”Your attention please. There has been another gate change. Flight 299 from Philadelphia is now departing from gate B7. Scurry, you hapless bastards! Pump those legs! Bleed! And please stop the crying and the endearing treaties with your desperate, pathetic glances: we are indifferent to your pain.”


Okay, I’m making some of that up. Like the part where they said “please.”


In the intervening months since I last flew I had forgotten what a freak show awaits you at the Philly International Airport (Useless Air terminal). Sent off to the fabulous big shouldered city of Chicago – one of my favorite destinations – and was actually looking forward to the trip. Like I said, it’s been a while. I forgot. I have never gotten in and out of Chicago without incident. Almost always weather-related. This time was no exception.


The delays are one thing; you grow to expect them. That's why they have the bars so conveniently close to the gate. To let "sweet liquor ease the pain," as Troy McClure once said. But the willy-nilly (did I just say that?) redirection to different gates, seemingly at random. What? How can they not know with reasonable certainty where the plane will finally end up? Why does it always sound like such a surprise? Dammit who's in charge here?

Inside, the usual sweaty coagulation of business travelers mingled with the even more pitiable (but ultimately more annoying) vacationers in a helpless dismal wad of multihued dismay, like a pressed and formed paste of gummis, gum and perspiration. Looks colorful and almost attractive, til you get too close. The business types at least know to shut up about it. The newbies feel the need to tell you how inconvenient this all is. And bond with you over it.

Listen pal, just because we’re in it together doesn’t mean I’m at all interested in hearing how it looks from where you are. We haven’t survived a prison camp together, and we won’t be taking a house by the sea together when it’s all over. It’s just a late flight. I’m pressed this close to your armpit out of necessity, not out of anything endearing about you, or some perverse desire to breathe in your funk. I am trying to avoid eye contact here and just get through this. Help me out.

And in a related aside on which I will not elaborate further, let me cast the first vote in support of revising the adage “the greatest thing since sliced bread” to something more impressive and essential, like, “the greatest thing since underarm deodorant.” Hoofa.

Occasionally a pod of bronzed young coed lovelies would spill forth from arriving planes and stride with youthful determination past us. They seemed to be disgorged in pockets (from planes arriving [apparently] from points tropical and festive and southerly) as though they were erupting from larval form at regular intervals. Even they, though bright with youth and health were brimming also with hostility and a tangible disgust. It emanated in glistening heat waves.


We were none of us having a good time, you understand.


And yet, the last couple of days held a sort of work nirvana experience for me, if that isn’t too oxymoronic. The kind of busy where you look up and five hours have gone by and you realize that you forgot to eat. An altered state of consciousness. Busy as hell, no question there, but not that “oh my god I can’t take another minute of this” kind of busy. The “my neurons are humming and my thoughts are pressing through, rhythmic and thorough and relevant, immune to distractions, creating a cascade of almost zen-like productivity that is (I think) the same thing that Stephen King used to refer to as ‘falling into the page’ while writing” – THAT kind of busy. Where you feel creative and relaxed and in control even though you’re like a multi-armed Ganesh flipping infinite switches at blinding speed and all in the nick of time to keep it all going. Doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, whee-doggies! This is why the neocortex evolved.


But the airport still sucked. First class means nothing on a two hour flight. I had four little packets of cashews for dinner on Monday. (Folks in coach eat pretzels, ha!) But those little bottles of Johnny Walker, while too little, did help. As Troy McClure wisely observed.




posted by MT at 10:47 AM |