Some thoughts on travel, after a long time
things seen and heard while out in the world
I am writing this in an airport heading home after an unexpected trip which has proven to be both a lot of great things packed into a short space of time, and also very exhausting. Of course the latter is a direct result of the former.
It is the first time I have traveled since the summer of 2019 and I guess I am out of practice because it seems a little harder than I remember to sleep in a small metal box hurtling through the sky and I found some logistics nearly overwhelming… but what has not changed, I’m happy to report, is airports and how much I love them.
Why? So many reasons, and the first that springs to mind is that in an airport, you are not quite in real life, rather supended in a strange world where normal rules don’t apply, and nowhere does this principle regin supreme more than in the airport bar.
Throughout the years I have perched on bar stools in these in-between zones and had some of the most fascinating converstaions with folks of all stripes, people I would have never met nor interacted with otherwise. All in the same boat, thrown together in ways we never would be in daily life. A conversation begins, things are said that would usally not be said to near strangers, perhaps the bartender interjects their thoughts, and a strange intimacy is formed. Very rarely I have kept in touch with a few of these people afterwords, but most often we have separated without even exchanging names.
**
All those voices, so many languages; where have they been and where might they be heading? I wonder. I always wonder.
At departures, a tall young man embracing a woman who looks to be his grandmother. She doesn’t want to let him go. Another family member, perhaps the father of one and son of the other, takes photos and films the emotional goodbye: I cannot tell which one will be doing the traveling.
Outside arrivals, cars pull up, picking up weary travelers, some interactions appearing so formal as to border on the brusque, while others leap out, leaving engines running to sprint between cars to embrace loved ones. A priest in long black vestements is uneasy—or irritated?--at how long he is having to wait for his ride and when it finally comes the driver looks so like him I wonder if they are brothers, despite the stiff greeting.
In a line waiting to check in, I count ten members of a large family group: grandma, two sets of parents, multiple teenagers; they are gently ribbing on of the girls for forgetting to add a colorful ribbon to her generic black suticase. Someone else will take it from the carousel, they tell her. Finally one of the moms reaches into a suitcase and pulls out a florescent greet sock and ties it around the handle. Everyone is glad and then an eleventh person arrives, hugging each in turn. What kind of fabulous family reunion are they attending and where?
It doesn’t matter, not really. In an airport, everyone is a story waiting for to be written, futures ripe to be imagined. Anyone could be anything when you don’t know their story.
**
As I’m sure is obvious by now, part of the joy of travel for me is people watching—and listening, an activity I also engage in at home but which carries its own layer of fascinating randomness when I’m out of my environment and everything is out of context and for some reason I seem to be paying more attention.
It’s not just in airports, on this trip I also noted the following:
Woman to her friend in a bookstore: Look: this cookbook is in the movie Rosemary’s Baby.
Bartender to a regular: Tom, last night I had a dream that I participated in a barber reality show.
Both send my mind spinning off in multiple directions, like off-the-cuff writing prompts.
**
What you imagine can be more fascinating than reality: a European man sporting a wild beard of impressive length and wearing a clean, pressed suit looked like the most interesting kind of story; yet during a brief conversation we had while while navigating the transfer zones he was soon railing in a rather whiny voice about the evils of cell phones and how everyone was glued to them—he didn’t, wouldn’t ever own such a thing himself. Yet minutes later he wondered aloud where the airline lounges were, because he had access to them through his bankcard and off he went, oblivious to his own judgement and contradictions: a case where interacting actually made him less interesting than I’d supposed from just looking at him.
**
A young couple with three small children—a girl of three and six month old twins—were on my outgoing flight. They were the last off the plane: she carried one twin and held the small girl by the hand. He held the other twin and on his back a pack stuffed with baby supplies to which more bags had been tied.
We all watched as they slowly, carefully, made their way down the stairs to join us on the last transfer bus waiting on the tarmac to take us to our ongoing connections. No one showed impatience or grumbled under their breath. The couple approached the bus doors and as they did, their compatriots sprang into action—just as they would have on a bus back home in Kathmandu.
Hands reached out for the children, as I have seen so many times on public transport when a child is handed in before the parent climbs on behind them. Spaces cleared for them all to sit and the woman now holding the baby engaged the toddler beside her in that “do you want to come home with me” gently teasing banter which seems to follow the same pattern in Nepali as it does in every other language.
Across the aisle, the father struggled with a baby sling and once it became evident that it was either upside down or inside out, a grandmotherly woman behind him reached over to help with the clips. We were in a foreign country, but we hadn’t left Nepal behind.