On a recent morning flight my travel companion was an empty seat. There are positive and negative aspects to that actuality. The positive – I didn’t have to listen to someone’s inane babbling about the healing powers of organic tea or some such irrelevant BS. The negative – I didn’t meet the new, whoever / whatever the new might be. I surprise myself these days in that I actually crave meeting and talking to new people. That’s not who I’ve ever been but I’m okay with it. Left to my own devices with headphones imprisoned a lifetime away in the overhead I simply observed, as always I do. I observed boredom and disinterest by all involved save (1). By all I mean the (10) or so homo-sapiens in my immediate field of vision, but I imagine this observation held true throughout the cabin. Flight is by its very nature a boring almost workmanlike activity. Perhaps the airlines should invest in flight attendants who are not only polite and welcoming but also skilled as jugglers or magicians. A hottie whirling (4) bowling pins and a caramel apple up and down the aisle would certainly be more entertaining than scrutinizing the passing cumulus formations. And who wouldn’t prefer a magic act over a bag of pretzels? Just my opinion.
Regardless, after unfairly categorizing and summarily dismissing the validity of all that I saw I fixated on a middle-aged, middle-class, Chinese lady (2) rows up on the right. Not so much her as much as what she was reading. I didn’t know the book at the time but I could see that it was written in traditional Chinese. I watched her flip these pages from back to front reading and thought to myself how strange it must be to read a book from the end to the beginning. That’s obviously not the case but certainly illuminates my American bias. I also thought, now here is a language I could get behind. I “read” magazines and newspapers from back to front after all. Not sure why, just always have – give me the punch line and then the story? Maybe. I don’t understand Chinese script but I think it is a pure and beautiful thing. It’s all apparently based on the square. All characters fit into and / or are subservient to said square. The order and discipline one must possess to read, much less write this language has to be immense and probably more than I care to undertake as a hobby. The format is fascinating and the structure of the characters at least, seems to be a very architectural ideal. I dig that – I find it very Lou Kahn personally. Plus, there’s no punctuation. I dig that also. Punctual inflection is the responsibility of the reader and is contingent upon his / her interpretation of the ebb and flow of the narrative. How cool is that? It’s possibly the coolest thing that my western mind has no viable capacity to grasp. She seemed genuinely content and thoroughly entertained though and that’s a helluva lot more than I can say for the rest of the gang (self included).
Speaking of reading backwards, I also passed some time (that I will never get back) with Sky magazine – possibly the single most worthless publication in the modern world. The centerpiece of this particular issue was Memphis, Tennessee so I thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t. I spent more than a few formative nights and adventurous sun-baked afternoons in that town and it’s always held a certain stature in my nostalgia. The picture painted on these pages was A-Grade bullshit top to bottom. Sure, there was the obligatory mention of Stax and Beale Street and the Lorraine Motel but most of it was about Elvis. I get that people call him the “King” or whatever but I’ve always thought that he was just another dumb redneck who happened to be able to sing. Have you seen Graceland? Has anything ever said “country-come-to-town” more than that dump? (4) white columns does not a mansion make and carpet on the walls does not make one an innovator. His music was okay but he stole his whole act so who cares? He made famous what white people had not witnessed prior to. Again, who cares? I can draw a line between the origins of music and any / every important band and that line would not go through “the big E”. It would often go through Memphis though and that’s what this spread obnoxiously ignored. If Memphis is anything, it’s a music town and Elvis can’t even shine the shoes of the greats who walked along the very ground he’s buried beneath – long before he assumed the throne.
I guess it’s not surprising that he dominated the piece but it was disappointing all the same. I haven’t spent very much time in Memphis in a lot of years but surely there’s more to it than fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. There certainly used to be. The ironic is that last week I read where a recent study ranked Memphis among the top (10) most depressing cities in the United States. But reading this article it is actually more like freaking Shangri-La – advertising and marketing run amuck as per the norm. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it from back to front?
Deplaning I saw that in Chinese lady’s haste to gather her seemingly (30) bags, purses, scarves and other sundries she neglected to grab her book and left it in her seat. Not desiring to dislodge the karmic joy that is my life I scooped it up so as to return it to her in the terminal. I was curious what the book was about and turned it over to the cover, but immediately recognized that the front was the back. I flipped through the pages looking for a clue to the title, again forgetting that it was in a different language. I had imagined it to be something profound from the Qing Dynasty or Confucius or maybe even Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The book itself was so absolutely foreign to me that I didn’t even know how to hold it really! I finally located the cover and much to my dismay realized that what this sweet lady had been so engrossed in, what she obviously gained so much joy from was not in fact profound at all – barely meaningful even. There emblazoned across the “cover” in flaming yellow-orange Times New Roman was the title – The Firm by John Grisham. Seriously? What an enormous rip-off! (The irony of the fact that I was pre-irritated by the Memphis article was not lost on me by the way.) When I finally caught up to her she was extremely grateful that I’d returned her prized possession. “sweet young man” blah, blah, blah. I was stunned.
As I walked away, karma intact, I realized that Elvis’ Blue Christmas was bleeding from the airport speakers.
There is an odd symmetry to the randomness of life, eh?
I find it improbably comforting.
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