This, the first of the missives I’ll be sending from Brasil, will be a hobbling, fractured thing — made of disjointed thoughts alongside the bits and pieces of what I decide is worth copying from this journal I’ve been attempting to keep, with some degree of regularity and authenticity, with uncertain success.

I change in voice like a chameleon, where the shifting environment is an amalgam of diction from 1. my upbringing as an inveterate nerd (I competed in vocabulary bees, for pete’s sake), 2. whatever I have been reading, and 3. my (elusive, ever-changing) state of mind. Right now, looks like it’s “wordy, tortured, and prone to mixing metaphors.” I’m so sorry. I warned you.

A large part of the reason I’ve come to Brasil—and why I’m writing this—is to find a more solid voice, and something stronger to say with it.

I also intend, in later posts, to have more photos (alongside, I hope, better-structured writing), but in the daze of time and movement and travel, I didn’t find myself aware enough to take many photographs. More’s the pity, because there are few visions more perfect, both ever-changing and essentially itself, than the view outside an airplane window.

JUN 19, scattered thoughts during a 10-hour layover in DALLAS, TX—

“To get wasted during my 10-hour layover in fucking Dallas or not to get wasted during my 10-hour layover in fucking DALLAS: is that even a question?”

Actually, I didn’t, because my interest in being drunk and/or hungover on a 9-hour flight is negligible—but I will say this, my hatred for the Dallas airport, and penchant for getting stuck there, is both storied and well-documented.

I was in a particular daze because the night before I had pulled an all-nighter to finish packing, moving my things out of my house, and see some friends one last time before I jet away. I was exhausted.

I don’t know how the time went. A lot of wandering. I searched desperately for some poetry books I wanted to bring, but found nary a poetry section. A lot of Mary Higgins Clarke, though. Instead, I entertained myself running on those great fast-walk not-an-elevator things (what is the word for that), and ended up finding a very strange bar that was showing the World Cup games. For a good while, I slept inside a bed-chamber made of two big, soft, black armchairs pushed to face one another, hugging my bag so it wouldn’t be stolen and covering my head with a velvet dress I found stuffed into my backpack. I am already a refugee.

Some bits on the airport itself—

“Succeeding through a stolid enforcement of their own existence, airports are the last great bastion of the postmodern phenomena usually associated with the American shopping mall: this strange blend of indoor/outdoor, public/private, relational/and consumer spaces, which pairs beautifully with an airport’s inherent liminality. This is the uncanny, the unreal, and it comes with Duty Free.”

This unreality is encouraged by the airport’s own symphony, the lull of constant, soft background noise, hushed somehow by its own power: the canned background music that you never recognize, rolling suitcases, the tak-tak-tak of stewardesses in heels, a million hurried (and unhurried) conversations, languages on languages, the occasional walkie-talkie—my favorite, the strange disability-cart driver who warned travelers in his way of his arrival by yelling “beep beep” like the cartoon roadrunner. And of course, the strong, clipped voices of women in authority warning you not to let your bag out of your sight, announcing final boarding calls, translators calling for passengers to show up, so on.

The entire experience is actually a lot like going to IKEA.

One unfortunate difference for my obsessive tedium: no movie theater. One addition: a Hyatt, attached to the airport. Unfortunately, I would have had to go back through TSA screening (also: I would have had to pay, which—not going to say I didn’t consider it, but in the end: two chairz). DFW, by the way, is the 2nd largest airport in the United States and has its own police force, firefighters, and zip code. (Another thing I did there: read its entire wikipedia.)

“Re: wayfinding: I believe zig-zag motion is an element of control.”

A lot of one’s experience in airports is going through structured queues; at DFW, even the entrances to the bathrooms make you do a curly left-right-left motion. Just like when you were a kid, blindfolded, about to destroy a piñata (though I always hoped to miss, as the blindfolded one is often not the first to the candy), and how they spin you to disorient. Or that game, with the baseball bat on the forehead, and the running. Put that into slow motion, add to it the nerves of organizing travel and the ennui of unreal spaces, and you have the brilliance of an airport’s method of human suppression. I know it’s also space-saving, but think on every occasion on which you’ve done this—lining up for customs, at six flags (don’t get me started on amusement parks), or even to get into a movie: back and forth and back and forth, seeing the same group of faces pass you by and come back to be next line over. It’s mind-numbing. There’s something that kills directness in it. Okay. Maybe I’m reaching.

JUN 19, scattered thoughts on a plane when I should’ve been sleeping—

I have a young flight.

The rush to get seated was disorganized and brusque; little adherence to our boarding levels, and next to none paying attention to the intercom-weilding attendants’ instructions—myself included as I could barely hear him. One woman, whose child kept hitting my bag and who clearly only spoke English, kept asking what “she” was saying. Loudly but impotently, as she was summarily ignored. Chaos, but organized, as we all herded on at once.

A woman, earlier, in the line—this time, definitely Brazilian (it’s a posture, and an accent—) pointed out: “voçe tá vendo, já ta o jeitinho dos Brasileiros.” It loosely translates to, “you can see it already—the ‘way of the Brazilians.’ ” I’m terrified she’s right. What is going to be this flight for me? This trip?

The plane is large, and newer-seeming, with a distinctly creepy video projection of unsettlingly put-together female flight attendants asserting how smoothly this flight will go. The pilot, on the other hand, is virtually unintelligible, his voice fuzzy in a way that is actually somewhat familiar—
and comforting.

Now it’s just waiting, watching, yawning idly. A high percentage of the passengers around me are handsome, young, brunette dudes, with the notable exception of a strange family with two young sons. One is wearing a Saturdays shirt. I think to myself: I am (finally) too old and too heart-weary for this.

The husband of the family beside me is small, long-haired, bearded, some form of hippy or gamer or both. The wife is large, and carrying a mysterious packet of newspaper clippings. The kids are bouncy, but cute. I wonder about them. At some point later in the flight, the wife will crawl forward onto her knees on the small aisle in front of their row of seats and liberally apply deoderant. I will never know what.

I hate the American Airlines tail-flag redesign, a truly ugly piece of graphics. I like the new logo okay, but I really have such a nostalgic attachment to the wold wings—I even had a little metal pin. I travelled so muhc as a child, I’ve kept many of the same habits—I smile and nod to the pilots in the cockpit, steeling myself against waving sometimes. I always take a look at the safety pamphlet (now with very “uncanny-valley” 3D-modeled humans, facing uncertain dangers).

I have such nostalgic attachments to takeoffs, being handed gum from my mother for the ritualist popping of the ears, relishing the growing tensions as we take up speed and approach becoming airborne. You can feel every notch of acceleration; the anticipation when the captain announces, “flight attendants, prepare for takeoff ; ” when the plane begins a slow, sure, turn and straightening…sometimes, there’s a disappointment, when you keep stopping, and starting, and slowing, and so forth—then the terror of unmitigated acceleration and suddenly —you didn’t really even feel it, but something’s loosened, and you’re in the air—

It’s a strange feeling to despair, both over changing too much, and over feeling like you’ve never changed.