USA Trip: Random Thoughts on the Plane
This is a recollection of my thoughts after my end-of-summer trip/adventure in California. It is an attempt to organize my thoughts during the flight from San Francisco to London (and eventually all the way home). The trip itself is exhaustively described in this diary.
Author’s Note: I find the gradual change in the tone of this post (from the too-artistic-and-abstract beginning all the way to the lowly Kamila-style end) to be quite hilarious, and intend to keep it that way.
We are bathing in the otherworldly feather-like rays of the moonlight. The Great Lakes, like molten silver poured over the land, reflect the full moon, sometimes shyly hiding beneath transparent fibers of the clouds. Everything is a thousand shades of black: the soft, matte, almost velvet blackness of the wing; the deep, rich blackness of the sky bejeweled by the stars (those little punctures in the fabric of our world, through which pours the light of unknown universes beyond1); the pitch-black nothingness of the land beneath — the land that I am bound to, with all the sorrows and fears, the land that now, at last, can be forgotten, for I am in the sky…
To forget was my wish. To forget and be free to think, to clear my mind and see all the way to the horizon, beyond the everyday reality obstructing my view. I was hoping to see the path out of this gray time, towards a future without fear, perhaps even one I could one day call a life worth living. How am I to know the way towards such an elusive dream? Maybe I am aiming too high, and that is why I cannot find the path…
I was not fated to be free. Now crushed under the burden of the accident and its consequences, in pain and fearing the future, I cannot bear the thought of this plane landing so soon, hurling me back into the reality I had wanted to escape. But the longer I avoid the world, the harder it will hit me once it catches up.
The accident is quite unnerving. I believe things happen for a reason and have a purpose, but I fail to see the purpose in this. Why did it happen? It is childish to ask such a question, and yet I am asking it, striving for an explanation of this mess I’ve ended up in. Pain I can endure, but the rest is much worse. The amount of money the hospitalization cost is about an order of magnitude beyond the limits of my imagination (and yes, I have no insurance). Also, I can’t remember some things I’d always known: when I try to, I get a feeling of panic that something is missing instead. I hope this is only because of the shock, since if it weren’t just temporary, I would be completely, absolutely, wonderfully screwed.
Furthermore, I am disconcerted by having made a certain decision of my own will, but being sad about not only the decision, but also the fact that I was capable of making it. And yet from my reasoning it follows that this is by far the best choice. I guess it would be just too easy if my enraged childish emotion-driven self could be comforted by reason alone.
This is all so negative. That is not how I want to remember this trip. Although I am now in pain and anxiety, I remember being hopeful during the trip. I was very grateful for the opportunity (and, of course, also for the very fact that PPershing was willing to do so much for me), overjoyed at the sight of the natural beauty, amazed that I found quite a number of kind people lurking somewhere out there (either it was a major statistical fluke, or this world may be less doomed than I had thought), surprised by the amount of good things that happened to me among all the bad things, etc. There were quite a few eye-opening moments and I definitely learned a lot. Experience and knowledge are extremely valuable, just as time to think and to stare in wonder. Although I am happy to be coming back after all the things that went wrong, I am still glad to have been there2, and tremendously thankful to PPershing.