My newly acquired fear of flying

I've just returned from a whirl-wind trip to Massachusetts where I was able to catch up with family and friends, eat an enormous amount of ice cream, consume some Sam Adams in the land of its brewing, take a DUCK tour throughout Boston, roast like a stuck pig on Good Harbor beach, eat a heavy amount of nachos at our favorite elitist pub (as opposed to our favorite non-elitist pub), watch some good movies, enjoy the World Cup final with my favorite professor, go to a great wedding, and acquire a free ticket voucher for relinquishing my seat and taking a later flight.

As I type this, the jet lag combined with the many tiring hours of flying is zonking me out. But, I will attempt to continue with my update in a somewhat coherent fashion. I am quite glad I was able to take some time to head back up to the place I've called home for the past 4 years. I felt a strange mix of feelings when I arrived. I felt both a sense of place (being well acquainted with the area) and a sense of placelessness (considering I am no longer a student and have no real "home"). What was once a place of my future and of my present has become a place of my past, a place filled with favorite haunts, endless U-turns, sites of revelation -- a place filled now with memories.

Part of me felt a pull to stay on the North Shore. Here, life is familiar. I've grown here, matured and learned and become "adult." I have friends here, a support system, a church that I love. Boston is a great city, with so much more to be reaped and explored. But another part of me felt comfortable with the idea of not returning. Some people live their lives in circles, or prefer to order their lives via compartments. I live my life in eras, in certain stretches of time that are significant for some reason or another, stretches that can be long (years) or very short (days). I have a million journals that are organized by an era in my life. My missions trip to Bolivia when I was 15. My semester in Uganda. My junior year fall semester. My backpacking trip in Italy. My time here at L'Arche. Going back to the North Shore was like reentering a previous era, a strange feeling when you are in the midst of writing a new story, experiencing a new stage in life. Then again, the idea of letting go of Massachusetts...for good...doesn't exactly settle well. I loved it there and I love it there still. And who knows what the future may hold. I may end up back there in a few months or few years time. Life does tend to circle back on itself, I've noticed.

Now, for the title I've chosen for this entry, I must explain. It seems that, as of late, I have acquired a fear of flying. Perhaps "fear" is too strong a word. More like an apprehensiveness, an uneasiness, the opposite of comfort. I have never exactly found flying to be a pleasurable experience (except on BritishAir, as you can imagine). The whole airport experience is a case study in social control and social conformity. Your inequities are laid bare by the security folks as you shuffle through the lines in bare feet, like cattle being herded, and are occasionally pulled aside to be prodded at or have your belongings fondled. People are usually angry....angry at the crying baby on the plane, angry at the ticketing agent, angry at the baggage folks. Once you are on the plane, if you do not have the luxury of sitting in First Class, you are crammed in next to complete strangers who won't acknowledge your existence (or perhaps acknowledge it too much) with frigid air blasting down on you as you feel the plane slide into the air with a fair amount of bucking and bumping. Of course, your flight could very well be delayed or cancelled, which means more airport time, which is never fun.

On top of all of this, you are stuck inside a thin metal tube rushing through the air at an ungodly speed, and you have no idea whether the buzzing noise in the rear of the plane is good or bad. You really know nothing...and you can hardly believe the pilots or the attendants. Their job is to put the passengers at ease and convince them that flying is the safest, most natural thing in the world. If the plane hit the ocean and started sinking, I bet the attendants would still be smiling as they tred water.

I haven't always been fearful. I have been flying since I was in my early teens, and I probably have averaged 5 or so flights a year since college. I also know that there are millions of flights in the air every day and that traveling my air is remarkably safer than traveling by car. I have heard the statistics...that you'd have to fly 24 hours a day for 24 years to experience a plane crash. Blah blah. None of these rationalizations really sets me at ease when I am in the air. It's like my mind has suddenly awoken to the fact that the human person really shouldn't be that far from the earth, that air planes are way too big and way to flimsy to be going that high that fast.

My dad says I just need to surrender, to let go of my fear and be okay with dying. Nothing like a healthy dose of fatalism to get through a harrowing ordeal. Death by airplane crash would definitely be a romantic, exciting way to go. You'd have a great view before you die and exciting ride on the way down. You'd be all over the news, for at least a few days. People would think of you ever time they get on a flight, about the jumbo jet that crashed and sent you to your untimely grave. And, most likely, as your plane crashed down, you would be enjoying a good book or a writing something profound in your journal or jamming to some sweet tunes. I guess it's actually one of the best ways to die...exciting, swift, relatively painless, romantic.

Mmm...morbidity. I was reading a book on the plane today by J M Coetzee, called Disgrace. The protagonist is a rather vile character, complex of course, but lives an uninspired, despicable life...and I couldn't help but think -- "Is this the book I want to be reading if the plane crashes down? Is the broken, sordid life of David Lurie the last thing I want flickering through my mind seconds before I die?" I think about that a lot actually. Death is a great motivator for moral decision making. I think even David Lurie realizes this in Disgrace. With the understanding of death, we are reminded that our every thought, our every action, could easily be our last.

On that note, I sleep....thanking the Lord that I am on the solid earth (and trying to ignore the fact that I am really just sleeping upon the rocking surface of tectonic plates, floating across molten lava).