Arrested There in the Driveway

They’re serving up breakfast on the 6:30AM flight down to Hangzhou.  The sun is just rising up over the horizon.  At this altitude, the sky is clear.  Below me is a rolling quilt of clouds that extends on for as far as I can see.  I couldn’t get a cab at 5:00AM this morning.  Nothing outside at the gate and no one answered my Didi broadcast.  I repeated it three times and figured driving over was my only option.  Throwing my bag in the car, I was looked up and was arrested there in the driveway for a moment.  Above me were the Big Dipper and a range of other, unidentifiable star groupings.  I felt like waking my children up and suggesting they get acquainted with the heavens. 

Air China is always looking out for its customers.  Up in my face, whether I want to look or not is a short piece about logistics.   How captivating.  Trucks deliver the freight to this location.  Then it is loaded on to a boat.  Who made the call on this as entertainment?  Now a lady in an Air China regulation red blouse is showing pictures of planes being loaded up with cargo.  Now we’re getting a clip with photos of commercial flights in China during the 1950s. Who in China had clearance to fly then?  They almost certainly paid for the privilege ten years later. 

Started “The Country Under My Skin” by the Nicaraguan poet, revolutionary, Gioconda Belli.  I wasn’t sure what to expect but as Salman Rushdie’s effusive blurb on the back jacket suggests, it is very well written.  She moves swiftly through her youth into the cul-de-sac of an uninspiring marriage and on to her artistic and political awakening.  Considering the Sandinistas through her eyes, we see a movement that at least early on, tried to amalgamate disparate revolutionary traditions into something unique.  Insurgents, who were also wary of  the Soviet Union’s experience, were also unsure about the direction of the Cuban revolution. It’s always remarkable to consider as history a period one lived through.  I’ve tried, unsuccessfully thus far, to interest my older daughter in the book. It’s as far back from her birth as World War II was for me. The pictures of Ms. Belli at the debutantes ball, and later in revolutionary garb, seemed to primarily catch  the imagination of my little one. 

I have the whole row here to myself.  You have to be careful.  Once they close the doors, there is a land grab for empty spaces.  I had judiciously laid out my three or four sheaths of newspaper, my book, my laptop across the area so we had no-occupy-movement.  I considered laying out and resting as one does on the 6:30AM flight, but I’m not tired.  That will happen later, after the double espresso wears off.  To my right is the not-so-undercover flight cop.  He made his way in and took a seat, right after the door closed.  Sporting a buzz cut, wearing regulation white button down shirt, black slacks, shined leather shoes, there is little question about his role.  After comparing the Chinese  and the English version of the message which suggests that this officer will detain and arrest you in  you don’t comply with  the flight rules, I eyed him, as he gazed forward, and typed out my last message or two surreptitiously before we were airborne. 

Yawning, reading that over.  Perhaps there is still a chance to sleep.