(no subject)
Passengers
At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people-
carry-on bags and paperbacks-
that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain
we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place
for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.
It's just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman
passes through her daughter's hair ...
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below ...
well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
-Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning © University of Pittsburgh Press
My mom just emailed that to me. I had another harrowing flying experience during the trip to Baja and back. It was our first flight, PDX to San Francisco. The pilot warned us there were reports of "moderate turbulence" and that the beverage service would be terminated early so that the flight attendants could clean up and be buckled up for the entire descent and landing. And indeed, it was bumpy all the way down. The approach involved much sudden pitch and roll. And if you've ever landed in San Fran, you know how the approach is over water. Every time the plane rolled, the whole window would be a view of churned up white-cap water. A few passengers screamed during the most forceful ones. I was not among them, but I had abandoned all illusions of decorum and calm and thrown myself down where I could hold on. I had a row to myself and was sitting in the aisle -- with my seat belt on, I just lay across the seats. I held on and waited for the impact, planned how to get out, wondered how long I could hold my breath under water, because I thought the next sudden movement might be too much for the pilots to correct. At one point, just before we hit the runway, the engines were gunned -- like "pedal to the metal" gunned -- and I was sure the landing was so disastrous that the pilots were aborting and trying to take us back up into the sky. But no, somehow we did land ok. And a flight attendant came on the speaker and asked us to applaud the successful landing in the very bad weather. I later learned that flights to San Fran were delayed for several hours that day due to weather. I suspect we were one of the last on-time flights.
So this, and that landing on the way back from Moldova, easily the two worst flying experiences I've ever had in the many hundreds of flights in my lifetime, both within the space of a year. It feels like a cruel trick to be a flying-phobe who keeps having her fears *justified.*
At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people-
carry-on bags and paperbacks-
that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain
we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place
for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.
It's just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman
passes through her daughter's hair ...
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below ...
well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
-Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning © University of Pittsburgh Press
My mom just emailed that to me. I had another harrowing flying experience during the trip to Baja and back. It was our first flight, PDX to San Francisco. The pilot warned us there were reports of "moderate turbulence" and that the beverage service would be terminated early so that the flight attendants could clean up and be buckled up for the entire descent and landing. And indeed, it was bumpy all the way down. The approach involved much sudden pitch and roll. And if you've ever landed in San Fran, you know how the approach is over water. Every time the plane rolled, the whole window would be a view of churned up white-cap water. A few passengers screamed during the most forceful ones. I was not among them, but I had abandoned all illusions of decorum and calm and thrown myself down where I could hold on. I had a row to myself and was sitting in the aisle -- with my seat belt on, I just lay across the seats. I held on and waited for the impact, planned how to get out, wondered how long I could hold my breath under water, because I thought the next sudden movement might be too much for the pilots to correct. At one point, just before we hit the runway, the engines were gunned -- like "pedal to the metal" gunned -- and I was sure the landing was so disastrous that the pilots were aborting and trying to take us back up into the sky. But no, somehow we did land ok. And a flight attendant came on the speaker and asked us to applaud the successful landing in the very bad weather. I later learned that flights to San Fran were delayed for several hours that day due to weather. I suspect we were one of the last on-time flights.
So this, and that landing on the way back from Moldova, easily the two worst flying experiences I've ever had in the many hundreds of flights in my lifetime, both within the space of a year. It feels like a cruel trick to be a flying-phobe who keeps having her fears *justified.*