Alas, on this trip to the United States I flew in directly, which means I skipped the dubious joys of sitting in the Brussels airport, reading metaphysical literature, and eating bizarrely tiny little sausages made entirely of salt. What a shame.
I first stepped onto US soil at Newark Airport, a place I've written about before. In terms of tourist attractions, Newark Airport has all the charm and texture of a year-old chicken nugget. A change in the entry procedures has transformed the arrival process into one long journey down a narrow gray hallway. Random signs blink meaningless letters and numbers. A suburban gas station would be more scenic, but perhaps not more existential.
In the lounge, waiting to transit to BWI, I engaged in the ageless pastimes of airport travelers on layover: ogling strangers, and buying overpriced things I would immediately regret. I went to a coffee shop and ordered a "small" latte. I received a cup the size of my head. The woman next to me, who'd ordered a medium, got a cup at least as tall as my arm. Nobody dared to order a large, perhaps fearing it would have to be delivered by truck. The strangers in the airport were neither attractive nor freakish enough to be interesting. I did notice that in the absence of economic growth, Americans seem to have resorted to procreation, or at least, there were a lot more children around than I'm used to.
American advertising, judging by airport sloganeering, has lost all touch with reality. One billboard asked, "If someone said they had cancer, would you tell them to just get over it?" Meanwhile, a tearout page in my magazine guessed, "My intern is the only one following me on Twitter" and advised me to "fill the void"...with shopping.
The process of immigration racks me with inexplicable nervousness, mainly on the Indian side. I'm not afraid of being denied entry to the United States - I still have enough faith in the structures of citizenship - but I'm terrified of being stranded in India, tossed into some notorious prison and left to fend for myself among hardened criminals and the types of people who might one day write "Shantaram." I think I have my mother to blame for this irrational obsession - once, years ago, we drove to Tijuana on a lark and she spent the entire time mulling over what life would be like inside a Mexican jail. We had forgotten our passports. These were less cautious days and the border authorities laughed and waved us back through, but not before she'd painted a surprisingly vivid picture.
I also used this recent layover to question whether or not I should waste the eight hours or so it'll take to read "Fifty Shades of Grey", shuddering to notice that the book has now spawned an entire display case in Hudson Booksellers, including themed sex guides. Dear God.
Instead, I absorbed myself in Siri Hustvedt's "A Plea for Eros," a collection of essays that are among the best I've ever read and cement Hustvedt's status as one of my fantasy dinner party guests. The title essay neatly dissects some of the fundamental incongruities of political feminism and personal desire; meanwhile, the last essay - "Extracts from a story of the wounded self" seemed utterly relatable. I don't know if I necessarily agree with Hustvedt's notion of an overpowering "wound," but she was a dreamy, somewhat off-kilter child, and I get that. The Guardian review, linked above, refers to Hustvedt's view of her childhood as "over-romanticised," to which I reply 1) oh well and 2) ouch. Interestingly, the literary essays - which the critic liked - were not my favorites.
I finished the book and lurked briefly around the terminal's Jamba Juice stall, mainly enjoying the whiff of freshly-squeezed orange that wafts from every Jamba Juice outlet I've ever come across. Years of living in India, it turns out, have turned me into some sort of financial exile: neither dollars nor rupees strike me as entirely real, and no matter how much I spend on something, I'm never sure if I got a good deal or not. This, along with my recent latte, turned me off actually buying a smoothie, and after a few minutes of exchanging glances with the clerk - who no doubt found me a bit creepy - I wandered back to my cripplingly uncomfortable leather seat to wait for the airline to open my flight.
Perhaps because they are places of limbo and boredom, airports have always inspired the weirdest waking dreams in me. Mostly my airport fantasies are the usual banal stuff, but sometimes they're graphic and vaguely interesting. This time, I had a vision in which I lost my passport and had to live in the airport for days. I spent several minutes plotting when and in which order I'd hit all the food stalls in the terminal, and how I'd explain myself once I was caught.
When I got bored with that, I imagined what would happen if all of the passengers were stranded in the airport and had to agitate collectively for our rights to eat the airport food free of charge. I'd already planned a stump speech for this imaginary constituency when, anti-climatically, they began to board my flight to Baltimore.
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