airport/airplane

I do it all. I enter the Portland airport. Walk up to the counter. Scan my passport in a thing. Give my ticket away. Get my ticket again. Pull my luggage to the conveyor belt and hand it over to luggage security goons. Walk one hundred yards east to the D-E Terminal security area. Get through with my guitar, taped kind of shut, and my backpack and now I am clean and can do anything from this point forward in the airport. I walk past the shops on a walking conveyor belt, so twice as briskly I walk, and past the arched sun roof and just past the bronze loiterer, who is a statue in the middle of the way who is the president of something long put away, and it has gotten hot and then I arrive at the end: four international terminals. After sitting for awhile trying my computer, making the airline employees suspicious (they wait for a few customers that haven’t entered the plane yet for the Amsterdam plane and yell out the names, I look up when they say a name and they look at me, I’m not far away, so I look down again, so they continue to wait and yell his name, and now its directed at me), I find the Delta Skymiles club, an elevator, one floor up with the fat man, then we both immerge into the haven of condescending businessmen, mostly white and ridiculously old. Two impatient men having a conversation, having to yell into the others ear repetitions of what they have already said. I hear it all, I am a few seats away. They are bitching about their delayed flight, hoping to catch a sympathetic ear, one would assume one who can give some compensation on behalf of the bastards who flew too slow. I eat here because the food is free. Food is cookies, small dried fruits, nuts, soda, orange juice, coffee, crackers, green olives, cranberry juice. My little black plate empties. My little clear cup empties, except for one orange drop stuck in the round ravine at the bottom. The small trash near me suddenly fills with my empty things. I decide to leave. I look out the glass that overlooks the way below, in the terminal. The people have no idea we’re here, eating free food, drinking free drinks and in comfortable leather chairs all around while we do it, and watching them pass beneath us like small animals in our house! They are human, but so beneath us! Hahaha! I was about to leave. Then, I do. Out of the elevator, it’s still hot in the terminal and people are still sitting in metal stools at high circle tables in front of the McDonalds and the Bruchies. To get back to my terminal I would turn right. I turn and straight ahead, past the bronze statue, more people have come to sit down in front of Gate 15, the plane leaves in 40 minutes.
In the plane now, against the window but still on the ground, I meet Happy, who is a nurse, an old Asian woman with sparse hair but at huge volumes. Her scalp is visible through wiry mesh that rises 3 inches above. We talk off and on throughout the flight but what’s most important is to mention her so that you can know who is there. Because there has to be someone there. You have to know so you don’t make something else up. The flight is 10 hours of daylight. The sun is chasing our plane west, around the earth to Tokyo. Lunch is served, my first airplane meal. The rice and chicken is lukewarm. It is good but gives me a painful feeling of presence within my stomach. Let’s wait. Wait for awhile. I waited awhile with this feeling in my stomach like a knife at my throat! I lose my mind, I climb out of my seat... I am back and feel good. The plane’s intercom has requested that all windows be shut. The movie is one, the pillows are out. The sun is out. We have made night for ourselves. But when the time comes when a solitary curiousity acts on the window covers and reveals the light again, the entire plane is pissed. The light outside is so bright in comparison to our artificial night that people are in pain to see it. We watch four movies in our dark, then some music videos mixed when sitcoms, then another meal. I eat most of my fried rice and half of the fruit, my tongue still hurts. The Lights come on, the window covers come up and we readjust to the light like animals being taken out of the basement.