Flight
My arrival is foggy at best. The city is covered in soft cotton, as if it knew I was coming and did not want to be woken. Flowers and slightly confused morning-faces greet my exit through the airport – it is far too early for these people to understand.
I don’t even have time to smoke my cigarette as the line for a taxi into the city has also decided 8am on a Saturday is far too early. We do not talk; my cab driver is a professional and my lethargic awareness chooses to pretend my professional of a cab driver is not there – so unlike the strange bespectacled man training to be a semi-driver who began the trip.
I make an educated guess that the unfamiliar territory around me is unfamiliar because it is Queens, not because two months is a long time to be away from the only city I’ve known. The drive would be long if everything isn’t always longer when you’ve been drinking and have somewhere to be. My dulled New York sense of time won’t allow lies here.
If my arrival was foggy my departure is almost non-existent. Nothing to prove I’ve been anywhere important, short of simply-printed boarding passes and a few receipts. The visit is an isolated incident, like a harmless hurricane that blows through a town you’ve never heard of.
The city is not the city today. There’s no traffic, so an historically lengthy ride takes less time than a speedy stumble from the train to my old room. I’ve got time to stand now, and it’s time well spent. This single strip of dirt and pavement and ramps is crowded like I remember. It could stand to have more foot traffic, but the scene is accurate enough.
Hudson News. “I (heart) New York”. The comfort these familiar sites allow is more of a surprise than the dozen coffee-shops I pass that aren’t Starbucks. The crowd has followed me here; maybe to say goodbye. To wish me a safe trip and wonder when I’ll be back – the steady din of the city isn’t the same without my high chime and low rumble.
There’s a section of JFK you may never see in all your travels. It’s populated by dinky additions to the numerous JetBlue gates and so similar to what I affectionately refer to as the “little shit of an airport” that serves the Buffalo-Niagara region. So similar and yet so different, if merely because twenty-four gates divided by two gates is still a lot of gates. Twelve gates for every one. Twelve flights and twelve completely different destinations for every flight home or every flight to Toronto. But I won’t do the math here and no one else will either; that magic division between early morning and the rest of the day has yet to pass.
One month for every day. I’ve been gone for only a weekend, and yet so much can change. Show up, fall into the routine. Some people need a life-halting homecoming, still others choose to pretend they never left at all. The city and its people were exactly as I left it – minus the innumerable changes, that is. Buffalo is shorter, smaller and easier to say. More compact and less populated, yet so much harder to measure. Which is the homecoming? I guess it’s a race to the finish. All I know is if there’s cake when I get to the dorm I may never come back.
I don’t even have time to smoke my cigarette as the line for a taxi into the city has also decided 8am on a Saturday is far too early. We do not talk; my cab driver is a professional and my lethargic awareness chooses to pretend my professional of a cab driver is not there – so unlike the strange bespectacled man training to be a semi-driver who began the trip.
I make an educated guess that the unfamiliar territory around me is unfamiliar because it is Queens, not because two months is a long time to be away from the only city I’ve known. The drive would be long if everything isn’t always longer when you’ve been drinking and have somewhere to be. My dulled New York sense of time won’t allow lies here.
If my arrival was foggy my departure is almost non-existent. Nothing to prove I’ve been anywhere important, short of simply-printed boarding passes and a few receipts. The visit is an isolated incident, like a harmless hurricane that blows through a town you’ve never heard of.
The city is not the city today. There’s no traffic, so an historically lengthy ride takes less time than a speedy stumble from the train to my old room. I’ve got time to stand now, and it’s time well spent. This single strip of dirt and pavement and ramps is crowded like I remember. It could stand to have more foot traffic, but the scene is accurate enough.
Hudson News. “I (heart) New York”. The comfort these familiar sites allow is more of a surprise than the dozen coffee-shops I pass that aren’t Starbucks. The crowd has followed me here; maybe to say goodbye. To wish me a safe trip and wonder when I’ll be back – the steady din of the city isn’t the same without my high chime and low rumble.
There’s a section of JFK you may never see in all your travels. It’s populated by dinky additions to the numerous JetBlue gates and so similar to what I affectionately refer to as the “little shit of an airport” that serves the Buffalo-Niagara region. So similar and yet so different, if merely because twenty-four gates divided by two gates is still a lot of gates. Twelve gates for every one. Twelve flights and twelve completely different destinations for every flight home or every flight to Toronto. But I won’t do the math here and no one else will either; that magic division between early morning and the rest of the day has yet to pass.
One month for every day. I’ve been gone for only a weekend, and yet so much can change. Show up, fall into the routine. Some people need a life-halting homecoming, still others choose to pretend they never left at all. The city and its people were exactly as I left it – minus the innumerable changes, that is. Buffalo is shorter, smaller and easier to say. More compact and less populated, yet so much harder to measure. Which is the homecoming? I guess it’s a race to the finish. All I know is if there’s cake when I get to the dorm I may never come back.
posted by Dave | 3:25:00 AM
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