post-bourgeois transcendence …

I was traveling back from Scandinavia through Frankfurt and it was at the airport that I was having a meal in the nearly empty restaurant ( there were only a few other customers) whilst waiting for the flight back to London. I had eaten breakfast in the hotel in Stockholm in the morning, but after the late morning meeting had traveled to the airport and failed to eat lunch because of all the rapid transfers from metro to train to plane. Here though in Frankfurt waiting for the next flight, I found that I had an enormous appetite and so was sitting at a table eating steak and frites, some salad and a Damson sorbet. On the table was a small glass vase with a small selection of flowers. Why would you put a vase of flowers on this small table I wondered for a moment, but the answer was obvious they dreamed of working in a city restaurant and were practicing. That was the boring everyday conclusion i came to. In the early evening I was drinking coffee and watching the planes taxi to the runway and take off. An hour long video call watching the planes over the screen. To see the world from an airport terminus is not merely to see it from afar but also to see it differently. Through the sheets of glass across the surface details of concrete, grass, terminals and satellite terminals, enormous hangers… the planes wait, the crew wait, the passengers wait, the freight waits. The airport spreads to the horizon, a housing estate. A man is skinning a small deer hanging from a tree in a garden, he is naked beneath his butchers apron. To leave this place and return home is pleasure. People are walking around loading luggage and cargo onto planes. They are working in the airport. .. The flight is called. I’m sitting ten rows back from the entrance, in front of it beyond the flight attendants working area is the business class seating. The doors gave duct tape over the cracked plastic. The plane taxis around on the runways and then with creams and roars rakes off. i can hear the wheels being stored. Ten minutes after taking off a woman nine rows in front of me starts groaning… They ask if anyone has medical skills, an accident and emergency sister from a London hospital, takes control. The medical kit is rusted shut. The flight staff are visibly relieved that the sister… After five minutes she tells them that the woman needs hospital immediately. Ten minutes later they tell us the plane will be landing at South Thalia, a small airport on the coast. Lights, ambulances, we disembark as they clean and disinfect the area around the seats… In the cafeteria they open especially for the flight, inside the airport, more duct tape, plastic chairs, its a clear night with a full moon. I wash my face and leave the airport, my phone and take a bus into the adjacent town…