Up in the air and across the pond
Traveling is a very curious thing. It’s all pleasantly paradoxical when you think of it terms of your individuality. You travel why? You travel to have new experiences, escape a present situation and live uninhibited by the restraints of home and create a new world in your span of vacation; you travel to diversify your world and your memories, so they are not all localized and small; you travel to “get cultured” (whatever that means, as everyone seems to do this differently, which I guess suggests that culture is not as objective as we like to think it is); you travel to feel ownership over another part of the world. You travel to exercise your right of individuality, right? How refreshing is it to get off a plane, get out of a car after a long ride, and realize that no one here is like you? That you, and only you, are getting to impose your personality upon this place and can pick and chose what you present. (These are supposed to be mantras that we live our daily lives by, granted, but it’s much more pronounced when you’re in a new place where there are no constraints or pressures of how you usually act and dress and talk).
But the paradox comes in here. Someone else has sat in 19G on this United Airlines flight and felt the same exact emotions. Other travelers have been captivated by similar notions of escapism and adventure and giddiness and all that. While the individuals and specific motives of every traveler is a little different (for example: I’m sitting next to a young British family of four – a small boy who is asleep on the floor, a father wearing a sleepy eye mask and asleep, a mother watching a startlingly violent movie on a way too old looking DVD player and a curly haired girl who is sleeping next to me curled in the crescent of a retired and prideful cat, with her head resting over the armrest and onto my hip. The why of their travels is certainly not mine, but I think it’s safe to say that we share the same tremendous excitement that comes only at 32,000 feet over the Atlantic as you’re being transported to an entirely different country), there are generic feelings of thrill just as generic as little meals, blankets, pillows, airplane courtesies. No one can dismiss how cool traveling is, how amazing the idea alone of walking onto a plane and walking out in a new world. And in that sense, there’s a unity on airplanes, in airports, trains, busses, boats and all that.
The thing with traveling is that even though we feel elevated to this spectacular status of ownership and experiences, the truth is that we are all going to take the same pictures, we are all going to curse the airplane food and then swear that as soon as we get off the plane, we are going to eat at the super secret small family diner Rick Steeves just loves, we have all hated the smell of bathrooms, the scratchy texture of seats in coach (if only you’d just worked a little harder…), despised the bright and hideous constellation of tacky lights of the carpet in times when all we wanted was sleep, we all hear the screaming baby and we all (selfishly) wonder why single mother is not attending to this disturbance. We’ll visit the same monuments; follow the same generic itineraries that make us think that it’s the first time the city has ever! been seen this way.
My parents – seemingly normal people under other circumstances – endorse prescription drug abuse for the family on late-night or really long flights to avoid losing a day due to severe jet lag when you land somewhere. Time it right, take an Ambien and wake up in a new world without any sleep deprivation of grogginess. I never, ever take them because I hate the idea of forcing sleep and pretty much, am of the mindset that you shouldn’t take medicine unless you truly do need it. (Part of the reticence also perhaps stems from the annoyance I have towards people who can just put on a sleepy mask, lean their chair back and not appreciate the restlessness, crying babies, fuzzy movies and fluttering stewardesses that everyone else has to deal with; not only do these people miss out on the miracles of flying through the night, but they are also extremely annoying and dull to sit next to). The idea of just inducing yourself to be dismissed from life for an entire flight isn’t right, to me. Today I took a pill because I was being a selfish and spoiled daughter who, as a result of being mad at my parents for a farrago of reasons, took one in spite, storming off and telling my parents it wouldn’t work, they never work, Dad, it’s extremely unhealthy. And as a karmic reaction, I was right. I’m here, groggy but unable to sleep, suspended between these two kind of loosely defined worlds that present themselves at times when you’re alone in bed growing restlessness with the stagnancy and paralysis of being awake when you should be asleep.
Another reason (and why it’s relevant to this all) I don’t like taking sleeping pills is because it feeds the idea of undeserved entitlement. Maybe instead of inducing sleep, escaping jet lag and that goofy feeling of chasing time and then realizing that you’re actually ahead of it, we should embrace jet lag. It’s a birthmark of travel, right? Walking off the plane confused and turned around, with teeth that need to be brushed and hair that, judging by the little Medusa of fried and flattened strands on the back of your head, needs it to. Clothes that are so yesterday. These are the just some of minor disturbances that make traveling a leveling experience. But those people who pop a pill and then stride off the plane rested (and annoyingly peppy) are artificially assuaging one of the annoyances in the contract that they signed upon boarding. You’re one of us. Be tired and grumpy. It’s one of the few times we can be and have it be acceptable. Taking pills puts you and the importance of being in your right mind above that of everyone else.
As a side note: do the wives and husbands of pilots and stewardesses ever wonder what goes on in the private crew seating quarters where, as they must know, their spouses are sleeping with coworkers and not them? Is it cheating if you’re 25,000 feet in the air over international waters? (of course, of course, it’s not really since they are chair sleeping but you’re forced to wonder: if something occurs in the hazy and nondescript thing that is the sky, how can it possibility be deemed of the same value of an event that occurs on the ground and in a designated and defined place and time).
