Friday, February 4, 2011

Father O'Blivion

I considered myself lucky. The first leg of my flight from America I was given first class and for a while I was suspended in the deep, satisfying, oblivion airline brochures speak of. It wasn't free, but the bill would come later. However, on the following leg of my trip I'm  sitting in steerage among the great unwashed, or rather the restless. In first class there's no need to get up, other than to go to the bathroom or just pass a fart because your co-passengers sit a mile away, but here, in coach, you get up just to be free. Free of your neighbor, free of the seat that instead of affording you comfort pains you left and right and pushes your head forward where it should be yielding back, so you can take a goddamn nap.
The elderly guy next to me has been elbowing me for at least an hour, shifting continuously in an effort to find comfort. I don't even try. I just sit  and practice "discomfort control", a kind of yoga I developed over the years. I think its what fakirs on nail beds practice, a secret stance that allows one to bring most everything to a stop, except thought. Thought is what keeps me interested. I never quite understood the idea of meditation, where one would cease to exist, only to find oneself watching oneself from above, suspended in inertia. How boring is that? No, floating on one's thoughts, like right now provides the stuff stories are made of, or inventions, ideas that can't be swept under the rug of timelessness. Oh, yes, we're all one, but the old guy next to me expresses that by invading my space with his elbow. I don't want to be one with him. He sleeps with his mouth hanging open to one side and has one eye that stays open. Not pretty.
So, in a way you might say that coach creates more introspection than first class. So be it. Don't think there's much use for my thoughts but I write them down nonetheless.
Oh, now the old guy's awake and holding a Kindle. How about that! He has joined the digerati. Give him credit for that. Probably a gift from his granddaughter who otherwise wouldn't know what to get the old guy. Tell me about it. I'm totally Mr. Dig-it-all myself, iPod-connected, iPhone in pocket, plus a hard drive, camera, and this iPad I'm writing on, all in a small vest I'm beginning to love for allowing me to ditch the murse, the man-bag I otherwise would have to lug around.
All my gear is about the smallest currently available, and still it weighs a ton after 30 minutes. I'm dreaming of a iPhone 5, or 6, some future model Steve Jobs is probably perusing right now in his aqualung or whatever it is he waits around in while watching his own dialysis.
I'm so glad Steve Jobs doesn't meditate.

Steve Jobs is sick. I'm sure Matt Groening can't wait for his screen-test imagining future episodes of Futurama, where Steve can play a disembodied head next to that of Nixon (previous sentence is only for folks who know what I'm talking about). The future is already present in a world where prognosis and procrastination dictate a tomorrow where nothing is the way it was, or will be better, except for the gadgets through which we helplessly try to connect with ourselves and our base. It's all in vain. You may be Steve Jobs, brilliant and futuristic, but you're going to die yelling for your mommy, or god-forbid, Bill Gates.
What pathetic lives we live. And here, in the air, high above it all, of all places, we temporarily coexist in the vacuum of a pressurized cabin, shaped like a salami with barely more worth were we to hit the ground a little too hard.
I'm the first to admit that I have contributed little more to this world than helping populate it with one more inhabitant. Although I wish my son all the best, a rightful position in society, recognition for his talents, and gobs of love and happiness, our worth as a species has become highly questionable in my mind. We're all expendable and if not for some tv cartoon going to make fun of us years into the future we'll soon be forgotten, no matter what our accomplishments were.
And see, exactly those kind of thoughts I wasn't having in first class. That's why I considered myself lucky, no matter what class I fly. Oblivion to the rescue.

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