for "girl"
I really wanted to write something pretty for "girl," but just when I had started to formulate something in my mind, a story about a man stumbling upon a picture of a girl while packing his stuff up to move away (to where I'd figure out later), I had to get on a plane and fly back to Poughkeepsie.
When I left Phoenix yesterday afternoon, it was 75 degrees. I sat next to a young couple who filmed the takeoff and landing on a small camcorder. I wondered what could be so interesting about blurred scenery viewed through a fingerprint-smudged window, especially during the landing, when it was dark out and the outlines of buildings, the stenciled bridges, the cars driving to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what, faded in the distance, reduced to thin bands of light or pinpricks in a satin sheet. Would they watch this video later and recognize where they were flying to? Would they see the streaked lines of light, distorted by streams of air rushing over the wings, and think, yes, this is when we flew over Philadelphia, the day after Wrangler wandered off down the street and we couldn't find him and Jesse cried for hours until the dog, that fucking dog, I swear to god he's got some kind of sonar or radar or some shit, he heard her and came waltzing back through the door like he meant it all along, and that young man sitting next to us on the plane, he kept looking up from his book and sighing and rolling his eyes everytime Jesse opened the camera, and I wanted her to turn the camera on him, stick it in his face, make him a part of this goddamn vacation, too, if he was so goddamn interested.
When I arrived in Philly, the temperature was 30 degrees. I had a cheesteak in the airport, waiting for my plane to start boarding. It was a tiny turbo prop, not even the kind with jets, but with dual propellers, one piece of long-obsolete flight equipment on either wing, the kind with only two seats on either side of the aisle and a single flight attendant taking care of all twenty passengers, who gives the safety demonstration with a look of despair in her eyes that says, you can buckle your seatbelt like this, and the exits are here, here, and here, but you do realize, if this thing goes down, we're all fucked anyway, so I might as well spend this time figuring out some helpful hand gestures to guide you in hail marys, shemas, whatever god believe in as long as he--or she, one never knows, she might think, shaking her head and chuckling--saves your ass.
As I was sitting in the airport waiting for news on my flight, an official-looking airline employee came to use the courtesy phone. I didn't hear his entire conversation, but I heard a single snippet which left me a little disconcerted: "No, of course not," he said, chuckling, "I'm not compromising safety." I wondered whether airline employees were like your father when his car starts smoking from the hood or the "check engine" light comes on in the Terwilliger curves and you're still a good ten minutes from downtown Portland, a good fifteen from the central library, where the stack of research books crumbling around your feet is due in 48 minutes and the fines will fall on his shoulders. "It'll make it," he'll say. "Just got to ride it a bit easier." When you roll your eyes and grip the little leather handle above your shoulder strap until your knuckles turn white, he'll look at you and say, "What, do you want to be late? Trust me, it'll be fine. Christ, it's better than being late, isn't it? Don't look so morbid."
When I arrived in Newburgh, the temperature was 5 degrees. Ben and Shruti were there to pick me up, and we took a scenic route back to campus, driving through Beacon and New Hamburg and a small, self-proclaimed "Hamlet." I felt this weird sense of anonymity, of inconsequence that one feels when driving through a completely foreign place, counting the empty cars and vacant windows and burned-out streetlights, the bakeries and cafes and newspaper stands of rural New York, that feeling that one will never know anything about the lives of the people whose presence is manifest in the flickering lights behind drawn curtains and in the cold, empty sidewalks, the dusty bootprints lining the street. We arrived at about 1 AM. I unpacked and failed to fall asleep for a few hours.
Now, the night before classes are set to resume, I'm tired but flying. I'm ready for classes, for that feeling of curling up on my couch in front of the radiator and reading an academic book, of being that image of academia and college life and adolescence and ignorance and, shit, there's so much left to learn, so much that I'll never know, but fuck it, I'll keep trying, maybe to make my presence known at parties, holding a red dixie cup with gin and tonic spilling over the rim and decrying with slurred s's the two-party system, maybe to feel more full, maybe to fill a void in my life, a gaping wound caused by a girl's affections, her warm touch grown cold and her fingernails forever gouged into my skin, or a brother's disapproval, a stiff shake of the head or a disappointed eye cast downward, or maybe because.
When I left Phoenix yesterday afternoon, it was 75 degrees. I sat next to a young couple who filmed the takeoff and landing on a small camcorder. I wondered what could be so interesting about blurred scenery viewed through a fingerprint-smudged window, especially during the landing, when it was dark out and the outlines of buildings, the stenciled bridges, the cars driving to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what, faded in the distance, reduced to thin bands of light or pinpricks in a satin sheet. Would they watch this video later and recognize where they were flying to? Would they see the streaked lines of light, distorted by streams of air rushing over the wings, and think, yes, this is when we flew over Philadelphia, the day after Wrangler wandered off down the street and we couldn't find him and Jesse cried for hours until the dog, that fucking dog, I swear to god he's got some kind of sonar or radar or some shit, he heard her and came waltzing back through the door like he meant it all along, and that young man sitting next to us on the plane, he kept looking up from his book and sighing and rolling his eyes everytime Jesse opened the camera, and I wanted her to turn the camera on him, stick it in his face, make him a part of this goddamn vacation, too, if he was so goddamn interested.
When I arrived in Philly, the temperature was 30 degrees. I had a cheesteak in the airport, waiting for my plane to start boarding. It was a tiny turbo prop, not even the kind with jets, but with dual propellers, one piece of long-obsolete flight equipment on either wing, the kind with only two seats on either side of the aisle and a single flight attendant taking care of all twenty passengers, who gives the safety demonstration with a look of despair in her eyes that says, you can buckle your seatbelt like this, and the exits are here, here, and here, but you do realize, if this thing goes down, we're all fucked anyway, so I might as well spend this time figuring out some helpful hand gestures to guide you in hail marys, shemas, whatever god believe in as long as he--or she, one never knows, she might think, shaking her head and chuckling--saves your ass.
As I was sitting in the airport waiting for news on my flight, an official-looking airline employee came to use the courtesy phone. I didn't hear his entire conversation, but I heard a single snippet which left me a little disconcerted: "No, of course not," he said, chuckling, "I'm not compromising safety." I wondered whether airline employees were like your father when his car starts smoking from the hood or the "check engine" light comes on in the Terwilliger curves and you're still a good ten minutes from downtown Portland, a good fifteen from the central library, where the stack of research books crumbling around your feet is due in 48 minutes and the fines will fall on his shoulders. "It'll make it," he'll say. "Just got to ride it a bit easier." When you roll your eyes and grip the little leather handle above your shoulder strap until your knuckles turn white, he'll look at you and say, "What, do you want to be late? Trust me, it'll be fine. Christ, it's better than being late, isn't it? Don't look so morbid."
When I arrived in Newburgh, the temperature was 5 degrees. Ben and Shruti were there to pick me up, and we took a scenic route back to campus, driving through Beacon and New Hamburg and a small, self-proclaimed "Hamlet." I felt this weird sense of anonymity, of inconsequence that one feels when driving through a completely foreign place, counting the empty cars and vacant windows and burned-out streetlights, the bakeries and cafes and newspaper stands of rural New York, that feeling that one will never know anything about the lives of the people whose presence is manifest in the flickering lights behind drawn curtains and in the cold, empty sidewalks, the dusty bootprints lining the street. We arrived at about 1 AM. I unpacked and failed to fall asleep for a few hours.
Now, the night before classes are set to resume, I'm tired but flying. I'm ready for classes, for that feeling of curling up on my couch in front of the radiator and reading an academic book, of being that image of academia and college life and adolescence and ignorance and, shit, there's so much left to learn, so much that I'll never know, but fuck it, I'll keep trying, maybe to make my presence known at parties, holding a red dixie cup with gin and tonic spilling over the rim and decrying with slurred s's the two-party system, maybe to feel more full, maybe to fill a void in my life, a gaping wound caused by a girl's affections, her warm touch grown cold and her fingernails forever gouged into my skin, or a brother's disapproval, a stiff shake of the head or a disappointed eye cast downward, or maybe because.