I love to travel. I’ve never been a nervous flyer, don’t get
carsick and have travelled alone since childhood. So why this morning when the alarm goes off
do I have a ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach that stops me from even
having my morning tea?
I’ve got cabin fever. I know I need to leave the island. I
am like one of those animals you see at the zoo that paces the perimeter of its
space, frustrated by the barriers that keep in from moving on. I love living in
Malta this time. The rock is treating me better now than it did when I was a
spotty, chubby adolescent that didn’t fit in. Apparently its OK to be a spotty
chubby adult that doesn’t fit in- somehow this time I go unnoticed.
I need to go in to the office for a couple of hours before I
fly. I haven’t put everything into place for what will be my longest time away
since I started the job a year ago today. A lot can happen here in a week and a
half and even though the trip is for work I’m already wondering what will be
waiting for me when I get back.
There is a car on fire in one of the tunnels on the way to
the airport but I’m just finishing a good book so I hardly notice the detours
and then we are pulling up outside departures. I love airports. I always get to
the airport early because I hate rushing or being late, but airports have
always been one of my favourite places. Perhaps it’s because I feel they serve
as a little snapshot of society. I don’t know if other people notice it but
airports are like caricatures of the places they represent. Bangkok, Phnom
Penh, Antananarivo, Paris, London on and on like postcards of their respective
societies.
Or perhaps because in an airport I am invisible- free to
indulge in one of my very favourite pass times; people watching. People watching is, of course, the most
elegant way of saying it. What I actually do is eavesdrop into other people
lives. Snap shots of families, couples, school groups, friendships all mixed
together, all on display. I think ‘people watching’ is one of my greatest
flaws. It comes, I suspect, from so much time spent alone in formative years. I
am certainly a lone traveller- it is rare that I share the routes I map out
with another person and then it is not the same. I’m distracted by my
companions, unable to indulge- I become fodder for someone else’s picture of
society and am no longer an observer to it.
I’ve never had a problem being alone. I don’t associate
being alone with being lonely. On the contrary- the loneliest times in my life
have been those where I’m surrounded by people or in the company of the closest
family or friends. That moment you realise that your experience or impression
or understanding of something is so different from that of those who are
supposed to be your nearest and dearest. That’s when I am so acutely aware of
my subjective reality that I truly feel alone. Sitting in restaurants,
theatres, galleries, walking through cities and villages day or night by
myself- these are the times I have honed my people watching skills.
I never dwell too long on one interaction, it feels
intrusive and I always think people can tell if you are paying them attention,
even if they can’t see you. I flit from one social interaction to another like
a fly, never settling for long, just long enough to add the faintest impression
of human interaction into the tapestry I’ve created in my mind.
I’m a noticer of things- I think that makes a difference
too. I don’t have to try too hard to notice someone changing their body
language or tone. I notice things that are out of place, misaligned, smudged or
newly clean. I can’t walk past a pin or a penny without stooping down, I still
avoid cracks and take stock of my environment whenever I settle anywhere. Whether it’s plane seats, café’s or parks you
can rest assured that if I have been sitting there for more than 5 minutes I’ve
made a subconscious mental note of random things around me- where are the
exits, how do the windows work, where is the nearest group of people, what
colour is the sky today, what shape are the clouds, what does it smell like,
how do I feel here?
Today was a good day for observing. The plane I was boarding
for Frankfurt was full of Americans. They make it too easy- you don’t even have
to try. It makes me smile the way they speak loudly and project it to the room,
like they are inviting you to participate in the conversation. The Maltese are
loud too of course, and I count myself among the loudest at times, but that is
a kind of passionate, excited loud, whereas the Americans just seem to amplify
a regular conversation as thought welcoming you in. The couple beside me had
been on a tour of Europe, last stop Sicily, and were recounting to another
American couple, who I gather they had crossed paths with on the trip, the
quaint and comical duo of driver and guide who took them up Etna the day
before, scolding one another for paying too much attention to women and not
enough to the road. I have no idea what they thought of Sicily or Etna but I know
that Mario and his counterpart will be spoken of in Seattle for years to come.
When I was in my teens and early twenties it was always me
who got stopped at security. I was taking my shoes off to be whipped with that
strange cloth wand long before it was standard practice. Perhaps it was the
sight of me alone in places where I stood out, or my sullen air or my heavy
boots but it was a running joke with my family that if anyone were going to get
pulled to one side it would be me. That is no longer the case. Like all
frequent travellers I have the procedures down pat and security is never an
issue. I know this is not the case for
everyone. I wonder whether it will ever be the case again that it is faces like
mine that attract the attention.
Security issues at airports have burst my bubble a little
though. My favourite places where cultures collide, where the basest human
emotions are put on display, where crowds gather and I become invisible are now
marred by an undercurrent of tension. Even if I am not, people are nervous. You
can see it in the way they look at one another, the manner in which they
gather, the offhand things they say. I’m always ashamed of myself when I think
of such things because surely that’s the point. It’s like that game we played
as children where to think of the game was to loose it, and if you pointed out
to your friends that you had lost, you made them think of it too, and therefore
they also lost ‘the game’. The winners of the game were always those who didn’t
even know it existed, or were so uninterested in it that it never drifted,
unbidden, into their consciousness. Fear is like that. Even thinking about it
plays into it- acknowledging it makes you loose the game. Then, as soon as one
person has referred to it, we are all reminded, prompted to awareness, and we
all loose the game. I hope one day we will all forget we ever played this game.
“There’s weather in Frankfurt- that’s why we are delayed”
the woman next to me is explaining to her husband in the seat next to me.
‘There’s weather in Frankfurt’… that’s exactly what she said and I beamed. I’ve
never heard that phrase before, I assume it’s a cultural thing but perhaps it’s
just personal. I took the phrase and packed it away with all the other oddities
I’ve picked up along the way. I wonder whether I will ever use it now myself,
the way that for years now I’ve gestured ‘come here’ with palm down rather than
up, or bowed my head if I have to step across people’s legs, or taken money
from people with both hands. All cultural quirks I’ve adopted slowly over time
that have made themselves part of my manner.
“There’s weather in Frankfurt.”- and there was.
The first jolt of turbulence flipped my stomach. The clouds
were thick and I couldn’t see the wings of the plane through the grey. The
plane shook and the clouds broke and Frankfurt appeared beneath us. Why is it
that when you fly through a cloud the windows don’t get wet if clouds are made
of rain? The water droplets pattered onto the windows and wings of the plane as
we made our decent but up there, in the thick of it, my window had been bone
dry.
As we taxied in to position I wiped the smear from my
forehead off the window and put my lipstick stained water glass in my bag
beside my book, removing all trace of myself from that spot. I was late, but
not worryingly so- the people ahead of me would miss their connection, but I
would just make it.
The next plane would be much, much smaller, fighting through
the clouds to take us on to our final destination, Basel Switzerland. While here on business participating in a
fundraising event hosted by renowned artist
and social justice advocate Alfredo Jaar, and indeed the duration of
this trip, I would be inhabiting that strange state of being where you are both
yourself and something else.
Representing a charitable organisation in public is like
wearing a costume of political, ethical and academic ideals. It’s still you
inside and the costume should fit but you’re still playing a part, fulfilling a
role- play-acting.
Enough for now, the house is waking on my second day here and
I need to get back into character.
