God I hate transit lounges. I don't have to be here today, but in my aimless wanderings this evening I looked up and found myself here, and felt a need to write about these places. Airports, railway stations, bus terminals, they all feel the same.
Empty.
Devoid of any warmth.
Places to avoid.
The low murmur of the TV, always on the least interesting channel or show in eternity ever. The phalanxes of plastic chairs and tables, which are comfortable maybe one time in a hundred. The hubbub of a hundred conversations, none of them able to rise above the level of a dull, faint echo. Often drowned out by the rattle of the cash registers, metal trays clanging in the food outlets, the constant thrumming of trains, planes or buses. Aircraft with their insistent whine, buses a growling cough. Not to mention the constant whirr of escalators or the occasional ding of the elevators.
The PA announcements that you can never hear clearly, unless you concentrate within an inch of your life. The endless neon lights, blinding as a jackhammer directly into your eyes. The constant sense of tiredness, of dislocation.
Flying into Chicago O'Hare with the city a lattice work of light below. In the airport as the sky lightened from black to purple to pink as the sun gently kisses the sky before dawn. The abstract night shapes of imagination, with only the aviation lights distinguishable, slowly coalescing into sharp, hard metallic jet fuselages, eyes squinting as the sun hits them just so.
The bleakness of Belfast airport, emotion and heart break rising to my throat, threatening to strangle me. A special transit hell all of it's own. Delays in Belfast, my nose studiously in an FHM or Q magazine, missing my flight in London, a voucher and an indistinguishable airport hotel room, the bleakness swelling to take another day of my life. I remember the Customs officer going through Heathrow on the way to Northern Ireland, have you met your girlfriend in real life - I should have turned back then. The inanity of early morning news, especially after jetlag.
Cairo airport, waiting in the main departure lounge for two hours in the earliest of mornings, waiting to check my luggage in, with no sleep, feeling the most vulnerable I have felt in an airport ever. Fighting to keep concentration, to keep awake, for just five more minutes, and then five minutes more, my eyeballs burning.
The sheep like procession courtesy of Greyhound Canada. The midnight truck stop in Kenora, Edmonton closed on a Sunday, under two feet of snow. Winnipeg at night, Thunder Bay in a bright bright morning, and a Sudbury transfer of buses, yawning all the while. The monotony of the travel broken by the first few days of the US invasion of Iraq, catching the news every few hours, CNN and shock and awe in stop motion perhaps.
Transiting Auckland airport, feeling a fraud. Coming to Australia to be with the family to recover from the overseas experience, and it as if I am using my homeland as a stop off lounge. The accents over the PA, sounding strange. Wanting to just leave the airport, to start my life again back home, but I am too unorganised, it is too early, too soon to even consider that. I shuffle onto the plane to Brisbane with my head in three different places at once.
Paul
Empty.
Devoid of any warmth.
Places to avoid.
The low murmur of the TV, always on the least interesting channel or show in eternity ever. The phalanxes of plastic chairs and tables, which are comfortable maybe one time in a hundred. The hubbub of a hundred conversations, none of them able to rise above the level of a dull, faint echo. Often drowned out by the rattle of the cash registers, metal trays clanging in the food outlets, the constant thrumming of trains, planes or buses. Aircraft with their insistent whine, buses a growling cough. Not to mention the constant whirr of escalators or the occasional ding of the elevators.
The PA announcements that you can never hear clearly, unless you concentrate within an inch of your life. The endless neon lights, blinding as a jackhammer directly into your eyes. The constant sense of tiredness, of dislocation.
Flying into Chicago O'Hare with the city a lattice work of light below. In the airport as the sky lightened from black to purple to pink as the sun gently kisses the sky before dawn. The abstract night shapes of imagination, with only the aviation lights distinguishable, slowly coalescing into sharp, hard metallic jet fuselages, eyes squinting as the sun hits them just so.
The bleakness of Belfast airport, emotion and heart break rising to my throat, threatening to strangle me. A special transit hell all of it's own. Delays in Belfast, my nose studiously in an FHM or Q magazine, missing my flight in London, a voucher and an indistinguishable airport hotel room, the bleakness swelling to take another day of my life. I remember the Customs officer going through Heathrow on the way to Northern Ireland, have you met your girlfriend in real life - I should have turned back then. The inanity of early morning news, especially after jetlag.
Cairo airport, waiting in the main departure lounge for two hours in the earliest of mornings, waiting to check my luggage in, with no sleep, feeling the most vulnerable I have felt in an airport ever. Fighting to keep concentration, to keep awake, for just five more minutes, and then five minutes more, my eyeballs burning.
The sheep like procession courtesy of Greyhound Canada. The midnight truck stop in Kenora, Edmonton closed on a Sunday, under two feet of snow. Winnipeg at night, Thunder Bay in a bright bright morning, and a Sudbury transfer of buses, yawning all the while. The monotony of the travel broken by the first few days of the US invasion of Iraq, catching the news every few hours, CNN and shock and awe in stop motion perhaps.
Transiting Auckland airport, feeling a fraud. Coming to Australia to be with the family to recover from the overseas experience, and it as if I am using my homeland as a stop off lounge. The accents over the PA, sounding strange. Wanting to just leave the airport, to start my life again back home, but I am too unorganised, it is too early, too soon to even consider that. I shuffle onto the plane to Brisbane with my head in three different places at once.
Paul
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