Folded up like origami, strapped into position like a man in an electric chair, fed 5/8-scale replicas of food, and forced to stare at an unblinking screen showing an endless loop of a man struggling to break free from his seat might seem to be an attempt by security apparatchik to extract some vital information about an impending act of faith-based schizophrenia or how one in custody might break free from legirons or my maiden's last four digits or the name of my favorite social security card, but the comparisons to prison life find more parallels in prison life than those actually found in prison life. I asked the man across the aisle if he would trade a package of filter-less crackers for a place in the line leading to the lavatory. Or maybe a seat by the emergency exit. He looked at my face and said the price just went up three hundred percent. I recalled statesmen before me and their phlebitic struggles in air flight and I wondered if I had been elected in absentia. "Oh boy!," I thought, "I'm going to Absentia."
I always wanted to go there. Why, I spent most of my childhood daydreaming about the place. And now, the day had arrived. I thought about my family back home. I grew misty. They always said I would end up there. How did they know?
I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and smiled. This was no tiny, airless cell, it was a universe of possibilities. A new world. That baby in row 29, why, he howled like a hyena. The coughing man was calling wild game. A woman walked by balancing her luggage on her head. The man with the hairy neck in 34A bounded
from his seat and swung from aisle to aisle. The engines roared like lions. Women gathered in the galley to collect the day's water and scrub their laundry. Newspapers rustled like palmettos. Nobody spoke my language. There was laughing in the back, where men were carving wooden bowls. Somebody hung a woven mat from a tree. A woman walked down the aisle, sweeping it with a straw broom, followed by a line of stewardesses singing in four part harmony.
Move fast
On those mountains
You are running away
On those mountains
Just then, somebody must have chopped open a pineapple; I smelled pineapple, I know it. Where was it? Then a woman appeared at my side and put a plate of antelope stew before me and I scooped it out of the bowl with my left hand. It was delicious. Someone grabbed my arm and I opened my eyes.
It was still dark.
Stars faltered in the moonless sky. I stretched out in my chair. Somewhere out there in the darkness I had seen a herd of hills that followed a dry valley lined with fever trees. The hills were like the backs of cape buffalo, migrating to the western horizon. Now, I could hear the hills moving quickly. Everything moved quickly. This night, the wind charged out of the west, fierce, snorting, stampeding up the valley and the slope in front of me, scattering everything in its path, swinging everything around like a weather vane - even the sky had turned. I tilted my head to see. Orion was now standing upright, directly overhead. Dim and scintillating, he trembled like an aging warrior, red and shrunken, a wrinkled, dying man. I tilted my head again and he was now the reflection of the faint civilization below, where idle men sat in the dirt beneath umbrella trees poking sticks into campfires that sent a plume of orange stars to replenish the night sky while old women folded their hands eleven different ways. An old man nodded. The acacia were swept up by the wind and their thorns fell into an argument, chattering across the valley. The wind burst over the hilltop, full of urgency. My hat blew away. The thatched roof rattled like bones. Wooden masks shuddered against the walls. Chairs walked across the grass. Termites fell from the sky. Predators, gloved and silent, stalked the bush. There was a muffled cry beneath the roar of the wind. I thought I heard a body fall to the ground.
I jumped from my chair.I always wanted to go there. Why, I spent most of my childhood daydreaming about the place. And now, the day had arrived. I thought about my family back home. I grew misty. They always said I would end up there. How did they know?
I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and smiled. This was no tiny, airless cell, it was a universe of possibilities. A new world. That baby in row 29, why, he howled like a hyena. The coughing man was calling wild game. A woman walked by balancing her luggage on her head. The man with the hairy neck in 34A bounded
from his seat and swung from aisle to aisle. The engines roared like lions. Women gathered in the galley to collect the day's water and scrub their laundry. Newspapers rustled like palmettos. Nobody spoke my language. There was laughing in the back, where men were carving wooden bowls. Somebody hung a woven mat from a tree. A woman walked down the aisle, sweeping it with a straw broom, followed by a line of stewardesses singing in four part harmony.Move fast
On those mountains
You are running away
On those mountains
Just then, somebody must have chopped open a pineapple; I smelled pineapple, I know it. Where was it? Then a woman appeared at my side and put a plate of antelope stew before me and I scooped it out of the bowl with my left hand. It was delicious. Someone grabbed my arm and I opened my eyes.
It was still dark.
Stars faltered in the moonless sky. I stretched out in my chair. Somewhere out there in the darkness I had seen a herd of hills that followed a dry valley lined with fever trees. The hills were like the backs of cape buffalo, migrating to the western horizon. Now, I could hear the hills moving quickly. Everything moved quickly. This night, the wind charged out of the west, fierce, snorting, stampeding up the valley and the slope in front of me, scattering everything in its path, swinging everything around like a weather vane - even the sky had turned. I tilted my head to see. Orion was now standing upright, directly overhead. Dim and scintillating, he trembled like an aging warrior, red and shrunken, a wrinkled, dying man. I tilted my head again and he was now the reflection of the faint civilization below, where idle men sat in the dirt beneath umbrella trees poking sticks into campfires that sent a plume of orange stars to replenish the night sky while old women folded their hands eleven different ways. An old man nodded. The acacia were swept up by the wind and their thorns fell into an argument, chattering across the valley. The wind burst over the hilltop, full of urgency. My hat blew away. The thatched roof rattled like bones. Wooden masks shuddered against the walls. Chairs walked across the grass. Termites fell from the sky. Predators, gloved and silent, stalked the bush. There was a muffled cry beneath the roar of the wind. I thought I heard a body fall to the ground.
The wind carried the blackness above like an animal skin, rippling, with swirls of smoke from distant cook fires and the scent of acacia blossoms and wild lemon. That smell, something like pine and peppermint and vinegar and whiskey and creosote. I wanted that wind. I reached out my hand. The savanna arched and hissed, waterless, thirsting. It was said that in the bush, lions patrol the boundaries, swinging paws like scythes, sweeping the edge for men who stray too far from the village.
This was not home, but in the darkness, it looked the same. I stepped closer to the edge. I couldn't see anything, but I heard women singing. Something grabbed my arm and I was gone.
This was not home, but in the darkness, it looked the same. I stepped closer to the edge. I couldn't see anything, but I heard women singing. Something grabbed my arm and I was gone.
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