Santo

Flying is a fragmentary experience (all travel is but flying especially, for whatever reason. Maybe because of how hermetically closed off airplanes are) and so it always leaves me with fragments of memories from the trip:

coming in to land at Santo Domingo, there's a lot of sun and ocean and spray. i don't like flying but this flight was great, I think i've gotten used to it somewhat. but in any case the song below is on and the crescendo is reached just as we begin to touch down. flying is so weird, The narrative of what's happening is filled with so much timeholes and no-spaces, places that aren't but that you still occupy like lines for food at an airport "restaurant" or the nook behind a pillar where the outlet goes so you can charge your phone. it's weird and terrible but also often results in all sorts of lovely things like landing on a beautiful day while it's raining and one of my favorite tracks is playing.

At JFK, there is a child who won't stand up. Her mother calls "miranda (she who should be admired, in latin)! Please stand!" but the child won't stand, they will only drag themselves across the ground or crawl even though it appears they are too old for that. "I'm done with you, I don't care about you any more" she says as if it's possible to disobey latin and not Admire she who should be admired. There's a grandmother but she is distant. the mother is clearly distraught, there's shame, people are looking. the line is long. next to me, a jewish family is talking about Trump and will they or won't they have to surrender (they say surrender) their phones. Miranda, I admire her, stands haphazardly and sits again, splaying her body against something which normally must not be touched so closely, must be ignored, it's dirty, an AIRPORT floor, do not touch it, it is filthy. She is splayed, admired.

SantoDomingo's entrace/the exit from its airport is always chaos. i'm looking for the person, paid for by my company, who'll give me a lift to the hotel. Suddenly, I have found him and now I'm moored in place as he does paper things, bureaucracy things. a family is weeping, hard weeping. i look at them and it hurts, it hurts so god damn much. i want to say something. four women, two men, weeping into each other, their tears set to mollify the walls of flesh that separate shoulder from face, cheek from collarbone, hands from hips, enveloping, encircling, looking for answers, weeping for answers. i don't know but i think someone has died(ormaybe they had to surrender their phones?)?), i suppose. they are crying very hard, i've only ever cried like that when someone had died. the driver rearrives. "time to go, follow me".

I turn to reach out to Miranda but she's weeping, drowning in golden threads which lead outwards towards the ocean, an ocean made of tears, of nospaces, of nothing-time, of endless travels, of fragments, of a collage of airports, a collage of lives, a collage of indifference DO NOT touch the floor

it is filthy