Is there any way I am so lucky as to have the whole row to myself on this overnight flight from Kennedy to Copenhagen?
The cartoon passengers in the Norwegian Air safety video are so white as to arouse my suspicion. Also the oxygen masks in premium seats reportedly require some additional action, some pulling of a cord, that those for economy seats do not. Suffocate the rich? Interesting.
The fat and pale analog humans drinking Coca Cola at eleven thirty at night across the aisle are staring as I swallow the Unisom recommended by my gynecologist in lieu of the Ambien prescription I wanted and the half a Klonopin I found among the dregs of some party past and later on learned how to spell.
Ah, here are my rowmates.
Too bad for me.
Perhaps they will be more tolerable for whatever disposition makes them almost unable to make a flight.
The sun here is relentless, and with my body disbelieving we are not still in Brooklyn, I barely slept in the five or so hours of paltry night.
Left the sour sheets and my first-night digs at 7 this morning, so ready to get to a better way of being, and trudged forty minutes to upscale Amagerbro, where I will wait out the hours until I may collect flat keys from an Inga who will trust me to care for her cats and sleep in her bed while she enjoys Paris for some days and nights.
A small cafe that is making the most of the light and was empty of people and manifest evidence of food service had that look like You’d better come in here, and a proprietor — bearded sweetly — appeared and welcomed me in English and said back that my mondo pack will be fine at my feet, that if the place fills up we’ll put it elsewhere.
Now I am having a latte that is the best and realest thing to pass my lips in two whole days, maybe longer. The sandwich board-advertised croissants and pains au chocolats have appeared in the pastry case, two of each, hot from his oven and exhaling fresh pastry smell, and now a lady with a baby has come in and bought and borne away one pain au chocolat like she knows something, and so I will ask for the other, quick quick, because I want to know something, too.
Already Iʼve lapsed into the insanity of someone whoʼs gone from a too-social existence to almost-total solitude
The truth is I am terrified at all times, and to pretend that all I notice is the sunshine and beer and new friends is the only answer I know.
(Although maybe thatʼs exactly whatʼs at the root of such annoying manners at their most manifest, a vain effort to keep the demons of consciousness at bay?)
I slept so badly last night, mostly because of anxiety about getting up in time to do everything necessary in the apartment and be packed and make it to my bus on time, but also I think because Iʼve been on a cocktail of melatonin and some kind of over-the-counter antihistamine to get on this time zone but skipped them last night because I was afraid of oversleeping HOWEVER in the one good, tranquil, unworried hour of sleep I got, I was dreaming about us hiking in the Old World, and it was great.
