yet another episode in a recurring series of surreal experiences at O'hare...boarded a plane to Buenos Aires in business class
got comfortable
...the power cut off during the captain's preflight announcement, a generally disconcerting event. It's not a good feeling to be sitting in a plane and then all of a sudden the lights go off, the music stops, and everyone starts looking around...
anyhow, they got everything running again without further episode and then we took off...
...leveled out...
...and circled Chicago...
...and circled Chicago...
...and circled Chicago...
the captain said something about a hydraulic problem, or something like that. I can't remember, I was trying to sleep. Full disclosure: i unrolled my blanket and was napping right away, as i haven't slept much lately. Anyhow, while they were trying to sort out their issues, in large laps around the city, they dumped some fuel into Lake Michigan. I don't remember that through my half-awake haze but apparently my fellow travelers were paying attention. In fact, I fell asleep and only really woke up when we made a rough landing...at O'Hare. With a phalanx of emergency vehicles, my fellow travelers report. I was in a strange surreal place because I was trying to figure out how you wake up and arrive back at the same airport you just took off from. Sisyphian Dillemna or some kind of wierd absurdist theatrical plotline that the scandinavians would appreciate... anyhow. we were herded off the plane and told the flight was canceled. they lined us up in a deserted wing of the terminal we'd just departed and were told talk to agents about new flights...
...that, my friends, is where everyone's horrible O'hare story usually goes south...
...because it gets ugly when a couple hundred people are standing around fuming, suddenly confronted with their own self-importance because they have to be places... they have to get places... they have things to do, family to see, business to transact, agendas to tend to... when you mess up someone's flight plan you really toy with their sense of security. That line was full of angry, irritated travelers who wanted to be somewhere else, most of whom had gladly given in to the martyrdom complexes they harbor... every now and then i do believe people want to feel like they're being mistreated by the Man, call it the Job trip, that long simmering streak of Old Testament self-pity most of us have lurking somewhere in our systems...
But that line got ugly, fast... bad energy all around. that wasn't quite as bad as being trapped at o'hare in a blizzard in the winter, but it was still a very poisoned pool of ill will i suddenly found myself swimming in. i got treated well by the agent, booked a flight through DallasFtWorth for the next afternoon, and got bumped up to first class simply by treating my agent with courtesy, respect, and a little humanity. I try not to believe in self-importance because it breeds ego, and i wasn't angry in the least...cause i had PreKomp to go hit up... more on that in a second... before I tell you about preKomp let me put a temporary period on this particular episode in the ongoing epic that is my latest offering culled from the horrors of o'Hare archive...
This i've concluded:
O’Hare is a metaphor for purgatory, a study in indifference, a portrait in dysfunctional functionality. Its worker bees & transients are at the mercy of unpredictable weather conditions & mechanical problems, and ugly unforgiving cots on hostile floors are what happens at o'hare if things go bad. Everyone has an o'hare story or three, of winter storms, witless agents, wasted tickets, all essentially tales of infinite waits for a deliverance that never quite arrives. These are our lives, largely spent in transit to a destination we never get to, because of broken rides, token rewards, and disappointments grown serial… your path through the terminal is determined by how you treat it's inhabitants...
anyhow, in a nutshell, i made it out alive, at 1:45 am, after another strained conversation with an overwrought, clearly overworked guy down at baggage claim who was forwarding, holding, or procuring everyone's luggage... he said he'd send my luggage to buenos aires on my new booking, so i went home, with an eye to dancing the night away with the entheon village kids at radiohiro's rooftop...
i wasn't upset about having my flight canceled because I knew that by the time I got home, it would only be 2 am, and that meant that I could change clothes, grab my vampire cape, my venetian comedia del arte mask, & my fire spinning gear, and go to minimonk's crib & watch all my favorite people do their thing with fire & wax, rocking hard drives & UV clothes, working Boehringer Mixers & custom made kevlar props...
preKomp is Resonate refuse at the height of summer anticipation...
it's the tease before the plunge, the meniscus of a huge swell of collective thought soon to spill over...
...i burned a few times, danced till close to dawn, & left before i was too dehydrated...
...another two flights of travel - 24 more hours in transit through multiple airports to south america...
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