So this is the new music I was listening to as I took the first away-from-here trip since Jess's wedding.



I really like the whole album. It reminds me of going to Russia, and it reminds me of going to Ecuador, and it reminds me of going to Chicago, then it reminds me of coming home, the way it is, especially when you are young.

On the plane traveling east, there's arguably a visible difference between who live there and those who live westerly. I don't mean to stereotype as I travel towards the early sunsets, but those who aren't from where I'm from seem to have pearls wrapped around their wrists and to speak genteelly on their cellphones in just those minutes before lift-off forever-in-case-of-interair-mayhem-and-death-goodbyes and attachment... These people seem recognizable by their silken blouses, the frills (or ripples? what do they call those miniature billows that make their way ever closer to the atollic attachments closing upon the cinched places of the body? What do they call the knitted black sweaters, the designs coordinating with ripples? Is this an east coast seismic fabric calling? How do they get everything to coordinate?), and the nylon or nylon-tennis-shoe combos that greet their entry away from the cliches of the west coast.

(Such as galoshes, ratty clothes, marijuana and green trees, anti-Republican snipers and folks who descend trees to get to the school bus: they've made it, phew, probably not as relieved as the Texans would be if the Texans cared about the rest of us; in fact, they are too accepting to be relieved, but are instead secretly pleased (perhaps), as they watch the rest of us disperse like naive pre-barnacles washing in upon the shoals of something larger than ourselves or the west pioneering coast, or even American history if you would even imagine something to beat that in American history!

Except they don't seem to have exclamation points attached to their observations! Even their goodbyes to those who traveled across the country with them! They have seen everything! They make me excited to see their New York! Which I suppose I will never know!)

The little girl on the plane who asks for her misplaced play-doh by smiling first between the crack in front of my seat, and then pointing downwards when she realizes I am realizing music, says thank you loud enough for me to overhear it above the vent once I've turned off the music. I think first of how I once traveled like her. Then I think I might have been a parent, with a daughter traveling next to me, kicking up against the seat, asking the backdoor neighbors for lost items, and finally falling asleep stretched in some ridiculously unrecognizable pattern. I feel a longing. When we arrive, I listen to her tell someone: "Well, I understand where you're coming from, but I was feeling very frustrated. Afterall, we talked about this and you never mentioned... yes, yes... I know, I love you too, but that's not what I'm talking about. We discussed..."

Someone I found myself traveling between these patterns. Wishing I simply had a head nodding off next to me. Guessing that's not what my story is. Just holding my breath, and hoping for something different...

As we arrive, I have no room to speak. Literally. I can't speak. I am holding my breath and hoping my third 'fabric' roll doesn't reveal itself somewhere between hour three and five... a bit of turbulence, jittering, the ice-cubes in the diet coke I've asked for, and suddenly that disgusting fourth level just billows outwards in the direction of my western and eastern cohorts, whom I've been studying for jewelry, and accents... and the eight year old who asked me to pass her play-doh through the passageway between her seat and the canyon that makes my legs miserable: the way she taxiway talks to her friend, or father, or step-father: "No, I wasn't angry. I was disappointed because you promised me you'd be there... No, I understand... I get that... It's just that my emotions hoped for something..."

Is this who the east cost people are? I wonder. Because if it is, how is it they haven't taken over the universe? How isn't we haven't been invaded by rational bang-headed youngsters talking on their machines and reasoning through? I look again at the older woman with her pearls, her silken blouse, the mass of jewelry that has lodged itself upon her chest. You will never be like me, I think. How amazing is that?!

WE'RE SO GLAD TO HAVE HAD YOU ON OUR FLIGHT. WELCOME TO NEW YORK AND GOOD LUCK MAKING YOUR WAY, ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE SOMEONE PICKING YOU UP, AND YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT GOOGLE OR NEW YORK OR ANYTHING THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS OUTSIDE YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE EXISTENCE ON THE WEST COAST WHERE NOBODY EVEN NOTICES YOU.


I've been trying to remember who said it to me. But someone told me within this past year that a person should never live in a place where they feel nobody sees them.