Texas Re-Attempted: Flying with Apes and Penguins

I've given myself 4 hours, and caught the airport at its least secure. I hope the Americans on the other end will provide a better paranoia service. All I get is the manic depressive son of Michael Stipe, who asks if I have anything which can be construed as a weapon. I glance at my crotch and shake my head. Then another guy who wants to beat REM to the wrist-slit grunts something about metal belts. I say I preferred their first album and hold up my little bag of liquids. I'm through Security in 5 minutes and eating breakfast in a cafe that has knives shaped like scalpels.

"We're at an airport!" yells a child in the corner as he tugs his father's sleeve. I want to share his excitement. Maybe I could scream the same line at the table of Muslims next to me...

No. They might think it's a trap.

With 3 and a half hours to kill I return to the rabbit warren seating area and finish my John Connolly novel. Damn, it's a dark book - the first and darkest of the series. I wonder if he was angrier back then - sicker as he faced the prospect of an unpublished life, not knowing if his debut would sell. He has found more light and more comedy in his later books, but this first one... fuck! I finish the haunting epilogue as the plane begins take-off, hoping that I have likewise flushed my darkness and am now anew.

Take-off is awesome. Awe-fucking-some! There's still so much green in England - a country like wet moss catching gold in sunlight. As we lift higher I see squares of brown amidst the patchwork green, like a jigsaw uncompleted. I can't help but see reflections. The towns are brown and white like exposed bone - all things growing.

Bollox! There's no Sudoku! How the fuck am I gonna survive this flight? Bollox! My headphones don't work!

Then I think up a funny joke, which I'll use later in the blog. At the time I was laughing in my seat and alarming the black lady next to me who was reading a Christian self-help book (Oxymoron? Yes? No?)

Ooh, they're showing Rise of the Planet of the Apes! I order a new set of headphones and settle in for some delicious Simian distraction. Hopefully the lady beside me won't be offended by the talking monkeys and flip her shit all over the plane.

Well, that was a bag of wank. I know it's a film about apes but they could've used more than one napkin when they were writing character concepts. Another film with a bleak antagonist and a pointless love interest. It's a good thing I'm seeing Laura shortly, so I can dispell the Hollywood myth that all women are cookie-cutter accessories to subplot. I mean, seriously, her character notes must've been "smile at ape, fall in love, ask hero a few times if he's sure about what he's doing." For fuck's sake they could've got a...... monkey..... to do... that....

Hmm....

The next film comes on: Jim Carrey being inconvenienced by penguins. What. The. Fuck?

Aaagh! The last line got me! Why does that always happen with these family movies? They're a stream of tired cliches and then, right at the end, one line comes out of nowhere and makes me burst into tears.

"Kids, I have to go away on a long journey. I may be gone some time. So... I'm gonna need you to come with me."

Damn you, Jim.

Shit, man, I'm flying over the Atlantic Ocean to meet a girl! This is crazy! I wonder if anyone else on the plane is possessed of such ridiculous notions. Looking down at the sea, it hits me: this great expanse that took former men weeks to cross, that claimed the lives of countless sailors and explorers, that has yielded more stories and less secrets than outer space itself - I'm crossing it in mere hours. It's like I'm rushing through the halls of my ancestors.

Truly, it is as overwhelming and impossible to honour the landscape I pass over as to explain my decision to reach out for Laura. Such things were not meant to be contained by one pen... by one mind.

Perhaps I do not speak for there is too much to say.

The third film is a Woody Allen drama. Uugh! I take out my headphones and get on with my own pretentious and casual meanderings. Fuck you, Woody.

The fourth film stars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. It's about an American and a Brit who become embrolied in an adventure of intrigue and seduction. Such wild and implausible ideas these film-makers have.

Although the final reveal renders the entire film non-sensical.

I hope Laura's not related to me.

Ooh, and now we're flying over Louisiana, the place where the John Connolly book was set. I'm coming closer and closer to the extraordinary world of the mythic journey. I wonder what Threshold Guardian I will have to face...

... found him! The customs guy - not a scary customs official, but a "duuuude" customs official. "Alriiiiight!" he says as he takes my passport. He asks me what I'm doing here and I blurt out the entire story. "Nooo waaaaaay!" he exclaims. He seems genuinely shocked, and I wonder if my Messiah complex will be stamped as inadmissible. But luckily, he takes pity on me, and welcomes me to America.