Setting out
Diary entries for Flight AC851
26/11/2015, 11:49
Expectation, anticipation, hesitation – checking (double-checking) – resolution, palpable overflowing excitement.
So much has gone through my mind in the last week. Community, friendship, family, relationships, bonds, ties, co-operation, acceptance, movement, upheaval, struggle, conflict, calm, understanding, co-existence, peace. All words to consider for BRETHREN.
I’ve begun – the piece has begun – here in Terminal 2’s departure lounge. Currently I have 13 names for the Postcard Pieces project – and already thoughts of friends and loved ones are a comfort and spring propelling me into the future. When I arrive I will learn my surroundings, sense the present moment and realise what else I have brought into the space.
Here we go!!!
14:01
The sky goes on, and on, and on, brilliantly pure. The bleed from blue to white is so gradual and smooth that there is no horizon, no sense of an ending. I am in a window seat overlooking the right hand wing, which is quite still, feeling like I am suspended in a Calder mobile. I can read 5 signs on the wing: “No Grab”, “Anti-Ice Access”, “Hoist Point”, “No Step”, “Pressure Relief Door”.
This pen is about to run out.
13:54
crossing Greenland
We are now crossing Greenland. The sky is dark but clear. Mountains and snow emerge from white miles below. I sense the unreachable, the unique, or the inaccessible made accessible; to think you could not find this view, this place, any other way.
The moon is losing its pink tinge to a rueful yellow. It must be only 5pm British time, but the lunar beacon through the wash of cloud induces sleep. Were it not for mild turbulence you would think we have stopped moving altogether.
A red light blinks under the wing, calls out to blue.
15:13
From the sky, large objects far away look just the same as smaller ones up close. Greenland resembled frost in a freezer. Now we are an hour from Calgary, the cloud has broken to reveal the earth. The Sporadic distribution of water enclosed in brown, grey and white land looks no different to a corner of a beach of soaked dark brown sand, fresh from the tide’s departure. All puddles and erosion.
Everything flattens from a height. Yet the minutest detail seems noticeable. Tributary rivers bend round thick brown land chunks, though some are as straight roads. Others snake satisfactorily.
We are definitely over human habitation now: gridlines, white as grouting, are unmistakably geometric indentations on the land mass. Snow has fallen thickly everywhere, defining and concealing everything.
15:26
First glimpse of the Canadian Rockies on the horizon – drastically different to the flat. Huge, craggy, dynamic, beautiful.
Films watched on flight:
The Darjeeling Limited
KALEIDOSCOPE (Canadian animation short – Catherine Dubeau)
Thread (Malaysian short – Virginia Kennedy)
En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron
(A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence)
16:35, on Banff Airporter bus
The ground is flat all around with only slight fluctuations. Because I can now judge distances between objects, I sense my impatience to arrive growing. From the highway, far-off tips of mountains only increase the feeling. After 15 our of 17 hours of travel, I want to be there.
Finally glimpsed Calgary and its skyscrapers – not many, but enough! Up close: houses, people. An exciting moment of our descent was when the ground ceased to shine as a whole with an oily glean coating, and instead fields became distinct from buildings, the glass of which would reflect the light like a winking eye, confirming its presence.
Thoughts are flooding in again, I need to work to keep them in check. The pen gets between the imagined and the written word. Though I have enjoyed writing – it feels nostalgic, therapeutic, creative.
Rockies in the distance
17:15, using iPhone as the light fades
I was wrong about flat, the ground ripples to ever greater degrees as we approach the Rockies. Trees are more numerous too.
I was thinking about mountains. The excitement of wanting to transport yourself in an instant to the very top of the tip that pokes into the distant sky. That longing to be close, to know the whole tangible object on all sides and feel its weight.
I feel a closeness to people; a desire to find and show something new. Who else is art for but yourselves.
I may try doing this by recording my voice too. It would be a good way to get myself working with spoken word, verbalising thoughts and listening.
“CONCERT. DANCE
40 MINS AWAY”
– this sign bodes well!
17:29
Not long to go now. Thick pines line sheer monochrome rock faces. The realisation that every mountain emerges from all surrounding it.