1. The Reality of a Broken Windmill
We spend the first half of our life finding things to lament about
This is what's going through my head as a sit in wait for the 743 to Denver. Business men in casual clothes hosting meetings in cramped booths. Florescent lights pouring into action, serving fresh insight to foreign travelers. Everyone appears to be doing something more important then me.
It's winter here, but the windows look as flimsy as the day they were manufactured. The airport clerk lazily reads a typical women's magazine. Most likely an article about how to please your man or if a particular hourglass pencil skirt is in fashion. An old man in a wheelchair sports a bald mullet, a strange amalgam of a lumberjack and a Buddhist monk. A middle aged woman instructs her phone to message someone, in what seems to be a sci-fi throwback to the 70s. This place would look like a piece-wise ensemble to a foreigner, but it moved with staleness and hesitation to the native eye.
When I’m uncomfortable, I find myself trying to camouflage with my surroundings by making casual glances at no one in particular, or pretending to be occupied in something as trivial as my shoes. I can’t convince myself that this ever works. It was at a time like this that I noticed someone sitting next to me while I waited for the airport clerk to call my section number. Out of the corner of my periphery I could see a face intently focused on the edge of my nose. I tried to bypass this awkward moment by counting clever prints of airplanes etched into the carpet, but her gaze didn't falter. I read somewhere once that during unusual or intense moments, time can relatively compress when your brain attempts to process foreign information. When I turned my head to see who was fixated on my face, I moved with no more speed than a broken windmill.
She was immaculate and flaunted a youthful sexuality without any effort. A oversized pair of sorority girl sunglasses kept me from determining the color of the pools beneath. She wore a loose fitting camisole and leaned forward just enough to make me nervous. Her hair was pulled back with a few stray strands breaking the soft lines of her face. Her lips looked like they were made of cotton. They parted, ready to evaporate.
"Do you know how to get to Shinjuku Station?"
As far as I knew, we were in the desert and the 743 was waiting for me. I had a difficult time easing myself into this, into her camisole, and she couldn't be more at home, pretending I wasn’t in the room. Unsure of how this was happening, I felt the back of my throat vibrate.
"I'm sorry, I'm not sure."
She smiled in a way that made subtle creases appear on either side of her mouth. For a moment I thought the airport turned into a cliche rendition of that classic painting by DaVinci, and then she was gone. My mind waned with abruptness and I was suddenly aware that the chair I was sitting in was somewhat uncomfortable. The room hadn’t noticed this blurb in existence, so why should I? The clerk thumbed through a magazine, the monk stared at the ceiling, and she was gone.
Without considering the reality of her smile, I opened my tablet and typed a quick note.
Always behave appropriately
It was convenient that all of my electronic devices were tied to each other. I could read this message anywhere, at anytime. It would never be forgotten in the complex superfluous amusement park that we called a highway. A highway that could never be fully understood. Thinking back, I seem to remember Kepler trying to interpret this in a dusty basement. I couldn’t help but imagine objects within objects that unified everything. It made far more sense than strings and glue and outlandish metaphysical proposals. The clerk’s voice filled the room, rocking me back to reality.
"Now seating sections A through C, including all platinum and premium members."
I stood up and pulled a plane ticket out of my right pocket. Taking just a brief glance at the empty seat to my left, I walked toward the terminal exit.
* * * * * * * *
The boarding tunnel shared a sympathy for the bitter desert outside. A dull yellow light permeated every helpless carry-on, every recently shined shoe, and every fancy cup of coffee. As I stood at the apex of the slow crawl to our plane, I was made sober by the ocean like haze which formed from shuffling feet and bobbling heads. Each with a thought of there own. When I was young I believed that my thoughts made me unique and vastly different from everyone. How naive I had been in this machine like existence. Everything mimicked each other. Even the ramp floor could be mistaken for rocks and dust.
We moved forward in a waddling fashion. Everyone was in a hurry to sit down and wait for everyone else. At times like these I try to hold my composure and stay as calm as possible. It's an odd internal battle to pity those around you when you want to treat them with respect. Every time I pull this off, passers by receive an awkward half-smile. It feels normal to me, but I know it doesn't look sincere. This is the expression that the gentleman in jeans and a Hawaiian button-up gets when he looks back. The poor sap occupies a very sad point in space, two feet in front of my unpolished shoes. I see the impatience in his expression and I’m not sure how to act. You would think that thirty-four years of patience and education would have prepared me for these moments.
I could start a conversation.
"Hot outside, huh?"
"Yeah."
It would still end with the same wobble on my face. We would, most likely, never meet again, resulting in a useless conversation. Sure, maybe he was recovering from a tragic existential crisis and he was pleading for someone to acknowledge him, but that was unlikely. That was not the man in front of me. He was content in his flower print while his body urged for first place. We continued to waddle forward.
When the decent down the tunnel reached its end, and the landscape disappeared behind me, I was greeted by a very pleasant stewardess. I've always been partial to stewardesses. They stand as the only source of comfort in this mass of metal, plastic, and 70's decor. As we move single file down the thin rubber walkway, I can hear Carey, by Joni Mitchell, playing through the speakers. I instantly want to be transported to a time when dancing in the daylight with pretty dead things in your hair was commonplace. A time that forced shopkeepers to make signs like "No shirt, No shoes, No service!" My mom lived there, and that's where I wanted to be right now. Instead, I watch baggage straps sag lazily from side to side. A part of me desperately wants to believe they’re working in tandem to match Mitchell's beat, but, as I said before, I'm a sucker for fantasy.
I find my seat, C2, and I'm grateful for a being in the middle. Far away from the statistically improbable crash site and one step closer to the lavatory. A polite looking woman in a pale suit is sitting to my right, while the aisle seat remains empty. Looking up for something to do, I adjust the air spigot and I'm sprayed with a stale breeze. When the door closes, I'm reminded of a Darwinian past. Living things desperately trying to change their shape in a tunnel of recycled air. Though you can see evolution clearly in most high school museums, when thinking about this I tend to develop sympathy for spontaneous and instant design. With such a short life in comparison to a hydrogen cloud, we aspire to be just like the air we breath, full of movement and violence, but we actually just peter out with barely a dominate trait left for our children. Right now, I'll just have to do with this hallowed out pterodactyl, bones and all.
Where is Shinjuku Station?
The plane starts to slowly tax backwards as it eases out of its bindings, while workers with sticks and blocks scatter across the tarmac. I find the seatbelt fasteners, always a chore, and slide them into place. Looking past the blond hair and matching collar, I’m caught by a brief interruption of vertigo as the world I’m in and the world outside collided in a layman's version of relativity. Similar to tires spinning in the wrong direction. To center myself again I flip my head forward, like a good soldier, and find a modern touch screen monitor looking right back at me. To be precise, it was actually a set of mindless digital clouds and not something so ominous. For awhile, I stared at these clouds. There is something so deeply rooted in human nature that all comfort and sensibility sprouts from it. We all look for patterns. In those clouds I found repetition. This wasn't such a novel thing, as it was probably created with minimal effort and put on loop. To hell with it, I had discovered something, just shy of Prometheus, there was a clear pathway to my left, and there were several good books in my bag. I took out my tablet just before electronic devices were temporarily banned.
The world, and all of its divisions, are simply functions within functions
It's hard to explain what happened next. In all honesty, I'm terrified of flying. In rare and isolated locations of my life, I've found it hard to procure meaning, but when a plane starts to move, so do the cellos in my skin. Such is the flow of age, turbulence brightens dark dense bubbles and pins my head in place like a brainwashed government experiment. So, I resort to the delusion of synthetics and then remove myself for a moment.
I'm alone with my wife.
She's has the type of beauty that makes me question my existence every time I look at her. A marvelous crooked smile that makes me mirror her every movement. Her face radiates a comforting simplicity that allows me to forget about in-between objects and urges me to become content with blacks and whites. I can see the perfect curvature of her breasts down to the fluttering of her toes, while she waits in anticipation. The sheets are cool to the touch and her body radiates a heat that pulls all of the tension out my pores. This a moment of compounding envy. My shoulders hum as she breaths a soft note of relaxation.
A jerking industrial sound pries me back to reality as the plane’s landing gear salutes to the ground below. The emergency oxygen bags are still intact, the fake scenery is forever on repeat, and the pilot’s voice can be clearly heard. My flight to Salk Lake City is on time. I pull out the in-flight magazine from the seat-pouch in front of me and turn it over to see where my next gate is located. Not too far. Only about a ten minute walk from the landing site. As I put the flip book back in place, I notice something peculiar flickering beneath my seat. Upon further inspection, the floor was to melt away as wavicles chased each other in a circle. It was as if a miniature wormhole was casually forming underneath me. I bent over and stretched my head towards it, curious of its contents. Slowly, a clear tunnel took shape, full of dusty cabinets and old clocks. At its bottom I could see people rushing past each other in all directions with suitcases and duffle bags. I could hear a faint voice bouncing off the furniture below.
"Flight 258 to Cincinnati will be boarding in ten minutes"
Before I could register what was going on, the woman next to me slapped on a feathered hat and a pair of white gloves.
"Pardon me, may I...?"
She pointed at the hole between my legs.
What could I say. Twice in one day I had been molded into a speechless spinster of unusual happenstance events. Why was I acting so unfazed with all of this disorder? If anyone were to peer into my typical daily life, they would most likely find it mundane and stifling. Maybe this is how I react to such strange events. Up until now, the universe moved as it should. Maybe my mind perceives these fluctuations in normality as utterly equal to my boring routines. I conceded to these thoughts, moved my legs aside and gestured her towards the anomaly.
"Thank you"
She slipped beneath my seat and climbed down the cabinets and clocks. It was a swirl of pale and blond and those sort of things.
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