thank you for flying air surrealia

After spending a night awake (old collge habit; I never sleep before I fly. I'll tell the story of why some other time) and emotional, mostly writing the sort of ill-tempered emails one regrets almost immediately and cramming starches into my maw, I just took a nice shower and put goop in my hair and started preparing for the odyssey to the airport. In November 2001 I flew out of San Jose to Japan in a black GAP turtleneck Slice had liberated from a catering job, the pajama bottoms with the dogs dancing around fire hydrants, and boots. Completely loopy. Surrounded by venture capital types in their suits, staring at my fire hydrants. Things take on that star filter quality, do you know what I mean? Like you're looking at everything through your eyelashes, and it's brighter somehow? Everything gets looser and sillier and then you're on the plane and you just pass out before takeoff, which is how I prefer to fly.

I had a similar plan for today--an even more effective one, as I only got four and a half hours of sleep the night before last, and am truly weird right now--but I just got a phone call from the airline--it is very weird, having the phone ring at five in the morning--telling me that my flight has been cancelled due to high winds, but they can put me on an afternoon flight.

So I said yes. What else? This whole adventure has been getting ever more complicated; at one point on Monday my mother suggested I just bail on the whole enterprise, stay home, get things done, stop being such a stress monkey. But I have made such a tremendous fuss now about everything, I've irritated a great many people, and I really want to see Alceste and his big shiny puffball cats.

Even if it means I may have to take a little nap now before I lose my language capacity altogether.