Thursday, March 13, 2014

Will Confirm When Landed




Sitting on the tarmac at SFO.  Parting hugs, fill the tank, hop on 101, and ride along the Bay in the impossible sun.  Make a few final calls.  “Sorry we didn’t meet again.  I’ll be back.”  Indulge in free bananas and cheese blocks in the lounge.  Each lounge’s different.  This one damn sure ain’t the best.  Time to send out a dozen overdue emails. Ignore the “final call.”  Do two more.  Go.

This is usually the time when I can indulge in being off line.  For the next twelve hours you have an excuse to read, or write, but not be responsible for timely replies to all the bits that light up your inbox.  On the flight out they announced that there was WiFi.  I’ve done that before on flights but my main carriers, United and Air China never had it.  Not any longer. I just checked and didn’t see anything available.  I’m sure it will be there, and it won’t be free.  (And two hours later checking, I’m wrong.  There isn’t WiFi service on this plane.  Not all the planes have been fitted yet, it appears.)

The drinks are no longer free either.  Yes.  Obviously I’m in economy.  Ahh but its Economy Plus and the seat beside me is free, so I don’t have much beyond the added surcharges to complain about.  Beside me, two physical newspapers.  A New York Times and a Wall St. Journal.  The guy by the window has an FT as well.  Each one commands attention.   Unlike the online interface you can’t flip through it quickly. Articles on tangential subjects demand engagement that wouldn’t be afforded on line.  On line emails are a moment away.  The entirety of the web, beckons in the corner of the screen, within another browser.  When you hold up a paper with two hands, it generally has the fullness of your attention. 

Our pilot tells us we have to finish fueling up before we can push back.  I’m surprised.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.  It reminds me of me this morning darting down market and pulling over on Castro to filler up before returning the car to Enterprise.  It’s a last minute decision of mine.  One would imagine that these matters are largely settled way ahead of push back.  Perhaps there’s a series of safety checks that go with the fill up that must be completed at precisely this time.  I wonder how the Air Malaysia flight disappearance plays if you're a pilot?  Perhaps you pooh-pooh it as the result of poor skills or poor equipment, or perhaps you’d be scared shitless, knowing an outside chance for such a disaster was always in the cards. 

The people with the veg meals are getting served now, before we’ve taken off.  That’s a good one to remember if you’re consistently boarding hungry.  Flying domestic in India, you are hit with the confident head bob and smiling inquiry as to whether you wanted “northern vegetarian or southern vegetarian.”  I was a veg for 10 years a long time ago.  You could make that work in India, but in China? No.  My first year in China, 1993 was what killed it for me.  Every night the table was filled like a banquet with extraordinary dishes and every night I had the steamed cabbage and the white rice.  With a year before me of this routine I caved.  And, in terms of culinary breadth I am forever grateful. 



There’s a tenor player blowing in my ears.  Who is that?  It’s from the late fifties or early sixties.  Can I name it without looking?  No.  It’s Harold Land.  I know the man and some of his story.  I’ve written about him before.  But out in the wild, I didn’t have a prayer of identifying his tenor playing based on his style alone.  Perhaps if I’d seen him.

OK.  We’re late now.  I’m beginning to think this fuel spiel is an excuse. 话连[1]  Excuses and more excuses. Ahh, here we have our man.  He says earlier they’d lost power on the fueling effort (California still having blackouts?) and now they’re playing catch up.  Fair enough, but what precisely does that mean in delay time. 

OK.  “Everyone in their seats . . . Please turn off all large electronic devices”.  See ya.‘    

Flying up I read the article about Dianne Feinstein the erstwhile staunch defender of the CIA turning and unleashing on them, after realizing she’d been snooped upon herself.  The CIA lawyer made the first move, it appears, suggesting that her staff’s attempts to look into the hacking were unlawful.  That is certainly some high stakes poker.  Mr. John O. Brennan our CIA director looks like half my Irish relatives when he smiles.  But the frowning picture in the Times has him looking like a rather uncompromising cop.  I’m sure he’s no fun to tangle with any more than the California Senator is herself.  Now they’re going to have it out in public.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/us/senate-fight-with-cia-had-festered-for-weeks.html?ref=us

It’s rough, but it is ultimately ennobling that there are mechanisms like this to limit the hand of government, within government, that creaks and groans but is still able to endure unimaginable challenges now pressing, from the vantage of when it was written.   This is a drama and it is unclear where it will lead.  In China, this would be a very predictable script by the time is was made available for public consumption. 



The plane’s lights have been dimmed.  I’ve lucked out.  The next seat’s empty and the dude with the window’s also a reader.  So we’ve out dim lights on and most of the windows are brought down and its crepuscular all of a sudden if you ignore the burning sun, visible beneath a cracked shade or two.  “The Spinning Song Herbie Nichols” is a perfect orchestration of night time abandon tinged with frustration and concern.  I know it is ether Max Roach or Art Blakey on drums.  I should be able to tell the two.  These three albums they recorded should be as broadly part of the canon as Monk in my opinion.  So aching and proudly complicated as they swing effortlessly.  I’m erring the side of Roach.  Blakey would have those thunderous twirling frills.  OK.  Will confirm when we’ve landed. 

It was Max Roach . . .





[1] guǐhuàliánpiān:  to tell one lie after another (idiom) / to talk nonsense / bogus story

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