Reel Expression

Jet lag sucks. It is one of the most disorientating things you could possibly do to your body. If you’ve never experienced it before, count yourself lucky. I really don’t think our bodies are meant to move that fast and when you arrive, your entire consciousness takes at least a week longer to arrive. After a particularly horrible set of flights, it takes even longer. William Gibson said it best in his book Pattern Recognition, that it feels like your soul is still trying to catch up.

Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now.

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

I walk around in a haze. My appetite is lost and yet I want to eat. I’ve been sleeping 12 hours a night and yet still almost needing to pass out by 6pm. I force myself each day to stay awake until my usual sleeping time, but my body usually wins around 11:30pm. I’m just now starting to get some mental capacity back.

From door to door, it usually takes about 18 hours to get here. But with my past horrible experiences with different airlines and their lack of any sort of padding in the seats, I went a different route with Delta. Big bloody mistake. Ok.. yes the seats were more comfortable so my bottom didn’t start the extreme pain until 6 hours into the 9h 30m flight. You’d think since I sit on the captain’s chair for 12+ hours a day that I could handle the flight. It must be something to do with the cabin pressure and the extreme height exerting more gravity on your ass. Possibly added that the contours of the chairs just aren’t meant to actually be comfortable.

For the past 4 years, I’ve flown on many different airlines but each one has had the personal video screens on the back of the seat. What that means is that they can have various movies to choose from, including the “kid safe” crap so the real films aren’t edited out. However, Delta is still years behind with the large screens hanging down. Crap “kid safe” films.

All that would have been livable had things turned out differently in Atlanta. When I purchased my tickets, I was to fly Heathrow -> Atlanta -> 2h30m layover -> Omaha. About a month ago, expedia sent an email saying that my flights had been drastically changed and that I had to call them. What is drastic to one, is not drastic to others. They had moved my 1pm Heathrow flight back by 5min which knocked me out of being able to take that, since you have to have a certain amount of time to get through customs. I spent 2h on the phone with them while they tried to get me to fly London -> Ohio -> Denver -> Omaha. That’s not what I paid for. Then they tried to get me to change airlines and add $500. Finally they found a flight that left London at 11am and I had a 2h longer delay. Fine. Book that. Wish they would have told me it was out of Gatwick instead of Heathrow. Could have missed my flight had I not checked on Delta’s website.

Ok.. so I get to Atlanta, jet lagged, tired and cranky and the insane airport doesn’t seem to actually have an exit. I leave customs, give my check-in bag to the airline again, follow the exit and I’m bloody well in the terminal again. How the hell does one find a place to smoke when there is no exit? I thought I was in hell. Actually if there was a hell, the Atlanta airport would be it. It’s these never ending corridors that look exactly the same and no exits. Finally asked someone about how to leave the bloody place and found out that you could smoke in a glass box in each concourse. Fucking hell.

I smoke a couple of rollies, find my gate, smoke again, and have dinner. The place was so packed that I had to share a table with someone else while I attempted to force myself to eat. About 20min before I’m supposed to board, I go to the gate to see they had changed it to another concourse. Run over there, find a seat and wait. And wait. And wait.

Plane was supposed to take off at 7:45pm EDT. Delays. Plane isn’t there. 9:45pm we finally board.

10:30pm - we are still sitting on the runway, the air conditioning is broken. Do you know how hot and muggy Atlanta is in July? I’m telling you… the place actually is hell. Pilot comes on the intercom and says that the plane is having issues… one of the hydrollics is out and we are going back to the gate. Right when we are about to deplane, a lightning storm starts and they can’t work on it until it passes. I shit you not.

11:45pm - storm has passed and plane is fixed (hopefully) and we board again. Air conditioning is still broken however. I pass out.

12:45am - after sitting on the runway for an hour waiting in line to take off, we finally do.

1:45am CDT (2h later) - land in Omaha.

I finally got to my parents house at 3am CDT/9am BST 26 hours after I had left.

It’s almost a week later and I’m still in pretty much of a haze. All I’ve really been doing is watching movies and swimming. I had planned to get the first set out last Friday or Saturday but I’ve been far too out of it. Since I’m feeling more myself, I’ll be working on getting that out later today or tomorrow at the latest.

Cheers
Luth