Only Because I Have To

Friday night we were up late filming vignettes till all the energy was gone and we resigned ourselves to round-robin viewing of Youtube videos we each took turns to share.  Reluctantly we retired at midnight.  I’d be up early in the morning the next day.  Everything was packed, everything laid out, ready for departure.  Good boy.  Host with the coffee in the kitchen the next morning.  Another good lad.  Supping it up there above fifty foot trees viewing out to a steep, green, glen below that I’ve seen from here for so many, many years now. 

Cross the Bay Bridge, one last time.  My only chance to see a pal in Noe Valley was left until this morning.  That’s why I must leave now.  A true friend he agreed to meet me Saturday morning at 7:30AM.  I sat in the Boulangerie and waiting for him, texting him, eating through my sweet- tooth cream tart with a purple Bartlett pear on top.  Yogurt with oats.  Orange juice.  This is real orange juice.  I’ve consumed it all and bussed it over before my chum arrives.

I’d gotten books.  I showed him one or two.  He wanted to talk about Edmund Burke.  I wanted to show him “The Prophet.”  "No.  At that time the Whigs were effectively liberals, they insisted on trade, albeit mercantilist trade."  And as it begins to get good, as it always does, I’ve got to go though, and announce I’ll call an Uber in five minutes, so please let me know the best fiction you’ve read on the French Revolution, if you would.  He's quite happy to reflect upon this and I type out his suggestions in a chat to him, so I have them down contextually and head off finally, only because I have to.    

Friendly Bay Area Uber driver out to the airport.  His son had studied Chinese as a minor.  He had lived in China and liked it.  But I sense he may not have loved it.  Now he had work with a company that didn’t have anything to do with China.  He said his son would sometimes go to speak to the Chinese engineers there at work and it made him feel nostalgic. I felt sorry for this kid I’d never met.  I wonder what was still inside him, mid-gestation. 

Swift enough through security and up on to the plane.  A friend wrote to ask if I was traveling in business with a smiley emotocon.  “I am not” I wrote back, letting him know that I was sitting next to a large gentleman in economy.  Sometimes things work out and sometimes . . . your left without an upgrade. 

Presently, I’m in that emergency exit area where I can stretch out my legs.  But there is a cost.  Other people get the same idea and come here to stretch and do little dances and walk around in circles with their crying babies and generally treat your space as their space.  Two people in a row now have come to this little mini window, popped it open, flooding the space before me with blistering light considering the north pole down below.  The woman who caught the view before is back now, considering my window anew.  She has her iPhone out to capture the bright arctic scene.   

A little part of me is rather jittery every time someone arrives and stands next to that enormous door with a safety lock.  It wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out and throw open in a moment of excitement.  No one would really do that.  But who knows?  The stewardesses ought to tell people to stay the hell away from that area.  Where's a foreful United Airlines Battle-axe when you need her?  Another woman has come up to snap a photo.  A guy has taken his place behind her in line.  Step right up. 

Saturday, 03/03/18