“And we say nothing but when we want some.  And we do nothing but when we get some.”
--Robert Pollard

So I'm sitting in the arrival waiting area of terminal 3, dig, and there's a whole bunch of people with things to do and places to show up to surrounding me, whizzing by in this great hurry of self-involvement and apathy.  And one thing that's bothering me is that there aren't any black people in here.  I've only seen two or three, and two of those three were employees.  Arizona is a paradox of the most vulgar sort.  The land of Goldwater is making my stomach turn.  There's a modern art sculpture, staring me down just to my right.  It's chintz as all hell.  Three giant fiberglass guitars at obtuse angles, most of them plastered with the images of great hockey players.  Phoenix is a place that hasn't seen ice in over a million years, yet Wayne Gretsky is proudly immortalized on the fifteen-foot-long Fender Strat to my right.  This is too much to take.  I just had the worst designer coffee of my life, and the phone-call to the girl who was supposed to pick me up didn't connect.  I might stay here for five days.  That's not exactly a good time, but what is.  Airports are physical locations without place.  You fly into Charles De Gaulle from Cincinnati and the only difference is that the huge billboards are printed in French instead of Midwestern English.  And the kicker?  I’m listening to Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports”--how apropos.

When my flight out of Detroit is delayed for two hours, I walk to the Fox Sports Bar, the only place indoors where one can smoke at DTW.  I met a lyricist from Los Angeles, and a model from Toronto and her twin sister.  The two of them were going to L.A.  The guy from Hollywood was going to visit family in Clair, MI.  The model drunkenly informs me that she's been in 50 Cent videos and done commercials for Reebok with Donovan McNabb or someone big in football.  Her name is Leslie, and she's pleased to meet me.  My copy of John Rechy's post-war feverdream "City of Night" lies haphazardly on the table next to the 7-dollar Makers and Coke I order perfunctorily out of custom.  Dozens of TVs line the walls of the place, broadcasting different games involving men moving about round objects.  She asks me about Rechy, and I ask her if she's ever read Miller.  "He's a little like Miller," I tell her.  She doesn't know who Miller is.  She says the last book she read was in grade ten.  She's 28 years old.  I call her a liar, but who would brag about not reading books?  At this moment I am sorry for her, and hope she does alright out in L.A.  I'm pretty sure the sniffling she constantly does doesn't stem from symptoms of a cold.  Candy makes you dandy, or so I’ve been told.  We say our good-byes. 

Two hours after touchdown my ears haven't popped yet, and the drugs are wearing off.  My nose is starting to bother me again, but that's okay.  Luckily I found a place that sells cigarettes--I'm pretty sure I'd be a basket case or passed out right now without the aid of stimulants.  I had another one of those designer coffees from FourBucks, and it's doing the trick.  I'm starting to get a little paranoid--why wouldn't someone have come to pick me up by now?  Did they think I wouldn't be coming out until much later due to the fact that my flight was technically cancelled?  Would they even know that on this end of the Country?  Have I done something horrible without knowing it, and thus become a pariah in the eyes of she who asked me to fly out in the first place?  Soon the light flooding in from the widows beside me will fail.  The desert night sky is something I've always looked forward to seeing.  However, I never really figured it would be from an airport terminal.  The tarmac lights are blinding. 

I'm sure I'll be able to get a bus or cab into downtown Phoenix if I need it.  I could always walk it, because that would be super bad-ass, “Paris, Texas” style.  I'm starting to remember the way I smelled while traveling throughout Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean two years ago; that acrid scent of stale cigarettes and badsleep.  This Brian Eno music is tripping me the fuck out, but in a good way.  The screenplay I'm writing is becoming much more kinetic, and I like it that way.  I just hope Jake doesn't decide to chuck everything once I get back to Michigan.  God, Michigan, why do I live there?  Is it because it's someplace beside the one I grew up in?  I have no idea.  The girls in Michigan are about as bipolar as its weather systems, which are very much so.  Here come the warm jets, indeed.

They’re burning Paris to the ground.

I long for a connection with another human being that transcends speech and thought; a primeval bond that will last more than a couple weeks.  Why are people so complicated and simple simultaneously?  Motives are about as easy to figure out on the surface as the multiplication tables, but interacting with those creatures who embody the motives makes astrophysics look like masturbation.  We have produced just as many Mozarts as we have Hilters.  This everlasting cycle of destruction and beautiful reconstruction makes my head hurt.  I'm sure if I did something a little harder than Advil right now I'd stop caring so much, but that's not what I want at all.  I want to care too much, I want to be debilitated by goodwill, and maybe it's an excuse because I'm really not that good at using other people, but I really don't like trying to.

I think I smoke too much.

The light outside is dying, and so is the battery on my laptop, which means Mr. Eno and I are going to have to go our separate ways until I can find a power outlet to jack.  I wonder how dangerous downtown Phoenix is.  I can't imagine it being much worse than Woodward and Grand in Detroit, but then again I haven't been this far West since before I could talk.

And so I'm down and out at the Sky Harbor Intl. Airport, a bit outside of Phoenix, wishing I could be talking to someone I knew right now, drinking heavily and laughing about the fact that I had to wait for 7 hours in a drab lackluster desert airport, the mauve, downright arrogantly mauve colored walls staring me down, but I don't know if that's ever going to happen.  I think I'm starting to realize how precarious my situation is, but I could sleep outside tonight, and that would be just fine.  I'm sure it won't be as cold as Venice in mid October. 

And this one goes out to...

It just happened.  An instant of pure beauty.  I haven't seen anything so grand in months.  Sitting in the little airport café, I look to my left, and there's a dad with a little boy and girl playing "Spit."  The card game itself is so simple that it just makes the whole scene serene.  The father's probably about 40, his face is disfigured.  Maybe a birthmark.  The upper right quarter of his face, starting at the corner of his mouth and moving upwards, is red and blotchy.  It's something he's probably had to carry with him his whole life, but right now that doesn't matter to him.  What matters is that his son and daughter are laughing.  Goddamm, that's what I'm talking about.  In that instant of pure joy all the fear and Weltschmerz I've felt in the past few years temporarily dissolves away, like the good part of a bad dream in midwinter.  All is well, and always will be.  And though I'll never know who those three people really are, or if their lives end up being markedly tragic, that instant of the three of them playing cards, and all laughing together about nothing in particular will carry me into my dotage.  If I am sure of anything in this life, it's this...  It's this.

The practical dilemmas of finding a place to stay the night, and holding myself over until Monday when I finally return to Ypsilanti, are ultimately meaningless to me now.    It'll work out, because I'm in one of the most secure places in the world, an International Airport. 

And suddenly, as if from the clichéd ether, there she appears, wonderfully backlit by the setting sun, getting out of her car as if in slow motion.  I'm too jacked up on caffeine and completely wiped-out by sickness and lack of sleep to really know what's going on, but something tells me I'm going to be all right.  For at least a couple more days.  And we may die, but damn if we won’t do it with a defiant smile.