Some thoughts of a too-tired traveler at San Francisco Int'l Airport

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This whole thing was written in the terminal of SFO waiting for the flight to Seoul / Incheon. It isn't all that interesting, but it is certainly representative of the kind of things that run through my mind when I'm under a lot of stress. I was listening to the Breeders' album, "Last Splash," which is an album I'd recommend to any one. Right now (June 9, 12:39 PM, Korea Time) I'm listening to the Distillers, "Sing Sing Death House," I think, sitting at a computer on a glass-topped counter in a PC-room in my hotel, smoking cigarettes and getting ready to run late for work. I haven't got any photos yet, because my phone is in Korean. I'll figure it out sooner or later. The following is, again, something you might not want to think too hard about or even read at all, but if you like existential meandering, enjoy.

Oh, yeah, I was reading Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, on the plane (which I lost on the second leg of my flight), which is where I got the idea of the model train.


Just took a 100 yard bus ride from the domestic to international terminal. What a damn waste. There is one nice thing about it, though: you get to see the “back room” of the airport, the inner workings and hummings of the hive. Truly is spectacular. All of these little Cushmanns whirring around, more buses, the web of interconnecting gates, tunnels, and byways. There are intersections with stop signs posted.

It’s bizarre to think of the apparatus behind the airport. If you think about it like a model train town, which an airport is in essence, with its perfect, carpeted existence of food courts, shiny metal, escalators, and constant flurry of vehicles; you get a better idea of the scope. Also, of course, there is the fact that it is a cloudless day with the tan, creased California hills in the background withering in the heat lines. The setting is immaculate, as with a train set - there is never a grey or rainy day on your grandfather’s miniature line. It’s a heresy to imagine the capacitors, conductors pushing the model conductors around the tracks, all the little gears and cogs, the gyroscopes, relays, and such, all of which are necessary to put a model train set into motion, not to mention, the deus ex machina - the builder, the paints, the hours of woodwork…It’s quite a scene, that’s all, and the airport is like that from the outside. Maybe I’m too fascinated by the runway itself when the plane takes off. You can see a lot of the buzzing of the airport from a plane, too, but there are too many distractions. On a bus there isn’t much to do but look outside or make painfully awkward conversation with fellow passengers. I felt like a kid looking at the underbelly of the train set, utterly awed and a little afraid, as if looking would wound the mechanism.

Good goddamn. I am tired. None of what I just wrote is worthwhile, but it’s valid. Ah, semantics, a bar of soap, and a shiny new Datsun. Now into the subconscious while it’s still bleeding, the thing about it is, you have to wound it, a little, with logic, with substance, with something forceful and useful, to make the breathing consciousness realize its mortality. Give it something boring and useful enough to make the id want to shit its pants. Appease the superego and ply the ego with, well, with more ego, self-importance, and id comes with lightning fire in its britches. Fucking argh. It’s all too much, this trip, this job, this leaving, the broken price of freedom, for what? For what? "If you’re so special, why aren’t you dead?" Great line. Almost as good as …something else. Can’t think of anything better right now, so that’s good, best line ever, for this moment in time. A brick red convertible flies through the window at maximum velocity, and strafes the linoleum with blazing glass shards. Poetry in motion. None of this is any more worthwhile, but it is…something. Better that Better Homes and Gardens. Sleepy. Quiero agua.

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