Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
For the Love of Peanuts
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
British Airways flight 284 departing San Francisco bound for London will fly over the icy Atlantic. I’m on board, leaving SFO International Airport behind.
Like every airport in the world it seems, SFO is under continuous construction. They all post signs thanking me for my compulsory patience with the airport architects who are improving the infrastructure to better serve me.
My name is Noah. I’m a world traveler, explorer, a man on a journey. In truth, I am just a tourist making a sincere effort to survive the miracle of modern air travel.
Flying disconnects me from my known reality. The confirming landmarks of my daily life disappear. I transform into a blob of disemboweled protoplasm consigned to a pod inside a metal test tube. Passenger 3JOK46NWX.
Ground speed, 517 miles per hour. Altitude 36,998 feet. The plane, turbulence-free, feels like we are still parked on the ground at the airport. A few air bumps would remind me to pay attention to the seat belt sign.
The illuminated monitor at my seat graphically displays the approaching horizon. Only one landmark is mapped: Nuuk. Until now, I’d never heard of Nuuk. It is the capital of Greenland.
Except for a handful of ignored TV screens, the cabin is dark. Sleeping passengers, lopsided like dismembered cloth dolls awaiting new stuffing, doze away the miles. Except for the occasional night cough, it is quiet.
To stretch and break through my brain’s boredom, I check out the plane’s kitchen area. The snacks are salvage from a gas station mini-market. Nothing looks digestible, let alone desirable. Ice in the ice bucket has melted.
Humans are social animals, but flight etiquette proscribes that I stay in my seat instead of wandering about the plane introducing myself. I shrivel into myself. In silence with my private thoughts or no thoughts, I settle into a semi-vegetative state.
After ten and half hours, my flight touches down. Odd phrasing for a three-hundred-ton behemoth dropping from the sky on to hardened concrete. The intercom clicks on and the pilot speaks.
“We’ve arrived at Heathrow twenty-two minutes ahead of schedule. We will be taxiing until an open gate is assigned. For your safety, please keep your seat belt fastened.” Boasting about early, but pointless, arrival times without an available disembarkation gate aggravates me.
After deplaning, I join a throng of human ants on a long walk, a tram ride and down multiple escalators. We are advancing towards customs and then baggage claim where I will mill about hoping that my suitcase is not in New Zealand or Afghanistan.
People are mostly silent, trudging and shuffling, following arrows, lugging bruised carry-on luggage, dragging little ones by the hand, adjusting wrinkled clothing, battling misbehaving hair. This is as close as I get to feeling like a war refugee fleeing an approaching army.
I’ve thought a lot about not traveling. Curiosity is the tyrant that keeps me on the road.
I’ve thought of traveling by car or train, but never do. Neither serves free ginger ale with a packet of peanuts.
