Entering the Zone

Yesterday morning our friend L. drove Lorraine and me to the airport to enter the zone, or, in other words, to embark on a journey by air.  I hadn’t really believed until this morning that we were actually leaving, though the weighing of suitcases last night and last minute check marks on the task lists suggested it was really happening.  However, it’s not until you enter the zone that you actually understand the fact that you are going.

Once you are inside the zone there is little that you actually decide for yourself; basically you do what the people in charge of your travel tell you to.  It can be a bore, and it can be exhausting, but there can be moments of magic inside that zone.  I think part of the reason for it is that you are transported out of your quotidian existence, where the list of tasks you need to complete can weigh on your time, into a zone where there’s not much you can do except relax and free your mind to explore.

Here were some of my highlights from inside that zone:

The July 4 issue of The New Yorker (my chosen zone reading) had some good Talk of the Town pieces, including one on Afghanistan, which took me back to the conversations I’ve been having over the past week with F., a doctor from there who has left the country he loves because of the danger and corruption and heartbreak that he has witnessed there.  Then I read a piece on Jeff Nunokawa which made me want to read his short literary essays and commentaries on Facebook and another on Kirsten Hively and neon signs that made me think of a few noteworthy ones in Halifax I might want to photograph.  The EDL article made me glad not to be in England, and the one on Han Han got me wanting to check out his blog.

I interrupted this reading periodically to look out my window, which was on the south side of the plane, and wrote in my journal:

the world outside my window is a dream

green forests blue lakes

farmland and rivers in the clear air

two shining bays on the far horizon

then the blue blue Fundy straight below

I examined the slightly freckled male pattern baldness of the man in 28A.

I listened to Lorraine in 29B laughing out loud at something in Morning Glory.

When I got tired of reading, I listened to Janis J.singing Cry Baby and thought about the summer when Cream, The Doors, and Janis all played Vancouver, and I had money for only one concert.  I still regret my choice, though I did get to see Morrison take a dive on the stage at an "intense" moment in one of his songs.

After Toronto the air was hazy and I watched Unknown, kind of a waste of time with a couple of annoyingly impossible car chases, but held together with some interesting plot twists, a cute and clever Diane Kruger, and a very nice scene between Bruno Ganz, formerly of Stasi, and Frank Langella, member of “Section 15”.

Bright sun over the Prairies so that I sneezed when I lifted the blind – reminded me of a Quirks and Quarks show years ago where a Swedish researcher determined that a neural pathway in the nose can be stimulated by sunshine and cause that reflex.

Clouds floated out to the horizon over flat farmland, green and brown fields, and dark patches that looked like woodlots but turned out to be cloud shadows.

I listened to Clapton Unplugged and thought of my good friend K. who has loved Eric deeply for much of his life.  Then we came to Running on Faith as I sat next to my partner of 41 years and thought of our good fortune in this world, to love and to be loved.  Try listening to it here.

And finally we landed, picked up our bags, emerged from the zone into the bright light of western sun where the air feels just a little thinner and a little drier, and embarked on the next stage of this journey, once more outside of the zone.