missed the shuttle
A few weeks ago, I got off a plane and instead of going straight to baggage claim, I stopped at a table and sent an email. When I got up, I realized I wasn’t in the main concourse. The plane had landed at the remote terminal. And I’d just missed the shuttle out.
I waited beside a group of crew members still in their uniforms with their tiny TravelPro suitcases. Their shuttle came several minutes later. I wasn’t allowed on it. The security guard must have called someone to pick me up. It took another several minutes. I was expecting a golf cart or a truck, but the vehicle that arrived was huge. Big enough to fit everyone on the shuttle plane that arrived. Maybe it felt huge because I was boarding it alone. It was just me and the driver.
If I had taken the shuttle when I was supposed to, crunched between the elbows of strangers and carryon suitcases, I might have spent the time glued to my phone. But since I had a whole shuttle to myself, what could I do but look out the window.
It was night but the tarmac was illuminated with spotlights and lights from vehicles and planes. These giant jets were taking off real close on either side of me. I’d never seen a plane that big up close at lift off. The shuttle ride took about fifteen minutes because the driver had to stop pretty regularly to let these jets pass into the runway or let other vehicles pass. But I didn’t mind because I was stunned by what I was seeing out there.
I remember thinking the driver was young and handsome and that maybe he had aspired to be a pilot but ended up doing this instead. But I don’t actually remember the driver at all.
I also remember thinking about what a cool job he had, to get to drive through all of this, night after night. Most of the time I experience airports like nonplaces—as borders and barriers between me and my destination—but sometimes, say, a flight gets delayed, I’ll notice how an airport operates like its own city. Hospitals are like that too. Most of the workplaces I’ve experienced—from restaurants to offices—have been intimate like fucked up families I’m stuck dealing with or alienated from; I’ve always wondered what it must be like to experience a city-style workplace: where you are part of the rhythm and have a defined role to play in a section that also has a defined role. I noticed when I got off the shuttle, how many people in hi-viz tabards there were at various points. Because I was alone, they each said hi to me and directed me where to go.
The whole experience left me thinking about how one tiny action can go differently—someone can stop to send an email—and it can throw a process off. And that throwing a process off isn’t always a bad thing. I got to the baggage claim alright. I was, by that point, about forty minutes late, but the airline held my suitcase behind the desk. It all worked out, and plus, I now have this memory of how I accidentally went on a safari through the airport at night.
This is the second time I’ve had a vivid and life-giving experience at LAX. The first was on July 4, 2007. I was traveling to LA for the first time. I was reading William T. Vollmann’s The Rainbow Stories, a book I have yet to revisit but my foggy memory and distant appreciation of it has fueled much of my writing lately.
So I flew in on Independence Day because the ticket was cheap and what I got, before I landed, was….fireworks. But not fireworks that I knew before: from the ground, looking up. I saw fireworks out of the window as little sprinkles above each neighborhood. I was looking down on the fireworks, which from that vantage point, were candy-colored twinkling explosions beneath me in the sky. The way that houses look flat and small from the air, well I saw that, and above those little houses, little fireworks. From my window, I saw patchworks of communities spreading out to the Pacific Ocean. Every neighborhood, every suburb, every community that I could see had these little fireworks going off beneath my feet.
I came home to postcards from people thanking me for voting and telling me to tell five friends to vote. It was a couple days before the election and these postcards had struck me as ominous. I live in California now. How did the Democrats have that much volunteer labor and nowhere to direct this flow of energy and enthusiasm than postcards to Californians who already voted?
I rewatched Take Shelter last night, a movie I like and admire rather than love, but I admire quite a lot. Along with Wendy and Lucy, I think it’s one of the best films to express the bewildering despair of the Great Recession. You can’t really set out making something about the now, it has to happen. And for both of those films, it really happened. This is an obvious one, but I think ten years, when we try to put our finger on what was in the air, around this time, well, Killers of the Flower Moon is going to one of those works that help us remember. And Nightmare Alley.
Two podcasts you should listen to if you have the time, which, in very different ways reveal where the seams of our world are splitting:
The Dig’s interview with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Democratic Dealignment, (especially when Taylor and Daniel Denvir talk about ways the left alienate the working-class too)
The Wall Street Journal Reports on the current state of supply chain crises through the lens of grocery store distribution. How a new granola gets on the shelves at Whole Foods is a lot more complex than you might have thought
If you are in LA on Dec 14th, please come out to The Poetic Research Bureau for the first of a new event series I’m putting together called Quarterly. You can find out a little more about the event and this series at the website: quarterlyhappensquarterly.com
Something that often frustrates me about books is how siloed the community of authors and readers can be, and I wished for a space where books can be part of broader culture including the culture of science and technology. This is my attempt to create this space, inspired by conversations I had with the artist Jasmin Blasco, who is currently working on an incredible installation interrogating AVs.
It’s also a way for me to stay curious about the world. Something I really need right now.
There will be at least four more of these events. Four in 2025, for sure. Please reach out if you might want to get involved or subscribe to the mailing list.
And thanks for reading.