December 12, 1999

Airplanes' take-off trajectories are always steeper than I expect, but this time it seemed not to be steep enough. Like I'm some kind of expert.

They are already coming around with lunch. I am in seat 17A.

I saw a report on "20/20" once about the ways some people become deranged while in-flight, demanding to be able to smoke for instance, and flight attendants had had enough of it.

What impressed me, though, was when they made the point that the captain of a plane has absolute power over the plane -- power greater than virtually anybody anywhere on land.

It reminded me of how potent the words "by doctor's orders" are. Everybody is subject to the orders of their doctor, it seems. But does the pilot of Air Force One have absolute authority over his passengers? I'll have to look that up.

I'm listening to CDs, but the surrounding noise is pretty overwhelming. Most of my CDs are of piano solo music recorded in the 1940s and earlier, so the dynamic range is not very full and my headphones don't do much for drowning out surrounding sounds.

This CD is of Gregory Ginzburg playing Liszt's "Totentanz." Maybe a piece subtitled "Dance of Death" is inappropriate fare for an airplane ride.

Whenever I fly the first thought I have is "Whose idea was this, anyway? Whose big idea was it to shoot a tube of people 30,000 feet through the air at hundreds of miles per hour?" I'm thinking when I get back that I'd like to read about how planes work, and why they say that certain types of malfunctions and disasters simply can not happen under normal circumstances.

That phrase "tube of people" is making me laugh out loud right now. I do crack myself up. It reminds me of a funny definition I saw once for "Hot Dog." The definition was "Tube of beef." When I shared that definition with people they always say Eeewwwwwww.

When I was in the 4th grade I took the bus to school, and this 3rd grade kid sat next to me every day. He never said a word, he just sat there gaping at me. And I mean gaping with mouth wide open for the complete length of the bus ride every single day of that school year. I remember trying to make conversation but it never worked. He just sat there staring.

Turbulence.
Clouds.
Certain death.
Dies Irae.
Shit, can't remember the rest of the poem.

Another childhood staring trauma was at summer camp in North Carolina. Camp Chosatonga, which was originally called Sequoyiah (which I'm probably spelling wrong).

At camp Chosatonga anyone who took a picture with a flash got stared at. It was automatic, but I don't know that the people doing the staring knew they were doing it in such a ritualistic manner.

And if flash bulbs were not bad enough, I pitied the poor kid with a Polaroid. Not only did it flash but it whrrrrrrrrrrred when it spit out the picture. This happened during a quiet, serious event, and *everyone* turned to stare. Some kids did complete 180( turns, others stood up and squinted from across the room to see who had made this ghastly racket.

After that people who took flash photos didn't get the staring treatment quite as intensely as usual. So much energy and curiosity had been expelled on the kid with the Polaroid that I think the camp needed to lie down. I sensed an opportunity to sneak a flash photo in.

So I took a picture of who-knows-what. Without blinking a fat, dumb-looking kid sitting one row in front of me turned and stared. And stared. And stared. The event lasted another 30 or so minutes (there was a clock nearby, so I know I'm not exaggerating the time-span), and this fat kid sat 4 feet away from me with his mouth open and his eyes two-thirds shut and he stared and gaped at me for a lifetime.

I tried to act important. Like I knew what I was doing, like I was worth staring at, me and my big-shot flash camera. I took another picture, standing up this time while the kid's fat, stupid face followed my motions, and I got his face in the picture. I wonder if my photo caused the little flashbulb phosphene-like thing to linger in his vision for the next half-hour. Maybe that is what he was staring at.

I have the picture of that kid at home in Tampa. It is in my brown photo album, in the chest of drawers.

I never understood the fascination kids at that camp had with cameras and picture-taking, except that there was not a lot of personal technology around back then and maybe cameras got the stares that notebook computers and those stupid looking portable MP3 players get today.

I don't know if there is a connection between my present life and those days at Chosatonga, but I am usually self-conscious when photographing something in public. If someone is with me I can take comfort that they are a buffer for the stares intended for me. But typically this is not the case, and photographing something feels like theft. Which it is, in a way.

I've used the words "gape" and "gaping" more frequently in the past 2 days than in the past year. It is the first word that came to mind while walking through Harrah's Casino on Canal Street and seeing all those people playing the slots.

I'm going to read the in-flight magazine.