​Plane 

 

At the airport everyone is fighting. Shoeless belt-less computer and liquids out I step on over under and in between novice travelers. I’ve been doing this for a while now. been using jumbo jets like taxi cabs the last ten years. As I high knee long step through a sprawled out mess of clothes crumbs toys and crying children I am given looks of contempt and scorn by their mothers and fathers. I am through security. I look for a place to have a drink. I am giddy in an airport. I could live here I think. At the airport bar I am surrounded by other happy daylight drinkers. Everyone is getting good and sloshed and getting to know one another at this intergalactic watering hole. 

 

My plan - if you must know - is - I’mheadedtoafarminTexastowriteforabit. My editor, did I mention I have an editor? Well my editor, her name is Amelia and she’s my editor, well she says my book is gonna be good. and that I’ve gotta focus on it. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go to the farm to focus on my writing. No it’s not a working farm. It used to be. long time ago. belonged to my great grandfather. His name was Sykes McClane. He was a merchant marine in WWI. He had long legs so they called him daddy long legs. he went to Sunday school every Sunday so they called him Sunday School McClane. These are his glasses. Yep these right here. I think I’ll have another beer. Just the one for you? Sure? I’m buying? Gotta catch a flight? Well good day to you too sir. Best of luck to you too.  

 

Hurrah. Hurrah. Here’s to getting good and sloshed and getting to know one another at the airport bar.

 

Now I am in the plane. Now I am flying through the air. Now I need to take a leak. I unbuckle and flow down the aisle smiling from ear to ear cause in an airplane nothing matters. the word is liminal. and I am in a state of liminality. nothing matters down below or up ahead or behind. In order to be a good and proper passenger you must not concern yourself with what is down below up ahead or behind. in the bathroom there is a little window for looking out. Ptro! imagine that! a little window to look out while I leak. If I were the creator of the universe I’d most definitely make cities in those clouds. Could be there are. How can we know? I mean I stand here leaking and I imagine there’s cities in those clouds and that brings pleasure and joy and happiness to my mind so I say yes, yes there are cities in those clouds. Then I think, Goethe never got to do this, never got to see the details of a cloud. and neither did Balzac. hell not even Plato. come to think of it neither did Whitman, Howells, Hamsun, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Diderot, D’Israeli, Flaubert, Zola, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hugo, Spinoza, Smith, Smith, Smith, Milton, Dante, Bacon, Coleridge, Steele, Addison, Rabelais, Emerson, Carlyle, Johnson, Johnson, Johnson, Byron, Joyce, Eckermann, Boswell, Dickens, Voltaire, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! nor Hawthorn, Pound, Addison, Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy! Planes were around when Miller was alive. But did they have little windows in the bathrooms? Was he able to do as I?