<If nothing, to prod this sluggish blog into some activity>
Airports always get me thinking – my mind’s whirring and
it’s hard to keep my eyes on the page. It’s a sensory overload, watching the
plethora of people milling about, their facesliveshistories reflected on vast shiny surfaces. A place so huge that no sound
ever fills it except the periodic sterile and well-enunciated announcements (ting, ting:).
Everything else just floats about aimlessly – you hear snatches sometimes and
they’re always pregnant with so many unknown things.
Tap-tap-tap-tap some of them walk briskly, knowing exactly where to go. Others shuffle along, confused or conversing or just ambling, taking in perhaps the same things as me (Tap. Tap. Tap). The little squeaks that wheelchairs emit – the attendants look hypnotized, as if they wouldn’t notice if the warm piles of bone and wrinkly skin that they were carting along fell off on the way. Everyone’s shoes are clean. Mine aren’t. There’s a girl with bright pink hair. She looks away from everyone who stares – you don’t dye your hair a bright fucking pink without practising in your head the exact sort of nonchalant looking-away that you’ll do. Moments of panic – someone digs in a bag for a possibly misplaced something, someone else is turned away for having too much luggage, or the wrong sort. So many people are afraid of this ominously glinting space – they are impeccably dressed in brand new clothes, they are afraid to ask the stewardess for anything, they are afraid to respond to her perfectly tinted mouth shaping alien noises in a faux-pleasant voice. Others stride past looking glamorously shoddy; it’s a long way to go before one can afford to look shoddy in airports. Of course there’s diversity – there are flights going from everywhere to everywhere. There’ll be Jain monks and emo teens and pink-haired girls. But some things you’ll never see: white cleaning staff; Indians wearing surgical masks (germs, ha!); women with young children looking like they wouldn’t chuck them in a suitcase if they could; young children looking like they’ll stay quiet for the flight.
Tap-tap-tap-tap some of them walk briskly, knowing exactly where to go. Others shuffle along, confused or conversing or just ambling, taking in perhaps the same things as me (Tap. Tap. Tap). The little squeaks that wheelchairs emit – the attendants look hypnotized, as if they wouldn’t notice if the warm piles of bone and wrinkly skin that they were carting along fell off on the way. Everyone’s shoes are clean. Mine aren’t. There’s a girl with bright pink hair. She looks away from everyone who stares – you don’t dye your hair a bright fucking pink without practising in your head the exact sort of nonchalant looking-away that you’ll do. Moments of panic – someone digs in a bag for a possibly misplaced something, someone else is turned away for having too much luggage, or the wrong sort. So many people are afraid of this ominously glinting space – they are impeccably dressed in brand new clothes, they are afraid to ask the stewardess for anything, they are afraid to respond to her perfectly tinted mouth shaping alien noises in a faux-pleasant voice. Others stride past looking glamorously shoddy; it’s a long way to go before one can afford to look shoddy in airports. Of course there’s diversity – there are flights going from everywhere to everywhere. There’ll be Jain monks and emo teens and pink-haired girls. But some things you’ll never see: white cleaning staff; Indians wearing surgical masks (germs, ha!); women with young children looking like they wouldn’t chuck them in a suitcase if they could; young children looking like they’ll stay quiet for the flight.
The whirring winds down. Back to Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas. And then the flight.
