The Midnight Marauder

Adventures Seven Months Past (Part 2)

2011-02-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

Strange Conversations at Thirty Thousand Feet

Boarding the plane, I thought a cruel twist of fate would have this ex-girlfriend sitting next to me for the six hours to Honolulu. By the grace of Odin, I was spared. The woman next to me was a red-haired college student that seemed content to adhere to her books.

I always get an aisle seat. As a child, the window seat was the promised land. I could stare at the endless horizon in wonderment and awe. Looking up, I imagined what outer space would be like. Down below, everything was distant and I felt small on a vast planet.

But, with experience, the aisle seat was always the better choice. I hate disturbing people from a nap because my tiny bladder was overflowing for the third time in ninety minutes. The anxiety would be palpable, and left me guilt-stricken. I have lost that sense of awe and thinking about the whole-wide world from an airplane window.

I drift into a tired sleep.

I am awakened by the roar of the engines. I will be alert and conscious for the entirety of the flight. I hate the world.

The plane levels off at its cruising altitude and our flight today will be five hours and forty-five minutes. The weather in Honolulu is a cool seventy-eight degrees and sunny with slight cloud cover. You are free to use electronic devices, but the seat belt light will remain on for the duration of the flight.

I turn on my iPhone and look through my music. I am disheartened. None of the songs are appealing. I remind myself to update my library when I get back to Seattle. A promise that is never kept.

I thumb through the in-flight magazine knowing that it should occupy me for a good half-hour, right? The articles last me barely five minutes. Great, now I have five hours and forty minutes left in the flight.

The red-haired woman sitting next to me is buried in whatever handouts she has attached to her green three-ring binder. The handouts look the same as when I was in school. The nostalgia made me smile. The red-haired woman notices and turns. I realize that I have been staring. I expect a glare or some kind of discouraging sign. But she smiles slightly.

“First time going to Hawaii?”, I say. I am terrible at this. It is weird. I have no idea how to make small talk or even just introduce myself outside of any kind of work situation. I always have this lingering fear that whatever I am saying is trite and boring. And, this fear isn’t just borne from paranoia. I certainly notice when people conveniently change the subject, interrupt me, or the dreaded lets-just-ignore-the-nerd cold shoulder.

Amazingly, she answers, “No, I’ve been there before. Heading over to do some research.”

“Research?”

“Yeah, I study vulcanology. You know, volcanos.”

“Lots of volcanoes in Hawaii.”

“Yeah.”

Wow this is going no where.

I try to rescue the conversation.

“Cool, yeah, I am heading to the Philippines.”

“Have you ever been to Taal?”

“Oh yeah, its gorgeous in person.”

You know what? I don’t know if I’ve ever really been there in person. The Philippines has always been this ethereal place to me. When I was a kid, I remember things that no one else seems to recall. There are like vignettes in some long, forgotten, half-remembered dream.

There was this time that I remember getting lost in the jungle with my older brother. We (along with our parents) were visiting a family friend that was a dentist. Mike and I went out in the backyard to go exploring. We walked up a couple of hills which in my child’s mind became vast unconquerable valleys. There was mud, rain, and everything was an emerald green. We got lost, and I started half-crying. At one point, we were at some pond with a small waterfall. It was the local swimming area populated with the denizens of the next town over. The scene exuded an entrancing feeling of wonder. I don’t remember how we got home.

The thing is that the story that I just told you is not remembered by anybody. My brother has no recollection and neither do my parents. I wonder if it ever really did happen.

Meanwhile, the conversation with the fire-bright redhead was going well. We crossed over from subtle pleasantries to talking about ourselves. She was a graduate student at Washington studying vulcanology. In her youth, a vacation to Washington state from the very not-volcano-enabled Iowa introduced her to mountains, in particular Mount Rainer.

I remark that going to Hawaii must be like vacationing in Disneyland for someone in her field. Lame joke, but it made her laugh. And good times were had all around.

I felt fortunate. Most of my co-passengers are either smelly, boring, weird, or awkwardly sleeping on my shoulder in the middle of the flight. The redhead was funny, affable, interesting, and married. I noticed the ring on her finger about midway through the flight. Oh well, I thought at least I don’t have to be too charming then.

The flight passed by quickly. We said our goodbyes and headed out of the plane, once again strangers. I know it has been observed before, but airplanes are aberrant concoctions. One shares an almost intimate space with a complete stranger in a flying aluminium tube for several hours. You are hugging the very edge of life and death at altitudes that would kill everyone in minutes. Over the course of the trip, you get acquainted with your neighbors and even share meals with them. But as soon as those wheels touch the ground, any semblance of familiarity is dissipated. They were never really friends or even acquaintances, and left as faceless shadows in a crowd.

As soon as I step off the plane, I feel the warm embrace of Hawaii, and I feel home. Remorse fills me, and I realize for the first time that I wish my stay would be longer.

Adventures Seven Months Past (Part 1)

2011-02-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

All through the House

I get nervous on any plane trip. Longer trips across a vast ocean of water make me borderline frantic. It is not so much the fear of crashing and dying some sudden, horrible death. Well there is that, but it is more than that. I fear the thought of maybe getting stuck somewhere and not knowing anybody.

I am leaving my sweet, humble existence in Seattle for a reunion with family across the Pacific in the country of my birth, The Philippines. The trip is a simple one. I have one leg from Seattle to Honolulu with a quick overnight stay. The next morning, I make another one over the International Dateline into the heart of the beast that is Manila.

I make this trip routinely but it still leaves me anxious the night before. I check that I packed my passport over and over. Of course, it is still in the same place where I left it five minutes ago in my Swiss Army backpack. At first, I feel that I didn’t bring enough clothes, and then, it feels like I am bringing too much. I try to keep is simple. One suitcase and one carry-on. I don’t need much. Ok, now I feels like it isn’t enough.

I look at my mess of a room and wonder if I am forgetting anything. Passport is, again, in the same place. The iPhone is charging and my computer is converting movies to be played on the plane. I bring two books: the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass (which I have read several times) and Stephen King’s On Writing (which I’m in the middle of). Reading material - check. Movies for the plane - check. I know I’ll forget my toothbrush but thats ok. There has got to be a place somewhere that I can buy one right? Anxiety strikes a chord, and now I’m fretting over the damn toothbrush. I’ll clear my mind with some videogames.

Last year, while waiting for my flight to Manila, I stayed up through the night playing games. It gave my overactive mind something to do that didn’t involve me freaking out.

After a few hours, I fall asleep...after checking my passport one more time and then making sure the alarm clock was set...twice.

A Small Hiccup on the Way

The blaring of the alarm pulls me from a comforting sleep. I slowly rise. I am ahead of schedule. I figured that I’d involuntarily sleep in for about thirty minutes. Surprising myself, a quick shower is in order. A final check for everything is the last thing that I do. I call a taxi and wait in anticipation for my ride. My eyes are lazy with exhaustion. This is going to be a long day already.

The cab pulls up. I whisper, “Here we go”, to no one in particular. A small laugh rumbles in the back of my brain. God, I sure am an over-dramatic fool. The cab driver doesn’t really acknowledge my presence, but I remind myself that its five o’clock in the morning for him too. “Sea-Tac airport, please”, I mutter through a haze of anticipation and weird regret. It is funny. I always feel a tinge of regret whenever I set off for the airport. There is a small, but noticeable sense of abandonment when I leave. I am thinking too much again.

Yeah, the passport is still there, man.

Cab rides are strange. I have no idea who this guy is and the moments pass uneasily. The iPhone is used to assuage any social awkwardness. Of course, I start thinking about the battery life. This has to last me the 6-plus hours to Honolulu because I have to call my uncle to pick me up. I disregard any notions of a world without a cell phone and check Facebook again. I need some sort of acknowledgement that I am in fact leaving for the airport. It is an exercise in narcissism. I want people to miss me or anticipate my arrival.

Wait. Where is my phone charger?

Fuck. Where is it?

Yeah, my passport is still here, asshole.

I sigh. “Hey, could you turn around? I forgot my stupid phone charger.”

The cabbie replies, “Oh, you’ll need that on your trip.”

The reply left me remarkably confused. Without missing a beat, my inner voice is telling me that this cab drive is now going to take twice as long and cost twice as much. Good thing I woke up early, I assure myself.

Back at the house, I find the charger exactly where I left it last: connected to the computer. It is almost a surprise. I go outside and get back into the cab.

“Sea-Tac airport, please.”

The Airport of Kinda Funny Coincidences. But Not Really.

I like to get to SeaTac early. Once there was a frightful moment; I got to there with under an hour to check-in, get through the security line, and somehow run to the gate. I was the very last person to board the plane and no sooner had I sat down did the plane depart from the gate. And of course there was the half-disastrous Thanksgiving of ‘08, when I arrived with fifteen minutes to spare, missed my flight, and had to run the length of the airport twice to try and get on a flight to Los Angeles. Nowadays, I don’t mind waiting three or more hours for some stupid flight.

The security line is non-existent today, and I get through with about four hours to spare before my flight. Ok, four hours might be a tad long to wait for a flight. I think I might be a secret neurotic. This can’t be good.

I find a restaurant in front of my gate on the slight chance that the airplane decides to leave without me. I have a sublimely mediocre omelette, but it is better than I expected. Three cups of coffee, twenty-three refreshes of Facebook, two passport checks, a cursory glance at today’s news (the world is still fucked) later, the flight starts to board. I hit the restroom and hangout with the growing crowd awaiting their aluminum vessel. I scan the fellow passengers that I am about to share 6 hours in a cramped tube. It is the usual mix of families struggling keeping their kids under wraps, the too cute couple snuggled in a warm blanket, the other couple that look like they are on the verge of never speaking to each other again, the one family already in the shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and her.

Oh God, why.

I haven’t seen her in almost a decade and she looks the same from college. Maybe a little extra weight, but considering my own lack of fitness, it looks like the years have been kind. I can’t see her face. It has to be her. My astonishment is replaced by an enveloping anger, slowed to a boil, served with a hint of spite.

We broke up about eight years ago. It was a mixed of the usual trust issues, complacency, and the fact that I probably never forgave her for breaking my heart the first time. The last two years of the relationship felt like thirty. I dreamed of ways to leave, but a fear of being alone made me stay. I don’t know how she really felt because I was so wrapped up in myself that I could hardly be bothered. I even openly tried dating another woman behind her back in the last few months of the ill-fated relationship. I know, I was twenty-one and immature, and probably in some Freudian-sense it was some revenge ploy two years in the making. Remarkably, the break up was messy and stupid. Looking back at it, I realize what a pathetic person I was. Afterwards, those pangs of fear and doubt crept back into me, and I lamented how I screwed up what seemed like a good thing. It is only years after this that I acknowledged that those three years were largely poisonous and self-destructive. I am in a more mature place.

Then, I quickly exited to the nearest restroom and updated my Facebook status my disposition.

I caught a glance of myself in the mirror washing up. I laughed and think to myself that I should write about this someday.