My legs are cold from air siphoned around me; sterility in my two-foot box seat. This is not the first time I have seen the Atlantic from more than a mile above. This is not the first time I have covered the entire eastern seaboard in a meager few hours, all while waiting for a meal and finishing a few novels. I am surrounded by metal and heat-shrinked plastic and leather, probably fake. This is not the first time I have flown overseas.
It is the first time I have flown overseas with a less-than-tangible connection to the country. I will not meet family on the other side; all semblance of chaperoning is downplayed. They are there, but they are not watching as babysitters. They are watching as guards; security against fuck-ups and against lost passports and binges which end in hangovers to miss class for. On the screen, the movie they play is focused on some conflict in Africa; the lead role is played by Morgan Freeman. I think it is The Constant Gardener or Hotel Rwanda*. One of the African-conflict-caused-by-the-Western-world movies that came out around that time. The valium-coated comedy is not present in this movie; this is not meant as a reassurance to the passengers. This is a movie supplied by the people trying to satisfy the growing support of movies with depressing morality. *I found out later from some of the people who had watched it that the movie was Invictus and that Morgan Freeman was playing Nelson Mandela.
The riots in Greece are called to mind. Maybe it’s because I am going to Greece, and maybe it’s because I’m seeing exploding cars. I hope while I am there to get good photographs of the riots. Not for any particular reason other than to expand my portfolio. Maybe I’ll take sketches of some of the angriest people who are standing still. Maybe I’ll take sketches of the street actors and gypsies. If I do either, it will be to my benefit. I have needed to sketch for months now; I’ve gotten out of practice. My sketches and drawings have become more stylized line drawings. No color; none is needed. The stark white on black is enough to say what I need it to say. On the day of the final, I drew Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring on the whiteboard; it was an almost accurate sketch; one or two details missing.
* * * * *
You can see the curvature of the world from here. Clouds that look like islands; currents; islands that look like clouds; a mile-up, a fog tries to envelope the plane from the east, where we’re travelling. I look to my book, silence in the cacophony of roaring wind muffled by plastic and popped ears. A rainbow tint in the atmosphere.
The clouds imitate the surface at probably half the distance down; probably further than that. Waves churn and roil and smooth into vast expanses of either rough, foamy breakers or smooth glistening speed bumps, a vast succession of thousands of speed bumps, miles and miles wide. Dinner: a shrink-wrapped, microwave, vegetarian pasta without any dessert. I feel as though some meal-planning stranger decided to punish the vegetarians who didn’t want chicken if only because it meant they had to provide a choice of meals. That may be true; or the stewardess may have forgotten. In either case, it would have been as shrink-wrapped and nutrient-balanced as the rest.
The wing of the plane is covered by a shadow from the tail fin and dorsal of this lumbering beast of the air; we only seem to go slowly at 600 mph. Chasing tomorrow, it could take a day to reach our destination, it seems; I know it’s untrue. Eleven hours is thirteen shy; but it seems as though this trip may take forever. I might not sleep for the twenty-six hours I am travelling (all times total, before this flight and after) and I’ll have lost a day somewhere over the Atlantic. I wish I could see the Pacific from this height. Its cold romance is as comforting as a squid wrapped around my neck, but its beauty is just as mysterious.
Now, a view of the actual sea, not its lithograph image as it is printed on the clouds; a stippled opening around a vast blue mouth threatening to swallow the world as I see it whole. I smell the chicken dinners a few feet away, the congealed ranch wafting around, a penetrating, not quite sour smell. The turbulence is too much for the stewardesses, they say, slipping from “flight attendant.” No one notices. We’re too busy looking out windows or at screens and books to think a correction in order. We don’t really care if someone’s feelings are hurt over spilled milk. It wasn’t ours.
* * * * *
Shutting down to preserve battery life; essential to continuing to write in the hours that follow. My computer claims it’s 6:25 PM. That means that it must be 2:25 AM in Greece. 8 hours ahead. How will I learn to contact people at the right times? Early morning to reach them late night? Mid-afternoon or late night to reach them early morning? I’ll need to write down safe calling times to remind myself that people sleep sometimes.
* * * * *
It’s as though everyone here is hyperactive; everything has to be done so fast my eyes are only seeing motion blurs. Then again, I’ve been awake for almost twenty-seven hours. Hopefully a “spanakotyropita” (transliterated from the Greek) will keep me awake for the next few hours until my flight at 7:30 PM. Once I’ve boarded that flight, I can sleep until Thira, Santorini, and then head to the hotel, clean myself up, and sleep some more. By that time, I’ll be going on 30 hours of travel, I think, including the hour drive from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham.
I’m scared to try the meat; mostly because I haven’t really eaten any terrestrial meat since I had goat (which was okay; not as good as what I’ve had before) a few weeks ago, and up to then, over a year. Delirium sets in more with each minute awake. I can’t focus on reading, which means I can’t get research done, and I was trying to read a novel on an uncomfortable table and was nodding off. When I do this, I wake up whenever someone sits down. It makes me nervous. Paranoid, for lack of a better word. I haven’t really left Athens’ airport because I’m too worried about being back in time for my flight. I could have maybe left at 1 pm local time and gotten back before the flight… but not knowing the bus routes and being barely able to hear people over the exhaustion and noise of a thousand bustling travelers, I didn’t want to chance it.
I know I’m on the same flight with Tatiana and her kids; but I don’t know from what gate the flight leaves the airport, and I don’t want to end up going through security checkpoints to discover I need to turn back and try the other side. And it’s not on the board yet (admittedly, it’s 3:19 pm local time, four hours before the flight), so I can’t even guess where it is. My computer says that it is 7:23 AM in Alabama right now. My family should have received my e-mail, then, as well as Adam. I hope they didn’t write long-winded responses.
I wish I understood (modern) Greek. Herodotus is useless to me in this moment. I need a translator. Or a phrasebook. Or knowledge of the language.
I need sleep.
I’m running on empty.
* * * * *
Opening thoughts on Santorini:
It’s beautiful here, certainly. I feel as though a piece of Spanish moorland has been carved from the Iberian peninsula and dropped into the ocean. The whole island, as I’ve seen, is scrub-brush and stucco on sand dunes liable to move at any moment and lichens on staggering rocks. This island is covered by treacherous fertility: fields cover volcanic debris and in the tranquility I hear a single dog bark in the distance. In my hotel room, my roommates and I have opened the the doors to the balcony and the window in the living room to a chill summer breeze drawn from the ocean to dry our hair and cradle us into welcome sleep.
That’s not to say we intend to sleep just yet. It’s more ritual, this preparation for sleep; it helps us make this set of rooms into our temporary home. If only all hotels are this nice, then I will be well satisfied with these low mattresses and barking mutts and wild ocean breezes. And the volcano.
Houses teeter on its slopes, I noticed as we came into the island, and shops and hotels all cluster to be as close to the top as they can be. The people who live here have probably had family in those houses for generations, as with this villa turned inn. A small book on the table says there are bus tours to the Southern half of the island from 10:45 to 17:00. I may be taking one.
* * * * *
I fell asleep to the sounds of crickets and settling.
I awoke to the sound of birdsong.
The first morning of Santorini: proof that this place is as beautiful as it looked when we came in around twelve hours ago. I am recharged and no longer jet-lagged. Exhaustion is the best form of adaptation to a new time. I may begin to go running; I brought the clothes for it. And this island seems as good a place as any to run. I told myself that as I packed and being here reaffirms it. I’ll need some form of exercise. Start waking myself up early just to walk out to the road and jog a mile or something.
Breakfast begins in seven minutes, and though I am not very hungry, I will probably grab something to eat and something to hold for lunch; I’d rather have a snack than a meal. I will need to find internet soon to contact my family, but they know that I’m safe in Greece, which is enough for now. Maybe I’ll buy a phone card. Maybe I won’t.
I believe I just heard a donkey bray. The donkeys of Santorini, I suppose; there appears to be an obsession with them here, even going so far as to make molded plaster models of donkeys which artists then decorate. It seems like the Athens, GA, bulldogs, or the Tulsa, OK, penguins. There’s a reason; I’m certain I will discover it like so many other things.
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