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MAKE THE CONNECTION

by Melissa Lauber

Jump. Go ahead, just jump.

In 1959, Life magazine photographer Philippe Halsman published the book 'Jump,' revealing to the world the new science of 'jumpology.'

For the six previous years, he had traveled the globe, shooting 101 covers for Life and asking the famous people he met along the way to jump while he took their pictures. Richard Nixon jumped. So did Marilyn Monroe, Rogers and Hart, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The results were fascinating and Halsman realized he was onto something ? jumpology ? a kooky combination of psychology and photography.

In his book Halsman wrote, 'The subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. ? The mask falls. The real self becomes visible.'

I thought of Halsman several years ago: My toddler niece Emily and I were in church and she asked me, 'Don't you just want to jump for joy?'

Yes, of course. Don't we all just want to jump for joy? It's become part of my Easter observance ? a little resurrection in the step.

But lately, a series of personal circumstances has made me feel like I'm trudging around under a wet blanket. Jumping feels foreign ? almost obscene.

In this frame of mind, I stumbled across more information about jumping on the Internet. There was a dark piece of the Sept. 11 tragedy that I had not absorbed. When the airplanes flew into the World Trade Center buildings in New York, fire trapped people on the upper floors. That morning, more than 200 people jumped out of the buildings to their death. They jumped to escape, out of desperation, in a search for air to breathe, with a prayer for wings.

Those people have become known simply as 'the jumpers.' They are a group, ignored in large part because of society's unwillingness to acknowledge their last moments.

A team of French brothers made a documentary, '9/11,' about the tragedy. They were on the scene and felt forced to edit the sounds of the jumpers out of their account. 'The sheer frequency with which the bodies fell made the sound of impact impossible for Americans to hear,' they said in Esquire magazine.

Images of the jumpers were also not shown on television during coverage of the event. The sculpture, Tumbling Woman, which memorialized them, was banned from Rockefeller Center, and Richard Drew's photo of 'The Falling Man' appeared once in several American newspapers and was not published on their pages ever again.

Drews' photograph, which shows a man framed and falling against the towering building, is both graceful and full of grace. There is no sense of panic. His body cuts an artful image, like some exotic cliff diver from the old Wide World of Sports television show.

The image has been analyzed. It is estimated that on that morning, at 9:41 a.m., the man was traveling upside down at 150 miles per hour. One glance at a grainy photocopy of the picture and one of my co-workers began to cry.

Drew took the image because it was his job to do so. He also took a photograph years earlier of Bobby Kennedy when he was assassinated. He was so close to that event, Kennedy's blood stained his jacket. Ethel Kennedy begged him not to photograph. He got the shot that is now part of our collective history.

Drew was a witness at the World Trade Center that day. There is no doubt the images he recorded are difficult to look at. There are even 10 other frames of the falling man in which the chaos and humiliation of such a death are readily apparent.

But he didn't look away.

I wonder why we do. Each year at this time I want to experience Easter joy and turn my head away from Good Friday. What are we willing to witness and what does it mean when we avert our gaze? What if tears cloud our vision? What if fear keeps our eyes sealed shut?

My mother recognized my wet blanket mood. She assured me that there is beauty and purpose and a very present God even amid the horror of Christ crucified.

We can look at the jumpers because God has planted a spark of resurrection within each of us. That's where the joy is born. But this joy doesn't have to always be of the jumping kind. Sometimes joy will lead us to just sit under that wet blanket together.

I still prefer joy of the jumping variety. I believe too much in happy endings. But this year I learned to look a little closer and not turn the pages so fast.

I also learned a little more about jumping. Sometimes, it seems, we jump as a leap of faith into something grand. Other times, we jump just to be able to fall into God's arms. Either way, it's best to do it with our eyes wide open. That way, just as Halsman's jumpology predicts, our masks will fall and our real selves become visible.