Fear of Airports

I have a strange sort of fear that comes about in airports - a nameless anxiety that is independent of subject or circumstance. It comes, I believe, from a notion that as events occur in my life, and as time  passes, I am succeeding or failing by some absolute measure. Whatever that measure might be, it consists of terms that I do not detect or concern myself with in any ordinary day or place. It is difficult but necessary, perhaps, to realize that the discrepancy should not exist - airports may be a reminder for me of the nature of time, but they do not indicate in any sense that some days should be treated differently than others. If I am correct regarding the source and nature of this feeling, then it should be felt always, or never. But which?

Remarkably, I have retained very few memories of airports, and even amongst those, none seem to inform the impression that airports give me today. Aside from some particular travel difficulties (customs in Morocco, an overnight in Detroit), nothing particular of any consequence strikes my memory. And yet I have certainly experienced hundreds of things in airports, and spent an inordinate amount of time drifting in thought through those spare hours, whether daydreaming, or meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.

Perhaps the closest thing I have to an archetypal memory of airports is my layover after a trans-Atlantic flight to Stockholm, before connecting to Helsinki. I was irreversibly far down the road of quitting work, going not only back to school but going to school a third of the way around the world, preparing to plunge myself into a situation that would force me to meet people, and in doing so, succeed or fail on absolute terms. The terminal was empty and the first light of dawn spilled across the horizon as I sat thinking - mostly about my checking account, which is perhaps weird for me to note after what I’ve said so far. The reason I find it notable, though, is that it represents a more general focus on how circumstance comes to be - how we might decide things for ourselves, or drift through life with an innate sense of trust, or an innate sense of rudderlessness. A checking account is not a profound thing, but I had not worried about my checking account in years. What I was doing was examining the process of change, which is another way of saying meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.

I can be confident in saying that many similar, though smaller, moments have occurred in airports. I had several of them today alone. But they do not much register - not for too long, anyway - and I do not remember them as individual things.

I have carried a fear of forgetting for as long as I can remember - I was fixated even when I was young on an idea of cataloging the world that I experienced, to keep all my memories as possessions, as if there would be further use for them tomorrow. I was fearful of forgetting and sought all the traditional tools to help me remember. I took photos, and journaled each day. When my family decided to move, I videotaped the layout and composition of the house, as if such information would prove not only useful, but critical for something critical, to be accomplished later.

What I did not understand then is that even when we have forgotten particulars, we retain essences - patterns on top of patterns, becoming ultimately what I abuse the term “archetype” to describe - a sense independent of the thing - its common nature.

Before I knew the experience of air travel, I knew the loneliness of airports through random visits and the music of Brian Eno and Radiohead. There was an alienation and sadness expressed in OK Computer, both literal (the cover art, the song Let Down: “Airports, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, the emptiest of feelings.”) and figurative (placidness covering profound depth of feelings, good and bad, in songs like No Surprises and Lucky). For all the calmness of Discrete Music and Music for Airports, what I heard personally was the terror of man-made empty spaces, where we vacuum away the soul of nature to achieve profound impersonality. Those feelings no doubt color what I feel today, but how much?

I believe that periodic reflections on my life have brought me a great deal of sadness, because life is unavoidably difficult, and complicated, and frustrating, in different degrees and in different ways as we age. There has also been a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, but it can be hard to remember, because our nature is to bask in the positives each day, absorbing the satisfaction they give and draining them of any novelty.

The trip I am completing now has been important - I am certain of that. But that is a different proposition from memory. Still, I wonder what my memories of this trip will be, ten years from now. I know from experience that just as the particulars will fade, the essence of what the trip was about will likely grow clearer, and in that process, I will see how it fits into the arc of my life. All of life is like that - perhaps what I described earlier as an archetype may simply be a misdiagnosis of a certain sort of experience, or wisdom.

"Through Hollow Lands"

I frequently find myself confounded in trying to put my present - the past few years - into the context of the past.

One practical way might be to view my current condition against my evolving past condition through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In better regarding my own needs, and meeting someone that I care about and trust, and learning to eat healthy, and hell, getting sleep, I have removed or eased constraints on the lower levels, and sure enough, I find myself only increasing my desire for some sort of self-actualization (which was, admittedly, always there). My writing might even come from a need to express myself, be understood, and most of all, touch something universal.

It is that final point that I often come back to. It may have been different when I was young, when I thought the self was an act of differentiation. When did I get old enough that I started seeing the role of the self opposite - to integrate, elegant and harmonious, into what already exists, what is eternal?

Two years ago, I listened to Brian Eno in the last evening light at Chesler Park in Canyonlands. It was "Through Hollow Lands", what might otherwise be an innocuous track, but one of five songs in a row I consider perfect that end that album, when the elation of the three songs before settled into my soul and I had something like an out-of-body experience (not to put it too dramatically - I think some people would describe what I felt as "light-headedness"). I was out there searching for something in addition to solitude - meaning, connection, trying to link my past to my future. My grandmother loved the southwest, and I loved her. What of her - her values, her spirit, her mistakes - could I honor through my actions?

She died, what, seven years ago? That morning, I woke after a night out like a thousand others, strangely elated. I was lightheaded, hungover, but the morning light was upon me through the window, and I relented to it, rising early. Like some other rare mornings, the air felt full of magic, and I didn't want my walk to the convenience store, or my spell listening to the birds on the porch, to end. I called my dad that morning to ask if they were going to go see my grandma that day in the hospice, because I wanted to as well. I caught him at an awkward time - she had just died, but he hadn't called to tell us yet.

I know, among other things, that I managed to hurt him that day - the guilt of having not informed me, for they had seen it coming for hours. But I would not have wanted to be there. I might have tried to break the air in half, or the sunlight, for the feeling of cosmic frustration that must come with watching someone you love sliding into death. In failing to come to terms, I may have hurt myself (the way I used to dream of doing so).

In retrospect, there was no doubt the luck of time and circumstance on all scales involved, that she had the profound effect on me that she did. Not only that my day went that way, but that I was lost in my own life, and that I happened to reflect on hers amidst the haze of my prolonged adolescence, and understand in some dim way what was to be done. Most broadly of all, that I had the chance to know her - that the universe sat us down in such close proximity of time and space.

In the years since, I have grown into much more than I was then. More than once I have wished she could see me as I am now, for I want her to be proud of me - but what kind of contradiction would that be? And before I skip away down this road, perhaps it is wise to ask - when I say I have grown into more than I was, am I right? What does it mean? Does it matter?

When I look into the mirror today, I finally see some of the man I had been expecting to wake up as tomorrow for every day of the last 20 years - evolving though that image has been. And it is not in the wrinkle lines, or the hurt of my past that I see every time I am brave enough to catch my own gaze - but in the recognition of the collective past that I can see that I am finally there, at least in some way.

Change

I read a story about New York. Then I thought about the movie Quiet City.

And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.

Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.

As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.

The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.

Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.

Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.

There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."

I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.

That's life.