It seems that everytime I ride a plane, I find these spurts of creativity. Perhaps it is all the movement and motion, of people from all over the world, each with unique stories, of every age, wearing their various outfits, traveling at different gaits, the signs of travel creeping around the corners of their face; all caught in a purgatory in which they await cramming themselves into overpriced cabinets that mind-numbingly burn off excess fuel before they can refill their tanks. It seems that no matter how far we are going or how far we have come, we all come together for a variable amount of hours and sit, facing forward in a slouch, intimately sharing our elbows and knees with strangers we find it difficult to hold eye contact with.
This is true for all, except for all of those fuckers in the business or first class or the Airline lounges. I envy those fuckers; they have it figured out.
Business class aside, it is the proximity in which all of these people that inhabit this plane occupy that truly sparks a fire for me – the thoughts that I conjure up about the random people I encounter. The stories that I imagine about people I know nothing about, the assumptions I make about these people from the little conversations I overhear.
And yet, there is lurking in the distance of my sub consciousness, a general apathy towards many people that I encounter. Stale suits, stale breathe, stale laughs, stale bellies. It his hard for me to not allow apathy to turn in negativity and pessimism. When my thinking turns to these channels, I often have to stop and breathe. As a good friend’s mother told me, “Never finish bad thoughts.” Unfortunately it means that I have to stop writing a bit earlier than I would like.
To Seattle I go.