Somewhere over Texas…
When I finally realized that the fellow sitting next to me was saying something - or, more to the point, saying something to me - I haltingly tugged on my headphone cable, awkwardly plucking the ‘phones from my ears with what I can only assume was a fairly audible pop. He was still in the midst of his delivery, not noticing that I had summarily ignored him for a moment; or, rather, too polite to mention it, or start over.
He was looking past me out the window - in fact, this was how I had originally realized he was trying to start a conversation, having seen his reflection in the window while I was looking out myself. As a result, he was leaning somewhat into my space. I’ve always been a little funny about personal space, and perhaps this could be lumped together with the various peccadilloes one is forgiven for when having grown up in New York City. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s an exceptional idiosyncrasy. The random talking, though - that’s the bit, admittedly, that I have some trouble with.
By the time that I had developed most of what I now know was my nascent base personality - that is, by late adolescence - the notion that a stranger could, and might, spontaneously start a conversation with me was an idea that teetered dangerously on the razor’s edge between the deviant and the abhorrent. In this case, though, it was no coincidence that my time spent on the streets and in the subways of NYC had left me fairly unprepared for the real-life practicality of such easy loquaciousness. It’s no exaggeration to point out that, in my 26 years spent there, such a thing simply never happened. And just for the record, it had nothing to do with the maintenance of personal space; as anyone who’s ridden the NYC subway knows, it’s socially acceptable - and logically possible - to have a stranger fall asleep on your shoulder and still maintain perfectly polite isolation.
Alone in a crowd; tranquility amidst cacophony. That’s NYC for you. But, back to my seatmate.
As he spoke, the fellow was motioning toward the landscape below, lit as it was in the post-twilight darkness with a carpet of twinkling points. We had descended on our way to landing, and so were fairly low over the suburbs east of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The pinpoint lights visible below formed a kind of skewed swirl around a small subdivision, arcing across the window’s view and off to the northeast. It was quite pretty.
“…never seen Dallas so nice,” he said. “Not like Chicago, though; all straight lines and long streets there, everywhere you look. That’s a different kind of beauty.”
I turned back to my magazine for a moment, headphones strewn in my lap, unsure what to do; slowly, though, I felt myself falling into an easy rhythm, swiftly changing gears towards a response. In retrospect, I realize that it was my normal rhythm in such circumstances, even bordering on a very obvious “tell”: maintaining a brief but pregnant silence, wearing a thoughtful look, my mind races frantically for something witty to say. With unbroken cadence, the conversation hangs on a fermata, my mind a manic tumult. It’s a totally needless complication, of course, a hopelessly narcissistic moment spent bathing in self-importance; each time, I’m probably risking a mental breakdown just trying to sound sardonic. Sickening.
“Well,” I said, with my best haughty-but-surly tone, “it’s definitely a more…organic city.” If I could have reached around and patted myself on the back in that cramped seat, I almost certainly would have. I began to stuff my headphones back into my ears, starting with the one farthest from him. After all, I didn’t want to seem rude.
He looked appraisingly out the window and canted his head, considering my reply. I was adjusting the music still streaming from my ‘phones when he responded. “That’s a good way to put it. More organic,” he repeated; it was as if he was turning the word over in his hands, examining it.
It was at this very moment that I realized, with a not-insignificant shock, that we were verging on actual conversation for the first time. I felt, not a little patronizingly, a sort of admiration for my fellow seatmate; despite what can only be described as my attempted conversational mugging, he was marvelously undaunted. Bravo, I thought.
“Well,” he said, “I guess that makes it pretty random.”
Feeling my oats, I straightened out my spine and pronounced, “There is certainly a sort of sensibility in that which most people would consider random.” I could’ve slapped myself, it was so stupid.
He continued, undaunted, “I suppose it depends on whether you’re an engineer or an artist, right? Or, something like that.”
“Or both,” I said, not knowing what I could possibly mean by that.
By this time, the plane had landed. I’d noticed that the woman sitting in the row ahead of us had been listening to the tail end of our little discussion, and now that she had the chance to turn around, she asked, “Well, which are you, then?”
I was stunned. It was the question which, inevitably, had to be asked - and, more to the point, the one I dreaded. But I had painted myself into this corner, so to speak, and so I had to face the music. I shrugged, bluffing, “I’m an engineer - and a photographer, so…”
Which is true, of course, depending on how you define either photographer or the phrase I’m a… It turns out, after all was said and done, that I’m so cynical about my outward identity that I’ll do almost anything to re-define it - almost before anyone has a chance to really find out. The bottom line, I suppose, is that these interactions, which arise out of what seem to be random circumstances, prove more valuable to me as a self-reflective moment than any autobiographical fantasy I could possibly imagine.
As we exited the plane, the momentary confusion allowed me to lose my companions in the crowd, and I was again alone. The feeling was very familiar, and not unwelcome.
