To Paris From The Edge of Eternity

For several days I have had a rather nagging worry that I would not make it onto my return flight to Atlanta from London, to the degree that I was even sleepless a couple of nights. Quantum physicists have been confirming for a good while now that time is anything but linear. Plenty of theologians in many religions long ago figured this out. Some of us are slower at this than others. Today I got yet another lesson in the reality that the human spirit is not bounded inside of linear time. It was a little over a year ago that the pain of Harold’s suicide blasted into my consciousness two hours BEFORE he decided to exit this world. My lesson today on the nature of time was one I don’t wish to repeat any time soon.

After four rather grand weeks with Hans and Yne in the beautiful Brabant region of the Netherlands, it was time for me to pack it in and give them their house and lives back. It was thus with mixed feelings that Hans dropped me off at an airport roadhouse to spend the night before a flight the following morning to London. Hans has been like a hybrid brother/father of unbounded generosity to me, and this has been a delight beyond words and of great consolation to one who has never known a real father. His dear wife Yne cooked me all those fabulous meals of happy times I never knew as a kid. I really didn’t want to be in this hotel eating by myself. It was too much like my ‘normal’ life.

After a somewhat fitful and expensive night of sleep, I did manage to get to the Schipol airport in time for my flight to London. I arrived early enough to buy breakfast in the airport, a meal that almost proved to be my last supper. The plasma screens indicated the London flight was delayed and a mist of apprehension passed over me. Eventually we loaded the plane, which had finally arrived from wherever, and I took heart in the fact the clouds in the sky looked fluffy and friendly, and not mean.

I always ask for a seat far forward on the leading edge of the wing, thus having a combination of a clear view forward of the wing and the best possible ride without paying the king’s ransom for the front cabin. I figure all the seats arrive at exactly the same time so never could justify the cost of paying 2-300% more for the hot towel and extra leg room. The wine and food is free even in the cheap seats. And so it was that I was in row eight directly next to the right engine intake of a 737 twin jet. After an ordinary acceleration run and seeing the Dutch landscape drop away for several minutes, I wistfully thought of what I was leaving behind, those things all the king’s treasuries would never gain me. We headed out over the North Sea.

I was instantly snapped out of my introspection by an explosive noise. After some six hundred rides in every conceivable kind of commercial aircraft, I know what the normal sounds are. This was certainly not one of them. Neither was the acrid smell that came into the cabin. After 9/11 and the myriad terrorist bombings of the past three days, I suddenly entered into another dimension of time. The cabin attendants rushed down both aisles pulling down all of the overhead bins looking for evidence of an explosive device. The fellow next to me muttered something about soiling himself.

Surprisingly, the plane maintained attitude and the pilot came on the PA to calmly comment on the fact that we were going to attempt to return to the airport. He calmly said the engines still seemed to be working from what he could tell ‘up here’. ‘Back here’, I knew that something bad had happened in that turbine six feet from me. We slowly circled the North Sea, presumably to dump fuel so there would be less Jet-A kerosene to add to the excitement if the landing proved less than normal. The whole world learned on 9/11 what Jet-A kerosene used incorrectly does. I, and I suspect everyone else, held our collective breath to see what would happen when 200,000 pounds of aluminum and humans are reunited with earth at high speed in less than optimal circumstances.

That Boeing 737 did manage to make it back onto the ground. That turbine did not blow out of its casing and we were able to avoid seeing the fields beyond the end of runway. We were kept on the plane while it was determined that a very large bird had been sucked into the turbine outside my window. I will spare you the physics and possibilities that can occur when one throws a three-kilogram object at three hundred miles an hour into a very fast-turning jet turbine made of very brittle hard alloys. If one blade is bent or broken it can set up a cascade and the whole of the turbine assembly can in a second completely disintegrate, with catastrophic results for the airplane attached to it.

Life is astounding in how tenuous it is. One of the most precision-made and delicate inventions of mankind did not blow apart when six pounds were thrown into it. I did make it back onto terra firma. I was not in Chechnya or Saudi Arabia, yet hundreds of others this week did not experience a safe passage through time in those places. I sit here in Paris at 4:30 PM Thursday afternoon, astounded that I am here. It is the last place on earth I ever dreamed I would have been today. People come to Paris to climb the Eiffel Tower, gawk at the smile on the Mona Lisa, fall in love. They sure don’t come here to ruminate about physics and why they are still alive while others are not. But so it is. I did not become fish food in the North Sea today.

I have not felt so far from home since the time when I was in the occupied Jordan desert in 1971 and had the experience of having two fighter jets making a bombing run near some ancient archeological excavations I happened to be. Fighter jocks in wars don’t worry about things like tourists looking at old bones in ancient monasteries. Those of you that know me well know that flying is a bit like a crap shoot for me. I do it because it is the only way to get to paradise sometimes. I sit here on the opposite side of the planet knowing that I am going to have to take a very deep breath, turn around and climb back onto two more of those aluminum and titanium catapults, and face my inner fears.

Here goes.