Stevebaggin' it back to America

Written in Washington Dulles Airport
(but had no internet connection to post)

I had it timed so perfectly. Arriving flight came late. I had 50 minutes between getting off my plane and catching my connection. And if you knew one thing about arriving at a U.S. airport that is not your final destination in the United States, you'd know that in those 50 minutes I had to clear immigration, pick up my luggage, clear customs, re-check my luggage, and then proceed to run to my gate. Departure 4:45; boarding time 4:25. I got all my shit together, 4:25. Flight monitor: the four flights out of Dulles to Newark, "Delayed," "Now 5:45P," "Canceled," "Delayed." I wonder what is going on in Newark. As far as I know the weather's cleared. [Edit: It was windy, and Newark was overbooked or something. My flight was the one delayed to 5:45; it ended up taking off at 7:00.]

And did you know that they (G4 Security) -- yes, G4 Security. By the way, do they have some sort of worldwide monopoly on outsourced security duties? Mind you, I don't think they're very good, but clearly I'm biased. Why, you ask? Find out by following this link to Caryl's blog. I digressed, my apologies -- do a one-on-one interview with you at the gate for flights to the United States out of Europe? Out of Schiphol they do, anyway. They were so paranoid that I had come from Qatar (since, of course, presumably only dangerous people travel out to the Middle East); the man asked me how long I'd been in Holland ("three, four days"), what I was doing in Amsterdam ("just hung out in the city, smoked, visited a friend"), what my friend's name was ("Christine"). I have to say, though, my answers were pretty shady despite the fact that they only told the truth. Although, when asked, I did tell the guy that I had packed my bag at the hostel in the morning -- I had actually packed it five days prior when I was in Qatar and had since left it in the hostel's luggage storage. I didn't even have time to look into the suitcase this morning. Here's why.

Today I woke up at my hostel at 10:30 am. My flight out of Amsterdam was at 12:30 pm. Two hours before your flight takes off and you're in your bed in the city center -- I don't mean to brag, but not everybody could have handled it so well. I was pretty chill, didn't scramble, and, clearly, I got back to the States all right. I was on the train, on track to get to the airport by 11:30 (just the airport, the check-in counter was probably another five or ten minutes away). I was overcome (I don't know if overcome is the right word) by a moment of panic (despair?) -- just sheer fear that I'd miss another flight in the same week. Except this time I'd miss it knowing that I'm missing it, which is probably worse if it had come down to that. I mean, you can say that I'd be significantly closer to my preferred remedy had I missed a flight in Holland. But that's not the point. The point is I always have an underlying stream of consciousness, it's always going on, I'm always thinking, and despite the way I seem or things seem, I have an idea of what's up for me in the near (really, immediate) future. I can add a thought or plan seconds ahead of time and it's all still me. On that train, I went through a minute or two when that stream of consciousness wasn't there. If I missed that plane, I had no contingencies, no plans, absolutely no idea what I'd do next. But I realized that I could still think in that phase; I could think coherent (though probably irrelevant), crystal-clear thoughts. It was a rather terrifying, empty state and thoughts therein were totally irretrievable; I can only recall that I had the experience itself and that it was totally surreal, but not the content of the experience or how it was triggered. It turns out I totally had time to finish my pipe outside after my check-in, but I hadn't got the balls to take that chance and instead went straight to my gate, smoked only a bit in a bathroom stall before dumping everything out and went home.

Move blog?

So I'm thinking about transplanting my xanga to here. There's just too much crap going on on xanga. The layout here is cleaner (by default). I've wanted to do this for a long time, but it's not like I post often. Let's see if I can pull it off (and keep it up) this time. And why does that sound dirty? And maybe fuck transplanting. Who even gives a shit about transplanting? I'll just start by reposting tonight's entry.