Thursday, September 8, 2011

AIRPLANE READING IS NOW LIVE!

Our new project is now live at http://airplanereading.org.

Come visit, read, and contribute a story!

And our co-authored book is now available: Checking In / Checking Out.

Monday, July 11, 2011

"Experiments with Air"

From a series titled "Experiments with Air," here are few poems at Paperbag Magazine.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Fear of Poetry @ Propeller Magazine

Today, I am a poet. But as a child I found Dr. Seuss’s books irritating, and I only checked books out of the library because I liked how they decorated my nightstand. In grade and middle school, the only thing I remember reading or writing were love letters, carefully folded in triangles like the flags of remote countries I couldn’t name. And looking back, I believe I only wrote and read those letters because they seemed to be required of my middle class upbringing.

Continue reading...

Friday, April 1, 2011

Airplane Reading @ Defunct Magazine

LET’S BEGIN. What exactly happened to the legendary Pan Am Airlines? In its 60-year run (1930-1991), Pan Am was the first to introduce international service, cabin attendants, emergency safety procedures, cockpit computers, fear of flying courses, and hot meals. Of course, some older folks remember Pan Am very well, but it isn’t much of a stretch to say that in fifty years no one will remember Pan Am except for its logos stamped onto vintage travel bags. For that matter, no one will remember the struggles and wars of the early twenty-first century like we now remember them. Last week, for example and for a reason I can’t recall, I asked my research assistant if he knew the year of the My Lai Massacre. “My who?” he said.

Continue reading...

Notes from an uneventful flying day

1. First time full body scanned (felt sort of like hula hooping without moving, and only once).

2. On my short flight from New Orleans to Houston I notice that Continental planes have "Direct TV" in the back of each headrest: "96 channels" so that one is never bored in flight! Only $6 and a handy swipe of the credit card. Continental flights pride themselves now on being "cash free." This phrase is fascinating for its blatant contradiction: it doesn't exactly mean the plane is free of cash, but rather that it is easier for the plane to generate more cash! In particular, one of the extra things you can pay Continental for is the possibility do work for them in the event of a crash landing or runway skid: you can pay to sit in the emergency row. But back to the TVs. You can turn them off by hitting the bottom left button about 10 times until the screen goes gray-black. Approximately 95% of the screens stay on the entire flight, creating a disturbing horizon for the passenger who chooses not to focus on a single screen. It didn't occur to me while on the plane, but now that I think about it, directly behind the back of my head there was a little flickering screen, entertaining someone else.

3. All the way from Houston to LAX, my seatmate watched a nauseating program that seemed to be solely about prison guards tackling prisoners and pinning them down. This took place over and over, in a variety of drab windowless rooms: a prisoner would do something erratic, and then prison guards would pile on top of the wretched soul. I tried to hold my book up so that it blocked the peripheral view of the repeating scenes of large uniformed men and women driving their knees into the backs and necks of people splatted face down on the floor. This tactic (my tactic, the book block) was hardly effective. My neck is a little cricked this morning from trying to look away. I spent a lot of time watching the tall winglet of the 737-800 dance in light turbulence.

4. Concourse 6 at LAX seemed to be under major interior reconstruction: upon deplaning I noticed that the gate area was a jumble of plywood slats, tarps, and support beams. It looked totally cobbled together. And no one seemed to think it was odd. We all just walked our separate ways.

5. On the progress side of things, there seems to be a belated postmodern new wing being built on one end of the airport. Now after a quick follow up internet search I see it is the Bradley West Terminal, opening in 621 days, I read. Here's a photo from the site:


It looks to be part Saarinen, part Gehry, part Calatrava—and entirely too late. Note how the Airbus A380 dominates the foreground: can airports themselves (the buildings I mean) really inspire people any more? I learn that the new terminal is designed by Fentress Architects, who also designed the Denver airport terminal that looks like a row of tents or like strangely cropped mountain peaks scattered on the plain.

6. On the flight from LAX to YVR, the flight crew gradually modulated their accents, from vaguely Californian to strongly Canadian. This was curious. The plane was a new, leather-seated and TV-free Canadair Regional Jet of the 70-seat variety -- compared to the Continental 737s, it felt like home.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

My brother, airport videographer

Killing time in Detroit's McNamara World Gateway...

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The Textual Life of Airports

I'm currently finishing my book The Textual Life of Airports, which will be published by Continuum this coming fall.

Here is a brief abstract:

This book is about the common stories of airports that circulate in everyday life, and about the secret stories of airports—the strange or hidden narratives that do not always fit into ordinary notions about these sites. The book considers how airports figure into a U.S. imaginary: as sites where individual identity is confirmed, as places of public display, as contested zones of private space and security, and as complex arenas for nationalism and patriotism. The book also reflects on the philosophic problems that airport narratives house: contradictory senses of time, disoriented feelings of belonging or exile, and confused perceptions of space and place. Ten chapters cumulatively demonstrate how airport stories permeate the culture of flight.

The Textual Life of Airports turns to literature not merely as one form of cultural representation among others; rather, I treat literature as a critical method for thinking about how airports function culturally, socially, psychologically, philosophically—and finally, ecologically. I argue that airports depend on textuality to a great degree, as much as for their straightforward operations (such as the daily performances and narratives that play out all the way from the check-in stand to the departure gate), as for their everyday mysteries and inoperative moments (for instance, how a thousand unique stories can be contained in and canceled out by phrases like “weather delay” and “lost baggage”).

Throughout this book I linger on how airports read, or how they are interpreted in a range of contexts. These readings and interpretations can tell us a lot about how and why humans travel by air: what beliefs humans invest in flight, and what mysteries still lie beneath the sky, on the ground.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

How to Fly

1. Seat selection. For the smoothest ride, sit over the wings. The view may not be great but youll be closest to the planes centers of gravity and lift. Also, research says that passengers sitting toward the back of the plane are 40% more likely to survive a crash.

2. G-forces. These have to do with that blasted thing known as earths gravity (the details are trivial). Most humans can tolerate 5 g before loss of consciousness. If your plane goes into a steep dive and you want to be conscious for the final impact (or recovery), make sure to grunt, shout, and strain your neck muscles as much as possible—in military experiments, these actions have helped compress arteries and keep blood flow going to the head as well as G-suits do.

3. G-spots. If you are considering sexual intercourse in the lavatory, in order to become a member of the mile-high club, I advise instead making a visit to a hotel in Denver and extrapolating the difference. On the hotel bed, or in the hotel bathroom, try to get into positions that one could only attain in the cramped seats (dont forget about the armrests), or in an aircraft lavatory (sit, stand, or kneel?).

4. Mayday. There are a variety of ways to call for help if your airplane has an emergency. The most familiar is probably mayday. But you have to say it three times—mayday, mayday, mayday—so your message doesnt get confused with another. You can also say pan pan pan or pan-pan, pan-pan but this is only for a state of urgency, not imminent disaster, and it sounds a little too childlike for a serious situation. Finally, you can say declaring emergency which means the same as mayday, but sounds perhaps too formal for the occasion. If you cant remember any of these, don’t worry youll probably do the same as most people in the cockpit as the plane goes down. The most frequently heard last word from cockpit voice recordings is, if nothing else, the most accurate: shit. (Apparently, motherfucker takes too long to say in a real emergency, and fuck alone is too offensive.)

5. Dress. In case you are in a plane that crashes, youll want to dress properly. While flying over large bodies of water, wear wool; it insulates better than cotton or polyester. Do not wear flip-flops, fur stoles, or capes, which can easily snag on the pesky edges of wreckage. Finally, no neckties (strangulation) and no pantyhose (flammable).

6. Survival. If you crash in a remote, tropical environment and may have to wander through the jungle for days or weeks, dont bother with deodorant, which can cause strange rashes or attract large insects and lead to infection and death. For mountainous crashes, remember that the bows of a thick evergreen can provide good shelter from hard snows and wind. For crashes in arctic waters, use old sea ice for water. This ice has a blue hue and rounded corners and is largely salt-free. Water from icebergs is fresh, but icebergs are dangerous if you get too close.

7. Water landing. For any kind of water landing, be careful not to undo your seatbelt right away. Its the automatic thing to do, but a lot of people have died because they released the seatbelt and then were pushed around the planes interior by the in-rush of water and got disoriented. Wait for the water to arrive and level off, then undo the seatbelt and head for the exit. If you cant swim for shore, hold onto a piece of wreckage and dont think about sharks.

8. Emergency landing. A few years ago Wired magazine ran a piece on how to land a commercial airliner in case both pilots were incapacitated (food poisoning was the example used). In varying degrees of detail, the article said to: 1) call for help; 2) set the autopilot; 3) program your approach; 4) prepare for landing; and, 5) brake carefully. This is really complicated shit, of course, so be prepared to offer moral support, in the way of grunts, shouts, and screams, to whichever passenger has been chosen to carry out these important tasks.

9. Reading. Just as airplanes connect humans through space and time, books connect humans through space and time. When you see someone on an airplane reading a book, know that they are vulnerable not only because they are on an airplane but because they are reading a book on an airplane. This is a double vulnerability on which you should look kindly. If the plane becomes vulnerable, you should hold onto this persons hand—it will become more like your own than you can ever imagine.

10. Evolution. Never underestimate all the human beings it has taken to get to you: your will to survive has a tragically long history, only a small portion of which has been in air.