“There is no there there.”
~ Gertrude Stein
“There is.”
~ Laura Kelly
I am one of the nearly six million Americans in the past week who zipped a suitcase, lumbered through security, double checked my boarding pass and wedged my posterior into an airplane seat so I could fly somewhere.
The end of every year means this annual marquee holiday with its predictable migratory patterns. I, like millions of others, submitted to airplane travel because I wanted to be there. Where? There with my family and friends. All of us traveling wanted to go there. To our there, that place where we were not, that place that was one letter away from here.
When we travel, there is the future, the unreached place. Here is the present, the where we are. When we travel, the here is often the airport, the Uber ride, the gate, the bus. But on this most recent trip to get from there to here, here to there, I superjuiced my magnetic field to see what might come my way. I had 15 hours of travel and wanted to be in the here as much as I could. During my journey, I was reminded that I am always there, and stories are always here.
+ + +
Rolling my suitcase behind me like a pet on a leash, I stream across the Sofia Airport toward the check-in counter for the first of two flights that will take me to my there. The line is a forest of about a dozen very, very tall men. Toweringly tall and lanky men in matching warm-up suits that sport an emblem for the Balkan Basketball Club. My mind drifts to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when she drinks a mysterious potion that makes her smaller and smaller. Their tallness gives me Alice’s smallness.
I am dwarfed by the man in front of me, who is close to seven feet tall. The one beside me is even taller. I chat with them and find out that the team is professional and on its way to Israel for a game.
“How do you fit into the seats?” I ask, imagining some cruel kabuki to fold their limbs into the abbreviated space allotted each of us in economy class. One of the players says, “Emergency rows and aisle seats; it is the only way we can get through it.”
An hour later, our plane taxis toward take off. I lean over from my seat to get a wide-angle view. The basketball players are torqued into their seats with their legs angled into the aisle, which is now an obstacle course of giant man knees. It is the only way they can do it to get them there.
+ + +
I am disgorged into Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport for a three-hour layover. The travelers are a pageant, a revelation in thobes and fezzes, hijabs and burkas, blue jeans and sweatshirts. The airport swarms with more than 63 million passengers a year, people on their way to Abu Dhabi, Ulaanbaatar, Vilnius, Mecca, Miami. I want to stare, to stop, to be there.
Two young women pose in front of a candy shop for a selfie. I ask if I can take their picture. “Where are you going?” one asks. “The United States.” “Where are you going?” I ask. “Tanzania.” “Why do you want to take our picture?” she asks. “Because you are beautiful,” I say.
I snap a few shots. They ask me to join them in another selfie. We wish one another safe travels and disappear into the throngs.
+ + +
It’s boarding time for my next flight, and I am in line for a passport and security check. From behind me I hear the soft, industrial whir of a machine. Like a dentist’s drill without the menace. Someone says sorry. I turn. A woman sits on a narrow mechanized wheelchair. On a small platform at the back of the wheelchair stands a young man wearing a lot of metal. He’s driving and parting the waters.
The woman is elderly and petite. She wears what look like Warby Parker glasses, and her head is wrapped in an elaborate mélange of caramel-colored scarves marbled with sparkly threads. The headgear looks like an oversized, towering cinnamon bun. She sits erect, clutching an unremarkable purse on her lap. As the wheelchair slices through the herd waiting to remove their shoes and submit to metal detection, her long orange skirt billows.
She is tiny, but her presence commands. Posture, composure, headgear that could signal royalty. I want her to be the leader of a newly formed African nation. I fantasize about approaching her and asking if I can take her picture. I fantasize that she says yes and that we have a moment. And I fantasize that I have yet another story to tell.
