Still in something of a post-airline mood.
Usually, I am not a happy traveler. When people ask, I tell them that sure, I love to visit different places. I just hate getting there and back.
But today was oddly different. And not because of drugs or anything. After a tiny sliver of sleep, and dragging myself off the guest bed at just after 5 am, I was actually fairly civil to those around me at the airport, as we waited in one line after another, the goal of each line seeming to be to shuttle us from the downstairs holding pen to the upstairs holding pen. I got into a casual, brief conversation with the man in line in front of us, who confided that he hadn't been on a plane in fifteen years, and really didn't know he was soon going to be required to take off his shoes and various other pieces of clothing before he'd be flying anywhere.
And nowadays, because of my new implant, I always insist on the manual pat-down, instead of spread-eagling myself in whatever that contraption is that all of America simply accepts is as safe as, say, frakking and any other official toxicities currently on record. And I prefer to have this presumption of guilt preformed in public. It's interesting that the different boys assigned this task have such different techniques. On the flight out, the boy with the blue gloves gave me only the most cursory of examinations. In the Ontario airport, however, the big guy in uniform made sure to get his fists right up in my armpits. So glad I'd forgotten to hide my fifteen pounds of C4 there. After I'd passed muster, and could join the rest of the sheep who'd made their way through their mystery screenings, I asked Big Guy if he could tell me how many positive readings he got, yearly, on those blue gloves of his. He said he couldn't officially say, but that it wasn't many.
What a surprise.
Oh, but in any event, John patiently waited for me to reassemble myself, and we had a bagel and coffee (and my legally-prescribed preflight Xanax) before the totally uneventful flight from California to Dallas. We did get to see Mt. Palomar, off to our right. And the Salton Sea. And lots of desolation which will soon be the outskirts of the outskirts of LA. The landing in Dallas was as normal and routine as one could wish.
And there we were, where, in spite of only having 25 minutes to get lunch, we found a really nice bistro on the lower level of whichever Dallas terminal we were in, and we had what I thought was a really tasty, if harried lunch, with a delicious beer that I don't remember what it was. And crispy fresh cole slaw made with a remoulade sauce, instead of mayonnaise. Which I shoveled down like a starving escaped convict, and ran up the escalator, to the empty waiting area, where we were certain that the cabin door was already closed (damn that cole slaw!), only to discover that departure had been delayed for half an hour or so. So I went to look for another bag for the candy we were bringing home for our house-sitters -- the paper sack it came in was disintegrating, and I didn't want to leave a trail of soft centers through terminal C. Or B. Or whichever.
I did get a nice bag, that held the candy boxes nicely, with only the drawback of having TEXAS printed all over it. This, I figure, is what spray paint is for. Or I could turn it inside out. Or lose it, as with the fifteen hundred similar bags all over the house.
We were finally boarded, and all strapped in, and poised on the runway, when the captain said something about how we were waiting in Texas because the weather in Newark wasn't what they were hoping it would be. Like it wasn't going to change by the time we got there? At least the air conditioning was on, and I had plenty of impossible puzzles to do, and a murder mystery to read. The last time I was held captive by people I'd paid to transport me like a human being, I was on the tarmac at La Guardia for some five and a half hours, on a hot afternoon, in the full sun, without air conditioning, and if the flight attendants had come down the aisle, sprinkling us all with itching powder, to compound our communal discomfort, I wouldn't have been surprised.
But today, we finally took off. They always do. The flight attendants came through with the beverage cart, and John got a double scotch on the house. He kept trying to pay for it until I thought I was going to have to grab the credit card with my teeth (the 'fasten seat belt' sign being off at the time), but he finally calmed down, and had a big drink. I had a cup of ice water. I like to chew the cubes.
Coming down through the cloud cover over Newark was, as it often is at night, grimly magical -- the steady gleaming red stream of tail-lights along otherwise invisible arteries, the gridded streets and the reddish glow of the street lights. The mute blank spaces that are water, but look like bottomless gulfs. And tonight, there were torn trails of mist hanging in the air, and between the upper layer of translucent cloud cover, and a thinner one below us, was a stripe of black expanse. It was like flying in a painting by Georgia O'Keeffee and Joan Miro and Hieronymous Bosch all at once.
And, obviously, I'm home again. Clothes unpacked and stuffed into the hamper for tomorrow's marathon laund-o-rama. Papers cleared from the kitchen table, and tossed into the recycling bin. John made us a simple dinner of cheese omelets and cottage cheese -- I was so tired of eating in restaurants that, even if I have to wash the dishes myself, it's worth it. And now, even though I should still be on a California-based circadian time table, I find myself yawning and yearning to sleep again in my own bed. Even though the cats will get us up in three hours because they're cats and they have nothing better to do.
Tomorrow? Who cares? (And by the way, re: yesterday's post, where I went on and on about the buttons? I counted wrong -- I didn't need eight of the colorful little things, but sixteen. Which, as it happens, I now have, and have located the polar fleece, and could quite easily finish this project tomorrow, while the white clothes spin about in the basement. Why am I doing this, for a compete stranger? Maybe it'll help my karma? Maybe I just find it amusing, and that's enough?) Right now, I'm going to find that murder mystery, and re-immerse myself in its unlikely tale of mayhem and revenge. After I take my night-time meds, of course. And maybe dream of crossing other continents, in the metal equivalents of mythic magic carpets.
After, of course, I've passed the screening.
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
An entire continent, crossed in under seven hours, with my only physical contribution to the process being sitting on my butt and keeping my seat-belt fastened low and loose... Bizarre.
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