about takeoffs and landings

The first hour slips under our wings. The next hour peels paint as it angles us higher and farther from anywhere, locking us out of your homes from 35k feet. We wave through windows, untethered, until, washed up on the rock-strewn shore of our futures, we meet again.

about boarding positions around Christmas

I held Southwest boarding position A3. People were bunched up around the gate—baby strollers and wheelchairs and luggage and the A boarding group—but there was a little space where boarders A1 and 2 would stand, so I stood there.

 

A small black woman behind me started shooting anxious looks my direction. She suspected me of cutting in line and probably felt slighted.

 

A middle-aged white guy right behind me, probably a lawyer or accountant, also eyed me suspiciously while offering the woman more of the brain-deadening conversation he had evidently been killing the time with. It was the kind of commentary that only a perpetually positing hater of silence could offer a nervous, preoccupied woman: observations about the plane, about a trailer hooked up to the plane, about the time he flew as an unaccompanied minor, and, finally, about how preboarding was taking a while.

 

He continued serenading the nervous woman with these inanities until the preboarders got the go-ahead. Finally, she said to her co-sufferer of this linear injustice, "He"—meaning me—"must be number 1." Lawyer-accountant answered, "I'm 1. You're 2. I don't know what he is."

 

I turned and said, "I'm 3."

 

"He's 3," said our narrator. In any case, maybe they expected me to move. If I was them, I would have expected me to move. In fact, I'd be pretty irritated by me.

 

I usually would move, but this time I didn’t. I enjoyed the idea of them feeling tension I usually reserve for myself.

 

But soon more space opened up when the large number of wheelchair people and their dutiful escorts preboarded. The woman hesitated, then shifted around in front of me. The man soon followed. It was almost Christmas, after all, and, just in time, the world was set right once again.

 

(posts) two Eliot Smith lyrics that have bounced around my mind the last couple weeks

 

about a connecting flight

A beautiful woman sat in the aisle seat, row 6, and I took the window. More passengers filed in, and then a man took the middle seat. He wanted to sit by her. The plane was full of conversation minutes after takeoff. The man and woman talked. They talked the whole flight. I caught bits and pieces of what he said, but nothing she said. He told some stories. One was about a time he cashed a check at a bank drive-through but at home discovered the teller gave him too much money, which he reported. What a guy: honest and so secure that he doesn't even count money when it is given to him.

 

His smothered, gentle laughs, his quiet applause at her jokes, and the sun streaming through the window onto the pages of my book—it all felt so good. 

about something said in the breakroom

Lisa, her current husband, and her son from her previous marriage to a convict drove to Toronto during the holidays. Lisa brought back to the office some maple cookies. She told us, as we forced down the cookies, that Toronto is great because, immigration-wise, residents there describe the city as a mosaic rather than a melting pot. This elicited an "Aww" from Cheryl. Lisa then informed us that Toronto was what New York City wishes it was: a city in which people don't have that I'm-too-cool attitude. Also, Toronto has a China Town, Little Italy, and so on.

something about leaving

She started feeling a little sentimental as she prepared to check out of the hotel. "I'll never be in here again." A melancholy trickled always, but, in the moments that she inventoried her stuff and looked the room over, the valve opened a tiny bit more. She thought of the city she was in and of how she was unlikely to return because life is too short and there may be other places to go. She would feel this way the times she traveled even while not ever really wanting to come back.

about wearing out in the empty Providence airport

Unbothered runways press out to a deafened, mud-washed fringe of trees. Most people drive here. And away. Inside, neutral pop plays over the PA and suppresses mood. An unattended bag, a wilting plant in public space. How many rough mornings have there been at the Hampton Inn & Suites Providence Airport? Say goodbye to me and Massachusetts' shrunken head.

about waiting at the gate

The pilot pulled us up to our gate at Reagan. The old couple in the row in front of me immediately stood up. Husband had the aisle seat; wife had the middle. Deplaning is a slow process. One by one, starting in the front, the passengers stand up, gather themselves, step into the aisle, open the overhead bin, pull down luggage, check themselves one last time, and then head for the exit. So the old couple in row 14 waited.

The wife had to hunch over, as all middle-seat passengers do when they stand up. The husband, in the aisle now, stretched. And he shifted, readying himself, sort of, as if he was deplaning imminently. But the Southwest deplaning process proceeded as always: indifferently. The old husband lifted his hand to his wife's shoulder and made a rubbing motion. Then he gave her two slaps on the back as he would the Pontiac after a successful road trip. The slaps said, "You made it, and I respect that." She held steady, elbows propped on the headrest in front of her, and faithfully absorbed the wordless encouragement her husband offered. Welcome to Washington, D.C., and thank you for flying Southwest.

about being a city brotherly love

I know there were moments there when I told myself, "Hold on to this feeling." But all I remember is how I felt seeing the seven-day outlook on the local news of a city I was about to leave forever. And, out on the sidewalk, under the old church awning, all that regret and anguish stored up in a man's face.

about the flight in

The Chinese girl was saving the middle seat for her man. She boarded long before him because she checked in on time. He arrived. Between sandy hair and a trim build is the prematurely aged face of hard living; he wears a flannel shirt as though he always does; she wears a flannel shirt to signal union. He leans over to her sometimes and speaks. His voice seems to quietly echo out of his mouth. Later, he will get up to use the restroom and end up waiting several minutes longer for his turn than expected. The Chinese girl will watch him, watching him for minutes while her iPhone continues streaming. Across the aisle from the Chinese girl and her fuckup boyfriend, a man takes a seat next to a young mother who cautions him, "Hope you don't mind a fussy baby!" He smiles and says he does not. The baby will sleep the entire flight, but he will take out a pair of fingernail clippers and go to work grooming at 30,000 feet. On my row, a grandmother pushes up the window shade with both hands, and the sun blasts through my eyes.

about an interplanetary low

This is a test. In a few minutes the siren will trail off and the bullhorn will thank us for participating. Tests, drills: these occur every other day now. Strap on the oxygen mask, help mask others, duck, preferably under something sturdy.

What good will it do? None. Life here will end. Hard to imagine a time not so long ago when we rocketed ourselves to this place in hopes of making a life together.

about "Travels in Siberia" Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier, humor contributor to The New Yorker, developed a Russia fetish traveling there and, in 2010, published Travels in Siberia. This hefty travel log relays all kinds of details about Frazier's experiences with his guides, with locals, the climate, terrain, and culture. As made clear by the title, this book focuses on his times in Siberia, the massive symbol that accounts for the bulk of Russian territory (about three quarters of it). The travel-log part that makes for most of the book plodded aimlessly, and the narrative's pace stalled; the best parts relate some fascinating history lessons.

something about "Just One More Thing" by Peter Falk

In Just One More Thing, Peter Falk tells a few dozen stories from his life, but this is not a birth-to-death autobiography. He shares some tales from his youth and pre-acting days, and a half dozen or so more stories from "Columbo," but the bulk come from his movie shoots and travels. (A couple are throwaways, just recaps of his favorite plot points and bits of dialog.)

Like the famous television detective he played, Peter Falk is an original. If there are any takeaways, it's that playing "Columbo" may have made him world famous, but Falk has an enviable film resume. Of all American comedy films, "The In-Laws," with Falk and Alan Arkin, ranks pretty high. He also did solid work with his longtime friend, John Cassavetes.

If you are fond of "Columbo" and Peter Falk (or Falk's turn in "Wings of Desire"), Just One More Thing is a worthy read.

about staycations

A "staycation" is not a thing and I would prefer people stop saying it.