Systematically Airborne

Well, I’m airborne. Once again, I made it onto the plane before takeoff. I’m just as amazed every time this happens. And it’s all thanks to my system. Over the course of about 20 or so transatlantic flights the last decade and a half, I have developed a unique system for the ultimate travel experience. I have fine-tuned it to the point where it gets me on the airplane almost every time, often with several minutes to spare. I’d say there’s a good 92% chance I’ll make it onto the plane using this system.

Now, you may think nothing short of 100% is even worth it, but why get so hung up in that little 8%? Why not just acknowledge that the glass is way more than half full. 92% sure beats 49%, or even 76%. Besides, you can always make up that 8% in extra adventures, which inevitably follow in the wake of missed flights.

It all begins with planning.

Months ago, as the trip started taking shape in my head, ideas and images of what I wanted it to look like swirled around in my mind for a while, waiting to be recorded in detail at a later date, like an artist’s sketch containing a few simple lines, an under-drawing to be filled out with color and well-defined shapes as the artwork develops. I purchased my airline tickets early, before they went up in price. Now, all I had to do was wait for the basic idea of the trip to crystallize into crisp detail of train schedules, bus routes, hostel prices and bookings. It didn’t. See, the beauty of my system is that it doesn’t rely heavily on planning at all. All it takes is basic idea, swirling around in beautiful, free form. Rick Steves already took care of the rest.

Step One
Now, when preparing to get on an airplane, it is important to get as little sleep as possible the night before travel. This ensures optimum in-flight relaxation and sleeping ability. You achieve this by waiting to pack until as late as possible that evening if you have a morning flight. When you start packing, go at it at a slow, methodical pace, checking off your list which you have previously created, laying everything out as neatly as possible, until you get so sleepy you simply cannot stay awake any longer. This is remedied by setting your alarm for as early as possible the next morning – I recommend four hours from when you go to sleep – so you are properly sleep deprived, yet have ample time to finish packing in the morning.

Step Two
Ignore your alarm for about an hour or so, to make sure you stay sharp when you do get up. Work at an increasingly frantic pace throughout morning to ensure the proper winding up of your nerves. In the end, disregard all your meticulous organization from the night before, and throw everything into your suitcase whichever way it fits. Leave your house at the latest possible moment.

Step Three
If at all possible, you should get into an argument with the person who volunteered to take you to the airport. Since he is taking you, chances are you two are close, and this will provide a good opportunity to test your friendship. Such a fight can easily be achieved by telling him to focus on his driving (i.e. drive faster) instead of making pleasant conversation with you, which clearly is distracting him from the task at hand. If you keep criticizing his driving, chances are he will feel compelled to defend his actions, at which point you are properly justified to yell at him at the top of your lungs. The argument is an important part of the system. It serves the purpose of enabling you to blow off steam, allowing any travel jitters to escape thoroughly, and hopefully prove that your friendship with the driver can withstand a reasonable amount of nervous tension.

Step Four
You arrive at the airport cleansed of any nervousness. Now it is time for inventory control. If you played your cards right during the frenetic portion of your packing earlier in the morning, your bag is about 10 lbs overweight, since you made the last-minute decision of combining all your luggage into one large suitcase instead of two smaller ones. This is a good thing, because it gives you the opportunity to go through your things one more time, this time with an audience, ensuring top quality of inspection. As this is a regular part of the system, you have an extra bag handy in your suitcase, and expertly reconfigure your belongings into two checked bags instead of one.

Step Five
Due to the proper execution of Step Three, your mind is now in a tranquil state of calm. You meander through airport security at your own relaxed pace, and not even your offensive lack of a pedicure is enough to rattle the security personnel as you expose your feet. They do ask you to take off your belt, but you get to keep the rest of your clothing intact. You arrive at the gate about 3 minutes before boarding time… plenty of time to get yourself some breakfast, which you eat with relish while groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 board before you.

When you get your seat and the woman who sits down next to you is very large and extremely chatty, it doesn’t even faze you. You simply wrap your airline blanket around you, jot down some notes as to the success of your travel system, and realize you’re going to Scandinavia with nothing long-sleeved to protect from the chill of the evenings… and mornings… and days. This doesn’t matter, you are a tough Viking. You can handle the chill. Also, you didn’t bring your allergy medication. This is fine. Chances are, your allergies won’t flare up while you’re over there. I’d say it’s about an 8% chance.

With all these things worked out, you lean your seat back and fall into a deep, deep sleep, which lasts until you land in Chicago… the ultimate way to spend the fist leg of an international trip. Like I said, this system works!

The Last Chapter

Gently, she put the book down. The last chapter had come to an end. It was a bittersweet thing, this coming to the end of a book. This one was a different sort of book to be sure, but it was beautiful and happy and sad nonetheless.

She had always enjoyed a good novel. The thicker the book and the longer the story, the more thoroughly she enjoyed it. It was like having a constant companion, a friend that provided great company at any given time – and when the book finished, it was as if this friend suddenly vanished. When she was younger, she only wanted to read stories with happy endings. Once, she was so upset by the tragic ending of a particular book that she hurled it across the room upon finishing and cried. As her tastes had grown more sophisticated, she had begun to realize that comedy and tragedy are equally important in literature. As long as there existed an element of hope and redemption, she was undaunted by even the starkest realism.

All books must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And like all good fiction, this one had followed a proper plot pyramid with an incentive start, rising action and complication, leading to a climax. Then came the necessary falling action, unraveling into resolution, the end.

They say the devil is in the detail. And maybe they’re right. Just as real life is lived in the in-between, a good story consists of little beads of detail – individual scenes that make up each chapter. When strung together, these beads form an intricate piece of jewelry. Each individual bead may not be all that attractive or exciting on its own, in fact, most are surprisingly non-descript. But like pearls on a string, they provide the building blocks for a beautiful work of art by advancing the story, introducing conflict, and creating suspense. There were a few astonishing gems in this story, which added sparkle and a focal point, but it was the connection, the intertwining strands of beads, the arrangement that created this amazing effect.

Yet she knew how difficult it was keeping a reader interested through scene after scene, how easy for an author to get stuck in the nitty-gritty of the details. This is where most stories fall apart, where things begin to unravel. There had been some tedious parts in this one too, but she had stuck with the book regardless. And sure enough, it got interesting again. Not in the way she had expected, but this is what intrigued her so much about this story – the unpredictability of it. Nothing could make her lose interest more than a predictable, boilerplate piece of fiction.

The overarching storyline was based around one of the most common themes in literature and was not all that unusual in and of itself. However, there was something about the execution, the character development, the interplay of light and shadow in this one that had held her spellbound, had fascinated and captivated her throughout its entirety.

A great story has great characters. That was no less true of this particular tale. The protagonists had embarked on an adventure, experiencing long stretches of smooth sailing, flights of euphoria and bliss, moments of despair, and even plunges into madness. These were multifaceted, nuanced, well-developed human characters, who through harmony and chaos lived a large slice of life and learned hard-earned lessons.

Even the antagonists were interesting – not at all the shallow, one-dimensional bad guys so often seen in fiction. On the contrary, in this story their internal struggles and conflicts were highlighted with artful skill and finesse, to the point where the reader couldn’t help feeling a certain empathy for them. The myriad supporting characters added to the texture, providing layers of depth and interest.

The last two or three chapters had been full of twists and turns, and the book had ended, frankly, on a bit of a cliffhanger. Would there be a sequel? And if so, could it be possible to create one on par with or maybe even greater than the original?

She had pondered this for a while. But there was a lot of reading to do, she told herself, and no point in sitting idly waiting for a hypothetical follow-up – she was determined to live it up a notch in the meantime. Perhaps with a couple of short stories? She had never been a huge fan of short fiction, however. Somehow it seemed like a rip-off when they ended so soon. She had dabbled briefly in flash fiction, and was tempted to see if she could develop her one completed story into a longer work… but it seemed premature, she didn’t know if there was enough material there. It had shown unexpected potential, yet somehow the plot just seemed doomed if it were to be extended beyond the obligatory 1000 words or less.

She was definitely a feature-length kind of girl… and she had suspicions the book she had just finished could quite possibly be one of the greatest stories she would ever read… and that even though the book had ended, perhaps the story was not yet over. She was eager to find out what other astounding developments this author might have up his sleeve. Perhaps she would just wait this one out after all.

Flight Delays

About to take off from the cliff’s edge
Just when you think it’s going to go one way, it goes the other
So you decide to move with it
And then it goes the opposite way again
Teetering, swaying, trying to gain foothold
Winds are shifting, erratically
It’s a thrill, it’s a scary, fun, exhilarating thrill
Not knowing, yet feeling the pull from both depths
Currents are strong in cross-directions
Knowing you must choose, having to pick a side

No longer sitting on the fence, but giving yourself to flight
The only question is, without a navigator, which way to fly?

Discovering Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

-Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī جلال‌الدین محمد رو
13 th century

Back To Basic

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"
— Henry David Thoreau

And so it was that I returned to the trail for some peace and tranquility today… it never fails to do the trick. Immediately, four dappled Dalmatians tugging at their pair of chatty lady friends greet me. And just ahead of them, three cheerfully colored children dragging mommy along.

It takes a bit for the chatter in my head to shut up, for the noise to subside and give space to that inner voice that always surfaces out here… eventually.

Gone is the green canopy of warmer months. The trail is more harshly lit than before – during the intense heat of a bygone season the canopy always secured a moist, secluded shade – and left behind is its black skeleton twisting starkly against the bright-blue sky.

The following are my impressions from my last visit…

Ode to Summer

I’m out there again. At first, there is silence. The start is slow as I carry so much baggage; refuse from the day is piled high on my shoulders. All I can hear are crickets, those ever-present noisemakers singing incessantly of some romantic escapade or other.

Everywhere, I notice little lines criss-crossing the bottom of the trail, which is softer than usual from the recent rain. It looks like someone pressed crumpled paper onto the soft clay, then pulled it up leaving a wrinkled face behind. I wonder at this for some time and cannot figure out what might have caused it. Then I see the earthworm wriggling across the trail, and it becomes clear. But how many millions of worms did it take to cause such a mesh, busier than a city street map? Little earthworm street maps telling of where they’ve been, though not where they’re headed.

Tiny airplanes whistle by my ears, mosquito fly-by attempts on my face to be contended with constantly. Moisture rises from the damp dirt, drying itself off after the rainstorms of late. The air is full of that after-shower smell, brown and heavy. Startling orange mushrooms shine up from the banks of the pond.

Little by little, the load melts away. The wearier my body gets, the clearer my head, freeing up thoughts to frolic in the wide meadows of my mind.

That’s when I hear it. The multi-tonality of the cricket song starts dividing, as if vibrating on separate frequencies. It’s a little like Tuvan throat singing. The forest starts speaking to me. I hear songs of longing and lust, of love and loneliness. In the song of the crickets, I hear my own voice from inside, speaking to me clearly and calmly.

I listen and breathe.

Shades

Light and Dark.
Best Together but Separate.

Shadows in the light are necessary to create dimension.
There is always a little light in the night.

Mix the two together, and get shades of gray,
which vary according to the weather.

Flickerings

Orange glow
Two little embers
Still flicker