Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
“All things change, and we change with them.”Please note that this blog spans a broad period of time. The intervening years have brought many things into my life, including divorce and remarriage. As such, some older posts reference a relationship which is no longer active. In context, however, the portrayal is accurate.
For many reasons, I have chosen to let entries such as this one remain in the overall continuity of the site.
The flight out of Grand Rapids has fourteen seats and I sit down wondering where Ritchie and the Big Bopper will be sitting.
I scrawl “Buddy Holly was Here” on the cover of the in flight magazine as we lift off. The generic business casual traveler dozing next to me doesn’t notice and for a second I feel like Tyler Durden, wishing I’d worn a plaid leisure suit.
I try to write, barely scratching the surface of a months old episode that’s starting to turn a little sour in the back of my mind. It’s been a difficult couple of months and I am resolved to get back into the swing of things again while on my trip. There’s too much waiting int he wings and I’m afraid that if I don’t kickstart things, I may not be able to ever get any of it back. And I have debts to pay, to the tea kids sipping their milkshakes patiently, to any number of amnesiac gods I’m sharing.
Sot it’s time to get back to work. I fight the bouncing turbulence of the Peggy Sue Express and battle against my own lousy penmanship, working on getting a scruffy god laid in a cheap hotel.
After a couple of pages, I start to feel a sense of deja vu — “Have I written this already?” I wonder. Or is it just that I’ve made so many notes, talked about it so much, plotted it all out in my head, that I’m already doe before a single word has been written?
I give up, deciding to check my laptop once I’ve landed.
I stare out of the window for the remaining thirty minutes of the flight . . . Watching the Lake Michigan coastline through the propeller and wishing mhy camera were not in the overhead compartment when we pass over the squat silo of a nuclear power plant.
I look for fallout clouds and doze, dreaming fitfully about the shape of my family.
———-
Midway
Midway airport in Chicago makes Mos Eisley look like Monte Carlo.
I’ve always love to travel in airports, especially alone — there’s always so much to see . . . gods and aspiring mortals everywhere.
A darkly beautiful woman strides through the crowds, virtually ignored by everyone around her — although every child she passes watches her intently, smiling shyly, drawn perhaps by the bright rainbow striped skirt she is wearing. As she walks, she smiles at each of them with so much warmth that I say to myself “This is how mythologies are born.”
On the plane out of Chicago. I’m sitting next to two men in their forties. They have shaved heads and identical silver goatees. They debate the authorship of the piped-in pop music (“I don’t think Jimmy Buffet wrote ‘Kokomo’, love…”) and are very gentle and loving with each other. For a moment I assume they are twins and then I remember that I’m on my way to San Francisco.
More gods to travel with and I debate asking them if I can take their picture. They are immaculate, identical, and utterly beautiful . . . they deserve to live forever.
Runway
We pull back from the gate and I start wishing for a steak dinner and a bottle of whiskey.
It’s going to be a long flight.
I’m on one of those shitbag discount airlines — the flying equivalent of blue stripe cigarettes– as if air travel weren’t already the most degrading form of transportation — so there’s no chance of anything even remotely resembling food, let alone steak. But I’m still holding out hope for the whiskey.
An hour later and I’m starting to wish that I’d risked a quick meal and a drink during my brief layover in Chicago. One cannot read Graham Greene for very long without wanting a drink. At least,I can’t.
Sitting on the runway, one of those thoroughly ridiculous delays that are never explained or apologized for.
Moving now . . . a four hour flight ahead of me, I think I see a ray of hope in the form of a drink cart in the galley.
35,000 Feet
In the air now. I’ve read about two hundred pages of Greene, listened to Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations.
Across the aisle from me an elderly asian woman has taken out a linen napkin, unfolding it to reveal three bing cherries which she eats, slowly, as though it were a religious ritual. I do not see what she does with the pits.
The cart is slowly making it’s way up the aisle bearing little cheesy pretzel things and the promise of whiskey at four dollars a shot.
Over the Rockies
Canadian Mist — the whiskey that talks funny and wears a knit cap. I may be the only Irish thing on the plane.
Bad whiskey. Glenn Gould. Graham Greene. A two hour delay getting into San Francisco. And I’m never going to get my steak dinner tonight.
Had to get up once, to cry in the lavatory. The bald, silver-bearded gods sitting with me are very kind and I didn’t want to distress them or their blood marys.
Play Canadian Misty For Me
Sitting with my fingertips in my eyes, crying over Graham Greene . . . there’s a faint pressure against my hand and I open my eyes to see the flight attendant slipping two dollars (the change from my ill-advised whiskey purchase) under my fingertips. She smiles kindly at me and moves on.
I wipe my eyes. Air travel is undignified as it is. I don’t need the whiskey or self-indulgent tears to make it worse.
Air Kids
Lovely foreign children wander up and down the aisle with their parents in tow, walking them like puppies.
I’ll be back with my kids soon. Tonight.
Almost There
A different flight attendant this time, asking me about the book I am reading.
“It looks good.”
“It is, very good.”
“What’s it about?”
“Um. It’s about a writer living in London who gets asked by a friend to investigate whether or not his wife is having an affair. The catch is that the writer was at one point a few years earlier, having an affair with his friend’s wife. But she broke it off. So it’s about jealousy and infidelity and the pain of loving someone who is absent.”
“I’ll have to read it.”
“It’s very good,” I say. “Although it is a bit sad, actually.”
“It’s sad?”
“Very.”
“Maybe it has a happy ending.”
“Mm, no . . . no, I don’t think so.”
“How do you know?”
“Well . . . it’s not that kind of story. I can tell. The sorrow is already built in.”
“You can tell that?”
“Yes. And I’ve seen the movie.”
On The Ground
I land and collect my baggage. My brother shows up in a suit and tie, looking very distinguished and grown up. He’s forty and suddenly I feel like I’m in high school again. We drive out of the city — one of the only real cities I love in the world — and wander through suburbia to his house where his wife and two of the biggest gins and tonic are waiting. I sneak in to see my son, sleeping, and cry a bit in the dark.
My mom is in the guest room with my daughter. I give both of them a kiss and go out to stay up late and talk with my brother and his wife. Eventually they go to bed and I sort through e-mail and a bad AOL dialup connection. I realize that I’ve been up for over twenty-four hours. And I never got my steak. I’m heading up to my parent’s house in the wild outback of Northern California in the morning.
Time to crawl into bed with my son and sleep.