Day 1- Out the window of the plane it looks like that Georgia O’Keefe painting hanging in the Art Institute. The big one in the stairwell. "Sky Above Clouds IV". The one that looks like hundreds of white lily pads floating on the surface of a blue pond stretching to a pink horizon. Well it’s is not exactly like that out the window. The clouds out there are an unbroken field of white like snow rising in drifts and banks. It was raining on the ground, but up here above the clouds, the sky is a hard, dazzling blue, looking like an upside down blue glazed porcelain bowl that would shatter if hit with a hammer. The clouds look so solid and real I imagine myself walking out onto the wing and falling backwards into an embankment, making a snow angel while I blind myself staring up at the empty blue void of the sky. I want my mind to be an empty blue void. I want to be an overturned bowl emptied of all its contents.
Of course I realize that if I were to step off the wing, I would fall right through the clouds and not stop till the ground came up to meet me. But from here they look so soft and real it is hard to believe they wouldn’t break my fall.
I am on my way to Spain with my friend Hugo. What had started out as only a vague idea several months ago is now a reality. I took a two month leave from my job at a large chain bookstore, let the lease run out on my apartment, moved all my stuff back to my parents house, and now I was off to Spain, and then to England to visit my friend Evan, who was working and living there.
We are at cruising altitude. The ride is very smooth. It’s easy to forget we are miles above the ground in a gleaming metal tube. It is only on take-offs, when the engines roar to life and the plane shoots forward pinning you back in your seat, and your ears pop as you gain altitude, while the plane bumps along in the air currents, leaving your stomach in your throat; Only then do you realize you are flying, what an unnatural act you are committing. I love flying. I do it infrequently enough that it is still a novelty to me. I like seeing the clouds from the other side, seeing the flat plains of the Midwest sectioned into perfect squares by country roads, seeing the wrinkled skin of the earth from so far away that what on the ground seems a hopeless jumble starts to look like an orderly pattern, like a painting by Seurat. If you can stand far enough away from something, see the biggest picture, even the most contradictory mess and starts to make sense. Which is why I’m trying to get really far away. To see if things make sense.
.Hugo has brought along his Global Positioning System. On it we can track our movement. The plane appears as a black and white triangle pointed East. A crooked digital line represents the shore of Lake Michigan. A black dot is Chicago. We can even tell how fast we are going. We are going very fast. Though looking out the window, with only the empty sky and unchanging fields of cloud as points of reference, we might as well be standing still..
I take out a book by Frederico Garcia Lorca. The poems are in Spanish and then on the facing page translated into English. I try to read only the Spanish side, looking at the English when I run into trouble. Which I admit is quite often. My Spanish is very bad. I took 4 years in high school, but it has been so long since I put it to any use, most of it is forgotten. I know I am going to have to rely on Hugo to do most of the talking in Spain. I think I can trust him. Right now I am trying to memorize some of the more romantic bits for potential deployment with pretty Spanish girls.
The pilot announces over the intercom that we’re a in a holding pattern near the Canadian/Michigan border. There is "weather" in Philadelphia, where we were to land and change planes for Madrid. Apparently, we thought we could sneak up into Canada and tiptoe around the storm and come in through the back door. Ah, but nature is much older and wiser than Man, and has anticipated our move and parried. We had already spent an hour sitting on the runaway hoping for abatement of this same storm, and now with the holding, Hugo and I start to wonder if we will make our 8:30 connection.
It turns out they have closed Philadelphia, and we instead land in Syracuse, NY. We get in line with everyone else to make other flight arrangements. The line is very long and slow. This is ridiculous. Most, all of these other people, are merely on their way to other destinations within the US. Hugo and I are on our way to Spain. We do not have time for this. We are more important than these people. With that decided, Hugo and I go to the front of the line. He, being better at this sort of thing, corrals a woman and explains our situation. She directs us to another desk. It turns out there is a commuter flight leaving for Newark in 15 minutes, and from Newark we can catch a plane on to Madrid tonight.
I run down to baggage claim to collect out bags while Hugo negotiates the ticket vouchers. When I get back with our stuff, I find that their is a problem with our tickets. We bought them through a student travel service, the kind of place that buys tickets in bulk and sells them at a discount. No one at the counter knows how to handle these. Phone calls are made. More people show up. Judgmental clucking noises are made. Forms are filled out. Time ticks away. Finally we have our new tickets.
We run out onto the tarmac and are confronted with our plane. I have never flown a commuter flight before. The plane is a propeller powered 19 seater. Hugo and I throw our bags in the back, board the plane, and take 2 seats near the rear. There are 7 people on the flight, 9 if you count the crew. Besides us, there are business men returning from a week of business making. Hugo and I are the only travellers. They are returning to a wife, kids, a house with mortgage payments. And I’m sure that each man’s wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, his children the smartest, his house a castle, but they are not doing what we are doing. They cannot do what we are doing. We are young and without a care. And I know they are looking at us and wondering, "Who are these virile young men and where are they off to, Oh I wish it was me, I wish I could do what they are doing?" Because we have the secret. I have the secret. Yes, I hold the key to life right here.
But the truth is I have no idea where I was going. To Spain and adventure now, yes. But when I came back to America? Part of me is entertaining the idea of not coming back, of finding a job in London and living there. I have never found a better antidote for my troubles that travel. Free of constraints and responsibilities, under a foreign sky, it is impossible to worry about one’s troubles. You exist outside of time, outside of everything. You are merely passing through.
The pilot comes back and asks Hugo and I to move toward the middle of the plane. The luggage in back is heavy and they need to use the passengers as human counterweights to balance out the plane.
The plane is in the air and I look out the window. I am the only one awake. Everyone else is either sleeping or have their eyes closed in silent prayer. I can’t be sure which. Lightning flashes inside clouds and the plane bucks and jumps. For some reason, it is okay for this small plane to fly in the same weather that grounded our original, much larger, sturdier seeming plane. Maybe I will ask the pilot why that is. I could ask him if I want to. He is right there, only about 15 feet away, through the open door to the cockpit. By leaning into the aisle, I can see out the front window of the plane. The noses weaves, rises and falls. It is exhilarating and frightening. We are really Flying! Its not at all like a big commercial passenger jet. It really feels like we are thousands of feet up, riding the air currents like a bird. It is loud as wind and rain buffet the plane. My heart is in my throat.
We are landing. As we approach the runway, I watch out the front window as the nose of the plane is first left of the center, then right, but never quite managing to align itself with that painted line down the middle of the runway. I have never watched a landing up close before. Maybe this is normal. Again I would like to ask the pilot, but he seems busy.
Just before we are to touch down, the nose is about 30 degrees left of center, and I imagine a fireball cartwheeling down the runawy, when at the last moment, the nose straightens out and we come in with a relatively smooth landing.
Hugo and I collect our bags and find the desk to check in for our next leg. It turns out that this flight is not direct to Madrid, but instead to Zurich, where we will board another plane for Madrid which takes off (surprise surprise) 15 minutes after we touch down in Zurich. Hugo wants to know what is going to happen to our bags. The woman tells us they will be checked straight through to Madrid and will be there when we arrive. We don’t believe her. Would you? She seems like a nice lady and all, but come on. But there is no time to argue. We run through the terminal to to catch our plane, fairly certain that we have seen our luggage for the last time.
The plane is a SwissAir. It is the nicest plane I have ever been on. The seats are big and comfortable and the plane is almost empty. Hugo and I each have a entire middle row of 4 seats to ourselves. I page through the Air Mall catalogue. I am intrigued by a bike seat called the "Liberator." The middle of the seat is cut out, relieving, so says the ad copy, pressure on a very sensitive area of the male anatomy, an area to which prolonged exposure to such pressure can damage sensitive nerve endings and be detrimental to the male’s quest to produce heirs.
I point this out to Hugo. He has always been very concerned with his virility, and in fact on a bike ride we had taken a few weeks earlier had complained of numbness of the very sort described. He is also intrigued. He considers placing an order using one of the phones placed in each of the seatbacks. Air Mall says it will wave the $8US per minute fee if you place an order. In the end, he decides against it. His money is better spent playing a car racing game on one of the seatback monitors.
I am getting sleepy. I stretch out across my four seats and check my watch, but it is worthless. I have no idea what time zone we are in. We are somewhere between two continents, the New World and the Old. Above is the infinite reach of sky and space, below the blue depths of the ocean. We hang suspended somewhere in between. This is where I want to be; right Now, in the middle of all this empty space without time.
Page 2