That State of Denmark

so yesterday i pulled out my trusty notebook so that i could share, with you, the tale of my recent harrowing flight. i went through the notebook multiple times and came up empty. i mean, i clearly remember writing furiously in the notebook and, at most, was afraid i would not be able to read my scrawl. but now i have empty pages and a lingering fear that my trauma led to hallucinations. let me tell you (and hopefully this typing is no illusion).

it was when i was headed out to california for my run up many mountains. i decided to take a direct flight, so i could kick back, relax and maybe take a long nap. after a series of delays, we set out on our trip and the plane took off. all was well with the world until it hit me. out of nowhere. like a sucker punch to the chin. an awful rotten smell. someone had just farted. i willed myself to get through it, without making it too obvious that i had noticed - everyone has the right to release a little gas every now and then. but then, no sooner had that smell dispersed, than it returned again in full force. and again. and again. i was trying to fan the air around with my magazine, while not being too obvious but it was not helping. those next to me seemed unaffected but no one looked guilty. the stink, oh the stink. i leaned forward and the odor followed me. i whipped my head back and got no clues. i was trapped in the window seat, next to windows that don't open. what to do... what to do?

i toyed with the idea of pushing the call button for a flight attendant, but what was i to tell them? someone is farting around me, i don't know who it is but it's killing me! i considered asking to be moved but the flight was full. i was exhausted - the flight had taken off hours late and so it was getting to my bedtime but i couldn't sleep. heck, i couldn't breathe! once again, i jerked myself upright and scanned those around me. no signs of anything. i started having crazy thoughts related to farting. he who smelt it dealt it - i certainly smelt it but i knew i hadn't dealt it. instead i was the one who had been dealt a cruel hand. maybe that's what the rhyme should be - he who smelt it has been dealt it. then: ooh this is one silent but deadly gas attack. i wondered how this mystery person was able to control their farts so they made no sound. i wondered what they had eaten that disagreed with them this terribly. i was surprised that they were not running for the restroom to get it all out.

i grabbed my travel blanket and tried to bury my nose in it and oscillated between suffocating on the blanket and suffocating on the foul air, all while trying to get a little sleep. i would drift off and then be jerked back to wakefulness by another explosion of funk. it was a six hour flight and at least five were stinky. i started trying to relate this silent stench to the theory of the tree that falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it. does it make a sound? and if a fart is released in a plane and we are all there but no one hears it, does it make a stink? tragically and traumatically and resoundingly. yes. and creates a fear of flying like no one has ever known. and inspires an overwhelming desire to run off the plane. and brings about note-taking hallucinations.

'Tis the Season To Be...

i doubt anyone would make movies of my family christmases when i was kid, heck, i don't really remember them myself. i have vague memories of laid back days where we hung about doing very little. sometimes we were invited to a christmas party for family friends but we never hosted anything and my parents seemed happy to just not have to go to work (i assume that is why they were happy, since that is why i am happy now on holidays). at some point in this holiday deal, my mother decided to plant a fir tree in a massive flower pot and that there tree remains our family christmas tree to this day. during the most of the year, it hangs out in the yard but, come december, the tree is brought in and decorated with some lights and tinsel. any christmas cards that are received are propped up around and on the tree and there you have it, christmas. we would put little gifts around the tree that we would open on christmas morning. my mom pretty much always bought me a pretty nightie and my dad always gave me a diary with his name printed on it. i still love nighties and am yet to find a diary that i wish to fill as much as those i used to get for christmas.

it doesn't sound like much, does it? yet it really was a perfect family day, even when my grandparents gave me a dress i would only ever wear to make them happy. and it wasn't even a day that i would rave about if anyone asked me how my holidays were. but you know there is a saying about hindsight giving you excellent vision or it's my mother saying, "you'll think about this later," and, well, adage writers and my mom were right.

i have lived in new york for ten years now and, for years i have honed the art of the 'orphan holiday season.' and i am not alone. the the time i have been here, i and my fellow expats who are unable to be home with family for the holiday season, come together to pretend we are not drowning in a heavily marketed christmas. i cook enough food to feed people into an amnesiac trance and we do things like watch a coupling marathon or the matrix trilogy. and then it's time for dessert! the day of big feasting and vegging out was becoming a great time in december. but then, as some party pooper once said - all good things must come to an end.

friends moved on, and some even returned to pat, and i have new family, by way of hidef. and it is wonderful and it is great and at the same time, it is poignant and a little sad. having moved out of the purgatory of denial, i am a part of a new family tradition but it is one that has me thinking of my own family, scattered around too far and wide to join us. perhaps my mission this year is to invent a word for this happy-sad transition from one place to another. something as cool as schadenfreude or marmalade!