Creative Non-Fiction
What One Endures
To Reach a Glittering Galaxy
It’s 8:30 pm and your plane has just taken off under thick cloud cover and heavy rain in Southeast Asia. You look out the window and the pilot drops a wing, making a 90-degree turn less than a minute after the wheels leave the tarmac. You suddenly take in the sight of a choppy sea below, pure white foam sloshing from black wave to black wave.
The wing neutralises, but it’s too late, you’re already sweating and cold. The plane dips a little. Must’ve been a wind current. Your stomach has taken up residency in your mouth. Your fingers and toes are victims of a hot rush of blood, then another.
You check the barf bag is in your seat pocket and grab your carry-on stowed under the seat in front of you, reaching for your AirPods. Your Face ID opens your phone and you shuffle through Spotify to find the obscure album. It’s the only thing that will make you safe.
You check the Bluetooth is working. It is. You pump the volume, close your eyes, and try to forget you’re on a plane at all.
It’s an obscure album. You don’t know where it came from. No one else seems to know it much.
Back in 2002, you found it sparkling new on the last page of your stuffed CD case while you were stuck in traffic on I-10 East. You always had to reach to the back bucket seat and drag the laden case to the front so you could flip through and find what you were in the mood for. Maybe a friend had discarded it there when you were busy driving one day. It didn’t matter how it got there. You fell in love; the notes gently washed over your weird literal mind. You came to put it on when you had an hour to yourself, an hour to unwind.
In the mid 00’s, it found its way onto your first iPod. From there, it automatically transferred from device to device, like a permanent piece of genetic code containing indispensable data on your personal trajectory. Now it somehow lives in your pocket, stuck inside yet another personal device, an iPhone 14 these days. It’s there any time if you need it. Just think of it. Just pull it up on your app.
Turbulence ensues. You feel like you’re going to hurl. You open your eyes. That was a mistake. The captain starts speaking in poor English. Something about turbulence. Seatbelts. Service stopping. You wonder how his aviation skills compare with his English skills.
The volume goes up to max on your phone and an early memory of hearing the obscure album surfaces. There you are, back in your dear friend’s rainbow-painted house in Tallahassee. He’d always looked out for you. A big brother of sorts. He also always shared music freely. He always played it on his old southern record player. Maybe it was him who secretly gifted you the CD. Maybe it wasn’t. Everything feels safe and carefree for a while as you remember relaxing in his mustard living room, despite the turbulence.
You look at your phone (it’s a sick habit these days) and it’s showing you the name of one of the obscure songs – We Have a Map of the Piano. You had somehow never known it before, only that it was the third track on the album, your favourite track. You wonder if younger generations use the word ‘track’ anymore, or ‘album’ for that matter.
The stewardess asks if you want mango juice. Service must’ve resumed. She is forcing a smile as she catches her weight on your armrest and the juice cartons nearly tip sideways off the refreshment cart. You can’t hear her but tell her no anyway. Her lipstick has smeared and strands of silk black hair have come away from her tight black bun. As she turns to the adjacent row, you see her floppy blue bow drooping leftward. You’re not the only one struggling with the bumpy ride. Back to the song, The Rainbow House. The place that is not here.
Lights catch your eye. Somehow you’ve reached Bangkok already. They are a welcoming glitter galaxy below, but thunder smacks hard, alarmingly hard nearby, taunting your tiny puddle-jumping plane. A broad brush of white light shatters the sky around you. You close your eyes again. The pitter-pat of track 11’s sleigh bells lulls you. You want to sleep, you want to keep remembering all of the yous that have been calmed by the obscure album over the years.
Finally, you feel the wheels bounce and skid on the tarmac, followed by screeching breaks. Begrudgingly, you remove one earbud so you can better hear what’s happening around you. More screeching breaks and fanning side to side. You remember you used to love it when pilots slammed on the breaks during landings. You’re not young anymore. You wonder what next iteration of technology will be catapulted onto the market, insisting you buy it now, buy it first, buy it again later.
You hear men behind you laughing loudly and squint through the seats - they’re dressed in pilot uniforms. They must be laughing at how shit the landing was. You wished you found it funny, too.
Your turn comes to disembark. You say thank you to the staff, for what you don’t know. Thank you for not killing me? Thank you for the exhilarating ride? Thank you for forcing me inward?
You turn off the obscure album and release all the yous that have been calmed by it all these years, that calmed you now.
You walk into the airport, thoroughly blasted by a commercial air conditioner, and prepare for the next flight.
