Path to Enlightened Insanity

Poems are too short

to really say anything.

So, I don’t write them.

I’ve sensed “that” season has started again. No its not the holiday season, all the signage and promotions for that started a few weeks ago. Usually this season starts the day after Thanksgiving.

What season is it?

The shopping season?

(No thats year round now silly.)

Its the onset of neuroticism. This is the season where all the pressures of the aforementioned holidays turn people into utter pricks and assholes. The congestion on the roads will increase, mad rushes at toy stores for inconsequential toys that’ll be forgotten in a few months anyway, over elaborate preparations for what really should be simple family affairs, and shopping, lots of shopping, followed by returns.

Me? I avoid this. As much of it as I can I avoid. I find the level of stress that people put themselves through for what are supposed to be enjoyable events quite insane, but then again its quite American. I think we have the most stressful vacations too while I’m at it. (Re: Nazi Parents)

So relax, everyone. Just stop and smell the tailpipes (or roses if you can find them).

My mom has a phrase: “There is no such thing as a family vacation, either you take the family or you take a vacation.” This also applies apparently to other people’s families as well.

In this instance the family in question is the director’s family. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they were there but once we got above three or four people it becomes a logistical mess, and there are enough compromises that I think nobody is truly happy, well at least I wasn’t really.

So at the end of the day as we were going home on the subway I split from the group and visited the WTC site. It was one of the three places on my list to see. (The list is: the WTC site, Central Park, and the SoHo Apple Store.) I can go to the other two on another trip, they won’t be dramatically different next time I’m here, but the WTC site is an evolving construction site/memorial now, and I know it will be different next time I’m in New York City.

I’d call it a construction site/museum exhibit now. I asked a friend who visited it a year or two ago what he thought of it, he said it was a tourist trap. Apparently the police have cracked down on the merchants in the area. The bathtub itself is quite well obscured from your average commuter. An obvious attempt to both keep tourists moving, and protect the psyche’s of New Yorkers.

I also found the very small memorial area.

There were several messages that peace and love are the only things that can overcome war and hate. My thoughts at the time: making war is easy, making peace is hard.

I think in general We Americans have chosen the easy road of late: spending binges on credit (personal, corporate, and public), war; black, white, blue and red views vs. views of grey and purple ambiguity; self-centeredness; and war.

I quite doubt we’ll do the hard things. Its not in our current nature. If America does, I’ll be back from wherever I am.

Okay I admit it I’m a dork. I’m currently on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

Well, given that I’ve been anti-coat this whole trip this is the first time I’ve been cold. Its not really the cold it the wind.

I’m disturbed that there is Twin Tower memorabilia at the observatory store. Somehow I think being reminded of it when I’m in the tallest building in this area of the country, well its bad taste. Sort of like morning breath on steroids.

Being in NYC and seeing the personal touchpoints of the 9/11 attacks, well its forced me to reconsider my feelings and thoughts… More on that later..

The film I worked on two years ago premiers in an hour or so. All I can think is that its a world away from where I am now in so many ways.

This entry must be short. (I’m writing it on the back of a Starbucks receipt @ Starbucks.) I’ve been debating of where to aim to move next. NYC? San Fran? Seattle? Canada?

I dunno.

You know, one of those implicit things about New York City: you walk a lot. I’ve actually not seen one of those bloblous people that are common in Ohio and Kentucky (One lives down the street from me. He has this bad habit of crossing the street barefoot and shirtless. Pleeze.)

But yeah, while some people have bellies, there are no grotesquely obese people that I’ve seen while I’ve been here. Maybe they’re all camping out in Brooklyn or on Long Island.. But they’re not in Manhattan.

Also, I’ven’t found the blue fairy, although I’ve not looked for her.

I just want to drop a quick note for posterity’s sake. I wrote the last three posts offline, and stored them in MarsEdit’s Drafts folder. When I went to post them online MarsEdit somehow lost the times I wrote the entries. (In the past its kept the post time.) So I had to guess at what they should be. So for the past three entries the finished writing time is a guess.

Yeah, I’m anal retentive.

You gotta stick to that Vice Presidential language. It seems to have served Dick well so, I feel the more I work his level of language in the better it’ll be.

So, well all in all this has been a great trip so far. It started out last night as I was packing and pre-preparing to go to work. (I went to work then directly to the airport.) In the middle of finishing up my packing, the electric goes out. So in addition to not being able to actually see what I’m packing, I’m also faced with the problem of ensuring that I turned off all the lights, because I’m not going to be at my apartment for a few days and I don’t want to leave a light on.

Okay so we started with the power going out while I was packing. Work went fine. Although on my way out getting a bagel at the local Brugglers, I ran into a coworker on my way in. This is wasn’t any coworker, this was the uberbitch, “this is my Kinko’s so do what I say” coworker. Given that we were both off the clock and she was nicely goading me on, I just ignored her.

So. I did make it to the airport on-time, which I consider a miracle. While I was waiting for my flight to take off there was a woman in tears because she had missed her flight because of TSA-Rape. (Or at least thats what it seemed like from her reaction.) While initially I thought she was grandstanding to get what she wanted given her personal family situation I understand why she was so upset. To be tactful, I’ll leave out what had happened. So after the raving emotional mother, the power outage and running into uberbitch, I figured we had gotten everything that could go wrong out of the system.

How wrong I can be sometimes.

The forty five or so of us got on the plane, one of these wonderful regional-jet-sardine-cans that US Airways is relying on to provide the proper level of service for every city, and keep costs down. No sooner than we had gotten on the plane, the pilot announced there was a ground stop at our destination because of the weather and we’d be delayed, and he thought we’d be more comfortable in the terminal. Most people got off the plane for the fire drill. Then they got all back in. I having just went to the bathroom and well, not wanting to move around just hung around on the plane.. I guess me and my fellow minded passengers failed the fire drill. After battening down the hatches on the plane we taxied to the end of the runway and waited for another forty-five minutes, right next to a snazzy FedEx Express 727. (Note there is no such thing as Federal Express anymore.. Its now known at FedEx Express. Because we’ve got FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, FedEx Custom Solutions, and my employer: FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers (Yeah we got screwed with the long name. Although there is a newer member of the family, FedEx Postal Solutions. Whee! Next thing you know we’ll have FedEx Food after we buy and fix McDonald’s, you’ll get your food by 10:30 am tomorrow, should be fast enough for anyone.)

But back to the point. So we ended up leaving Cincinnati about the time we were supposed to get to Charlotte. When we got there we didn’t have a gate. (Yeah, our flight was batting a 500.)

I ended up missing my connecting flight, which was good because well I got to get lunch at Chili’s and Starbucks. Free Starbucks. One of the wonderful things about most airports now adays is all of the food service is provided by the same company, when the credit card processing goes down, All of the credit card processing goes down. I grabbed some cash for food, and I got a free coffee after they couldn’t use my Starbucks Duetto Card.

We had a short ground stop leaving to Laguardia which didn’t cause us much trouble. And thats where I’m at now, on the A320 EOW waiting for some freaking beverage service, because these airliners are like the desert. (For good reason, they can’t raise the humidity too high because it is corrosive to the shell of the airplane.)

So well yeah its been a great trip besides the fact that I’m exhausted from being awake for twenty hours.

Oh another thing about this bullshit security. While they’ve gone through such pains and forcing people to break off their nail files from their nail clippers, They’ll gladly provide you with glass salt shakers and glass beer bottles which can be very easily broken and made into a weapon. This is of course while sit down restaurants are forced to pay lip service to security by only using plastic silverware.

Logic does not appear to be something that we americans have.

Just for the record by the end of this week I will have been in no fewer than six states, one province, and two countries just during this week. Yes. I’m going to New York this weekend. I promise this will be the last little weekend trip because well, I’m getting tired of them, and the novel is suffering horribly, next weekend will be novel writing and I will get 8,000 words in. This my friends is how you kill procrastination.

The Canada trip last weekend was well quite impromptu. Basically the night before I would’ve had to leave I got on Priceline and said, if I get the room I’ll go, if I don’t get a room, i won’t go. And well I got the room, and went.

The trip to New York City on the other hand, well this started back in 2002 with a movie shoot that I worked on right after I got back from my internship in Atlanta. This time feels a lot like that time. I’m rushed, flyin by the seat of my pants all over the place and not really having any idea what I’m doing tomorrow. Yeah, film shoots are fun, and so are galavanting trips across the country.

My plane is getting ready to board, but I’ll just say something short and quickly. I love airports. There is something amazing about the inherent ballet that occurs and the human drama that unfolds as well.. More about that later after I have time to process what I just recently heard.

I admit it. I’m a kid when it comes to flying. I can still look at planes and tell you what type they are (sometimes even down to the sub-model (e.g. a 737-200 vs a 737 in general.)

We just took off and surpassed 10 minute ban on using laptops and other electronic devices. I think I had the same expression and feeling of awe at taking off as I probably did when I was seven. Its an amazing magical gift to be able to fly. Just over 100 years ago powered flight was the fringe technology of inventors and visionaries. Now people get frustrated when everything does not go as planned. At the magical moment of rotation (the point during takeoff where the nose leaves the ground and the plane is no longer supported by its wheels but instead supported by the amazing imbalance of air pressure between the top and bottom of the wings) I looked around at my fellow passengers, and all of them that I could see were unaware of the magical physics of flight that we were partaking of. They were in a zone of uninterested complacency, unaware of the magic of physics that was occurring around them.

Stop, take a moment to stop and relish in the little magical and amazing things around us. If this week has taught me anything, its that while I feel good when I’m a busy beaver and productive and getting lots of things done, I miss stopping and people watching. (Although people watching is dually helpful for and horribly non-conducive to novel writing)

From 20,000 or so feet, suspended by the magic of air rushing over two metal branches, I give you my two cents on smelling the ros… err the magic around us.