Travel Time

ARGH.

Double argh.

My flight has been delayed.

Thank goodness it wasn’t cancelled, which when I was first checking in it did sound like it was, weather somewhere messing things up.

Not here.

Here, it’s clear as a bell, I can tell you, I don’t have to be up in the weather tower to tell you, I can just look out the window to the jet way.

The barren jetway where there is no plane, no plane at all.

I was to catch a red-eye leaving SFO, San Francisco International Airport, at 11:56 a.m.  Which I was early for my check in anyhow, it happens that my commute time from train to BART was far faster than I suspected it would be and the terminal airport was empty.

No security line.

No standing in line.

An apologetic clerk at the front was the only indication to me that something was off.  However, I was happy to be here, happy to be on my way, happy to be moving.

That is until I overheard someone in the terminal complain about the flight delay.

What flight delay?

Oh.

That one.

The one that I am on.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Really?

Grr.

Thank goodness there’s a Pete’s Coffee and Tea in the terminal.

I got myself an apple and a cup of tea and flipped through my magazine for a while.  I have plenty of time to blog, and fortunately there is free wifi here and plenty of outlets.

I have also three movies on down load in my computer, so I have plenty to do and I will be quite fine.

I splurged and bought an airplane travel pillow along with a bottle of water and the magazine from the kiosk in the terminal.

This is not the worst travel delay I have ever experienced, really, it’s just more of a hassle than anything else, one and a half hours less of sleep for me.

Hopefully my connecting flight will be on time.

The clerk did say that I should be able to make my flight, that in effect, I would just be spending the time that I would have in Atlanta in a waiting area, here in a waiting area.

All time is not my time.

I can choose, however, to make the best of it.

How often do I sit still anyhow?

Not very.

I will be tired I am sure, but in the end, it’s probably all for the best.

I have a hard time sleeping on airplanes.

I get super excited and it’s hard for me to get calm down enough to fly.

I did follow my friend’s advice about getting up earlier than I would have normally.  I woke up nearly an hour and a half before my alarm was to go off.  Thereby getting to my laundry, shower, breakfast, and writing routine with loads of time to spare before I needed to make my way to 7th and Irving for my tete a tete at Tart to Tart.

I spent the majority of my day in the 7th and Irving neighborhood, having coffee and a long discourse at the Tart to Tart then hopping across the street for lunch and more talking with another at Crepevine.

Then a  little “spa” time for me and a manicure, pedicure, and eyebrow waxing at the nail salon.

Today has been an excuse to read magazines like a pro.

And sit on my butt.

And soon to watch a lot of movies.

I have my set of head phones with me, my nice fat Skull Candy ones with the big ear phones that block out all noise and sit comfortably on my head.

The ones I wore on my flight previously to Florida the last time I saw my mom, just before flying out to Paris.

It felt like going in reverse at one point today.

The last time I flew out from SFO it was to Paris.

Time feels all synchronous and deja vu’y.

I just paid off my Paris return flight ticket yesterday and this feels like some weird loop-hole of time that I fell into.

I almost felt as nervous preparing for this flight as I did for the one to Paris.

A friend called me before I headed off into the night to the airport and we chatted about family and sibling relationships and I realized, just like I did when I travelled to Paris, that all I had to do was the next action in front of me.

Once I was off the phone I simply finished packing my suitcase and calmly ate my dinner.  I did feel anxious to get moving, anxiety that I can obviously see now I had no need for, but it was not overwhelming and I knew that I was on the way with nothing forgotten.

In fact, I feel like a real adult traveller, with my nice suitcase that I haven’t used since returning from Paris and my new airplane pillow, with the magazine and the charger on my phone, having a laptop, my Iphone, a bottle of water, and the wherewithal to take care of myself.

I have grown up by traveling.

I have also learned that I don’t have to travel in a skimpy manner.

I packed my suitcase rather than just an overnight bag.

I brought a couple of extra pieces of clothing I probably won’t use, but might and as such are nice to have with me, a couple of pairs of shoes, and just having the spare room to not squash everything into my messenger bag is really nice.

I realize that traveling is a part of who I am.

I am a traveller.

I do it pretty well.

Even when my flight is delayed.

I have things to occupy my time and I have the disposition that makes me a calm traveller. I am not really all that irked that my flight is delayed.

It’s an extra hour and a half in a terminal in an airport that I am happy to say is my home base, the place I have flown most to and from in my life.

It feels fortuitous even, lucky, somehow to be doing this travel.

I may change my mind about that if I miss my connecting flight, but for the moment.

All is well in the world.

Just a tiny bit delayed.

Soft

It was unexpected, the amends thing.

What happened.

How it went.

The delay in the renegotiation of Carmen.

I became something else today, some one else today, some one different, more approachable, more…

“Touchable,” he said in the car driving me home from San Francisco International Airport.

“Yes,” I nodded, in the dark, the freeway whisking past, the giant girders of the freight yards in Oakland looming in the shadows, the lights of the city pearling around me.

“More in touch with the moment,” he added.

Did he just say more touchable?

Yes, I believe he did.

Will Chase, not that Will Chase, told me at Burning Man this year he was glad to see me in a different work position as I had always been so untouchable.

I see a thematic here.

My mom and I had a fight this morning.

It was terrifying and sad and hard and I saw the wall, I saw the wall so clearly, so distinctly so about to be raised.  I could feel the bridge being hauled up over the moat and I could see myself retreating back into the dark.

And then I stopped.

A voice in my head said, “be the adult here.”

Then it added, “or do you want to come back and make amends for this later?”

I was about to detach by dropping a brick wall.

I was about to detach by dropping a machete.

I took a really deep breath and realized that I had to be the one that made the move.  It did not matter what I felt, it did not matter who was right.

All that mattered was clearing the air and communicating the best way I knew how, and it was not pretty and it there was a lot I did not say, but I made the approach and I sat and listened.

I was not the child cowering in a corner.

Nor was I the teenager that split last night and walked the block having a phone conversation with a boy about stealing a golf cart and going to make out on the back nine.

Of course, that was never really an option, said boy being in San Francisco and said golf green being in a 55 and up retirement village.

The only “boys” about were good ole boys.

And there was to be no making out with them even if I had gotten the oogley eye or two from a couple of them.

No you can’t look at my tattoos closer up pervert, shoo.

I really did have a moment last night when it got to be too much and I left the house and made some phone calls.  I cannot stand to be around my mom when she is having a fight with the boyfriend.

Weirds me right the fuck out.

They had kissed and made up by the time I was up and about this morning.

However, the charge was still in the air and I did not realize it and I walked right into it and my mom got angry.

Which with just a few thousand miles perspective I can suddenly see as a fear response.

She was afraid I would withdraw my love again.

And she might have been right, except I was more interested in being happy, joyous, and free.

I was more interested in being happy than right.

The woman, and I do not say woman lightly, it did happen, it happened like he said it would but not like how I expected it to go, got up from the kitchen table and made the approach.

I cannot in my life time remember approaching my mother ever to make it right.

The attitude has always been run away or ignore it until it went away.

But it never really went away and running away from myself is no longer an option.

We had rocky communication, but it was communication and it was a new kind of beginning.

And she freaking over shared beyond belief and it does not matter.

I am not there anymore.  I can truly love from a distance.

I can ask for help, should the time or place arise.

Not that I want to or am counting on doing so.

I also absolved her of the money.

I forgave the debt.

Once upon a time a similar debt was absolved for me and I ran it by John Ater and it felt right to do so.  My mom’s company was enough.  I do not need blood money.

Nor money that felt like it could have strings attached.

Nope.

I let it go.

And I feel even more free for having done that.

Even more open and available.

I have held onto this idea for so long that I should get this money that I never even realized the great big rock of shit I was holding onto that got in the way of me being open and available to true financial success.

I open my arms to the abundance that is all around me, I dropped the imaginary and I made myself available to what is truly supposed to be mine.

What ever that is, however that may come, it can come now, there is a space there for it.

My chest feels free, I can breathe.

Maybe it is just being out of central Florida, maybe it was seeing the girls on the corners tonight, maybe it is just one more thing cleaned up so that I may move forward towards Paris.

I do not know.

I do not care.

I have softened.

I have grown touchable.

Pausing to insert theme song from Rocky Horror Picture Show, Susan Saradon singing, “touch-a-touch-a-touch me, I wanna feel dirty.”

And now back to our regularly scheduled program of enlightenment and Stuart Smalley aphorisms.

sincerely yours,

A soft touch.