A week at the Airport by Alain be Botton

"The stock market could never put an accurate price on thousands of moments of beauty and interest that occurred around the world every day under an airline's banner:  it could not describe the site of Nova Scotia from the air, it had no room in its optics for the camaraderie enjoyed by employees in the Hong Kong ticket office, it had no means of quantifying the adrenalin thrill of take-off."  from A Week at the Airport by Alain be Botton.




Veteran writer Alain de Botton, who has written prolifically on questions of home, life, travel and friendship, was asked to be the writer-in-residence at Heathrow International Airport for one week.  The airport paid to put him up and put no restrictions on what he could write.  They only asked that he spend the whole week within the confines of the airport.  They even gave him a desk in a public space near terminal 5 where he could sit and write and talk to people.

He produced a really fabulous essay, almost a work of prose poetry, on all aspects of the airport:  departure, arrival, food (from the elite lounges to the food courts), baggage claim, ticket desk, shopping.  He met pilots and employees and baggage handlers and many many travelers and stopped to ask them their stories.

This little book was filled with pictures of the variety of scenes one encounters at the airport like the beauty of the engineering of the airport terminal, the airplanes lined up on the tarmac in the breaking morning sun, meals bring prepared en masse by hairnetted Filipino women, businessmen working in the airport lounge and bags rolling off the conveyer belt.

His stay at the airport produced a love letter to Heathrow, a wide-eyed wondering of the marvels of modern day travel and the people that live the stories under the fabric of the terminal.  It made me wonder about possible companion positions like writer-in-residence at the mall, Disney or the hospital.   It is not a learn-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-inner-workings-of-the-airport piece, it was just a lazy stroll and a week of ideas about how the terminal--much hated, little noticed is a profound place in our modern age.  Less than 100 pages and chock full of pictures, it reads like a long poem.  Think Virgil for the airport.

Happy Birthday Old Friend

April is birthday month for me and many friends. One old former friend of mine celebrated her birthday yesterday, and I meant to post this for her then. This poem was generated by a picture prompt of swings. In honor of m old friend's birthday and National Poetry Month here is a tribute to swinging.

Tribute to Swinging

In college my roommate had a rocking chair.
She rocked so passionately that sometimes her rocking chair fell a part.
It was not uncommon for her to re-glue her special chair over winter break.
When her rocking chair was in the shop,
she found a swing set in the park across the street and swung--higher and higher over the water that it looked out upon.
I tried rocking too and swinging, but it makes me queasy.
Motion sickness comes over me easily.
A quiet disease caused by imbalance in your inner ear.
Rocking, swinging, riding, sailing, looking at microfilm in the public library
--any inorganic motion makes me uncomfortable.
I feel it start to tingle in my hands and feet,
and the dizziness and nausea comes over me instantly,
until I stop what I am doing.
But it is a wave across time from me to you when this happens.
I know you are out there whenever I rock or swing.
I think of you. Leaving me alone. As I have thought of you so many times.
Funny how this swing always brings us back together.

First Poem for April

Mysteries of Grammar

“Too many words,” I say,
“at 5:00 when I pick you up I have too many words.
Can I give you some?”
“You mean, like a run-on sentence?” he asks.
“Kind of,” I say. “Do you ever have days like that?”
“Days like a run-on sentence?” he asks
“um..hmmm,” I nod.
“My days,” he said, “are more like when the subject and verb don’t agree, and the teacher puts a circle around it and writes in big red letters. AGREEMENT. And I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
Later, we pour ourselves fancy glasses of sparkling apple juice to celebrate.
“To the comma splice,” I say clinking glasses.
“Long live the sentence fragment,” he adds.
Always space for a few more words.

Speaking of the Shoe Muse

here is a poem I wrote in my Wednesday writing class. Susan read it aloud during class and I kind of liked it. Here it is:

You don’t know what came over you
when you saw those sparkling red pumps--
Candy-apple red, three inch spiked heels,
shinier than the ruby slippers,
narrower than a ballet shoe.

A deep longing sprang up from somewhere
you could not remember.
Your size 11 feet always gave you
lessons in humility, never grace.

The desire ran so deep and so thick
that now your dreams are filled with red shoes,
And the muse whispers “shoes”
on her weekend nights off.

Imagine, as I know you will,
picking up prescriptions and
dropping off dry cleaning, and you suddenly
see something shine in a store window
and remember what you cannot have:

The taut muscular stomach of a pretty boy you once knew
The feel of a baby sucking at your breast
The ability to dance high on tip-toe,
a slender hipbone jutting out
above the waistband of your jeans

All your longing seems focused on lightness
On being no denser than a piece of fine silk
On floating somehow, impossibly, on a cloud
or being dangled by fine wires as you pretend to
fly across a stage on extended calf muscles.
All your longing points you at smallness,
Points you at bright high heeled sparkly shoes
That all size sevens wear.