I didn’t have an iota of interest in photographing one other thing in Frankfurt on our way out of the city. Our focus was on getting to the airport and dealing with the circus of hoops. Regarding those missed photo opportunities, there was nothing, not a thing, I could have captured that would have wrapped up the three weeks of our vacation that is now finished, fertig, and finito. Back to the circus, I anticipate the worst going through airports; they’re as bad as going into department stores where I know that there’s little likelihood of me finding the experience pleasing. There’s too much anxiety here as I wait for something to fall out of order, forcing us into the oblivion of chaos as we try to right the listing ship we hoped to take home without incident.
Taking the train to the airport is one of the saving graces as there’s no tension of jumping out of cars in the turmoil unfolding in the front of the terminal. Casually, we depart the train and start the long walk to the place in the terminal where we need to go, wherever that may be. We don’t care where it is as signs will direct us should we find ourselves walking aimlessly; plus, there always seems to be a staff member who helps point the confused in the right direction. Our first line has us collecting our boarding passes, checking in and paying for a bag we didn’t really anticipate having, and inquiring about the availability of upgrades. Passports, COVID-19 test results, attestation, and vaccine cards are handed over before we can pay the 59 Euros to check our heavier bag. As for upgrades, while Lufthansa’s business class was reduced to nearly a third of what it was a week ago, it was still a bit too pricey, but Premium Economy sounded sweet, and so here I am with my legs stretched out, my computer comfortably on a table in front of me, and my stomach full from our lunch that was served about an hour into our flight.
But I’m getting ahead of things: after checking in and purchasing our upgrades, we still had to maneuver the security gauntlet. Whoa, was that really it? It’s certainly a cliché, but that was butter. We slid through with belts and shoes on, and nothing was flagged for extra security checks. Done and sitting down for a bite to eat just moments later.
Back to our flight already in progress, with only 6 hours and 45 minutes remaining before reaching Washington, D.C. That’s the next pressure point as we’ll only have 70 minutes to collect our bag, make it through U.S. Immigration and Customs, and board our United flight to Arizona. I’m skeptical we can make it but I’ll pretend some optimism so as to not torture myself with negativity. Oh, what is that? Turbulence? Flatulence? Nope, it’s Mr. Sandman asking me to join him for a nap; I just might oblige.
Thirty minutes later I return to awareness of being in flight. Just made my first bathroom break, and normally, that wouldn’t rank as important enough to find its way onto these pages, but I saw that there might be a dozen people in the economy section while premium economy has significantly more passengers. As I came back, Caroline was watching The Black Klansman, and by mistake, I started reading the subtitles on her screen. Damn it, I was dragged into this cringe-worthy film, but as I tried listening in on the headphone Caroline wasn’t using, the dialogue was too dreadful, so I continued to read and squirmed while not being able to turn away. The really horrible thing is I’m learning nothing about racial history I didn’t already know, but I’m giving up time when I should have been trying to drag something out of my mind and into a document.
Watching the movie, I find my brain wiped clean of wanting to write. Obviously, I’m well aware I’ll likely have only regurgitated some lament, tripe, or iteration of something or other I’ve already spewed before, but that doesn’t mean I should so easily turn away from trying to find the hidden words not yet sequenced in my head I’ve been trying to discover. And then the movie is over, and we are down to less than 4 hours before we land.
I said I was learning nothing about racial tensions I didn’t already know, but I have to take into account that for much of my life, those around me have told me again and again that I see a hateful world they cannot see. From the perspective of Spike Lee, who made The Black Klansman, I can understand his need to inform people that the point from 40 years ago to today is a short one wherein some respects, little has changed or maybe even gotten worse. I do have the knowledge of living in a mostly-white bubble, but that doesn’t blind me to the innuendo and structural bias that’s nearly always on display.
Just as I didn’t have it in me to photograph our leaving Frankfurt, I’m not feeling this writing thing on the way home. Well, I do have another 5-hour leg that takes us from D.C. to Phoenix, and maybe as I grow exhausted, my body clock tells me it’s well past midnight with hours to go before we open the door to home at nearly 5:00 a.m. Frankfurt time, I’ll see a story right before me, but I have my doubts.
Oh, I nearly forgot; as we were on the tram into Frankfurt, I was thinking about how peculiar it is that for three weeks, we were regular fixtures in a number of people’s lives, and with that ride towards the airport, we were on our way to disappearing. Death is a lot like that, too, as every day in every city, people are born, and others die; they simply disappear. Sure, some will miss them, but the city as a kind of organism will continue to crawl about doing what it’s been doing every day, supporting those who go about surviving while oblivious to their own brief time where they are. We were in this city, living a lifetime of experiences in regard to our existence in the area for these 21 days, and now we must leave. In some strange way, we are being reincarnated back into a previous existence where we’ll resume the rituals and behaviors we left behind. On one hand, I look forward to returning to my bed, favorite coffee shop, my cooking, and some of our conveniences, but all of that could be had should we be willing to hit reset and set up a new set of routines just as we did in Frankfurt.
How nice might it be to throw a few of life’s belongings into a small container and board a ship with your reduced footprint as you are whisked away to some random place to establish a life that exists for six months before you pack up again and adapt to new circumstances yet again? Why does humanity look to plant such deep roots on a treadmill where little changes and everything remains familiar? By what kind of insanity must we be possessed that believes constant conformity and repetition is a path to any kind of happiness? The only answer can be that we are too stupid to understand that the wealthy are given just that option and that real freedom can only be found by exploring a restlessness that burns deep in the human spirit.
Well, this is a first, two movies on a flight. The second one was Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan. Great soundtrack, aside from the predictable strings orchestration contrived to drive emotions at the predictable moment of a small win, which seriously diminished the impact of the film, and the ticking stopwatch grew tedious when it was pushed too far out front, but there was something in the bleakness of futility that gave the movie power. Now, with a mere hour-thirty minutes before our arrival, the flight felt as though it was shorter than it had been. Over 90% of those on this flight have been asleep for hours now, with most window shades closed before I started watching the first movie. These people land at 3:20 in the afternoon and will need to sleep this evening; what do they know that I don’t?
Okay, I see blank spaces where letters should appear. John, you need to change your pixels from white to black as letters become words and words become sentences representing thoughts that dribble through fingers. This act of reaching into muscle memory to find key presses that allow something I vaguely know before the word starts to appear is nothing more than typing for sure, but when I think too hard about what might come next, I find myself focusing on what could be in my head and not what will appear on the screen.
I look out the window, trying to find inspiration from the Atlantic Ocean we are flying over, but only see a blue haze. A few moments before, I could see Nova Scotia and the last remnants of its island mass before leaving it behind on our trajectory toward Boston and New York City. With these quick thoughts shared, the crew emerges from the darkness armed with snacks and drinks, pushing me to press pause on this return to my external surrogate brain reflected on screen.
Tamp down the anxiety, John, as freaking out about customs when you are still this far away from dealing with that clusterfuck serves you not one bit. Instead, try to find that sense of celebration that you are once again in America, and things will show themselves not to be all that bad. In the coming days, Europe can take a few blows about things I don’t like about it or not. Hmm, this has me wondering if I really have a cohesive idea of what America is; the old clichés don’t really do it for me, and Tocqueville’s observations over 190 years ago no longer hold a lot of water for me. I have to think, who are we people from the alleged United States these days? Can we be drawn into a cultural identity that adequately offers a valid impression of the vast breadth of people that make up this land?
God damn, I have the worst reaction to landing in this country as what I see writ large across the faces of those in our airports, and these are the people that can afford air travel, is a bucket load of stupid. How, just how the hell, has our population dropped so deeply into imbecility? Go ahead and dismiss my casual observational claim here to be able to read faces, body language, clothing, and other characteristics to qualify the intellect of those around me with such aspersions, but we are displaying the depths of stupidity in the most vulgar showing of our behaviors. Now, contrast this with my own bullshit where I lament the conformity of Europeans and their desire for a bland uniform society along with China’s recent pronouncement that effeminate males will be forced out of the eye of society as they are considered to be a danger to civil society. So we have a conflict here: in America, we are free to be as stupid as we choose to be because, fuck you, I have the right to do and say what I want. In Europe, you will be ignored, shunned, and invisible if you choose to follow your own path. While in China, there’s probably some likelihood that, like the Uighur population, you’ll end up in prison for reeducation should you show signs of individuality.
This is a conundrum as when I grew up, I loved the freedom to express myself in every belligerent way I chose with no regard to who I was offending, but as I’ve grown old, my desire is to express things passionately and hopefully smartly. I love the idea of an advanced society, but not one where half of those walking around are effectively primates of a lower order. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about what personal tragedy has brought these cultural nothings to their low point; they have at least some responsibility to lend gravitas to the American character and demonstrate grace and an ability to communicate somewhat elegantly.
Like writing angry letters after midnight, I should lay off the spleen-venting after traveling in airplanes and through airports for more than half a day. My Tourette’s is in full effect after moving among the hoi polloi, not that I’m any better than anyone, but to those around me, who think their display of consumptive behavior and brand mimicry of the doltish who’ve influenced them lend them credibility, you’re wrong, as your face belies the truth hidden behind your vacuous eyes. Fuck you and your fashion; it doesn’t hide the screaming, empty idiot inside your thick skull cackling in a half-hearted attempt to demonstrate humanity. You’ve lost the game of being an advanced representative member of our species. I’m galled that I have to return to this and accept that over the coming days, I’ll need to dull myself to this reality or crack under the pressure of integrating myself with this subspecies of Neanderthals.
Maybe the sandwich Caroline and I just shared can pull me off this cliff-side of lament, but what does it really matter as rarely – if ever – do I push out for publication these vitriolic missives that paint me into the corner of arrogance my inner-seething self can be all too familiar with, especially after encountering an abundance of smart people. So, yes, it does happen that I find myself in the company of legitimate, earnest, amazing Americans, but the cramped quarters of a domestic carrier moving us cattle around is not the place.
Enough of this, as I’m tiring of myself, but should I stop writing, I’ll begin to fall asleep here somewhere west of Pennsylvania and still far east of Arizona. It’s moving towards 1:00 in the morning inside my head, though as I look outside at the white clouds streaming by underneath us, my eyes are insisting it’s still late in the day. I need to stick with this late-day mode as sleep at this time will begin to interfere with a proper night of sleep at home. But who am I fooling? When 3:00 in the morning comes around in Arizona, my brain will be begging me to explain why I’m in bed at noon when I should have already eaten breakfast and begun the process of foraging for lunch.
Yawns are not conducive to being mindfully energetic; on the contrary, they momentarily have you questioning yourself as to why you don’t give into closing your eyes a moment to deal with the tiredness. And to think, we are only about an hour and a half into this flight. I’m afraid this battle of sleepy mind versus desire could be lost as tension in the form of a headache is knocking at the back of my skull. This could also be a bit of dehydration from the avoidance of drinking anything on this flight so we can sidestep maneuvering through the tight quarters in order to use a bathroom. Jeez, I’m feeling weak.
I had to ask a flight attendant how much time was left before we landed as I just couldn’t figure it out between my computer, which says 2:00 am, my Fitbit, which says 8:00 pm, and our flight time, which became a mathematical dilemma to my wretchedly tired brain. When we finally do reach home, there is nothing in that kitchen or refrigerator that would be easily heated and eaten and those things we bought in the airport in Frankfurt to carry us through are long gone. Going back out and driving the car to fetch something sounds like a bad idea, as does walking somewhere nearby, as we’ve already heard that the temperature will be right around 100 degrees when we land. I explained my issue to Caroline, and she reminded me that maybe we can get something in the terminal after we land, but I don’t think we’d be able to sit down as we have a checked bag, and who wants to leave that going around a carousel in an airport where anyone can walk into the baggage claim area and snatch a forlorn bag? Hmm, I think I’m delirious.
Landed, and everything was already closed at the airport by 7:30 on a Tuesday night. Got our bag and headed out to grab a taxi, and luck would have it that our Bangladeshi driver felt like exploring a tangent of how anti-tax he was and how he’d be voting Republican in the future. What the fuck America, nothing to eat, it’s hot, and our driver is a South Asian extremist? I tried engaging him that America has one of the earth’s lowest tax rates among advanced countries but he countered that they got something for their taxes. So, I scratched my head and considered how Suriname, Zimbabwe, Uganda, the Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, India, Slovenia, and the Ivory Coast all have higher tax rates and see that money comes back to them in the form of quality of life (not that I’ve lived in those places)? Or maybe he was talking about Finland, Japan, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, or Belgium, who all pay between 13% – 20% more than we do, but that’s only in regards to America’s wealthiest earners, as 61% of Americans paid NO federal income taxes in 2020 and yet the cry from low-income earners is just below the intensity of someone screaming murder.
But why argue using statistics and logic? Just look at how Americans can no longer travel their roads as they are all dirt, and our hotels have gone bankrupt, and what does that matter anyway because our restaurants were taxed out of business, so how would one even survive on the road. With our air traffic control system destroyed, we couldn’t fly, our hospitals were regulated to the point they all moved to Belarus or Bolivia, where the personal tax rate is a low 13%, and bribing warlords to waive medical regulations proved cheaper than doing business in miserable America where nobody is happy, can’t afford gasoline, beer, milk, or bread that now costs $40 a loaf due to fake science from the Food & Drug Administration who wants to kill American children for Hillary Clinton’s death cult.
We are fucking beyond stupid, and no one is checking anyone else regarding the nonsense that spews out of idiots’ mouths. Oh yeah, we have the freedom to be as dumb as others will indulge us as we risk being shot if we challenge the abhorrent belligerence of their debased, broken minds.
A right-wing media willingly and knowingly distorts the truth with no reliable corporate or government entity calling them to task; it’s all just part of the noise of capitalism. If the speed of dissemination is rapid enough in a constant cycle, the damage done with a few hours of pedaling lies is enough to cement the disinformation into the vulnerable as effectively as COVID is robbing people of quality of life or even life itself. Jesus Christ, is this really what I returned to America for?
[On a more positive note – we had no problem moving through Immigration in DC, and nobody was interested in opening our checked bag. We arrived at the gate of our connecting flight with lots of time to spare – Caroline]