Letter From America - Part 1

(Actually, more of a letter from Heathrow and mid-Atlantic)


Heathrow was some kind of Kafkaesque airport nightmare - despite staff thrusting palliative sandwiches at wan travellers, who had the appearance of having lost years in desolate stationary queues. Queues that appeared and disappeared amorphously before one's eyes, and for which no end (or, terrifyingly, beginning) could be found. Indeed, I myself fell under the spell and elected to join one. As nobody appeared to know which queue they were in, nor could the end of any specific queue be found, I grasped gratefully at the one end that appeared brig-o-doon-like in front of me. I was seduced by the admittedly random logic that any queue was better than the ice-cold state of belonging to none at all. Frankly, I am reluctant to recall anything further of this chapter of my journey.

Was pleased to get my seat of least-terror (aisle, over-wing). But no sooner had I blessed the absence of proximate screaming children, than I realized I was marooned amidst a host of rubbery American adolescents who insisted on conversing dude-to-dude over my head. Ah well.

300 ‘dudes’ later (just over 4.5 hours) (could this be measured in dudes-per-hour?) we had moved not an inch. We were in another queue, this time comprising planes. The weight of several hundred people occupying this queue-space appeared to be an insignificant factor. (Wondered if this observation could be usefully applied to models of federalism. Brain starting to depart from planet, even if plane not.) Our wings required de-icing. Apparently this would take 40 minutes and smell bad. 40 minutes after the arrival of the (rather cute, as it transpired) spray-bot, that is. Which didn’t happen for, as I mentioned, a significant period of time. Apparently, dude, they have millions of de-icing rigs at the airport in Alaska – it’s, like, skoosh, like a carwash, man, and that’s it. And thus a 9 hour flight became a 13 ½ hour one.

******

Already, merely from the vantage of mid-Atlantic, I was able to cock a rueful brow as I reflected on my real life (the one 38,000 below, and some way South East). Still wantonly not engaging with any of the things I would like to in life. It’s not as if I make a good-faith try, yet fail gallantly – this scenario would be a triumph next to my perpetual tortuous inertia. Does the solution to inaction lie all the way across the Atlantic, I wonder...

This last year has been, without a doubt the best year of my life. Albeit a turbulent one. I was plunged head-over-heels-over-head-over-heels into love, only to be denied thrice (well, technically, I proposed 4 times, but who’s counting?). The U.S. is my crowing cock - no further denial-invitations shall be forthcoming. He is the only other person I’ve encountered who truly understands the nature of anxiety: how it dissembles one’s life brick-by-brick, extinguishing all under its suffocating blanket. Yet it is responsible for forging the most beautiful , and unseverable, of connections between us.

The trials of love aside, this was also the year I embarked on my most ambitious project to date. I was so crap at being what others' expected. I hope I turn out to be rather more successful at being me. So: slowly I sand-off the socially-acceptable topcoat. Perhaps this will be the year we’ll get a peek at the grain.

And so it begins with my little US adventure.

To be continued...
(possibly. Should I find the impetus...)