airaroake

Fifteen hours into a forty hour airplane journey, I feel the all-too-familiar aches and pains of the floating meditation across the sky. I yearn to walk. I dream of gliding through space powered by my own energy with arms swinging and face smiling; a carefree stroll through the park, through the grocery store, through a pile of crap. But, I am bound to my seat, battling my neighbor for the armrest until we pass the latest bout of turbulence and the captain turns off the "fasten seatbelt" sign.

Opening a book is useless - the words bounce around the cabin. The in-flight entertainment is another tragic love story where good battles evil at the hands of too many product placements. I attempt a conversation with my seatmate, but after the where-are-you-goings and where-have-you-beens all I can do is pretend that his fat isn't resting on my thigh. There is little joy watching my fellow travelers, except for the couple in the back row who is entertaining for only as long as my mind is up to the task of filling in a few details.

Exhausting all of the activities available in this space, I am determined to find a song to listen to. Something to put me to sleep, to remove my mind from this reality. I start at the beginning. CD #1. Song #1 is too emotional. 15 seconds into song #2 I remember why I never liked it. Song #3 is too loud, #4 is too cheesy, numbers 5 and 6 are too boring.

CD #2. Song #1 is too mellow, #2 is too energetic, #3 doesn't feel right. I give up on CD #2 and try #3. Finally, CD #13 (Led Zeppelin) song #7 (Ramble On):

"Leaves are falling all around
It's time I was on my way.
Thanks to you I'm much obliged
For such a pleasant stay."

My aches and pains fade away into the Jamaican sunset. We went to Jamaica to learn about the third world with Rastafarians for teachers and the lyrics of Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin for textbooks. After 21 days of instruction, I breathed a last breath of perfumed air as "Ramble On" played in my headphones. I climbed the stairs to the airplane singing, "Gonna work my way, round the world; I can't stop this feelin' in my heart."

Ten years later, I am rambling on across the sky at 159,500 miles per hour slower than a shooting star. I listen to the song again. My fingers rap against the free arm rest. My toes wiggle on the floor. I skootch around in my seat. I open my eyes and see a sea of bobbing backs-of-heads. A flock of hundreds in sitting levitation migrating thousands of miles.

The song ends, I listen to it again. "But now it's time for me to go. The moon lights my way." This time I notice the different styles of clothing, from chic Chanel in first class to travel fleece. The song ends, I listen to it again. "Got no time for spreading roots, The time has come to be gone." Now I notice baby smiles and age-old wrinkles in the faces around me. The song ends, I listen to it again. By the 52nd time, I am bursting! I clearly see the complexities of the lyrics and painfully feel the longing. Awed by the beauty of this song that so perfectly captures this moment, I can no longer contain this energy.

I begin to sing.

"And now's the time, the time is now. To sing my song."

My sleeping neighbors wake annoyed. The awake sit up afraid.

"Sometimes I grow so tired, But I know I've got one thing I got to do."

Despite the illuminated "fasten seatbelt" sign, I unclip my belt and stand.

People wriggle in their seats looking for an explanation.

The flight attendant's voice crackles over the intercom, "All passengers must remain seated until the captain turns off the 'fast seatbelt' sign."

I dance through the aisle towards her. Because of the turbulence, it's more of a choppy walk than a dance but it is a complete bodily expression of the feelings in my heart. She fights with her seatbelt with one hand while the other holds the phone to her face, "Captain, we have a situation. We have a passenger refusing to sit down. I repeat. We have a situation. I think she's singing a Led Zeppelin song."

I tickle children on their chins singing, "Mine's a tale that can't be told, My freedom I hold dear. How years ago in days of old, When magic filled the air."

At the guitar solo, a muffled "weeerh weeerh" escapes from the air guitar of the French-looking teen in 19F. With a little encouragement, he performs a flawless "Jimmy Page" in the aisle. We finish the 2nd round of the song and begin again.

A co-pilot emerges from the cockpit, "Yep. Definitely Led Zeppelin."

"Ma'am," the flight attendant tries again, "you will have to sit down."

I continue singing as the co-pilot responds, "Ahh, she's not hurting anyone, plus this is one of my favorite songs." He kneels, takes the flight attendant's hand and sings, "Twas in the darkest depth of Mordor, I met a girl so fair." The turbulence causes the passengers to bob and weave with laughter. The co-pilot sings two more rounds of the song before returning to the cockpit. Each time, the hum of the cabin increases.

It is the hymn of the traveler.

After the energy crescendos and everyone is singing, the passenger in seat 21B grabs the flight attendant's intercom phone and begins "On the road again." The woman in 42D pushes her call button and asks for the lyrics. An engineer hacks into the in-flight entertainment system to display the lyrics from his computer.

We take turns singing into the intercom while the lyrics bobble by on our personal entertainment systems. We sing our favorite tunes of coming and going, of love and loss. By the time we land we've shared our tales through song.

It's karaoke in the sky...airaroake.

end of an era

I got my new passport today. It's empty and light; a fresh, new era.

My old passport has 36 stamps from 14 cities: chicago, frankfurt, paris, nice, london, amsterdam, tokyo, hong kong, new york city, rome, melbourne, vancouver, budapest, and seattle. Each stamp marks a passage.

Sunday, I spent two hours sorting through a box of papers from high school and college. I wasn't able to throw away everything. For some reason, I needed to keep concrete evidence that I used to know calculus, that I programmed pascal in high school, and that I wrote a story in college that my teacher called, "unique and creative." Why? Who is it for?

My mom kept everything from my childhood: stories I had written, report cards, paintings. My grandmother kept everything from my mother's childhood. From time-to-time, at Christmas or a birthday, I will receive something that my mom or grandmother kept that I had given them. Sometimes I am passed a story that my mom wrote, a photo of my grandmother or her mother, or a favorite book of my great-grandfather's with an article about "living life to its fullest" that he clipped to the front cover. It's our own personal history. The women keep the archives. It ties us together.

Yesterday, I wondered about showing my boxes of papers to my children. I realized that most of my boxes are about the things I almost did: the stories I started but never completed, the research I did but never compiled into a story. Boring! From here on I will only save items related to what I have completed. My passport is an important item for that exhibit in my personal museum: here are the places I have been.

As curator of the Museum of Me, I need to prioritize the pieces in the collection to determine which to preserve and which to throw away based on their relevance to my history. I've always felt that I would use these pieces to write a story someday. And, I think by getting rid of the less relevant pieces I free up the space to focus on the important pieces.

I have a lot more sorting to do...as I continue to explore who I am. I am Anneke, and I am a pack rat. A pack rat with a purpose...although I wonder...if I threw everything away, would I be lighter? Able to move faster? More creative? Do I really need all of this stuff to remind me who I am?