on flying

A solo business trip away can be a meditative experience. The focal point – a meeting, workshop, job interview – draws you out of the everyday processes and sends you on a structured trajectory for self reflection.

On a solo business trip you become as close to a single atom you have ever been in your life. When you are travelling alone, you are transmitting. Transferring. When you are travelling as a group, you are part of a compound. Your actions are determined by relations; the taxi is too small, the child is hungry, the friend needs the toilet. Alone, at the airport, you stand on a horizontal conveyer belt instead of walking. When else have you been able to do this? Nowhere. No matter where you are in an airport you are moving forwards. You are on your way.

Once seated on the plane you enter a state of zen-like awareness. You become acutely alert to your mortal boundaries. You know your arms, the way they touch against the arm rests. You know the small of your back, the way it pulsates against the back of the seat. The space between the seat in front of you and the seat beside are the walls of the temple erected for you. In this temple only your immediate needs matter. Only the elementals seem significant. The arrival of food. The escaping moisture in your throat. The re-conditioned air clogging your nose.

On a plane you can only ever be you, there is no room for anyone else.

You cannot think of others in a plane because of the proximity to death. Does a race car driver think of anything else when on the track? When taking a hairpin turn at 220kph, does a race car driver consider his father’s declining assets? Does he ruminate on the progress of his child in early school? Does he remind himself that he has to call his brother about the proposal he will make soon to a woman who doesn’t love him? The driver, like you, looks out the window and sees the truth of death so very close. Closer than it has ever been this week. This year.

Every one of your senses is heightened on a plane. You hear the whump of the galley cabinets closing. The lever sound of the rudders adjusting. The small fluctuations in the engine whine. You become a scientist of the flight plan, alert to imperfections in the pitch and roll of the plane.

When you watch the faces of the flight crew you look for signs of weakness in their practiced facade. Hidden meanings in their shared glances. The way their fingers grip and re-grip the meal trolley. The slight of hand as they pass over the dry cracker biscuits. You are aware of such things because these people are complicit in your near death experience. They are the operators of this cruel theatre. Every line has been written down. There is a script.

You cannot help but concentrate on the details. The jostle of the atmosphere. The rivets in the turbine housing. Labels on the exterior wing mark out the obvious: ‘no standing on wing’. Each detail is further suggestion of the proximity to death.

There are numbers on the wing. 22. 28. 34. 46. What do they mean? There are vents at the top of the engine housing. Who cleans such things? How often? Such detail terrifies you, but you cannot stand to not know them. They seem integral to your survival. In a similar way, you are terrified of doctors and the details they hold. You confuse symptoms with cause. But the symptoms are there. The windows are are double walled glass for a reason. Such details hold back your death.

Outside the window you see life plays out in miniature. You cannot help but take the perspective of gods. Life reduced to geometry. You take the landscape apart with your eyes. Reshape it. Move a building here, drag a river there. The landscape is a hunting ground for your imagination. Everything is neat, even the things you have moved. There is no pain at this height. There is no calamity. No debris. The wounds of the earth cannot be seen.

Ahead of you a movie on the entertainment system pauses on a simulated air crash scene. The captain announces the imminent return to earth. Preparing for the descent, one of the crew pulls back the curtain separating business from economy. Everyone is together now. Prepared. Death is now more certain than ever. There can be no class in a flaming ball of tin at 10,000 feet.

Silence settles over the cabin as the descent steepens, broken only by the occasional whoosh of a toilet flush. The whine of the engine gains new octaves. Each bank of the plane is a reminder of your orientation. Up is up. Down is a long way down.

All the air crash re-enactments you’ve seen rush through your mind. You compare the details, look for similarities. From beneath the seats you feel the landing gear fall into place. The aircraft sheds another 50 or so metres. The clouds throw themselves against the wings and things start to shake. You wonder how many times the plane will bank before they announce an emergency?

You go through the known details again. The quantities. Your life flashes before you but things are crowded with scenes from the flight safety card; faceless figures deploying a inflatable craft, a mother and child gripping their ankles, attracting attention after the crash by blowing a small whistle.

Out the window life starts to take on its gruesome detail. The landscape warps into corrugations. A factory. A paddock. A tractor resting by a fence-line. A pool with an umbrella. As the ground hurtles towards you the details turn into obstacles. The geometry is gone. Everything is collateral. Each final degree of descent plunges you back towards your mortality.

The last few fence-lines pass under the wheels and the empty grey of the tarmac strobes metres below. The wheels come down, each axel sheathed in 12 inches of precious rubber. One final gasp shatters through the cabin.

The plane rolls to a rest. The details disappear. The temple is dismantled. A hundred mobile phones chime to life.

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