His condition is grounded (perhaps in a mental hospital) but he's determined to try again. Here, I heard the lyrics not as "a soul in tension/ is learning to fly" but "my sole intention/ was learning to fly", in that the narrator failed at his attempt to die. He has no navigator to bring him 'home', where his happiness once was. He thought he thought of everything that could go wrong with his plan, not heeding the warnings of what could happen. "Ice is forming/ on the tips of my wings" means that his ability to function is weakening with his depression.
He cannot stop thinking of his regrets and failures, the "circling sky". The sky would represent everything he wished to accomplish but, for whatever reason, could not. The "fatal attraction" holding them fast would be the romantic notions of suicide that many people seem to hold, and he cannot "escape/this irresistible grasp", pulling all his thoughts into this final act. The narrator is desperate for a way out, and receives an 'answer' from the sky: "standing below/ my senses reeled". "A flight of fancy on a windswept field" brings to mind the fields near my residence: they're windswept and desolate. The narrator is trapped in circumstances or a life from which they cannot escape, but they see the road out: suicide ("a ribbon of black/stretched to the point of no turning back"). The musical background seems both 'grounded' and lofty, the thoughts of one who can't "fly". I recently heard this song on the radio and have always associated it with suicidal ideations.