hate/love

In one day as I was flying to Cleveland I rediscovered intense hate for one thing and intense love for another. They're not related.

I freaking hate flying and almost everything associated with it. I fly a lot, and I HATE airports. I've had practically every bad experience possible and those I haven't had, I'm sure I will. I've been in two-hour security lines (pre-9/11) that make you miss your flight so that you're stuck in the airport for six hours. I've been sent back home from the airport. I've lost luggage, I've sat in a plane waiting an hour for a storm to pass so that we could move up a hundred feet to the gate (thus missing a connecting flight), I've been given a boarding pass to Austin instead of Boston (and once I cleared that up I had to retrieve my luggage that was also routed to Austin), I've spent 15 hours at the airport/on planes for a 5 hour flight, I've switched planes due to malfunctions. Like everyone else, I've had the crying babies and obnoxious kids and vocally grumpy passengers and seat-kickers and lean-backers-even-while-you're-eating. I hate the recycled air and the loud, fast flush in the bathrooms and the prevalence of incompetence. I feel like such a horrible person when I am easily annoyed at someone for being incompetent, but I can't stand it. I've lost expensive things on airplanes, like my retainer and iPod. And though this is of course my fault, it contributes to my bitterness.

One of the things I hate most is how airports desensitize people. The staff rarely cares about the passengers, because to them everyone is just another cranky customer with the same problems as everyone else. They can no longer see why some hours at an airport versus some hours with someone you haven't seen and won't see for a long time is a reason for some pain. Over time the urge to place blame on them for your woes snuffs their natural empathy. I do know there's nothing they can do, but I do think that if the woman behind the counter was actually sympathetic when she tells me my flight that I paid for months in advance is overbooked and I'm not getting on this plane even as I can see it outside the window, I wouldn't feel so defeated. Instead, I'm just another, and to the woman behind the counter, why risk sympathy when you'll likely just get anger in return? I've tried combatting this with politeness and the kind of empathy I'd like, because I think people do respond, but honestly I'm just not always that patient and it's hard to be nice first if someone else isn't all that nice to you.

My hatred of airports/planes is so pure that it overcomes my natural urge to romanticize such imperfections with their counterparts, like the beautiful views and how you're covering all kinds of distance without feeling any motion and how you have long stretches of time for music and books and the conversations you have with strangers and how I actually liked the food back when they gave it to you and that one time I acidentally went to the international terminal to pick someone up and saw people standing around with signs and flowers and so visibly eager to see loved ones from afar. I like these latter things about flying, but for me they are distinct from the experience of flying. I like them as individual things, and I hate flying as a whole. It's the difference between a good thing with imperfections, which is how I see most things, and a bad thing with some saving graces.

Enough about that.

I didn't bring enough to read during my delays last weekend, but I had a pocketbook Chagall and I was too tired to read much anyway so I just looked at his pictures. I freaking love Chagall. I don't know much about art, so it's not like I have a whole lot to choose from when I say he's my favorite, but for what it's worth, he is. I love how he captures such real emotion with such dreamlike images, and how his vibrant colors make you think that's what life really looks like. I like how people are often upside-down or at odd angles and how he gives them unnatural curves that seem natural. One of the things I love best is how he makes people fit together--how they float, intertwine, connect in some way. One of my favorites is The Birthday, where a woman is leaning forward on one foot, like she's drifting upwards, and a man is floating above her, kissing her. They're back to back, so he has to stretch his head 180 degrees (impossible) so that he can be face to face with her. I also love his windows and the views into other worlds, how these views also happen when there are no windows. I like his art because you could think hard about it if you want to and there are deeper things that I probably don't get, but you don't have to think too hard. It's strange and beautiful and you can just look at it to get that. You can see that it's not exactly simple because it's different and odd and there must be some reason and technique for how he gets you to feel this way--it's not just a pretty scene but something he does to it--but still, it is simple.