Brace thyself
I'm home, and roasting, chargrilling, broiling and simmering slowly. Stepping out of the airport was like walking into a Saharian furnace, wearing a gigantic polar bear.
But the flight was tranquil and uneventful. Upon landing, the engines spluttered to a grinding silence, and the plane nosedived sharply into the tarmac, crumpling into a horrendous fireball of roasting rubber and razor heat, to a macabre soundtrack of hysterical screams and the sound of large amounts of luggage crushing soft human bodies.
(Is what didn't happen).
Yea. We coasted smoothly down onto the runway and I walked out with my hand luggage. I have such a boring life.
But here are some extracts of eight notebook pages of inconsequential writing I regurgitated during the ponderous hours frittered away on the plane. It's mainly incoherent and largely irrelevant. In other words, time well spent, and a commendable way to begin the languorous Easter holidays.
I'm bored.
There are helplines for suicides, depressions, drug overdose, emergencies, kids running away from home. There are no helplines for boredom. No one I can call to say "Ohgodhelpme, I've been staring blankly at the fibres of the airplane seat in front of me for the past 64 minutes."
When I was young I used to stare at something bright until I got those fuzzy electric circles in my eyes that turn into purple splodges when you switch your gaze to a white wall. I'd try to look directly at them, but the more you try to look at them, the more they slip away into the periphery. Elusive bastards! Did I start this paragraph with "When I was young"? That's a lie, I still do it now. If you ever catch me staring at something bright, that's what I'm doing.
Seriously though, when I was young, I used to think that inanimate objects smiled at me when I wasn't looking. I don't think that anymore, because I'm all grown up now
because now I think they give me the middle finger instead.
I want to write until my hand hurts.
Everyday I have a recurring nightmare. Then I go to sleep. <--something that someone who should be on Prozac might say.
This afternoon I was watching champagne bubbles charge upwards in a slim column from the bottom of a champagne glass, wondering if little civilizations inhabited them, and the entire history of their bubbly existence was contained within that journey from the bottom to an oblivious pop at the surface.
To them it may have seemed like millennia. Then I paused to reflect on how Earth looks a little like a champagne bubble.
And also, on how a single sip would constitute, you know, mass genocide.
History is philosophy by example.
I have come to the conclusion that sugar packets look like very tiny pillows, and should be utilized thusly.
When I see clusters of illuminated dust motes coasting down a sunbeam, sometimes I think that each one is a soul of some thing, rising up to material emancipation and salvation. Riding the golden rays up to Lint Heaven, bursting through the purgatorial Giant Dryer Filter in the Sky, to the promised land of No Hoovers beyond. Or something.
Other times, it makes me extremely fearful of breathing.
It's like in philosophy. You can debate the reality of existence until the proverbial bovine homecoming, but after the heated discussion over whether that glass of apple juice really exists or is merely an ILLUSION created by an EVIL DEMON HELLBENT ON EXISTENTIAL DECEPTION EN MASSE, you're still going to drink the damn juice.
I had a point, but...well, no, I didn't.
Having points is overrated.
I pointedly do not have a point.
Not having a point, you see, is the whole point.
I really want to open the plane door.