Flying High

Well I’m sitting at Danny’s bar in Venice California, next to the ocean, trying to put my brain back together after a few months of bursting insanity. Things are getting back together and I’m snuggling into a fine form of unconsciousness and the good old news-fed drivelty and blank stupidity of the status quo in Modern America. I was stuck in my head the last day or two because I seem to have been so stoned the last few months that I have finally reached total burnout syndrome. I discovered that I had reached this marvelous landmark when I woke on a plane from Hawaii to Los Angeles, via Phoenix, with a nice exit row of my own, ample leg room, two blankets and a number of pillows; but the arm rests were built in on this emergency row, so I couldn’t lay down. It could have been worse; we could have been hurtling down at the earth from 37,000 feet, a wing ripped off by a giant pterodactyl straight out of the coming apocalypse. Planes, and other carbon guzzling machines, be warned! The vision has been seen.
I had to pee. So I got up and wandered to the back, because first class was before me, and I wasn’t welcome there on this specific flight, flying with the savages in the back, I was, and so I wandered back and noticed an open row with the right kind of arm rests and three open seats for me to lie myself down on. I peed, then returned to exit row 10 to collect my blankets and pillows, and decided to store my cell phones so they wouldn’t press into me when I went to curl down to sleep. I acquired a second cell phone in Hawaii a few months ago using the idiotic logic that a second phone would somehow simplify my life.
I do remember putting the phones in a conveniently located pocket in my backpack that I don’t remember being there. I went to the back of the plane and made myself comfortable in the empty row, put up the armrests and lied myself down. I went right to sleep. I woke with the light of the sun coming through the window, and felt refreshed. It was a perfect red-eye flight. It had passed like an evening on the couch. Easy. I went back to my previous seat, with the endless legroom, and the beautiful view out the window, over the clouds, over the ocean. Past the half-way point the stress of being awake, trapped inside an aluminum tube, thousands of feet above the mother planet, begins to subside, and hope rises, that all of us squirming sardines on board will land safely, and escape to the land. We landed, thank the Jesus of the Universe, and I had little time between flights. When the doors opened, I was on my way. Out the tunnel of emptiness and through the A concourse of Phoenix I shuffled, hurrying through the corridors on my wild morning adventure to the B concourse and my flight to Los Angeles. After years of the monotony of flight, the thrill was still with me. Yippee, my heart leapt anew, with the thought that I would again go hurlting into the air in a metal phallus with wings.
Between concourses, I decided to retrieve my phones from my bag. I opened every pocket. Nothing. Stuff. No phone. No time. No connection. I didn’t search thoroughly. I knew they had to be there, but the question lingered. Had I failed completely? I hurried along to the next flight, 8:57 to Los Angeles, and a sweet blond snake in the grass, who I had no way to contact. I searched again before boarding the flight. And searched. And crossed the way to report my phones lost. I admitted to the uninterested lady the stupidity of what I’d done. She didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to really even think. Everyone had boarded my plane, and she told me to report it in Los Angeles. I ran across and boarded my plane, still hoping that I would search my bags again and find a last hope of sanity.
When my beautiful lady friend finally picked me up, with worries about why I had not called, my little pleasure domes of connectedness were still missing. While she was sympathetic to my story, I have not been able to come to terms with this blaring act of clarity. The reality of my situation has still not sunken in. I am now completely out of touch. How does a grown man with his face up close and personal with someone else's bag, just go ahead and stick his cell phones right in there? Bye Bye. I am drinking the red juice of the Lords sweetest miracle, and feeling softly optimistic about the demise of life as we know it. I think it’s overrated anyway.