New Jersey, Part II

Immediately after exiting the concourse, heading toward Newark International's baggage claim with the midday sun pouring in through fixed windows, bleaching everything, it is impossible to not notice that you are in New Jersey. New Jersey is (& might always be) New Jersey. Even after technology and quantum warfare and modern evolution and post-modern evolution and popomo evolution has changed the look, the feel, the size, the climate and the dominant species of the rest of the surrounding world, New Jersey will still be in red sweat pants, talking too loudly.

If you ever find yourself in western New Jersey without a car and needing to catch a mid-afternoon flight out of EWR I highly recommend you charter a taxi service and have them pick you up not at your shitty, cheap hotel but at a local pizza shop: the conversation on the ride will be better than it would have been otherwise and you'll get to the airport with ample time to get through security. Time that is best spent dozing off in an uncomfortable plastic chair outside your gate because EWR is a lot of things but a conversational airport it is not. Nothing even close to LAX where the friendly conversation of fellow travelers can easily get you through the forever-long wait your flight; especially if the fellow traveler is an Indian man who goes by the man Dennis, owns and operates a long-haul trucking company out of San Diego and is waiting for his flight back to SD, having just arrived from India where he picked up his mother (her first visit to the USA).

On that taxi ride from western NJ to Newark make sure to pay close attention to the surrounding environs because NJ is a deceptively beautiful place, but this natural beauty is something that can easily be missed (and is completely unnoticeable from the plane).

Save for the occasional plane going down and/or hijackers, airports and airplanes are relatively safe places to be, all in all. Still knowing this, we all still usually keep one hand on our carry-ons while dozing in our uncomfortable plastic seats, waiting for our departure and it's not hard to imagine that simple observation stretched out all thin and used as a metaphor for our entire lives. It is once we are on that plane that we usually relax a little which is ironic because it is once we are on that plane that the danger-slash-risk to our selves and our property heightens but it's not like you or anyone else can go anywhere or do anything else so why worry about it anymore, just greet the person sitting next to you, give casual attention to the flight attendant/drop-down television as they/it details out the federally mandated safety instructions and cross your fingers (again easily imagined stretched out and metaphorical and etc.).

After you have arrived home (maybe just maybe EWR to DEN, DEN to SFO, SFO to EUG), if you can, at all costs avoid immediately going back to your apartment/townhouse/condo/etcetera with your plants and your domesticated animals and your silverware and your (non-drop-down) TV and your bed. Instead go get some ice cream or a hard drink or a small bite. Tell some of your stories about Dennis or the red sweat pants or the woman from Helsinki who programs computers and sat next to you on the way to Denver. Tell these stories to friends or lovers, revel in it all for just a little fucking longer; talk about the beautiful trees and the taxi driver and all his wicked NJ stories, make it all last as long as you can because once your back at home, drinking some tap water from your own glass, about to lie down in your own bed and turn out the light, then it's over.

Cross your fingers.