The stillness of flight

I’m coming down. From dehydration. Intoxication. Fatigation – not a word, but it works.

I feel like I’ve been away for a month. Not two weeks. Vancouver to Toronto to New York to Toronto to Vancouver. Days blurred into nights. Nights collided with days. Parties and bars and films and people become one never-ending evening. Sleep was secondary. I was in flight. A different flight from the one I write this from. While now I travel at what seems like the speed of sound, I am more motionless than I’ve been in days. Still, as the landscape shifts below. As the clouds change shape. From dragons to clowns to naked women.

My thoughts catch up to my present. To the now. To my airplane seat. I remember smothered details. I am aware of instances in different lights. Conversations are jumbled together. I can’t remember who said what. Or where discussions went. Did I make promises? Did I tell too much? What day is it? Is this a dream?

And then there are those few moments that I can still feel, touch, smell as though I am living inside them at this very instance. Those I will keep forever. Locked away in my memory. Cherished as a commodity more valuable than gold. Is gold still valuable?

How do musicians on tour do it? Keep up this chaotic, unnatural pace of life? Like Eddie Vedder. Drinking bottle after bottle of red wine on stage as Jeremy turns into Daughter and so on and on and on. Night after night after night. Rock stars aren’t human. Or perhaps they are the strongest soldiers.

White wine was my main cohort and instigator. White wine, red wine, prosecco, champagne, and then bourbon. A mistake made one night in New York after several glasses of sedating grape juice. I should know better than to turn to that old, amber friend when my body is equalized with wine. I saw the city at 6am that morning as I walked to my hotel and slept as long as my check-out would allow me, dreaming of a coconut water IV. I suppose, one must always see a city at that early sun-rising hour.

And now, sitting in this narrow seat with exit row leg room, I am still. Thousands of feet and miles in the air. I don’t want wifi on planes. I only want quiet. This is the last quiet frontier. Let’s not ruin it like the rain forests.

I love flying. I do. I love turbulence. The shakes. The tremble. The wake up. The fear. I love the moment the engine roars alive. The way it purrs like a thousand galloping stallions. And then the slow roll from gate to runway. Too slow. I rock back and forth in my seat willing the wheels to roll faster. To get on with it. And then they do. Jet engines. Rockets. Volcanoes. Torpedoes down the runway as I am forced back in my seat. My adrenaline surges up my throat. It does a jig in my lungs. This is my favourite feeling. The excitement before the calm.

Two weeks of excitement before the now calm.

When can we do it again?

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