The plane list

How ironic that I should find myself in such an unsettled, unsure mental position when I have the words SECURITY stamped in huge, accusing letters above my head.

I wait for my fraying bag to be probed by enthusiastic personnel, who look at me with sideways glances. I think they are probably looking at the bright orange and blue hula hoop curled conspicuously round my arm, rather than my saltywet face.

They must see tears like these every day.

I have just waved goodbye to my father, my sister, my best friend and my beautiful man. That precious quartet of gentle faces and enveloping familiarity, disappearing behind the etched green glass.

For all I know they are still standing there.

I can´t see them any more but knowing I can run back for one more kiss is almost more than I can bear.

I turn away.

Released, I walk the length of the terminal to find a suitably quiet area of the walkway. I spend the next forty-five minutes alternately hooping and running to the gate to double-check my boarding time, until the hammering in my heart slows and I have a steamy sheen over my skin.

I am still crying through my pirouettes and as I board the flight I find tears in my hair.

***

The big contradiction that is my life has encouraged me to be comfortable with coincidental and opposing feelings.

This year I have been riding a prolonged and messy wave of all possible emotions, all competing against and struggling for each other.

Right now, I feel incredibly sad, but even through the ache I´m also ever so slightly excited and more than a little relieved that I have managed to get myself on this plane.

But I dont feel very comfortable sitting where I am. The seat is too small for me and my thoughts.

I try to pin them down with my pen but give up when I start boring myself. Instead I make a list, adding to it periodically over the rest of the 20-hour journey. This list is essentially just a sequence of thoughts, each of which hit me with equal profundity.

Please see below.


The Plane List
1. Life is not about killing time until you die.

2. Airports are emotional places. If there were such a thing as a supernatural creature that fed on consciousness, I imagine airports would be one of their prime hangouts.

3. Most people on planes do not know how to entertain themselves. In desperation they will read pages and pages of duty free goods they have no intention of buying, rather than listening to the commentary in their own heads.

4. I can be very judgemental under stress.

5. There are 3603 miles between London Heathrow and Newark, New Jersey. I do not know how many miles there are between Newark, New Jersey, and Mexico City, Mexico, because I was asleep when this information was available.

6. The ground temperature in London was 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The air temperature around the plane was -55 degrees Fahrenheit. I found great comfort in this symmetry.

7. Very little compares to airline mashed potato.

8. You can always tell where someone´s eyes are. Whether they are reading the paper over your shoulder or staring at you from across a crowded room, you are always aware when a person´s pupils are fixed on your skin.

9. Tomato Juice and Mr & Mrs T´s Bloody Mary Mix are almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated, and should never be considered interchangeable.

10. Freedom is compelling, intriguing and totally dependent on time and place. It´s all relative. You can be free to choose between a thousand paths and the glitter of them may be dazzling. But at the end of the day you can still only choose one thing. You can only ever be in one place at one time. And once that path is chosen, the nature of the other nine hundred and ninety nine paths will be changed forever.


The list and the emotion tire me out. I spend the rest of the journey slipping in and out of sleep, the orange lights of countless unnameable cities drifting below me like dreams.