You being me, of course. The ease of leaving Milan was sad and sweet. How could the airport of such a big city be so calm? Everywhere I went, it was queueless. At customs they grinned at me, as I had been told they would, and waved a hand. (Don't you want to ask me something? What if I am a dangerous criminal? Are you still doing your job if you don't humiliate someone?) I wandered through Duty Free to test alcoholic perfumes, which make me nauseous and high at the same time. Airport gates have proven time and time again to be the best places to sit and stare (you have to get there so early, and then you have to wait), and to take part in the sister activity of sitting and staring: people watching. I tried to eavesdrop on the people sitting to my right, but I didn't speak their language. Wait. I did. They were speaking English. Only it was country English from Northern Ireland. I think. It was strong, whatever it was. They were talking about mustard. I tuned out. The couple on my left was speaking French-inflected Italian. (Based on the parts I could understand, it sounded like they were speaking about the digestive tract of their younger daughter). A national identity. Does any country have one? The beautiful women began to arrive. Why are there always so many well-groomed women in airports? Wealth. I imagine them flying around the world just to show off their skin. I was suddenly very hungry but unable to spend seven euro on pretend-food and I began to hate the people who were munching things. Ha! Who do they think they are. Sandwiches! I was saving my last pennies for a pint in Dublin. On page 316 of Life of Pi, Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger, walks away from Pi without looking back after they spent I don't remember how many days stranded in a lifeboat together. And Pi tells us (Yann Martel writes), "What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell." I feel like I'm not botching this, and neither is Italy. I'm looking at Italy, Italy's looking back at me. I'm leaving part of myself here. I'm splitting in two. I'm watching her--she's on the tarmac--that ghost of myself--she'll be the me that walks south and doesn't look back. She is the wild me, who doesn't return to responsibility, but she is also the mother, the one who knows what is good.
It was raining. I wanted to get on the plane, but I didn't want to depart. A contradiction and an impossibility. My feet glued to the ground. Does this have to do with my blood? Why did I feel so at home here, even in the most homeless of circumstances?
I find it hilarious when flight attendants mime safety instructions. First of all, they are not mimes, and they are bad at it. If you look for it the next time you fly, you will see the suppressed twitch around their lips: they just want to speak. The second hilarious thing has to do with the safety instructions themselves. They say that if the oxygen masks should drop, everybody should take care of themselves first, before their children. As if airlines can control maternal instincts! Or paternal. Nonsense. If the shit hits the fan, what mama would put her own mask on first? You must have to really love order to be a flight attendant. Can you imagine someone going to school for that and having a messy kitchen? Do flight attendants even have kitchens? Or do they just flit around the world like matter in pumps, blowing in and out of hotel rooms? We took off in a light storm. Streaks of rain, illuminated by the lights on the wing, looked like double yellow lines on a road we were traveling next to. Turbulence like little hiccups. I truly love turbulence. I am thinking of home. I am eager to be there; I am not ready to go. Sometimes you have to pay for a little autonomy. I paid for it. I am "more than one remove away" (Carson, For All We Know, 5).
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