Take off

LA to New York ..and I’ve been up for almost 12 hours. Oh, I try to sleep on the plane but when I shut my eyes it sounds like every conversation in the cabin, including the jet engines, are going off inside of my head. So, I try polite conversation with the pretty ‘Scarlett Johanson like’ girl in the seat next to me. She works at an art gallery in New York city. Doesn’t own a car ..says she walks to work everyday. I try to imagine what that must be like. She’s originally from Los Angeles but enunciates so clearly that I couldn’t tell. No Southern California slur there. She tells me that she cannot hear the difference between the way New Yorkers and Angelenos speak. She also tells me not to believe what I see in Woody Allen movies. Well, ok ..I figure that’s because she speaks high caliber English with other New Yorkers speaking equally high caliber English. She’s reading ‘The Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand. I ask her if she thinks the characters sound like they’re giving speeches. She answers no, it sounds like normal conversation to her. Guess that’s because they’re speaking her language ..the one she learned at private schools in Hancock Park .

Flight 64 from New York to Zurich ..I’ve been up for 24 hours now. As soon as I get off the plane from LA ..I’m standing in the boarding line for the flight to Zurich. Kate says it rarely works out that way ..you usually have to run to another concourse. Now I’m hallucinating. I swear the little lady from Switzerland looks like Melissa Etheridge. I suppose she thinks I’m rude for staring ..maybe I should try to explain. Nah, I don’t want to risk getting lost in translation. It is good to hear people speaking German and French though ..just wish they’d do it somewhere other than the inside of my head. There’s a terrible pain going on in there –so I take out the big guns ..vicodin and motrin ..and start flushing my system with so much water that the stewardess stops to ask if I’m all right.