A series of tubes
I started out exhausted. Riding rush hour BART towards SFO, I felt the distinct sensation that it was all just a series of tubes. That I would slowly accelerate, first west. Then, arcing upwards, east. Train tubes connected to plane tubes connected to airport tubes and me just sliding through.
My approach to overnight flights is to create as much sensory deprivation as possible. Eye mask, pillow, ear plugs, blanket. But there’s no blocking out gravity. All night, I dreamed that the plane was falling out of the sky. Every minute adjustment of altitude, every bout of turbulence, triggered this sensation. Steep descent, 45,000 feet into the Atlantic. My unconscious brain repeated, “If you’re really falling, everyone would be screaming. No one is screaming. Stay asleep.” Next to me, Brock dreamed of earthquakes. The Big One. Monkey brains, playing tricks on us. Science may say the tube will float, but the monkey brain knows better.
Eventually, sunrise. Land below us; Portugal. I drifted off to sleep on the short train ride from Madrid to Toledo, listening to the low rumble of Spanish accents. Is it the smoking that drops the voice, adds gravel? Thin tubes dangling from the mouths of schoolgirls and office workers.
That first night, I get lost. I expected to. Me he perdido (I have lost myself). But Toledo is so small, no matter where you turn, here you are back at the Cathedral. We stop for beers and bocadillos at a café. Parents gather children from school and grab a quick drink before heading home. A boy practices his violin. Only one note in his repertoire. I watch American girls in short shorts and Chucks All-Stars order white wine and glasses of sangria. They must be Fundacion kids, I think. Like I was. Except, now everyone clutches glowing phones, sitting around their patio table, looking down into other worlds.
A boy with long dreads at the nape of his neck calls a skinny boy out of the bar. Suddenly, he throws a punch, and they’re screaming and kicking each other. No one gets up, but I think, duck! Run. The bartender rushes out and breaks up the fight, shouting at the boy with dreads and his three friends: Leave, now, or I’m calling the police. The skinny boy’s face is bleeding; he clutches one dread in a clenched fist. I think, thank god. No guns. Tubes to a much darker alternate universe.
The sun comes up at 8 am. Bells chime, one church tower after another. In the quiet between ringing, birds.
