Foil on the Surface of the Sea
REVIEWING THE SEA, LISTS, FLIGHTS by OLGA TAKARCZUK
Tranquil submission pacifies me with each step along the endotracheal pipe speared into the airport’s side.
I thwart the useless urge to rush the process. No matter my position, at the back or front of the hoarded procession, my experience will remain the same. I will either wait standing inside the jet bridge or in my seat anticipating our departure into the air.
I arrive at my row. I file my luggage above overhead, wedge it among heaped containers of soiled clothes reeking out into the cabin. A flight attendant measures the aisle with her gait, closing the smells inside.
I disturb a man sitting low in his seat. He isn’t tall, his knees only slightly graze the chair in front. His body has collapsed onto the upholstered surface. Only his head peaks up at an uncomfortable angle over which he holds a book.
I can’t see the cover on account of how low he has arranged his posture. When he rises, drawn up like a scuttled boat from the bedrock, he rests the book on the pleather, perked into a dollhouse roof to keep his place. It’s a Dutch translation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (Moord op de Nijl) the title is rendered in a font made to look like neon tube lighting and the computer-generated boat from the 2022 film adaptation lurks below. There’s more Dutch copy beneath it all but I can’t discern what it might mean as I pass over to my seat allocation by the window.
The reminiscent tone of the seatbelt sign fills in any gaps unoccupied by the now-cleared stagnant air circulating through the vessel. A kind of air that swaddles sounds inside of it, thickly, where the droll of the engines shake at the contents like set gelatine—inside translucent density. I remember the tone from films, like Flight Plan starring Jodie Foster and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York starring Macaulay Culkin. We’re all above the sea. The plane levels and the tone sounds.
No one gets up. Some passengers instinctively unbuckle their belts, presuming the light and tone above their heads to be a commandment from God.
Moments pass, the man beside me submerges himself once more, and I take in the rest of the journey through the window. Below the surface of the North Sea shines motionless. A cracked foil plane illuminated under hot low light, blinding in hues of coral and citron. Dozens of offshore wind turbines stake the unmoving waves. The masts pike the surface and cast shadows back thousands of feet behind. From my vantage, the toy windmills look no larger than tacky garden whirligigs.
The woman sitting in front of me takes a picture.
I think to write a task list. Use the time in the air to get my life together. Use the time in the air to capture thoughts on faulty perception. Use the time in the air to read a book.
Create operational lists, lists of food to buy or places to go, things to do, people to respond to, people to pester. Read the book, work through the list of sentences and paragraphs and breaks and chapters. Read Flights by Olga Tokarzcuk. A book of lists that I loved. Overwhelmed with story, fragmented and jerking, motioning to the end.
Land on the tarmac, draw a line with a finger down lists of names. Departure-lounge-blinking names with times and instructions. Go to gate. Board. Each orange-illuminated line is a roll call for registration, for remembrance, for ailments and allergies, transcribed with the stagnant copy in the antihistamine PIL (Patient Information Leaflet), listing yet-present drug-induced adversities. Drowsiness.
I move down the indexes, date-stamped and randomised. Too far down, the page on the departure board lists an ever-increasing page number. Page 12, 13, 14.
Before working myself raw, frenzied, the wheels rub the earth.
—Andy x