December 14, 2007
Friday

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere
With drops of Jupiter in her hair,
She acts like summer and she walks like rain,
Reminds me that there’s time to change . . .
           — Patrick Monahan, b. 1969
               American singer-songwriter

The skies were cloudy over the air corridor between Washington, D.C. and Harrisburg last night. On the last leg of my journey home I watched towns I couldn’t identify lighting the thin clouds from underneath. Descending into Middletown, the plane cut through the mist and I saw out my window the pulsing exclamation point of the television station tower atop Blue Mountain that rises 1600 feet above Susquehanna Township about a mile north of my house.

“Back in the ‘burg,” I said in a text message to several of my friends who’d expressed concerns about the weather, the arduousness of air travel, and my long absence. When I got replies almost immediately I was surprised. Wasn’t it near two in the morning where they were? I’d become so accustomed to adding two hours to my time before determining if it might be a good time to call someone back east that I forgot for a moment that we were now all in the same place, sort of. 

My trip was free of problems except for the anxiety over the zipper on my new Lands’ End suitcase. The zipper separated behind the slide at the right corner so that if the two slides were brought around to meet each other front and center, the length of the zipper on the right opened up. I noticed this when the TSA guard heaved the bag up on the examination table to begin the hand search. (Sheridan has a very small airport that sees 30,000 passengers a year. It doesn’t have the expensive equipment for scanning luggage, so that, as the TSA guard told me, a “high percentage” of the luggage is searched by hand. I suspect that percentage is 100.) I had visions of my belongings spilling out onto the tarmac. At least my cowboy boots and my Kum & Go t-shirt weren’t in there and would remain safe. When he was finished, the guard ran a band of silver duct tape around each side.

I flew above the cloud cover so I really didn’t have to watch Wyoming glide away beneath me. I fell asleep and woke when the plane thudded into Denver. From Denver to Dulles I enjoyed the company of the University of Denver men’s basketball team, 1 and 4 as they head to State College to play Penn State, 5 and 4 but undefeated at home. I told them that where I come from, Penn State football is almost a religion, but nobody talks about the basketball or the baseball there, two sports that I think are much more engaging to watch than football. I wished them well. In the waiting area at Dulles I talked to three young Army reservists on their way home for Christmas. They brought some joy to what could have been an agonizingly dull wait in a nearly-empty terminal where all the shops and restaurants were closed.

This morning I was up before seven. I made coffee and took it to my spot at the kitchen table. I was still bleary and my body ached from the ordeal of moving through airports and aircraft for more than twelve hours. I opened my notebook. “Thud,” was all I could think of to write. I knitted for a while, and with my second cup of coffee I picked up the stack of Christmas cards that has begun to accumulate, the only touch of the season yet in evidence in the house. The first one was from the staff of the hair salon I don’t go to anymore. The second was from the CPA who prepares our tax return. I picked up my pen and began making notes about a character whose only Christmas cards are from businesses.

There have been times when I avoided or neglected creative work for months. I’ve come back from Bread Loaf and not even taken the materials out of my car for many weeks. This morning, back in the ‘burg only seven hours, and I was working again.

Tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet?
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the milky way?
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind,
Was it everything you wanted to find . . .
While you were looking for yourself out there?

Yes.

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