Wild Blue

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I’m on an airplane, a can of people, a refrigerator of humans.  I love flying, especially the taking off part when the substance of air cuts under and over, lifting the whole structure of metal and padded seats by creating lift.  Bouncing on the wheels, the captain put this gal in reverse and pulled back the slingshot of fuel and physics.
Engines rev and it sounds like a cartoon, Daffy Duck traveling in a 21st century space jet voiced by Mel Blanc.  (Do you know that we are in the 21st century now?  Where’s my ray-gun?).  We aren’t moving, the lights go off, I have turned off the damn tv one time already, the screen reignites like a relative wanting to borrow money.  Huh.  Why do I smell fuel burning as the turbines spin?  We begin, ponderous and optimistic in the truth that air is navigable like water, thousands of pounds of air pressure able to lift this behemoth; a product of a hundred and more years of men and women trying to get off terra firma if only for a moment.
Sunny day; there are large, singular clouds, and we will be headed for 30,000 feet.  We are an elephant, determined and slow, plodding to next in line and then, KA-PWING!!!  Ooh baby, we are ON!!   Holy eff, it’s a miracle, we are up, by god, the fall foliage of Western New York laying orange flashes between lakes and ribbons of road.  Sunbeams, clouds like wispy angels hover over the land.  What a view!  Banking, turning, into a cloud and whoa, above, above, we are above the layer of stratus, cumulonimbus.
Why do clouds float?  Because water vapor is less dense and therefore lighter than air.  Ears pop, finally.  Leveling off, we are now above the backs of the clouds; I look down upon herds of white bison, thick white edifices and cloud villages.  Hello, minute earthen world; I look down  at thee and wonder.  What is secondly interesting is the three dimensional aspect of cloud life, it is like looking through a stereopticon, and how is it this effect is not evident from the ground?
This miracle of a thousand minds is now above the Finger Lake region, and from above I can see the striations of water gouged by glaciers.  We have no dinosaur bones in this area, for the ice maidens heaved then pushed them all south, revealing the 350 million year old Devonian bed of the once salt ocean that was here before the dinosaurs.  We have a salt mine buried, still run by Morton in Genesee County; if you clamber in, the workers have carved some of the salt pillars into ghostly figures.  What folks do for fun is such a component of history.  Heads up and pay attention!
What was left were the sea creatures, the tiny first ones; the brachiopods, crinoids, diatoms, and the mice of the sea,  trilobites that scurried and curled and flipped until the mass extinction arrived that seemed to kill everything at once within 2 million years.  Now they are a favorite for fossil hunters, uncloaked from layers of shale cracked open by hand or pick.  A prize in every box, a pearl in every oyster.  Is there not small success in discovery?  And here I am ensconced by a metal box with wings to be opened when I shall emerge as a snail from a shell, a mollusk to fish to amphibian, reptile, to mammal now walking upright, a biped devising fantastic machinery which hurtles through viable substance.
We’ve had four major extinctions in the life of this planet.  The next may take Grandma and the dog.
The cabin shudders as air pockets and turbulence roll under our belly; the engines seem to slow and we drop closer to the clouds to avoid atmospheric mischief turning cartwheels.  As fluffy and benevolent seem the clouds, would I like to fall through one as in a dream?  A dream, sure, but falling through clouds would leave one wet and possibly charged with static.  Someone could stick you upon a wall at a birthday party, like a balloon rubbed on hair.  It surrounds us, this force, I have gotten sparks from my cats’ fur.
But Ah!!  Too soon too soon, descent has begun.  Objects are becoming identifiable and the clouds rub their sides  against my contraption like a horse or a cat will.  Down, lulling quiet, but of course, there is the real concern of suddenly plummeting as a meteor from the sky.  How did pilots see, before gauges and computers?  Insanely inquisitive and brave, those folk, but are we not, too?  To trust and hope that it will work but once again for us; we have been good, have mercy on our pitiful heads.  Descent, a quieting of engines as if we are gliding, a silent paper plane launched and finished with its arc.  Shhh.  Boston Harbor Boston!  The ocean, tides and salt and crabs to nip tender skin. Turbulence nearer ground rattles our container and some human respiration has stopped, held in stasis until the tires hit tarmac.  Turning, banking, ocean wind, Oh Susan, where have you been, I missed you, says Mother Ocean
Hello tiny houses, hello boats, hello dogs that say bahk.  Down and down, lined up with the straightaway.  Engines kick into reverse to slow down into a curtsey and wheels touch and rumble and jeezus it seems we are driving this thing a gazillion miles per hour.  Miss Lady Pilot slams on the brakes and passengers tip forward, praying we don’t crash through the souvenir shop in the terminal.  We slow down amazingly fast, and then ease into Sunday drive look who’s here set another plate speed.  Grass is grass, buildings are buildings and I wait a bit to disembark as my clumsiness usually ends up with some poor victim getting klunked with my carry on.
Everyone is smiling, helpful, and with my Mid Atlantic accent, have pity on me.  I don’t care, I will take all the help I can get and the lovely man who runs the shuttle to the water taxi sees me jump up when he announces “End of the Line!”   I ask if this is the stop for the water taxi, no no no you sit down, I take you there.  This is the end of the line for the subway.  Dokey.  I smile and wave my hand in front of my face, miming that I don’t know where the hell I am.  He smiles, Don’ worry lady, I take you there.  We get to the water taxi stop, and he stands up.  Come on.  He guides me in his thick accent to a stairway leading down to the dock, and waves good bye when he sees I’m on the right track.   Nice fellow, and I told him so.
So there is a battered boat, no sign but there are gold and white checkered flags snapping in the wind while the boat bounces in the bay.   “Is this the water taxi?” I ask, just in case it’s really a pirate ship and I will be abducted (can’t you hear your Mom’s voice in your head? And pirates would lie anyways).  The young man jumps up and says yes ma’am let me help you with your luggage.  Aw.  Sweetie Pie.   The motorboat is enclosed in a plastic cabana and I puddle along as he motors me, the only passenger, perched on the cushion, a rube from the hinterlands thinking “I’m on the ocean!  Whee!”
What a honey, he makes sure I know where I’m going and made a phone call to the station ahead to let them know I’m coming.  It’s a three hour wait, but I have the laptop and here’s a hint for when you travel:  Dunkin’ Donuts does not have Wifi.  So I write this missive and look forward to the next two hour ferry ride if I remember where the hell I put the ticket which is my round trip ticket and if it’s lost, must pay the whole fare again.  Which is a big deal at $85 bucks round trip, and would be one more sign of the missing synapses.  If you see any of mine, mail them back please and I’ll send you a nice, crispy dollar if I remember.
I am excited, my friend from New England told me that they stop raking the beaches on the Cape during the autumn, so alllll the shells and odd little dead animals (carapaced ones, not fish, I’m not that nuts) will be in mounds of washed up seaweed.  It will be a treasure chest of smelly things to sort through, photograph, draw and toss.  Except the shells.  Them’s I’m a-keepin’.
Oh you who dream of connecting machines that compress civilizations and open connective doors, sleep well; searching for answers we are, each of us.  Night tides come and restore us, tell our hearts to lay down for soothing sleep; we put our blankets on the floor so the monsters at the window can’t see us, because of the protective magic of covers.  Covered by Devonian shell or winged metal tube, our talismans allay and battle our fears.  Go fly, in heart or mind, fly and rise above circumstances if only for a moment; pretend it is all right.  It probably already is, so sleep as if your blankets were enchanted cloaks, huddled shells where there is respite and release.  Dream, sweet traveler.  Good night.