The Flight

Going from New York to Spain is about six hours. You ride the jet stream at 30,000 feet across the Atlantic. Some people hate planes, they are cramped, they oblige you a gauntlet of long lines and checkpoints. People may have airports but they are great places to people watch. You see all of the foreigners and wonder why they have come, where they are going. Airports are also usually replete with attractive women. I see it as something else. It is a respite, an auxiliary state of mind where you have no responsibilities other than to get from point A to point B. It’s disorienting and almost like traveling in time. If you are flying from east to west you almost in a static state; the sun isn’t going to move much. If it is night time the darkness will stay consistent. If you are flying from west to east, you get the very opposite. A frenetic acceleration where the place you leave from it is six a.m. and when you arrive it is midnight.
Like I mentioned, I don’t mind flying, it’s comforting to literally be among the clouds and unless you are business traveler you are probably on your way to do something fun or visit some place interesting. Then again, you may be visiting relatives, or attending a funeral or christening. Once you’re on the plane, you always hope you accidentally get placed in first class. You look at your ticket and you have a low number, knowing it’s a row towards the front; you look down the aisles in anticipation. Inevitably you always cross those curtains and end up in coach. Once you are in coach you hope the seat is either empty, occupied by an attractive woman, or by someone interesting and skinny. I sat in my seat, a window seat. I like to look out at the sky as well as get a bird’s of the terrain during the landing period. A man sat down next to me, he had oily black-hair thinning and combed straight back, and he wore a goatee and had perfectly black hair. I couldn’t place where he was from. He also wore black, black pants, black belt, black shirt, and a black leather jacket. I looked over and nodded as he sat down, barely looking at first. He coarsely said “hello” and turned his head. As he turned I noticed that he had a black eye, a glaring shiner. I started to conjecture all sorts of reasons a man in his 40’s might have a black eye. I imagined organized crime, gambling perhaps. A feud with a spouse. We actually got to talking and he told me he was an elephant keeper. He started telling me about his work, and I ask whether the elephant had punched him in the face with his trunk in a jocular tone. He responded to me very seriously. Apparently the elephant was male and had been existed. The elephant had turned suddenly and hit him in the face with his penis. At first I didn’t believe but then I started getting flashbacks from nature documentaries. I remember a male dubbed “Big George” by the British narrator. It seems, he was washing the male down with a hose and he was standing on the elephant’s flank and it just happen. This man was pistol-whipped by an elephant’s penis and he lived to tell the tale

I passed through customs, the process expedited by a Spanish passport my mother had always forced me to keep. I have dual-citizenship. My parents have Spanish citizenship and thus I had the right to it as well. I never saw the point in it. I’m not Jason Bourne, how many passports do I need? Anyway I was certainly glad to have it now. Whenever you enter Europe you should know there is a short, quicly-paced line for E.U. members and a long, tedious line for everyone else.

Anyway I arrived in to Barajas fine. Getting from the international terminal to the national terminal is a forty minute exodus on its own. A labyrinth of glass and edges. Next I go to Santiago de Compostela and hopefully to surprise some family that doesn’t know what I look like. .

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