Notes from mid-second flight, somewhere over the North Atlantic, caught somewhere between no-time and all-time:
—-I saved the blond-brownie with chocolate chips that they handed out with dinner until just now. This was a bad call.
Maybe if my hunger hadn’t subsided, or if I hadn’t let the build up of looking forward to a treat before falling asleep upright with a bunch of strangers in the dark go on for so long, it wouldn’t have been such a fall from grace for the US Air food services. Okay, so they were never at “grace,” but certainly fell pretty far.
Instead of a sweet –anything–, anything I could have possibly looked forward to, I got a cookie-dough chew-square that my tongue felt must have been set to cool in a sweat-dampened sock, still scrunched and clay encrusted from the playing field at school, discarded and forgotten in the corner of the laundry room behind the washer, that none but the builder’s of the house 19 years ago had ever actually seen before.
Yes. It tasted like that.
I tucked the chew into the pocket of the seat-back in front of me, where all things like this go.
Old gum, goodnight.
___________________________
Got to admit, I’m getting nervous. Haven’t slept any this flight, ‘xcept a chunk of minutes before the first refreshments(cran-apple juice and pretzels) that came before dinner.
Okay so I had coffee after dinner — oops. But its alright. Getting things done.
Sweating my palms out with what-if wonderings of various ways I can screw up in Berlin. Or before I even make it there. What if I miss my flight from Frankfurt to Berlin? What if I can’t find the gate? Okay, I guess that one goes before the other. What if I can’t find the restroom? What if I attempt to speak German and make a total ass of myself? Why have I not learned German yet? Why was I wasting the battery life on my ipod listening to old music…
Anyway, it’ll be fine. I’ll find a sign with all the flights on it, look for the one to Berlin, see the gate number and the PEN IS SLIPPING & SLIDING BETWEEN MY FINGERS
Kind of annoying, actually…
I flew to London once, but my mother and sisters and her middle school drama classmates were with her.
–Yay one hour and 30 minutes left! They’re coming through with coffee and danishes! Yayyy…
Tomorrow’s gonna kill me..
Hallo, Berlin ich habe nicht schlafe AT ALL…
My watch still says 11:34, guess I’m losing a few hours cause the characterly azure blue of morning stands in the ovals vertical to my left and right.
I’m really getting into this book but I should really learn German. Or study my camera manual.. Oopsy..
And suddenly the planes a-buzz alight and everyone’s up! I’ve got coffee AND OJ!
I look to my left, saw the pale orange line between the lower dark blue and the above lighter blue, and I actually thought, “Does the Sun still Rise in the East?”
Not something I’m ever going to admit to again, but as this is literally the furthest I’ve ever been from everything I know(..America..the East coast) I think just this once I’ll slide it, as long as I’ve got how BRIEF that moment of questioning was(very brief, split-second, yes I know the Earth doesn’t reverse directions just because I’m on a different side of it(side? continent? — ?)
At least, I didn’t get my hopes up for the Danish. Wise, because it turned out to be a muffin top. It was warm though, in its plastic. Points.
Its blueberry, but its got a twinge of cinnamon to it. I guess that’s why the stewardess thought it was okay to call it a danish.
The cinnamon saves it though, from becoming a warm version of the what’s-inside-the-moist-sock? pastry of earlier.
Two sugars per 1/3 of a “tall” that is the entire Styrofoam cup that is the coffee.
Sometimes I drink my coffee black. Sometimes I take one sugar. You’ll want two(min.) for this.
Coffee’s gone. “Danish” gone(didn’t make it to the chewed winterfresh purgatory-slit like its predecessor — hooray!)
Why is the person in the seat behind me(and over one to the right) talking about Ground Zero? Really woman, we’re ON A PLANE.
She’s talking about how George Washington was inaugerated in the little Chapel across the street. Forgivable?
(I went there in ’05. Lots of memorabilia, firefighters’ pictures — sad.) Sad.
Way to bring me down.
I need to know what time to set my watch — the light’s all bright now, but my watch still says 12:04. Just after midnight back home.
Alright, 6:06 at destination. Watch reset. Hour more in the air. Time to crack down on dass Deutsch lernen!