D.I.A. (Denying Intrinsic Alienation?)
The music piped into the airy arc of skybridge is as disembodying as the landscape. Indian chanting, flutes and drums swirl dripping high fructose irony over the benumbed migratory sheep toting valises on wheels. The suddenness of all this lightness and space, a gift after the dark grip and fascist shadow of Homeland Security. The lines. The paramilitary uniforms. Remove coat, scarf, belt, shoes, computer. Many plastic bins hold my life sliding away. Separate gels, 3 oz. only, into separate plastic squares. No water. No yogurt. No bean dip. Why? Because we said so that’s why. Stripped bare in an endless lineup, watching helpless as my belongings disappear in a herd through the evil conveyor belt of radiation. Big fucking brother thinks he can see inside my heart. No way, or they’d never let me fly.
“Miss!” some guy is calling, “Miss!” I look around and there, inside a glass box like a giant Barbie on display, a middle aged white dude, tapped to get my attention. “I think my cell phone’s in with your shoes”. Behind him, uniformed goons are running wands over another freedom loving man’s body. “Miss…” He speaks to me as if nothing- him in the box, me in my socks, the raidioacitve wanding, or his words- is strange. “Nope. Not with my shoes.” I silently wish him courage and move on, towards the skybridge.
What won’t we put up with in the name of safety? What terrible humiliations will we not grow accustomed to in order to fall for the national lie that these ridiculous acts and props can keep us safe from a few centuries of karma coming down like steely rain? Everywhere around me people are re-lacing their shoes, putting their shit back together, comforting their children, being scoped and wanded . A display of adaptation- our most dangerous superpower.
“The security code has been raised to orange. Please report any suspicious behavior..” I want to do tai chi. I have 2 hours before boarding. I find a space that seems out of the way and is, ironically in front of the Gold Star Hideaway, or whatever they call the reserved space for the privileged rich and military personnel. Too much traffic here by the elevators, but I persevere, just to block their smooth transition, just to challenge them to adapt to me. I move on after the first third, comforted by the thought that for sure I’ve made it onto their film of the day.
Under the video of “The Extreme Ice Survey”, I stop. I always to, to pay homage to this nightmare unraveling. No one ever watches, it seems, but me; a full wall screen of the glaciers of Antarctica, time lapsing, collapsing, unavoidable. No way to adapt to this. But they do. On the screen, glaciers collapse, travelers pass, eyes averted. I close my eyes. Sink into my feet. Begin. Heels together, bend knees, shift weight into the left leg. Glaciers surrender in unreal time to the urgent flow of music. Arms lift as if drawn by invisible pulleys. Gateways of wrists, shoulders, elbows open. Beside the screen is a mural of Antarctic ice fields. Shift weight. Turn. At the lowest left hand corner, a tiny human figure in an orange anorak faces the vastness, like science. Hold the world. Like a human. Step out. The music flows all round me, relaxed, I say inside, relax. Am I holding the world right? I face the ice, step, follow my hips swinging slowly to the corner. Face airplanes taking off and landing out the wall tall window. Nobody stops. Nobody slows. Adaptation is instantaneous. The airplanes zoom off with the false speed of glacial collapse, time lapse, the madness of motion, relax: what is real? Push. Grasp the sparrow’s tail. Urgently the music tumbles as ice tumbles, urgent as planes speeding off, as unseen departure times near; I slow it all down. The melting poles, the speedy people, the jets blasting off and back again. Lift. Turn. Single whip. “The terror alert has been raised to Orange..” I feel the bubbling well. Sink my roots, 3 pins in each foot. Feel the dragon. The ice is clean as prophesy. The story becomes the future. The sign beside the streaming video images says “We believe that global warming is a non-partisan issue”- How did this come about? How did they get to put this here? Did they win an Irony Grant? Them and the chanting tribes in the skyway bridge? White crane spreads her wings. Brush knee, shift weight, push. 70/30. Feel the air under my hands. Feel the sadness of the beginning of the end. Stand in the middle like this. Invisible. Push. Turn. Play guitar. Now, meditate freak, go with that energy of otherness. It is the only thing bold enough to survive here.
Moving on, sideways through the world, past cameras and badges and ceaseless warnings. “Please report any suspicious behavior..” I am suspicious as anyone in my wild last-night’s-show-hair, my made up eyes and striped sweats and tai chi rooted trunk. I look for a phone to call Bobbie. How suspicious is that? Find one. Embark on a payphone terrorist action. My phone book is an actual phone book. I don’t know the time and have to ask strangers- have to talk to strangers, try to make eye contact. How suspicious… Try to function in the narrow wide world of U.S. culture without a cell phone. There are no public clocks anymore, and no public phones. Convenience for some destroys convenience for all. “The threat level has been raised to orange” Liars! It’s been orange for 9 years. “Please report any…” I look for an unflushed toilet in the women’s room. Know this means they’re broken and one piss won’t cost me 5 gallons. Suspicious. I stand before the automatic faucet, hands obediently extended, praying for water. One after another, on down the line, no response. Am I doing it right? Shit, I hate this. One responds. Try to brush my teeth. Try to spit. Response withheld. No water when you need it.
Suspicious means you don’t blend. I don’t blend. But somehow, I am invisible. Strange metaphor of this culture’s denial. What’s different should stand out. How suspicious that I am invisible. Me and the glaciers and the un-flushed toilets. Unassimilated. The rest pass by, nibbling the sugared glass. The smell of roses trailing dappled velvet. All the illusions jostle like the lines of passengers trying to survive security. A greenhouse is not a garden. A garden is not a jungle. This culture is a blender. The engines of convenience and custom whirs us all into it’s brutally indifferent blades, and if you don’t grab hard, hold fast to the ragged edge of the farthest wall, you’ll be shredded by the jagged teeth and made smooth. Homogenized. The roar is all there is. But the billboard images surrounding you in the spinning ‘tank are happy shiny people. Cognitive dissonance is a clang that completes the 4th wall and holds you pinned to stillness and obedience beneath it all. Waving flags with your shoes in your hand. Standing inside a glass box for all to see, here where no one sees. Please report any suspicious behavior. Man, oh man, have I got a report for you!
Written by Oak
