Fear of Flying
Two nights before we are scheduled to fly to London, I wake up at 4 a.m. with a bout of nerves. At least I think it is nerves. My brain is buzzing with stuff, things to do, details, known and unnamed fears.
I have a moment like this nearly every time I have to travel, especially when the trip involves extended distance and time. Especially when I have to get up and hit the road earlier than usual. So here we are, 48 hours before our flight to London and I wake up wired.
Most of us get to this point nearly every time. What still needs to be done? What, after all, really does not require my diminishing time and attention? Have I remembered and considered everything? What will I remember when it is too late and feel sorry about?
To this, especially for air travel, some people add the flying terrors. I have them. Or perhaps it is fair to say I did have them at one point. They are less severe and less frequent now as I have flown several times a year, on average, over the last few decades. Many people, even some frequent fliers, have them constantly and severely. My oldest brother and my wife fall into this category. If you have flying terrors, it is hard to talk yourself out of them.
Fear of flying is one of several irrationalities attending the business of long distance air travel. On occasion, a Christian friend will tell me he is not afraid of flying because he knows where he is going when he dies. That is not especially helpful. It's not fear of Hell that creates fear of flying in most folks who feel panic blowing in like rain. Mostly it is the fear of crashing more than death itself that inhabits the dark corners of the heart, especially those long moments before impact when a crash appears inevitable and one is helpless. I can't imagine what passangers aboard jets hijacked or damaged in flight must go through.
To this, the rational among us will say that air travel is safer than car travel. Again, not particularly helpful. After all, there is something essentially irrational about being sealed into an aluminum canister and shot into space at hundreds of miles an hour by enormous jet engines. Note, please, that jets are large and heavy: they would not fly on their own. The fact that ocean-going ships float despite being heavier than water does not make the jet seem any more likely as a flying machine.
So the arguments run. It is no easier on the fearful to consider rational arguments before flight. What works for some are sedatives. For my many young student friends, the answer and the advice they give is sleep. Good advice, although sleep is one thing I find difficult in plane -- or cars. So, I may be beyond help for whatever the nerves are stirring up. The best I can do is finish the tasks I have left, pack what I know I will need, leave what I don't need, tell the people I love that I do love them, and get myself to the airport in time to clear the laborious security process.
Now there is nothing left but to let them seal the tin can and fire up the jets. I pray that what I leave at home will not require my attention after all. And I whatever is just ahead will be a great experience.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Day 4
In a song called "To Live is to Fly" Townes Van Zandt writes about life. He uses the metaphor of flying, as the title suggests, and then he offers a bit of advice in the form of a refrain: "Shake the dust off of your wings/ and the sleep out of your eyes." It is good advice, I should think, as far as it means "wake up, get moving." We have a natural tendency to drift through life, or parts of our lives, in all sorts of ways -- from being too busy to notice, on one end of the spectrum, to being plain lazy.
I first remember hearing Van Zandt in a used bookstore in Dover, New Hampshire. An album of duets, Van Zandt and various other singers, played on the store stereo system as I wandered through the many rooms of seven foot book shelves. The music drew my attention and held it. Many of the voices were familiar and I knew a fair number of the songs. So I inquired, then later bought the album.
Van Zandt is a terrific song writer. Or was. He died too young from what we used to call hard living. However useful his advice, and however compelling his songs, he would not, generally speaking, be a reliable tour guide through life.
In the middle of "To Live is to Fly" are these lines: "Where you been is good and gone/ All you keep is the getting there." I am not sure I can do justice to the song by picking it apart this way; but these lines speak to me in a particular way right now. The interesting -- and perhaps we might infer meaningful -- part of life is not so much the facts that accumulate, its history, as it is the narrative, the journey itself.
In the next 48 hours, Lord willing, my wife and I will board a plane on the first leg of what should be a remarkable year for us. The story of how we get there and how we get back, and the story of what happens in the middle, is what will we will bring back, what we will have to offer. Do it. Pay attention. This advice I plan to follow. Journey is both our baggage and our calling card.
I first remember hearing Van Zandt in a used bookstore in Dover, New Hampshire. An album of duets, Van Zandt and various other singers, played on the store stereo system as I wandered through the many rooms of seven foot book shelves. The music drew my attention and held it. Many of the voices were familiar and I knew a fair number of the songs. So I inquired, then later bought the album.
Van Zandt is a terrific song writer. Or was. He died too young from what we used to call hard living. However useful his advice, and however compelling his songs, he would not, generally speaking, be a reliable tour guide through life.
In the middle of "To Live is to Fly" are these lines: "Where you been is good and gone/ All you keep is the getting there." I am not sure I can do justice to the song by picking it apart this way; but these lines speak to me in a particular way right now. The interesting -- and perhaps we might infer meaningful -- part of life is not so much the facts that accumulate, its history, as it is the narrative, the journey itself.
In the next 48 hours, Lord willing, my wife and I will board a plane on the first leg of what should be a remarkable year for us. The story of how we get there and how we get back, and the story of what happens in the middle, is what will we will bring back, what we will have to offer. Do it. Pay attention. This advice I plan to follow. Journey is both our baggage and our calling card.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Day 3
Before my present teaching gig, which has lasted twenty-six years, I was a journeyman teacher, following that all too common practice of shopping for sabbatical replacement spots and adjunct openings. If you count my second go at graduate school, during which I continued adjunct teaching, I have been at this for thirty seven years. That is a big number.
I must be fairly easily impressed. As with a lot of things in life, if you stay at it, stay healthy, and do the work you are meant to do, you get the big numbers. Cal Ripken, the baseball major league iron man, played in 2,632 straight games simply by showing up for work every day. He needed talent, of course, over a long stretch of years; but lots of players with talent don't make it to the bigs or don't play long. My mother, who turned 90 this summer, has for years expressed surprise at how old she is. Marriages that last for many years do so because the couple determines to stay at it; in good marriages, both parties work at it. I have been married for 40 years this June just past. And it is probably fair to say we have both worked to make the marriage good, although it has not seemed like work.
It is only when I look hard at these numbers that they seem to impressive to me. Here, too, as with many things, you do the task at hand, the day's work, the study or talk that comes next. Maybe you have set the goal before you as motivation and objective, but you don't think about it every day. I never once thought, "OK, I'm part way to 40. Only XX more years to go." All of these things can be thought of, at least metaphorically, in terms of journey or as travel. To say as much is both obvious and necessary, for reasons I hope to explore little by little.
In a little more than a week, my wife of 40 years and I expect to set out on journey, a awfully big adventure (to echo Peter Pan). We will be traveling for the better part of a year, to England first and then to Korea, teaching because that is what I do, living in places different to us, and soaking in whatever we encounter like sponges. Like paper towels. Like a shammy.
And, in this space, I will be writing about it, both to note what we find and, I hope, to sort out why it all matters.
I must be fairly easily impressed. As with a lot of things in life, if you stay at it, stay healthy, and do the work you are meant to do, you get the big numbers. Cal Ripken, the baseball major league iron man, played in 2,632 straight games simply by showing up for work every day. He needed talent, of course, over a long stretch of years; but lots of players with talent don't make it to the bigs or don't play long. My mother, who turned 90 this summer, has for years expressed surprise at how old she is. Marriages that last for many years do so because the couple determines to stay at it; in good marriages, both parties work at it. I have been married for 40 years this June just past. And it is probably fair to say we have both worked to make the marriage good, although it has not seemed like work.
It is only when I look hard at these numbers that they seem to impressive to me. Here, too, as with many things, you do the task at hand, the day's work, the study or talk that comes next. Maybe you have set the goal before you as motivation and objective, but you don't think about it every day. I never once thought, "OK, I'm part way to 40. Only XX more years to go." All of these things can be thought of, at least metaphorically, in terms of journey or as travel. To say as much is both obvious and necessary, for reasons I hope to explore little by little.
In a little more than a week, my wife of 40 years and I expect to set out on journey, a awfully big adventure (to echo Peter Pan). We will be traveling for the better part of a year, to England first and then to Korea, teaching because that is what I do, living in places different to us, and soaking in whatever we encounter like sponges. Like paper towels. Like a shammy.
And, in this space, I will be writing about it, both to note what we find and, I hope, to sort out why it all matters.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Day 2
With the exception of formula writing and hack work, every exercise in writing is an experiment in what can be said. Writers know this. One begins somewhere, with ideas or with language, and tries to find a shape or sound or substance. And then one moves it forward until it starts to breathe and move on its own. Recognizing that point changes the experiment a little. When the writing comes alive, as all good writing does, the writer's job is to keep up, to follow it out. This process holds true even when the writer begins with an uncluttered mind in the dark of a new morning and waits for something to come, as the late poet William Stafford is known to have done for most of his adult life.
My experiment will begin here. At the end of July this year, 2010, family gathered to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday. More than fifty of us gathered at my older brother's home in Leesburg, Virginia, where my mother lives in an apartment he built into his house. Some of the family attending I know well, three of my four brothers and their wives, nieces and nephews and their children, my mother's older twin sisters, three cousins. Some extended family, spouses and children of cousins and relatives of relatives, I had never met before. But we had all come for my mother, none of us exactly surprised at how far her touch had reached.
We pretty much stayed indoors since it was 108 degrees outside, the kind of day that makes you sweat instantly. The three 90 year old sisters, the Nordstrom girls, held center stage. They were dressed as if they were heading out to a wedding in lovely, colorful dresses. The rest of us, all younger and considerably less concerned about dress than the heat, tried to look as nice as shorts and sandals permit.
Everyone but my brother, my sister-in-law, and my mother had journeyed in from somewhere. My 92 year old aunts rode the train, their preferred mode of travel, from St. Paul. As far as I know their primary concession to age was allowing my cousin and her husband to ride on the coach with them. Most of the rest of us drove from all over -- Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts. We were, of course, more than happy to do it. We wanted to show up and be part of her life again while she still remembers us and can tell her stories -- before those are lost to her progressing Alzheimer's. My mother's journey, now at 90, is the hardest of all.
My experiment will begin here. At the end of July this year, 2010, family gathered to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday. More than fifty of us gathered at my older brother's home in Leesburg, Virginia, where my mother lives in an apartment he built into his house. Some of the family attending I know well, three of my four brothers and their wives, nieces and nephews and their children, my mother's older twin sisters, three cousins. Some extended family, spouses and children of cousins and relatives of relatives, I had never met before. But we had all come for my mother, none of us exactly surprised at how far her touch had reached.
We pretty much stayed indoors since it was 108 degrees outside, the kind of day that makes you sweat instantly. The three 90 year old sisters, the Nordstrom girls, held center stage. They were dressed as if they were heading out to a wedding in lovely, colorful dresses. The rest of us, all younger and considerably less concerned about dress than the heat, tried to look as nice as shorts and sandals permit.
Everyone but my brother, my sister-in-law, and my mother had journeyed in from somewhere. My 92 year old aunts rode the train, their preferred mode of travel, from St. Paul. As far as I know their primary concession to age was allowing my cousin and her husband to ride on the coach with them. Most of the rest of us drove from all over -- Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Massachusetts. We were, of course, more than happy to do it. We wanted to show up and be part of her life again while she still remembers us and can tell her stories -- before those are lost to her progressing Alzheimer's. My mother's journey, now at 90, is the hardest of all.
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