Proverbial Twilight, Literal Midnight

[The following two posts are published late; I wrote them in places without free internet, and I wasn't willing to pay for it. Now I'm at the gym, and these were some of my thoughts on the trip.]

It’s cold in the airport.

I’m sitting at the end of the east wing of the international terminal in San Francisco, and I have come down enough escalators and flights of stairs that I’m thoroughly convinced that I’m underground, and I mistrust the dim silhouettes of aircraft which drone through the darkness past the window at the end of the hall.

I’ve never been in a terminal quite like this; I’m used to having windows on all the walls, but here at the end of the pier one has only the comparatively narrow perspective of just one wall of glass. I think a menopausal woman may have gotten ahold of the air conditioning, and the metal arms of the chairs at the gate are distractingly cold, burrowing through the sleeves of my shirt to clutch at my forearms.


From my place amongst the rigid rows of black pleather-covered seating, I can see the base of the escalator which deposited me unceremoniously on the semi-reflective stone floor in the middle of this long chamber, and I’m watching other people glide down one by one, each glancing around expressionlessly for a moment before moving in the direction of their gate.
It’s pretty quiet here at the end of the terminal. My flight for Hong Kong doesn’t leave for another two hours or so, and as it’s already rather late there is little other activity. Those who are already seated at gates are mostly either sleeping or overgrown by headphone wires, their private soundtracks sprouting out of their ears and covering their whole bodies like ivy on old brick buildings. No one is talking, and I can hear the murmurs of passing crowds from the level above, and the jarring and intrusive voice of an airport administrator who chimes in every few minutes to tell us how likely we all are to die if we accept candy from strangers.

As of about ten minutes ago, my phone finally stopped functioning, and I just had time to send my parents a brief message, and tell a beautiful woman that I loved her, before my service was deactivated in preparation for my stay abroad. For some reason, it was this final goodbye which made this trip as real as it has yet been, and as I sit here now it seems wrong that I still have two hours to wait until I cross the ocean. For some reason, it always seems that one’s departure should immediately follow the most poignant goodbyes, and as a well-trained American movie-goer I find myself unable to occupy myself through the proverbial twilight, having spoken my last lines in the late afternoon and expected an immediate sunset into which I might ride. Instead, I’m sitting in a cold airport, unable to stop picturing a camera panning back and forth between myself and sleeping faces of family and friends, an acoustic guitar playing in the background.

Forgive my sentimentality; it’s late, my body thinks it’s even later, and I am beset by that intolerable restlessness for which the only cure is to quote Tennyson.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.