June 13, 2009

  • I didn't sleep on the plane from Detroit to Amsterdam.  The flight was eight hours and through the night; everyone else around me had pulled out their tissue-like plane pillows and thin plane blankets and left the plane, unconscious.  The girl beside me lay down, taking up three seats as she curled around herself, a snake, smoke.  I was awake.  I alone was awake, sitting rigidly in the soft glow of in-flight movie screens yet to be turned off.

    For some reason, I was thinking half in French. Ceci, c'est tout. C'est tout et mon couer est fatigué. Tout est temporaire et je peux le sentir, j'ai pensé.  I thought this like I have thought it so many times before, except this time, on a plane miles above the ocean, taking me to exciting things I was not excited about, I felt it more profusely than any other time in recent memory.  When you realize your mortality, when you realize your fragility, insignificance, and your habit of lying to yourself about such things, the world around you changes.  Ah ha!  See, there it is again!  The world, of course, does not change, though you like to tell yourself that it does.  It is you.

    When you realize your mortality, your world shrinks and grows.  You shrink and grow.  I am losing the feeling as I type, so I must now throw in the metaphor before I lose it all completely: you feel the world the way a fish-eye lens must feel its images.  Pinched and stretched, all at the same time, knowing full well that it is not quite to scale.  And really, quite more interesting that way.

    So I didn't sleep.  When I tried, I only managed to blacken my tissue-pillow with my damp understanding.

    (The train of thought begins to trail away.  Track away?)