I’m at LAX, again. I’m always coming back. My itinerant ways bring me here whenever I touch ground. And if it’s not LAX, it’s some other nameless port. But they’re all LAX to me.
It’s always sunny – so goddamned sunny. But it doesn’t warm anything. Sure… everything gets baked at first, but it hardens, becomes burnt, and steadily morphs from insulator to conductor. Just like everything around here – incessantly conducting – running relays through metal bars and wires pathetically wrapped in Bakelite and naugahyde.
No, the sun’s heat doesn’t warm… it just peels and strips everything. It sits, laconic yet persistent. The sun reveals all while saying nothing. It leaves us all naked - exposed. When it’s not content with that, it bores into us. It will strip the flesh from one’s shoulder – leave the nerves cold and unfeeling.
I’m stuck in the terminal. There’s an over-night delay. Crews replace an engine. I hate flying.
In here, there is air conditioning – not the creature comforts of home – but the precise quantifying of one’s environment. It chills me. I step outside, in the 90-degree heat, and still find myself chilled. I feel cold because I hate flying. Suspended animation. You are nowhere, your location denoted by a string of co-ordinates. Your existence is reduced to scientific abstraction.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of Tootsie-Pop? More importantly, when that sunlight is done peeling away at me, what will it find?
But I’m still stuck in the terminal. It’s just as bad as searing on the tarmac or careening through the air. The tension of isolation amongst so many people drives me to a window. Through the crystalline glass, I think I can make out the turgid, nourishing air. Inside, there is no re-assuring moisture, and there is no disconcerting stench – a fact I find disconcerting. Has the HVAC swept the humanity from this place, or was there every any to be had?
I need a good stink. A good stink – not the putrid messenger of a tragic accident or a pressing purpose. I need a smell not inflicted, yet also unrehearsed. No infusions of the flesh – no oils or powders or washes soon to go skyward. I need the seminal baby smell that never leaves us - the one which, in our finest hours, sneaks into our semi-somnolent minds - the one which reminds us we’re home.
I don’t even know why I’m travelling. It seemed long ago that I had a reason, a duty. Now, I’m no longer pulled toward something… I’m nudged forward. By myself? By somebody else? Both, probably. I find a place to call home, but rarely stay in the house. Months later, I’m on a plane, missing the white picket fence and the foundation – a foundation which grew from the very core of the earth.
Regardless, I’m at LAX, again. And I hate flying. Everything is weak, and my heart pounds in my head. The new engine in the 747 will take me somewhere.
