The taxi at O'Dark Thirty, the cold and wet endured without a jacket because the tropics await, security lines and trudging to the gate; all part of the equation. I often here folks talk about this portion of the journey as a thing to be endured, and, indeed, the nature of the departure can be less than the most glamorous portion of a person's travels. One does not often see the airport featured in slide shows of the trip.
As an alternate.....
The first alarm goes off and the day starts, dark and cold and wet, with three hours of sleep. There is no need for the second alarm, the safety alarm, because sleep is gone. The bag is ready by the door, the clothes are laid out, passpost and boarding pass already zipped into security pockets. The taxi is on time and the ride to SeaTac is spent with Kabu, who is from Ethiopia and has lived in the USA for twenty years. We discuss how much safer we feel outside of the US, rather than in. We both wonder why people feel it is the opposite way round.
Security is, well, the usual smoke and mirrors that are performed for the benefit of public consumption. I do not feel safer or less safe, but I share a "single-serving" conversation with a man who is wearing business attire and a Penguins jersey. Then there is the re-dressing and re-oredering of possessions after TSA is through with us. "Safe travels. And you."
For myself, departures become the doorway to a natural state of being. It is not the journey that is the challenge, but the staying still. My fear, my darkest fear, is an eventual and unstoppable decline into banality. I am terrified that if I stop sojourning, life will revolve more and more slowly, until, stopped, I cease to exist, swallowed by the lack of momentum. To disappear into the everyday, that is fear.
To be sure, the everyday banality that I dread exists in other places, but as a traveler, I am protected from it. Live long enough anywhere, no matter how exotic, and the tendrils of the everyday may ensnare. The somnambulant nature of banality, of the lapse into existing rather than being, is an ever-present danger.
But, today, that is not my fate, although I confess my fear, shameful as it may be. Today, I am watching the departures of others. Children roll about, the airline urges folks to check bags as the flight is full (the flight is always full), and people squint at their devices. We are all departing, each in our way, and I lighter as I move forward.
The most common question friends and neighbors ask me prior to one of my departures is "Are you excited yet." When I answer that I am not really that excited, they look puzzled. What I really am, as the hour nears, is relieved.
As an alternate.....
The first alarm goes off and the day starts, dark and cold and wet, with three hours of sleep. There is no need for the second alarm, the safety alarm, because sleep is gone. The bag is ready by the door, the clothes are laid out, passpost and boarding pass already zipped into security pockets. The taxi is on time and the ride to SeaTac is spent with Kabu, who is from Ethiopia and has lived in the USA for twenty years. We discuss how much safer we feel outside of the US, rather than in. We both wonder why people feel it is the opposite way round.
Security is, well, the usual smoke and mirrors that are performed for the benefit of public consumption. I do not feel safer or less safe, but I share a "single-serving" conversation with a man who is wearing business attire and a Penguins jersey. Then there is the re-dressing and re-oredering of possessions after TSA is through with us. "Safe travels. And you."
For myself, departures become the doorway to a natural state of being. It is not the journey that is the challenge, but the staying still. My fear, my darkest fear, is an eventual and unstoppable decline into banality. I am terrified that if I stop sojourning, life will revolve more and more slowly, until, stopped, I cease to exist, swallowed by the lack of momentum. To disappear into the everyday, that is fear.
To be sure, the everyday banality that I dread exists in other places, but as a traveler, I am protected from it. Live long enough anywhere, no matter how exotic, and the tendrils of the everyday may ensnare. The somnambulant nature of banality, of the lapse into existing rather than being, is an ever-present danger.
But, today, that is not my fate, although I confess my fear, shameful as it may be. Today, I am watching the departures of others. Children roll about, the airline urges folks to check bags as the flight is full (the flight is always full), and people squint at their devices. We are all departing, each in our way, and I lighter as I move forward.
The most common question friends and neighbors ask me prior to one of my departures is "Are you excited yet." When I answer that I am not really that excited, they look puzzled. What I really am, as the hour nears, is relieved.
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