A short excerpt of something I have been working on for way too long. Dedicated to my lovely sister who will soon be traveling the discounted, economy class, security laden skies.

      A voice comes on over the intercom, “Welcome to flight 735 everyone. This is Glen your captain speaking, I have beside me first officer Roger and your flight crew today Delia, Morgan, Tracy and Pat. We’ll be cruising up to 37,000 feet today with some headwinds at take off. Other than that it should be a smooth ride. Make yourselves comfortable and thanks for flying with us today.”

     A stewardess directs our attention to the front. She’s wearing a smile that her body can’t back up. “Good morning everybody. Before we get up and on our way, we’re going to have a safety demonstration. If you’ll pull out the pamphlet in the seat pocket in front of you, we’ll begin.” Before we get up and on our way. There’s always something. Before we get up and on our way. As if these stale seats create any sort of community that warrants a statement of our intentions as a collective. The only thing that binds all of the passengers on this jet is the assurance that we are going somewhere else, perhaps better, perhaps worse than where we departed. Motion is the key.Static.

“Now one more time in French.” The flight attendants deft movement is a familiar one and I am always struck at the consistency of their performance. I imagine that they must have an atmosphere of an aerobics class, a taunt leader directing proper arm motions, swinging forward, to the side and directing proper buckle presentation barking orders at the amateur performance, screaming: “if YOU don’t know where the exits are, how will THEY?!” Eventually after hours of practice, muscle memory would start to take over and slowly but surely things would start coming together they would be doing it, directing the imaginary crowd, that they soon realize would not even pay the slightest attention to their efforts. I believe there are mimes who were once disgruntled flight attendants.

**** I once saw a real crime show that featured an in-depth look at an airport luggage theft ring. It seems there was a well-organized effort at SEA-TAC between luggage handlers and security guards alike to smuggle out the luggage undetected. What was slightly absurd about it was this ring extended to the middle-class, second hand luggage dealers in the greater Seattle area. The effort of this little band was not to steal what was in the baggage but merely the casing itself. Once they had the cases out of the airport they would drive around and dump the contents in various drug store dumpsters. At that point they would deliver it to a church as a donation.

The church was nondenominational and a front, mostly, although the program said that they did have a pastor who was ordained on the Internet. It was the head deacon that was running the show. They still collected people’s money, in other words. They would buff and shine that luggage in the basement and then distribute it in small quantities to what it would seem to the average person to be a reputable second hand luggage dealer.

The talking heads conveyed an overall sense of general disappointment at the whole situation. It was as if they had started this venture from a lack of vision and opportunity. Even the officers looked tired, a reminder that their lives were as futile as the criminals they caught, only a difference was in the architecture of the prison. As it turns out it had been the deacon’s second wife who had turned in the whole lot of them. On the television screen she looked like the second wife of a deacon or maybe even the third wife of an unsuccessful dentist. It was a wonder that she would risk the security of having a husband to the upholding of a skewed sense of righteousness.

The narrator, in his brooding voice, kept referring to the level of security breach in the realm of post 9/11 air travel. To me it makes perfect sense, I mean as a traveller it may seem that all the levels of security in an airport make it difficult to try anything illegal but all those levels are operated by likely disgruntled underpaid, average citizens who could really give a shit. Get your gut reaction or racial profiling in a couple times a day and you have met your quota. The personal responsibility of any major disaster is on the airline as a corporate entity. Since the mentality of the cog in the corporate machine is to believe that an individual cannot make a difference, there would be no trace of guilt. None.