Quicksilver

Boston’s a dollop of hills in a spoonful of marshes. […]

The hills of Boston are skirted by endless flat marshes that fade, slow as twilight, into Harbor or River, providing blank empty planes on which men with ropes and rulers can construct whatever strange curves they phant’sy.

**

Yesterday was so one of those days! In where you couldn’t sleep before the flight – already exhausted on pickup, before you’ve even arrived at the airport or sat through briefing. I spent the whole afternoon in Tango-Echo, waiting for a major technical issue to be resolved (something to do with the actual electrical flight controls). We boarded as normal, sat on ground with the pax for around an hour.. pax disembarked to board another aircraft, went by immigration, crew control sent 4 of the 15 crew to airport standby, other flights or home… then the rest of us were sent back to the same aircraft to pretty much standby in case they managed to fix the problem. After 6pm crew control called us again and sent everyone home, I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved – was half-asleep on a chair and was wondering how I was going to operate a Jeddah and back!

Today I feel comparitively off the roof! Renergised. A decent night’s sleep is  multiple somersaults and happy magic tricks and fields of flowers. The difference in my face is nothing short of astounding – I’ve never met anyone else in where their fatigue features on their mug with that much fervor. It’s the weekend, but there’s a potential snag – a Sheikh (a former Interior Minister) died yesterday, so 3 days of official mourning has been declared. Still unsure if this means music at all the bars and clubs will be totally cut off completely, tonight only, or tomorrow only. 😦

Next month is going to be so chilled! Basically all I have only leave, and a Singapore-Brisbane! Microwavable relaxation right there.

The rope clutches a disk of New England sky.

I was talking to a girl about accommodation possibilities etc and she told me many crew are living in Dubai now. It’s surprisingly pretty affordable. The three main areas are apparently JLT or Jumeriah Lake Towers (where Basel is living), the Marina, or Discovery Gardens. Right after she told me that I saw a notice at the briefing area for shared apartments at JLT, full furnished and all-inclusive of utilities, internet etc. 4800aed per month. I don’t want to be just talking about it anymore, I want to make it fucking happen! Relocating seems more and more of a conceivable idea.

For my leave I need to be getting into this IATA course, and learn to drive. I get an awesomely shitty second-hand car and become comfortable with the idea of driving to the airport, and then find a place. Abu Dhabi is 40mins from the airport; Dubai is around an hour. For the potential leap in quality of life, 20 extra minutes on commute time is a small price to pay, no? 🙂

**

Humble and Shy climbed out the window on bedsheets tied together. Passive just jumped the two floors. Tragically, Docile died on the way down. I am aiming to become full of it. After observing other people I’ve come to realize that it’s acceptable. Even revered. And life’s short (so I hear) so why waste time on niceities.

**

Finished World Without End. Wept a little after the last page and hugged the book. Just started Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Cried on the first page. At the risk of sounding toss-ish, when I get into novels like these it really throws me into a tumble and spin. Books rock my rocks. I genuinely pity the fuck out of people who don’t really read anything. I was living in 1327 England yesterday; today I’m in 1713 America. Like I want to stalk writers and do something filthy with them, like a groupy following a rock band. Filthy as sucking out their brains and eating them in a munching of their consciousness. Or a blowjob. OK, OK, fine. Probably not either of those, but definetely a hello and a signed copy. 😛 Morbidly jealous of a fictional character with the ability to visualize spatial complexities (an architect). Would I function more to my liking if I was born a man..?

Words are down and there they are – black, white, accessible. One-way conversation. On paper it sticks. How I’m grateful.

He hadn’t really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things — hangings included — with a blunt, blank efficiency that’s admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships.

Quicksilver is a substantially more complex read than World Without End, as in, I need a dictionary on my pillow! But what satisfaction, full of words like “doppelgänger” and “mephitic”, worlds in such perfect context, and words I’d forgetton existed…

He goes down to where the long wharf grips the shore. Among fine stone sea-merchants’ houses, there is a brick-red door with a bunch of grapes dangling above it. Enoch goes through that door and finds himself in a good tavern. Men with swords and expensive clothes turn round to look at him. Slavers, merchants of rum and molasses and tea and tobacco, and captains of the ships that carry those things. It could be any place in the world, for the same tavern is in London, Cadiz, Smyrna, and Manila, and the same men are in it. None of them cares, supposing they even know, that witches are being hanged five minutes’ walk away. He is much more comfortable in here than out there; but he has not come to be comfortable.

Proportional Utopia

I didn’t want to write this entry, I still don’t know why I am. My moans and groans are either becoming really redundant, like.. get on with it already! Or you know, it’s stuff I really don’t want to admit to myself. I at least got out for a few beers last night – I hadn’t been out since St. Patricks Day (!), and was really starting to feel it. I was on standby so kept it low-key – and it’s nice to not have a hangover now!

Anyway. I’m so peeved.

I have a good deal, no real problems to speak of. So, any negative resolve just results in me being really angry with myself. This is what it’s like every day – me trying to grapple with this tragic self-resentment. On top of that I feel like I’m living in limbo, on the fence without a hint of what I’m meant to do next. Not in the way you’d imagine either. And by that I mean today, tomorrow, and the remainder of my myopic existence. It’s like I have a complete lack of direction, and can’t be anything other than painfully inefficient. I’m not saying I want to tornado through each day, I just want some clarity.

Is it unreasonable to want every day to be ridiculous in its goodness, glorious days that make you downright guilty as don’t deserve it but that can’t bother you all that much because it’s so good? It’s possible, and yet I haven’t decided whether Utopians are ignorant or necessary.

I miss terribly living in a big city. The beauty, the density, the anonymity, the efficiency.. makes me want to cry. Cities, proper ones, have a charisma – a charm that you absorb. Whatever way I choose to look at it this is still probably where I spend most of my time. About 720 hours in a month, and this month at least I spend 130 of those hours outstation. I’m not blaming Abu Dhabi for my unhappiness, because I can certainly remember being depressed in other places I’ve lived. But it contributes all the same – and harshly. The difference is that good urban form has the power to pull me out of a grumpy mood.

Tell me if I’m meant to just get on with it, make the best of it, try and travel on off days/manipulate my roster so I’m away as much as possible. Or, should I resign in the knowledge that it’s not good enough for me and shift? I’m too modest at times, I mean – why wouldn’t I deserve something better?? Issue is that I don’t see the latter ever actually happening, not at least for 2 years. Even if I wanted to relocate the options are somewhat dire. Most airlines aren’t hiring, I read even Etihad are now holding recruits for training way ahead in September! And then, speaking in practical terms, by then I’d be rather senior and the thought of pulling out and beginning all over isn’t the most attractive prospect.

On top of all that, I’m still unfathomably lonely, and it sucks.

So. I need to pull my shit together, and become an expert on budget travel, because despite discount tickets travel is still not a cheap activity now is it. Maybe Betty will give me some pointers. Compile a list of airlines that have requirements I meet and that I’d actually want to work for in the future (hmph). Go out on a limb and find out if I have an Irish or British grandparent. Marry a yankee (pfft). Get a lucrative second job so I can make real-life go faster. Unsurprisingly, nearly everything I want to push things forward with requires funding, and it’s always an amount more than what I possess.

I better have a really great time in London this week or the cards will come crashing (dramaqueen). Or at the very least, I need a quality shag. Oh no you didn’t!