the road to timbuktu

it's 3 am at 38,000 feet, and i'm high above the sleeping sterile saline wastes of the sahara. fidgeting in my coach seat, unable to get comfortable.

the cabin crew are playing that old flight attendant trick: turning up the heat so everyone will fall asleep and they won't have to give them any service and can instead remain ensconced in their galley gossip circles clucking like hens about the latest cosmo sex tips.

klm, the flying dutchman. i'm on my way to the other side of the continent, via amsterdam and paris, to fill in for a few weeks in another base. the company called me yesterday to tell me to pack my bags; they needed me 3,000 miles away.

the life of a pilot involves lots of flying in the back as a passenger. it's called dead-heading, and it's not in the glossy color brochure of flight schools.

operations likes to move their pawns around on a board; putting butts in seats, even when it doesn't make much sense to do so. especially when it doesn't make any sense.

"keelan, report to x."


so i sit in the back of the bus, man of the people that i am, and try to fall asleep. impossible. digestive systems reaching their feverish peak of action; unconscious flatulence slipping out from snoozing passengers and joining the common air supply in our pressurized metal tube whizzing through the celestial kingdom.

the cabin is sweltering; much like a native american sweat lodge. only it's built by airbus, so instead of purifying water vapor, you get super dry hot recirculated farts blasting from the vents. sure glad they served that lentil dish for dinner.

klm. the flying dutchman. more like the flying dutch oven.

i ring my flight attendant call button, just because i can.

"can i please get some water, and can you turn the temperature down a bit? it's really hot."

i start one of my favorite chill playlists in an effort to pass out before landing in europe. lean the forehead against the window. put the earbuds in and stare out at the inky brine of interstellar space sprayed with creamy white flecks of distant ice.

the perigree-syzygy moon is burning ardently at my level; casting her sweet buttermilk rays across the gently rocking wings. strobe and anti-collision lights reliably blink in time, silently asserting our rightful trajectory amongst the other heavenly gaseous masses.

smoky water vapor condensing from the exhaust stream of the big high-bypass turbofans; shocked into contrails from a volcanic tailpipe eruption at .82 mach by the -68 degree ambient air. lonely, some quietly wander in the hall of stars.

the moving map shows us overhead khartoum, sudan. i imagine the millions of people below trying to rest in their mud brick huts; baked like pizzas by the exothermic decay of the day's solar energy slowly released by the walls. remark at the relative peace with which the secession of the south has proceeded thus far. glance out the window towards darfur; towards those borderlands still filled with refugees.

i am, once again, crushed under the brain-baking heat; driven to madness by the incessant buzzing of flies around my face; recoiling at the wind-whipped dust smoking my eyes out. has it been 2 whole years since i left chad? escaping back to my comfortable lush summer colorado mountains, abandoning those trapped people i tried to help with planeloads of emergency supplies? that daily aerial bandaid on an unending hemorrhage? i glance at the track currently playing on the ipod:

dust is the devil’s snow.

we cruise northwards, following the nile over egypt. arcing high above the luxor tombs and great pyramids of ghiza: monumental failed attempts at immortality by men thousands of years before. these structures are perhaps ridiculously grandiose examples of it, but the same basic human desires persist today: like graffiti, like having children, like writing a blog: a wish for some type of enduring legacy. how can i make you remember me?

approaching cairo, we finally get a left 45-degree turn towards europe. the red line of our flight path hooks hard over the mediterranean; just like my brother’s errant golf drives that fly off into the weeds and woods. skirting the no-fly zone of libyan airspace, i think of the people currently under bombardment from allied forces.

why is the west helping the rebels there, but not in other places?

right now, a million ivorians are fleeing abidjan on foot; protesters are being gunned down in yemen; saudi arabia continues its role as the world's largest women's prison. why not intervene in those places?

libya has strategic value. and by value, i mean resources. and by resources, i mean oil. why all the pretense of protecting civilians? these lofty ideals of supporting human rights?

i think of all the petroleum i personally burn: in my own job; in my frequent globe hopping. humanitarian hypocrite. there's no way around it, slick.

and what do we have to show for this gasoline addiction? do the floating patches of plastic garbage in the oceans count as our century's legacy? did those cretaceous plants and dinosaurs have any idea of what they would do to us by rearranging their carbon and hydrogen molecules? how many people have died in oil-related wars? or because of fuel-powered car/train/plane crashes?

i look at the moving map. off the right wing are jordan, syria, iraq, ....afghanistan. the usual daily protests and revolutions and bloodletting. but lately it's not just homo sapiens blowing things up as fast as everyone can arrange it.

in the past few years, natural disasters have been striking our planet with the same fury and passion usually reserved for seething religious hatred. earthquakes in new zealand, chile, burma, haiti. volcanoes. tsunamis. are these events becoming more frequent? the frenzied death throes of a planet trying to rid itself of its human infection? or does it simply seem that way due to the greater publicity that those events receive, in these, the modern and fearful times? those media flies, always landing and rubbing their hands together on top of the world's piles of shit. why don't they do something useful? as someone once wrote:

dear fox news,

still no news about foxes.

sincerely,
unimpressed.

desensitized to human suffering and violence as we've become, the required voltage has been ratcheted up like an addict's dosage requirement. a bigger shock to feel anything. why are we not appalled by the truly horrendous anymore? is there a loss of empathy that results from the unending headlines and newsreels about tragedy? not enough feeling to go around, so we find ourselves involuntarily shutting down that part of ourselves?

400,000 homeless in japan, 20,000 dead and missing. statistics are pointless; meaning is exhausted as eyes glaze over. the number 20,000 does not even register. all of us becoming faceless numbers in the swelling seas of humanity; our individuality as insignificant as stardust.

a planet in crisis. always has been. probably always will be. i sigh at the irony of drenching space-echo guitars and cellos playing in my ears: this song is called longest year.

i look out the window again at the moon, and think of the few lucky men who have walked there.

i wonder, what did those astronauts think, standing on the lunar surface and seeing a lonely, watery planet floating in the void? hanging in space precariously, all alone? a speck in the cosmos, the only known harbor to all forms of life that have ever existed? and what of the endless vacuum of space, that dark beyond the blue? what does it tell?

the unbelievable untapped potential of mankind. able to put ourselves on our only satellite and return safely. yet we still can’t put a homeless man in an apartment, provide medicine or clean drinking water for the poor, or distribute wealth in a manner that respects human dignity.

i get up to drain the lizard. the soft glowing light of tv screens is reflected on all the ghostly, blanket-wrapped sleeping faces. a million shitty in-flight movies to entertain us. to distract us. i feel a deep sadness walking slowly down the aisle, past all these passed-out passengers. all of us together, voyageurs on this spaceship earth. i feel a deep affection for my fellow travelers as we blast through this enormous, anonymous galactic shadow known as night.

make it to the lav. unzip. stale proudly like a stallion. shake the thing by its neck and pack it away. push the flush button and plug my ears in anticipation of the deafening suction. the universe needs a powerful waste vacuum like this. or some kind of dark hole maybe. for disposal of the trash.

i head to the deserted rear galley and spy a tray with cupfuls of water and juice on it. down about four of them. more plastic destined to float in the seas below. peep out the tiny port in the rear door; nothing but black. feel the velvety effortless shift of the aircraft pitching up. we've burned enough fuel weight to climb to a more efficient altitude, and the captain deftly adds power to gain another 2000 feet. it's so silky smooth that most passengers wouldn't even notice. but a fellow aviator senses the slight decibel rise in the cochlea of his inner ears; detects the smallest unmistakable gyroscopic precession in his twitching scrotal hairs.

well done, sir. i salute your light touch and give you 2 extra style points.

back in my assigned seat, the flight attendant finally returns with a small cup of water. i say danke, and her face sours in a way that says "don't nag me again." i blame the supermoon. it's probably shark week with most of the ladies.

over the mediterranean now and the countless scattered islands of greece. i wonder what effects the superlune is having down there on lesbos island? maybe a pillow-fight or two?

onwards, over skopje and sarajevo. i've never been there, but the city names instantly conjure wars. everywhere is exactly the same. a planet completely out of control. the familiar feeling of being helpless to help.

disobeying the flight attendants' announcements, i open my window shade to the lightening sky. what's the point of having a window seat if you don't look out the window?

far below, the austrian alps are glittering in morning alpenglow. snow-covered summits are always pacifying for my tired mind. a homecoming for any mountain kid. some unquantifiable purity these peaks possess. something lofty that rock and ice aspire to, here in the lonesome heights, blanketed in virgin snows. a desolate vertical rise over base nature.

and here i am, eating a hot breakfast in a damn chair, 40,000 feet up in the sky while the temperature outside shows -85 fahrenheit.

on the bulkhead, a large screen displays a flat projection of our blue planet, complete with the sinusoidal wave-shaped depiction of areas where it's daytime and those where it's night. america is sleeping; an african dawn begins to creep.

this constant rotation, this sharing, this mutual assumption of guilt and innocence for all things happening on our lonely little rock outpost. the inertia, the unending battle between darkness and light; observed from a cold and remote perspective. a god's eye view.

we sail on, the glassy air igniting on the eastern skyline, a hot welder's arc of magma blobbing up over siberia, unlocking the cycle of another day. who will be culpable, who will be blameless today? maybe we're just taking turns.

and so it goes: the sleeping and farting and crying and buying and selling and proselytizing and mating and killing.


hurtling through space, crammed together on this tiny ship, somewhere out there beyond timbuktu.