Flights

Hello Gentle Reader

Gas stations often bring to mind desolate landmarks, places of transience and convenience. There bright lights are a welcomed sight on the dark nights of a long haul road trip. Those well versed in long car rides and road trips know the routine of a gas station: get gas, go to the bathroom, stretch ones legs, get cigarettes if needed, and purchase some food or drink. The experienced traveler is knowledgeable about all gas stations; as they are all the same. The experienced traveler knows to pay for gas first, while the others (if there are others) use the restroom, take a short walk through the parking lot, or grab food. After the gas is pumped, they’ll use the rest room, where enroute they scan the shelves picking out items they will grab on the rebound. A bag chips, beef jerky, perhaps some candy, a bottle of water or a sports drink; maybe an energy drink or pop. They know to avoid the oddities of the gas station. In the cooler are hardboiled eggs, sandwiches, cheese, yogurt, meat slices. The cashier relays the trained monologue: ‘any coffee, pizza, hot dog for you?’ If they want fast food they’ll go to a joint, not the gas station. As for the coffee it’s the same from the early morning. But the answer remains the same: ‘just the gas, and the chips and bottled water.’ Pay and leave. One would think the casher would be delighted by the site of human contact. But they appear indifferent. They are more annoyed that their solitude was abruptly interrupted by the ringing of the door and the chimes of the gas pumps. After the departure the silence resumes its reign in the gas station; while the radio quietly plays music and advertisements for the recently reinvigorated travelers, who have relieved themselves, stretched their legs, and now munch and talk again, before some fall asleep and other rotate driving. So it continues until the next gas station, or the next rest stop, or fast food place. So the radio hums and the road rumbles.

The same is said to more worldly travelers. Airports are second homes to them. They know how to traverse the sprawling expanse. Through the white noise, of flights arriving and departing, they know where they are going. Know which gate to be at. They know when to board their flight, and where their seat is. They are accustomed to the minimal space of aircrafts, and are familiar with the processes and procedures of takeoff.  They are far sighted people. Despite the discomfort of their present physical situation, they imagine and dream ever forward. Those severely lucky and wonderful dreamers exist in some far flung future. Their ability to be absolutely bound by physical laws and their sentenced statutory present predicament, while being mentally transfigured and relocated into the end goal of the entire trip, that glimmer destination. Be it white sandy beaches, with turquois oceans; or the snow caped mountains for a week of skiing and hot springs; or perhaps its returning to one’s family, oh that welcome home with smiles, hugs and kisses, a homemade meal, and of course: your own bed, riddled with the now foreign sounds of familiarity: snoring dog, purring cat, the faint sighs one’s partner, and the anxious sleep of children, barely contained in their beds, as stars and moon sail by. Travel deconstructs the familiar to foreign, and in doing so being appreciation to the otherwise mundane and monotonous. It’s also an attempt at escaping the familiarity; to change the bland for the exotic. Be gone with the flat prairies and the farm land, and set off for a metropolitan adventure through Paris; or explore the spiritual enlightenment and multicultural mysticism of India; to the progressive futuristic and modernly chic and exotic Japan.

To travel though takes bravery. It requires abandonment. One needs to be able to relieve themselves of attachments and by extension obligations. They also fly by the very seat of their pants. They do not concern themselves with the details, but dream up bigger and brighter pictures; seeking grander and more expansive destinations. These traits are not found in my genetic makeup. I am too concerned with the minute details of life: bills, taxes, family. I find myself to insecure and consider myself to naïve to travel with assurance and self-confidence. Traveling already brought to mind the long childhood car rides of my family. My sibling and I packed in the back seat, while my parents drove in the front. Our destinations on these extended journeys were always the same; either my grandparents to the west, or my grandparents to the east. When we went west, we passed through mountains and vales, across bridges and through tunnels, down winding roads where either my sibling or I got sick; then across a lake on a ferry before finally the final destination. After a couple days, we will repeat the journey in reverse. When we traveled east, the landscape became flat, endless, expansive and increasingly sparse and sporadic. Going east, felt like we had entered the edge or the end of the world. We would stop at small towns, villages, and hamlets for gas and a short break. Each one felt ghostly, ethereal, as if human habitation was barely vital, and on the verge of turning to dust and ruin. In the event the settlement had a bar, the locals would be located there. They were farm hands and ranchers; the downtrodden, and the grounded. They sat around old tables, the floor scuffed and greasy with grime; the lighting dim and dark. Everyone was engulfed in their own worlds, telling stories and drinking beer. Others watched the television, despite nothing of interest playing. We’d leave as quickly as we arrived; passing houses looking empty, abandoned, distraught and forgotten. All that lay before us was faraway skies and straightaway roads; while on each side, never ending prairie threatening to consume us with its never-ending nihilism. We’d reach our destination after dipping into a coulee, and beneath the shadow of an exaggerated cross we’d visit. After a couple days we’d reverse our trails and head home; bed weary and appreciative of what we had left. There is something about being in other people’s homes. It’s an alien feeling, leading one to desire to go home, to be in their own bed, amongst their possessions.  

Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland’s most popular, experimental, and critically acclaimed writers. Her novels “Primeval and Other Times,” and “House of Day, House of Night,” both sit happily on my bookshelf; where they tantalizingly flirt and entice me to re-read them. Yet, every time I pick either one up, and begin to read the first few pages, I worry the enjoyment it will be less magical on a second time around—or at least on a premature second reading; so they are hesitantly placed on the bookshelf, where they are to wait for the perfect and appropriate time to be re-read, enjoyed, and appreciated all over again. I’ve known about an impending translation of her well known novel “Flights,” was impending; but soon forgotten about; before haphazardly stumbling upon it, many moons later; and thankfully so. “Flights,” is a lot like the travelers meal: trail mix; it has its nuts, its fruits, its chocolates, and its granolas. Every handful produces some unique combination of the core ingredients. While Olga Tokarczuk’s novel provides a unique episodic and fragmented novel riddled with anecdotes, stories, fragments, essays, and thoughts on a variety of subjects, but always relatable in some regard or another.

One of the greatest enjoyments of Olga Tokarczuk’s writing is her ‘episodic consciousness.’ She has described the short story as her more natural form of writing, and has taken the short stories snapshot capabilities and vignette qualities, and applied them to the novel; in which one is given varying glances at the world and lives of the characters. In “Primeval and Other Times,” it was the ability to see and move through the eclectic characters of Primeval, from the mad woman and her dogs, who curses the moon, to the priest who fights the spring floods, to the mayor enchanted and enveloped in a world contained in a board game. “Primeval and Other Times,” was a honeycomb hive mind, where the combined consciousness of all the characters, created the most beautifully baroque yet tragic novel. “Flights,” plays a similar game of fragmentation; but rather than focusing itself on a continual fictional narrative, threaded and connected by the interconnected walls, thoughts, and experiences of the characters; is further disconnected from itself in physical or fictional format, and instead is connected by thematic concerns and concepts. In this case, “Flights,” is concerned with the idea of travel—or to get more abstract: the conceptual idea and experience of being perpetually in motion, or in a continual state of transit. What this motion maybe varies; and the enclosed stories, anecdotes, fragments, narratives, and essays often treat the subject with a lightness of touch, varying from the strict adherence to the physical format, to the abstract, philosophical, psychological and metaphysical.

One of my favorite stories collected is: “Harem (Menchu’s Tale),” a story about a inexperienced and young ruler, who soon finds himself in a precarious situation. As the crusades are about the wreak havoc on his kingdom, his advisors, viziers, and sages, plot against him. Beneath their wrinkles and white and grey beards, they contemplate how to usurp the throne gain power and control, before the crusading forces come to destroy the land. All of this is well beyond and above the poor young ruler’s comprehension; but his mother sees the reality and the sad cruelty of the situation, and seeks to warn him and flee with him. Yet in the end of course innocence, naivety and even compassion, are at times points of selfishness, which only ends in betrayal on both ends. I remember reading this story, in the soft orange haze of a street lamp, in a co-workers car, while they ran inside their house briefly. The irony was not lost on me at the time: reading a novel about travel in its many faceted forms; while at the time being in a stationery state, with the expectation of transit and travel to continue momentarily. Though it would be local, the process of driving around and the eclectic and eccentric topics brought up in conversation always comes at ease as street signs whiz by and lights zip past. The rhythmic motion punctuates the dialogue.

Anatomy also plays a part in the conceptual idea of travel. We observe a narrator describe the artistic display of the dissected and deconstructed cadavers of people. Their entire bodies and organs, naked and flayed, exposing their internal wonders to the world. How the blood vessels transport blood; how a smoker’s lungs have deteriorated from the non-smokers. How muscles and bones support and flex the body’s desire for movement. We accompany a anatomist on a trip to visit the wife of a late professor, in order to procure the work and specimen of the husbands work on preservation. We listen to the lament of Ruysch’s daughter, as she watches the Russian Tsar Peter (the great), purchase and transport numerous specimens back to his northern kingdom. We observe the disappearance of a man’s missing wife and child; and their mysterious discovery, but what happened in their three day absence perplexes and infuriates the one damaged the most by the event. We encounter the ironic; such as a man who believes the bible in hotels should be exchanged for the work of the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, who was capable of describing and understanding the sad and sorry state of existence. We also shadow a Russian woman who is desperately attempting to escape her mundane existence, and follows a ‘shrouded,’ old woman into a Kafkaesque journey of trains and surreal hell; only to find there is no escaping life—be it her own or the existential concept itself. The insane old woman passes on only one monologue of teaching, and her only philosophy and anti-authority resistance through travel:

“Whoever pauses will be petrified, whoever stops, pinned like an insect, his heart pierced by a wooden needle, his hands and feet drilled through and pinned into the threshold and the ceiling […] This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads – this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free people to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences.”

“Flights,” is a wonderful novel. It’s filled with meditations, digressions, narratives, essays, stories, anecdotes, fragments, and ponderings. There is always something to be found in the novel to be savored and enjoyed. At times both terrifying and wondrous, “Flgihts,” contemplates the notions of motion and movement; the thought of travel, the concepts of time and space. Every sit down leads to a new adventure. With its episodic and vignette style, “Flights,” often appears to be disconnected, but this is part of its charm. It’s unified by theme and thought, rather than a continual narrative arch; though some of the stories collected continue they are merely a single drop or a story contained in the entire book, which is riddled with numerous digressions thoughts and meditations. It’s thought provoking, wry, entertaining and fresh. Every time I sat down to read “Flights,” there was something new and engaging to be brought up. The format itself could not fit better into a world continually vying for attention, a demand for multitasking, along with a bombardment of questions, followed by a demand for answers. “Flights,” is a wonderful mediation on the continual state of motion, the desire to escape, the restlessness of life, and the unique perspective of the individual in a world now continually awake, interconnected and aware. In the end it’s a unique deconstruction of the travel writing genre, which prides itself on a linear and precise process from point a to destination b. Olga Tokarczuk has eschewed linearity and precision, for the eccentric and the eclectic in order to depict a pixelated world, populated by the profound, mundane, surreal, and ever perplexing human experience.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary