February 2004 Archives

So far, no attack of the jet lag; it has been a long day, but a sunny one, and as midnight approaches I'm beginning to falter, so it's shortly to bed for me. I'm already eating all the wrong things in all the right ways, but my conscience is nowhere to speak of and I don't really have anything against occasional enjoyment. In any case, all is well; wishing you all a sleepy, but happy, hello from the Strip.

Every time I say goodbye, I cry a little

Friday 27/01/04
Ground speed 533 MPH / 861 kph Airspeed: 900 kph
London time: 1520
Altitude: 10100 m 33000 ft
Time to go: 8:05
Outside temp: -72 F - 58 C
Distance to go: 4167(check) mi / 6898 km
Location: Off the eastern coast of Greenland

Short flights are all about the delight of a quick and easy escape. Longhauls, on the other hand, put me in an entirely different place. I grew up in the far east, Kuala Lumpur, to be exact, and being an angloyank (British-American expatriate) - with family in both countries, most of the journeys I was taken on, and which I came to make myself from the age of eleven or so, involved flights of 13 to 20 hours depending upon the direction of travel. They tie me to all that I've ever experienced, all that I know of the world we live in, and while that knowledge might amount to a drop of water in some vast and wonderful ocean, it's mine to treasure.

Short flights are all about the delight of a quick and easy escape. Longhauls, on the other hand, are my perspective. I don't suppose it should be any surprise that they usually make me feel more emotional than usual, but I do know that with one exception, that change in sensitivity, most often towards a brand of sadness, has always been connected with what I leave behind, not what I'm expecting to find. And this time I feel it more than usual; in recent years, my long voyages have been with lovers, and now that I'm a have-not, things feel different. Perhaps it's silly, but it's there; I'd like to be able to share the view.

Some things are clearer up here

Time to go: 05:27
Distance to go: 2874 mi / 4659 km
Altitude: 11000 m 36000 ft
Location: Oh, Canada. Over the only big bay on your map.

I was planning to sleep during the hours that Los Angeles remained asleep, but that just hasn't happened; food and movies and pain in the ass circadian rhythms. I've just seen In America, which was a grounded, wonderful and very touching film, and Freaky Friday, which was Disney's typically good-natured fun. The view outside is stunning; we've flown across northernmost Newfoundland, and are now crossing the vast expanse of the Hudson Bay, now a placid sea of ice, immaculate in its whiteness but for the massive cracks that snake here and there across its surface.
I'll bet that you've looked out of the window at the ground far below and wondered, at least once, be it desert or mountain, lush or barren, what life might be like in that unfamiliar universe down there. Or better, wanted there and then to drop safely through the body of the aircraft to the ground; to experience that miniature world in its true majesty, even if only for a moment. Oh for a change in the physical laws that govern all things; talk about a killer of the imagination.

Time for Runaway Jury.

My, but you work quickly!

Time to go: 02:27
Distance to go: 1249 mi / 2092 km
Altitude: 11900 m 39000 ft
Location: Southern Saskatchewan; southwest of Saskatoon and Regina.

Virgin must be just about the friendliest of airlines flying the UK-US route; practically forbidden on United and American, I've just been standing in the galley for a good while chatting to a veritable crowd of strange people, all tipsy, but none in a bad state. The steward's name is Gareth, he's a poof and he's from Manchester. We've just crossed the border into United States airspace, and the flat plains are starting to take on relief as we make our slow approch toward the northeastern end of the Rockies. Under two hours to go now -- stopped for lunch -- we're approaching Boise, Idaho, and soon to pass into Nevada, after which comes my birth state, and our final descent into Los Angeles.

-----------------------------

Now Saturday 28, 2310 local time; Disney have put me up in the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset this weekend through to Tuesday; they said they had a wireless network, and I've just tested their claims by picking up a network card from the Grove Mall Apple Store; this is the fantabulous proof of that technology.

Leave for London Heathrow in about half an hour; it's freezing outside, and while Los Angeles isn't exactly basking in it, it's up in the mid-teens (60s and 70s on the neolithic scale) right now, which is anything better than this.

Virgin, flight VS007 direct to LAX, I think; typically, I'd know, but this time around, I really don't care. Not apathy, but I need to be taken for a ride without having to do any directing myself; I'll just play camel and lug the bags, and maybe keep my thought processes at the same level - as the camel I mean, not to disparage too greatly - because sometimes I, we, don't do ourselves any favors on that front, and relaxation is fairly vital a tonic. Yes, I dropped a u - I'm going back to America!

This made me smile. It's novel in itself that an eighty one year old constitutional monarch should make almost daily scribblings and post them to his country and the world via the internet - and why not - but quite another for them to be so openly liberal as this.

To précis, he begins...

It's a shame that he can't execute his will, or the hardcore conservative right, but it is refreshing to hear something like that from someone so locally revered.
End of illuminating dinner break.

---
EDIT: BBC link

The exchange rate between the Pound and the Greenback stands at $1.86, which is just ridiculous. If I actually had a significant amount of money to spend, I'd probably lose all control in Los Angeles next week; a Brit-apparent with a charge card, an empty suitcase, a feeble US dollar, and a comfortable daytime temperature of 18 C... it's like smoking atop a pile of high-nitrate fertiliser.

As it stands, there's only a couple of things I'd like to pick up while there on the merchandise front, and nothing overly expensive - unless I experience a failure of inertia during my just-taking-a-look at the Apple Store - though if there's a chance in hell of me getting back here, I'll certainly take it because a) hot damn!, b) it's about time I stole another menu, and c) I miss real, hot and sour buffalo wings with chunky blue-cheese dip (not to mention Linda's $4 fudge cake, which is the size of my forearm and now a steal at £2.14).

It seems like a good idea to take my running gear with me, especially given my anticipated change in diet, and this time I'll be staying between Valencia - first weekend only - and Pasadena, both of which are pretty good for running around in. Alas, my knowledge of West Hollywood gaïety is limited, but unless things have changed, I think I'm prepared to go the week without subjecting myself to whistles and camp, openly leering "Hellos!" from beneath tilted sunglasses at the streetside cafés. It's a different planet, not a bad one, but not something I'm likely to face without my friends, all long since departed to places elsewhere.

I can get so bloody angry sometimes; it just doesn't seem rational. Though things are too busy for interruptions, I'm glad that I'm jetting next week because I really do need to get away; various aspects of my current state are driving me insane and I'm great at bottling it up for inopportune moments, like when I really need to concentrate. But where the hell is a person supposed vent anyway? My closest friend and confidante has become distant from me these last weeks, for reasons I'm not privy to, and the only person I feel safe enough to talk about anything with in person I can't let loose upon because simply being around him diffuses every painful sentiment in my being. I need to find a punch-bag; I've been one since the first time anybody thought of me as trustworthy, but there's no one around for me to take anything out on. For someone with such a wonderful group of friends, I feel distinctly ill-served in this department, but not through any shortcoming of those I love; it's my own doing; I just don't want to, can't, unload on these people who would verily take all that I could throw at them. I wouldn't even know where to start. What a pain in the head. I'm going to go work in the basement. I need to castrate some flowers. This is me, directionless, but I have a scalpel and ultra-fine surgical forceps. Steer well clear. Britain is angry.

I interrupt the writing of my preliminary abstract to let you know that I just tried a two-tier chocolate cake covered in a dark chocolate and orange marmalade fondant. I think my exact words were,

...munch, munch, pause, "Oh my god, Cathy! Turn me straight already."

An hour on, and this cake's endorphin rush still has me grinning like a sprinklee of the fairy dust. Though a thoracotomy is far more efficient, the way to a man's heart is thought to be best reached through his stomach; I now know myself to be that fickle beyond any doubt. In a slightly different Universe, I think I'd drop everything to be with someone who could bake a cake this good; even a woman. Give me some AA batteries and I'll certainly try my best.

I realise that I've been silent for quite a bit longer than four days in the past, but this trend seems likely to continue, what with looming assessments that are the fortune of every Ph.D. student in their final year. One comes this Monday, another in a month, and in there too is some necessary travel, three separate talks to give (one in front of more people than I can count), and a backlog of wet work that has to be done as soon as possible, and in a highly ordered manner. Which all really screws with my sense of comfort, perhaps not enormously, but more so than most things.

I'm not closing up shop yet, so entries will be forthcoming for those that care, just not as often as I would like. If everyone depended on RSS feeds to browse*, then this wouldn't matter so much to me, as you'd immediately know if I'd made a recent update, but most of my few regulars don't, simply dropping in to see if things have changed every now and again.

On that front a lack of entries is just pants; I don't want to drive you away until I'm quite ready.

This is simply notice to say that there will be less hot action here than usual, but (pause - mmm, that was a good orange!) all is well, if busy, and if I seem to be ignoring you more than is usual on iChat, just assume I'm a typical, rude Englishman and take it less to heart than you might otherwise. Unless you're English, in which case taking it to heart is probably a worthwhile exercise.

_________________________________
*wtf?! RSS? Huh? Was? Qué? Bu-bu-bu-bah?
Quick lesson in RSS
RSS reader for OS X
RSS reader for Winboxes
And my RSS feed: http://stairs.happenchance.com/index.xml
   ...paste the above address into an RSS reader, not a regular browser

Somewhere, across the Atlantic and Lake Michigan, one of my dear friends has gone and become a father. I can hardly believe it; it's a difficult thing to conceptualise, having not yet sunk in.

And it's absolutely wonderful. Happy. Happy. Happy!

Apparently Apple has it in mind to open a shop in London. Yay, if only so that I can see the unaffordably wonderful, full product line in person. Of course, they chose an odd place to open it; a marginally less stuffy bit of street would better suit their corporate image, but hey, re-model Regent Street from the inside out, why not? Welcome to the United Kingdom.

This might seem too utterly irrelevant to even be worth mentioning, but I just took a bath. Not to imply that I am a hygiene-impaired, lost minion of the black lagoon whose natural odour is of so esteemed a rankness that it is sought out by the nouveau-Indiana-Joneses of this world to imbue their 47-ingredient black-magic potions with the kind of stain removing power that you can only find in Persil Non-Biological (said potions are usually volunteered by an exceptionally cunning and ugly witch who lives in a dark cave on the Kindia plains of Guinea with too highly sophisticated an appreciation of schadenfreud for her own good - seen my birth-mother lately? Call me.).

Only that I've managed to shower almost exclusively for much of these last two years, and had forgotten how relaxing it can be to sit in a pool of scalding water and to stew in your own filth for half an hour. It has left me exhausted, but my aching muscles feel so much better; good medicine begins at home. It looks like an early night is in order.

The last two times that I jumped on the Cruiser - no, nothing like that, it's the popular name for the non-stop service between London King's Cross and Cambridge - we had bird hits.

You've seen smoke trails in wind tunnels, seen the wonderful, fluidic behaviour of moving air over solid objects; it hugs things. Smashing into a pigeon, an event I hereby entitle a smigeon (almost at risk of a homonym), is like spectacularly bursting your favourite feather-pillow all over the shop. Except that it can be wet, and a little gooey.

It is most exciting when you're in the first carriage... and the vents are open.

This despite a slowly increasing awareness of an unintentional eroding away of my self esteem, not by anyone else, but by me. You see, I've always tended to trust my own convictions, the decisions I've made, and sometimes they've been wrong, but it helps that I can usually recognise where I went wrong in the first place. It's where the answers aren't so clear that things start to become difficult.

Like in love, for example, where the choices made don't only affect you, but someone else. Someone who you may think you know, but whose innermost feelings are forever their own because they won't let you see, or let you be seen. It's a hard thing to find an honest relationship, more mature and more free of the pettinesses of adolescence, where you aren't constantly shielded by your partner from things they mistakenly think you'd rather not know, or be better off not hearing, where you are forced to do the same though it goes against the very essence of your nature. Do I run the constant risk of hurting myself, and more importantly, others, in needing to find something so elusive?

I know it exists, because I've seen it, but it seems rare enough to be the stuff of fantasy. The exceptional. A conventional kind of ungodly divine.

In the last seven years, I've been blessed with the companionship of two men that I've loved dearly, but whom, though no real fault of their own, haven't been the ones. I couldn't conceivably make them understand because it seems illogical enough that a person, that I, should be treated like gold, be loved so deeply, and yet feel so completely unfulfilled that burning the hands that reach for me is all that I can do. But it is no small thing to see anger and resentment each and every time you try to open up.

I don't constantly yearn for happiness, because if there's one thing I'm sure of, mood swings, hormonal imbalance, bad days and awful cooking aside, it is that I am happy, in of myself. I just want to be able to be me without being made to feel guilty for it, and I do think it's possible, but there's every chance that selfishness clouds my thinking, and I'm starting to doubt myself. I'm used to trusting my instincts, and this increasing lack of certainty leaves me anything but comfortable.
And this is who you're dealing with.