Reviving the blog
11:15 a.m.
I’m on an airplane for the first time in like six years. It’s one of those tiny-ass 60 seaters. A Delta.
I’m on the way to Cincinnati for a layover enroute to New York, where tomorrow I will watch my little brother defend six years of doctoral research into the alarm calls of tufted capuchin monkeys in front of a table full of assorted advisors and professors and other people I picture needing to clip their nose and ear hairs and such. I’m listening to Yes’s “Time and a Word” album and trying to avoid looking past my daughter through the window, where the wing is shaking a lot and is absolutely, definitely going to break off any second now.
My laptop is all big and sandwiched between the seat in front of me and me. I can’t open the lid quite enough to suit my eyes.
I’ve flown plenty of times, and every time, I can’t help but think it’s all a load of crap. It’s complete bullshit. The moment the wheels leave the ground, I know I’m being hoodwinked. The whole flying-in-a-big-metal-thing thing is impossible, malarcky of the highest order, and I will get to the bottom of how and why thousands of people a day are fooled into thinking they have soared through the air and clouds and sunshine and angel breath to get to DesMoines or Grandma’s or wherever in the hell they end up after the massive illusion has ended.
Astral Traver/Leaving without her
In 1984 I flew from Howard Air Force Base, Panama, to Charleston, South Carolina, strapped to the interior of a C-130. It was a cheap way to go because that was the kind of airplane my dad flew for the Air Force, and so he had connections, and one of them was going that way anyway, so what the hell. Me and my family sat seat-belted along the fuselage and facing each other and eating lunch out of a donut box that someone brought us at some point. No windows, but lots and lots of noise. Toward the end the noise got noisier and the horrible shaking shook extra hard and crescendoed with a sudden, lubed glide. Then we were told we could un-strap and get out, and we were in America again.
Complete and utter nonsense.
So now, as I write this, I am supposedly somewhere over like the boot of Missouri and there’s a bunch of squares and rectangles of brown farmland on the ground down there on the Earth, neatly separated by trees and culverts that demark one farmer’s claim of ownership from another’s. Rivers wind in ways that look completely different than the way they look from the ground. All serpentine and also lacking any sense.
1:30 p.m.
The apparent landing in Cincinnati was uneventful. We made a quick trip to the next gate using those people-mover dealios, which are fun and breezy when you walk on them and make you feel like you do when you run in a dream and the coffee shops go by extra fast.
Now I’m in a bigger plane here on the last leg to JFK in New York. Like twice as big. Also a Delta. The wings have those pointy things on the end that swoop up. I don’t think I’ve been on a plane with those before that I can remember. The swoopy things are blue and the sky is blue and the seats and everything are blue.
There are a lot of empty seats on this flight, so Mom and Sierra and I each have our own three-seat area to stretch out on.
A new thing on airplanes since the last time I was on one are these LCD screens that unfold from the same area as the air-shooter thing and personal lights above the seats. And so there are like 12 of these screens folded down that I can see, and the same movie is playing 12 times in little small squares, and I’m listening to Stars of the Lid and I want to take a nap.
And I have to pee. A little. But the stewards are blocking the aisle with their cartfuls of crap snacks and seven-dollar beers.
So I close my eyes and wait.
4:30 p.m.
We arrive a little bit early and this airport is huge but the Delta terminal is nice and compact so it's easy to get to the baggage claim area and claim baggage. Brandon is supposed to meet us here but he's not here yet, but neither is our baggage.
The bags start their march out of the rubber flappy things just as Brandon shows up and we all hug and everything is almost perfect except that Sierra's bag had apparently burst open at some point on its hapless and inanimate journey to this same place, and some baggage-handling person had had to wrap it up with tape, so it looks like a a tiny little bag of crime scene, but it's not. Everything is in there, and everything is okay.
So we take an air tram to where Brandon parked the rental car and talk and look at Queens, New York, out of the windows of the car as we head toward the apparently very diifferent nautical-themed town of Stony Brook on Long Island. There are a lot of row houses and graffiti. It's rush hour, so the driving is hard and everyone is excited and talking a lot but also going "whoa" when the traffic stops real fast. There are a bunch of real low stone underpasses that we drive under that Brandon says were designed that way on purpose back in the day by some asshole city planner because he wanted to keep the tall buses full of poor people away from the beaches and nicer parts of long Island.
It takes like an hour to get to Stony Brook, and I get to having to pee pretty badly.
6:30 P.M.
Brandon lives in an old house near the beach along with several other grad students. The houses nearby are empty and huge and all owned by the same guy. These are mostly million-dollar properties, but Brandon's boarding house is smaller and off-code and more run down and apparently would piss people in the area off it wasn't so well hidden.
A short walk from his place is his landlord's nicer and aforementionedly empty properties. The beach is way down there and the sun is low and brilliant on the Long Island Sound and that's where Brandon's wife, Barbara, is walking their dog, and we wait for her to come up some old rickety steps with the dog as I take some pictures of Sierra and the empty, beautiful back yard of this empty beautiful house that Brandon swears he never parties at or anything.
7: 30 p.m.
We head to an Indian restaurant and get five different curries and share. We also get a good bottle of wine. My mom gets a little tipsy, which I see rarely, and its funny.
So now we are checked in to Danford's, our nautically-themed hotel in Port Jefferson. I'm tired now and need to sleep. Tomorrow is a full day, including the main event, Brandon's thesis defense.
I look very forward to morning coffee and taking some nice morning-light shots with the good camera of boats and such.
And I miss my Jeaner.
I’m on an airplane for the first time in like six years. It’s one of those tiny-ass 60 seaters. A Delta.
I’m on the way to Cincinnati for a layover enroute to New York, where tomorrow I will watch my little brother defend six years of doctoral research into the alarm calls of tufted capuchin monkeys in front of a table full of assorted advisors and professors and other people I picture needing to clip their nose and ear hairs and such. I’m listening to Yes’s “Time and a Word” album and trying to avoid looking past my daughter through the window, where the wing is shaking a lot and is absolutely, definitely going to break off any second now.
My laptop is all big and sandwiched between the seat in front of me and me. I can’t open the lid quite enough to suit my eyes.
I’ve flown plenty of times, and every time, I can’t help but think it’s all a load of crap. It’s complete bullshit. The moment the wheels leave the ground, I know I’m being hoodwinked. The whole flying-in-a-big-metal-thing thing is impossible, malarcky of the highest order, and I will get to the bottom of how and why thousands of people a day are fooled into thinking they have soared through the air and clouds and sunshine and angel breath to get to DesMoines or Grandma’s or wherever in the hell they end up after the massive illusion has ended.
Astral Traver/Leaving without her
In 1984 I flew from Howard Air Force Base, Panama, to Charleston, South Carolina, strapped to the interior of a C-130. It was a cheap way to go because that was the kind of airplane my dad flew for the Air Force, and so he had connections, and one of them was going that way anyway, so what the hell. Me and my family sat seat-belted along the fuselage and facing each other and eating lunch out of a donut box that someone brought us at some point. No windows, but lots and lots of noise. Toward the end the noise got noisier and the horrible shaking shook extra hard and crescendoed with a sudden, lubed glide. Then we were told we could un-strap and get out, and we were in America again.
Complete and utter nonsense.
So now, as I write this, I am supposedly somewhere over like the boot of Missouri and there’s a bunch of squares and rectangles of brown farmland on the ground down there on the Earth, neatly separated by trees and culverts that demark one farmer’s claim of ownership from another’s. Rivers wind in ways that look completely different than the way they look from the ground. All serpentine and also lacking any sense.
1:30 p.m.
The apparent landing in Cincinnati was uneventful. We made a quick trip to the next gate using those people-mover dealios, which are fun and breezy when you walk on them and make you feel like you do when you run in a dream and the coffee shops go by extra fast.
Now I’m in a bigger plane here on the last leg to JFK in New York. Like twice as big. Also a Delta. The wings have those pointy things on the end that swoop up. I don’t think I’ve been on a plane with those before that I can remember. The swoopy things are blue and the sky is blue and the seats and everything are blue.
There are a lot of empty seats on this flight, so Mom and Sierra and I each have our own three-seat area to stretch out on.
A new thing on airplanes since the last time I was on one are these LCD screens that unfold from the same area as the air-shooter thing and personal lights above the seats. And so there are like 12 of these screens folded down that I can see, and the same movie is playing 12 times in little small squares, and I’m listening to Stars of the Lid and I want to take a nap.
And I have to pee. A little. But the stewards are blocking the aisle with their cartfuls of crap snacks and seven-dollar beers.
So I close my eyes and wait.
4:30 p.m.
We arrive a little bit early and this airport is huge but the Delta terminal is nice and compact so it's easy to get to the baggage claim area and claim baggage. Brandon is supposed to meet us here but he's not here yet, but neither is our baggage.
The bags start their march out of the rubber flappy things just as Brandon shows up and we all hug and everything is almost perfect except that Sierra's bag had apparently burst open at some point on its hapless and inanimate journey to this same place, and some baggage-handling person had had to wrap it up with tape, so it looks like a a tiny little bag of crime scene, but it's not. Everything is in there, and everything is okay.
So we take an air tram to where Brandon parked the rental car and talk and look at Queens, New York, out of the windows of the car as we head toward the apparently very diifferent nautical-themed town of Stony Brook on Long Island. There are a lot of row houses and graffiti. It's rush hour, so the driving is hard and everyone is excited and talking a lot but also going "whoa" when the traffic stops real fast. There are a bunch of real low stone underpasses that we drive under that Brandon says were designed that way on purpose back in the day by some asshole city planner because he wanted to keep the tall buses full of poor people away from the beaches and nicer parts of long Island.
It takes like an hour to get to Stony Brook, and I get to having to pee pretty badly.
6:30 P.M.
Brandon lives in an old house near the beach along with several other grad students. The houses nearby are empty and huge and all owned by the same guy. These are mostly million-dollar properties, but Brandon's boarding house is smaller and off-code and more run down and apparently would piss people in the area off it wasn't so well hidden.
A short walk from his place is his landlord's nicer and aforementionedly empty properties. The beach is way down there and the sun is low and brilliant on the Long Island Sound and that's where Brandon's wife, Barbara, is walking their dog, and we wait for her to come up some old rickety steps with the dog as I take some pictures of Sierra and the empty, beautiful back yard of this empty beautiful house that Brandon swears he never parties at or anything.
7: 30 p.m.
We head to an Indian restaurant and get five different curries and share. We also get a good bottle of wine. My mom gets a little tipsy, which I see rarely, and its funny.
So now we are checked in to Danford's, our nautically-themed hotel in Port Jefferson. I'm tired now and need to sleep. Tomorrow is a full day, including the main event, Brandon's thesis defense.
I look very forward to morning coffee and taking some nice morning-light shots with the good camera of boats and such.
And I miss my Jeaner.
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6:43 PM
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