Have you noticed how often a hotel’s “free hot breakfast” includes cold boiled eggs?
Oh, The Times
If it’s the year of twenty-seventeen, then you know an airline is in trouble. I don’t accept the year unchallenged. Like Billy Pilgrim, sometimes I feel like I’ve become unstuck in time. It comes mostly from hearing male Republicans say things like, “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.”
Well, not if you’re rich! Ha, ha. Oh, that Raul Labrador. He was kidding, of course. Ha, ha, what a joker. Thank the gods someone in the nation’s capitol has a sense of humor that matches Trump’s White House. You know those guys have a sense of humor when they decide they’re firing scientists from the EPA’s advisory board and replacing them with members of industry. That’s got to be a joke, right?
This year, depending on what Trump does — and his potential for disaster is infinite — might go down as a pivotal year of change for the U.S. airline industry. Each week finds another one in trouble or the news in recent months. First, there was United Airlines, politely trying to re-accommodate a passenger by taking him out of his seat and off the flight, to put him on another. Then American Airlines became the focus of social media ire when an employee bonked a woman on a flight with a stroller. American Airlines tried to fix it all by announcing that they were going to reduce leg room! That’s terrific news! Next they’ll be telling us that they’re going to start charging us to recline our seats or to use the restroom. After all, they’re making money and experiencing record profits, but, you know how it is with money and corporations: there’s never enough.
Delta Airlines, jealous over the the other airlines gaining so much attention, decided to boot a family off a flight from Hawaii. They made up with them, afterwards, of course, because it was just another spat between an airline and those ungrateful people buying tickets.
Today, in the spirit of U.S. airline news, Spirit Airlines canceled nine flights. People were upset. The airline blamed the pilots. The pilots blamed the airline. We all know that Spirit Airlines really just wanted their time in the news. All the other U.S. airlines were in the news. Even Southwest Airlines made the news after reports that their CEO is resisting changes to the baggage policy and still letting people have two free bags. What a madman! Doesn’t he know he’s leaving money on the table? Gads, the scoundrel.
Of course, the wealthy have had enough of the commoners and their problems with those pesky airlines. They’re either buying their own aircraft or using the terminals constructed for their exclusive use.
It’s exhausting to contemplate. As Alvin Lee of Ten Years After said at Woodstock once, “I think next time, I’m going home by helicopter.”
Maybe he didn’t say it. I am getting old. Or maybe I’m just unstuck in time again, and he’s going to say it in the future.
Winter Has Come
Snow has been sneaking down the surroundings mountains day by day since mid-November. I’ve tracked its progress, glancing up to see peaks and fields sporting new white blankets, setting off the barren brown and evergreens. Last night, under the night shield, the snow advanced to us.
We’re not the valley floor. That’s about two thousand feet further down, but one to three inches at our location is significant for the I-5 corridor. For just fourteen miles from us is the pass. This is where I-5 makes it through the mountain range between northern California and southern Oregon. It’s an impressive climb, in the top ten at least, of climbs I’ve driven, although way down from the scale of those encountered in the Rockies and Alps.
The pass isn’t looking bad this morning. The absent sunshine and temperatures hovering around freezing aren’t good signs for easy commutes but the roads are fairly clear. Just beware of black ice. About as far as I’m commuting is down to the coffee shop, lucky me. I’ll drive down there and then walk around downtown, stimulate the writing juices, and look for The Wall, the men of the Watch and white walkers.
Chaos
Last night’s dreams were a barrage of chaotic events and images. I vividly remember most of them (it?) because my left calf cramped. Pain shot me out of dreams into full wakefulness. Working the cramp, I remembered the dream.
I was travelling with my wife. We were hurrying through an airport. She was carrying all our baggage. It wasn’t much but included a brown paper shopping bag full of papers. “I can help,” I kept telling her. “Let me carry some of that.” I tried taking some. But no, she dismissed my urging and raced ahead. The airport was immaculate and wasn’t busy. We rushed through doors and across terminals and concourses.
Things were coming beginning to come out of the shopping back. “Here, wait, you’re losing things,” I told her, catching up. Slowing her, I tried re-organizing materials in the bag so they were more secure and suggested I take it, but she was too impatient and started off again.
And then we headed for an exit. I was bewildered. “But we didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “We didn’t fly anywhere.” Wordlessly, carrying the baggage, stopping to put papers back into the shopping bag, she prodded us to the exit.
Act two commenced. We were in a vehicle, I think. I never saw or heard it but we were on a divided white cement four lane highway. I couldn’t tell who was driving. Lightly traveled and free of potholes, the road followed curving green hills. The weather was pleasant. I could only see ahead of me and nothing of us or the car.
A bright orange car burst onto the highway ahead of us. Emitting blue smoke and loud noise out of its single large chrome exhaust pipe that came out the back, it looked like it was a home-made fiberglass creation on a shortened VW Beetle chassis. The car seemed barely under control. Accelerating to overtake one vehicle, it jumped lanes and almost hit another. Swerving back, it barely passed between two other vehicles.
We were commenting on the lack of control, what was going on in the driver’s head, and the vehicle’s construction and design, when they did lose control, spinning out as its engine gave up with a smoky, “BANG.”
We were on the scene instantly and then passing it, talking about stopping and helping – but then this crazy motorcyclist roared by. The rider was a young, well-groomed white man with short dark hair. He was driving insanely, cutting off a semi, causing it to crash, and then doing the same to another car.
This time, he wrecked. He got off his motorcycle, stared down at it a moment, and then started walking up the highway.
We were walking behind him. I could believe he was walking away from the mayhem he’d caused. His indifference appalled me. I raced up to him. Catching up, I began calling, “Hey, excuse me, hello,” before finally tapping his shoulder. Taller than me by at least eighteen inches, he was extremely skinny and white, and dressed in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves and a red neck tie that was loose around the collar. I began telling him, “Do you know what you did back there?” Unimpressed, he began leaving, but I held firm, holding onto him, taking him by his arm, and then his shoulder. I was amazed how muscular he was under his shirt.
I told him what he’d done. “So what?” he answered at last. “I’m working from home and McDonald’s has the right to send and receive faxes at my house. I can’t get any rest and I can’t get anything done.” Then the truck driver, a swarthy man a little shorter than me, caught up and entered into conversation with him.
My wife and I went on. We entered a terminal through a double metal door without any markings. Inside was messy and crowded with an old military base feel to it. Not much energy was put on decor. Food was available. We were hungry and perused the menu. Nothing was calling to us. We still wanted to order something but weren’t sure what we wanted to order, nor where to do it, but were beginning to grasp their system amidst the disorder.
Then it got chaotic. A disheveled greasy man appeared behind us. White, with stringy hair and a few days of beard, he was being disruptive. I didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He was just standing and grinning whenever I saw him. But I didn’t trust him. He was wearing sandals with no socks and baggy, dirty green pants.
Eventually something he did caused a commotion. He disappeared. Two police officers arrived. I could hear them talking about him but only heard fragments. They were attempting to find him. Slipping past them, I decided I could find him.
From here, the dream fractured into true incoherence. At this point, the point of view became external. I was watching myself and these scenes as though I watched a movie except I knew it was me and I wasn’t just sitting somewhere watching someone else. There was something about cutting our grass a certain manner and a bevy of strange rules being issued, rules that would undo what had succeeded. I was being urged to conform and obey. “They will ticket you if you don’t,” they told me. Everyone was worried about being ticketed.
“Enough of this,” I basically said. “I’m not doing that stuff.” I walked out, coming toward my watching vantage. My wife and others hurried behind me, talking to me, asking me to re-consider what I was doing but I was adamant. My dream’s last words were, “They’re just pieces of paper,” spoken by me.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
You’re hungry and you’re in the middle of nowhere. The morning walk took you to places that you didn’t expect. But that was the plan: you wanted to surprise yourself.
Well, you have. Look east, south, north, west – baking hard cinnamon and sand toned ground. Far away to the north are low purple and blue mountains. Turning west, you see the sparkling Bay Dome, so you think yourself there, specifying, downtown Palo Alto. Your bioworks connect with your wetworks and even out here, five bars are experienced. Your thoughts are translated into digits, which become transmitted commands, and the Earth Teleport System takes you to the bay area. In effortless seconds, you’ve gone from one place to another.
It’s a beautiful day under the dome in Palo Alto, blue and sunny, a little chilly in the shadows with hints of burned off fog. Electric cars hum along University Avenue but most people are strolling. Designated as a California Historic City, it’s unchanged since the early twenty-first century. Finding a Peet’s, you think, I’ll have a latte and croissant. The order has been placed before you enter the cafe and the systems direct you to the table along the window where your beverage and pastry await. A cup of tea and a shot of espresso appear on the table’s round surface. As you realize friends are arriving, they’re asking via your friendnet, “Can we join you?” Laughing, you answer, “Your drinks are already here.”
They port in. Hugs are exchanged. Books and art are discussed. “There’s a new art gallery opening in Mars New York,” Silvie says. “Want to go?”
Yes, of course. You’ve never been to Mars so this will be a special treat. Enjoy the gallery, have a meal, maybe do some dancing. Should others be invited? They are via the friendnet.
Soon, you have a platoon of friends, destination, Mars. You all port to the Interplanetary Teleport System in Utah. Signs direct you to the various space station and planet plazas where you can port yourself off of Earth to these other places. There are also teleport stations for bigger domes – Paris, London, Moscow, Sao Paolo – where stricter controls are required to visit these city states. But you’ve been to all of them, and the Moon. You’ve never been to Mars. You’ve always had a fear of flying, and as you aged, you thought, I’ll never see Mars.
But, wow, technology is amazing. So here you are, one hundred years old and retired, the prime of your life, really, off to Mars for the first time, at last.
All for just twenty-five dollars.
Michael Seidel, writer 