11 April 2008

Dept. of Transit:
Some Notes from Heathrow

Some musings I recorded during a meal of haddock, chips and Guinness at Heathrow:

TRAVEL AT HEATHROW inevitably involves what feels like an inordinate amount of walking and transportation to some other region of the sprawling complex that is London's largest airport. This may very well be the result of the stress of travel as well as the fact that airport diagrams, like subway maps, are not drawn to scale, making very large distances appear to be easily negotiated.

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My waitress has checked on me twice in the past five minutes. Does the proximity of a particular space to another space that is transient in nature make the first space transient by association? Applied to my meal, am I expected to leave this restaurant, which is a rather warm and fairly inviting environment, more quickly and is the service to be more harried than it usually would be, because I am in an airport?

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This next month is going to be painful...this next week, too, though the distracting power of work might save me from the full brunt to the melancholic torrent that will no doubt flood my psyche in the coming days. its deluges recalling the tears shed before my departure; its winds redolent of the cool breeze that rippled through the air as I left Budapest, yet a hundred times stronger. O, the violence of raw memories.

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Can't quite place that woman's accent (the waitress)...cute though...

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The PA system is butchering Don McClean's one, and essentially only, hit song.

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Watching darts is like watching poker or bowling. What makes a sport worthy of popular attention, anyway? Who watches darts (besides those held captive in overpriced airport restaurants)?

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Beveled corners on the vinegar bottle. Hmmm...

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Mar-le-na! I just met a girl named Marlena (presumably: that's the name given on my bill.)

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I'm about to go to a country of loud people. A country where people tote their over-priced tri-band cellphones in hip holsters and who don't mind the fact that answering calls on wireless earpieces makes them look schizophrenic.

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