Strange Bird

Leaving Mexico

I found this in the notebook where I keep my lyrics. I can't for the life of me remember if I had a melody for it yet, but it makes a cool poem. It is definitely from last summer.

I stared out of the peephole in my heavy hotel room door, waiting for him to walk by. I knew he’d take the room next to mine, like always. My breath against the wood grain warmed my face up to my eyes, but I refused to blink. I heard voices, my coworkers parting ways for the night mere feet away, and still I waited. After 15 seconds I began to question my sanity in this position, like trying to catch a glimpse of humpback whale’s breaching on the tip of the horizon. My breath caught in my throat and my heart stopped it’s pounding for a moment as his slender form appeared in my fish-eye view. Half a second before I abruptly turned my body to the side, as if he could see my eye watching him. I’m sure he’d seen that all day anyway.

Tina Fey

I spent a chilly Friday sitting reserve in my apartment all day, contemplating productivity, but mostly wasting the rapidly fleeting hours scrolling through blogs and watching Top Gear. I took a nap. Then at 7pm, a trip appeared on open time. 6 days in Dakar, Senegal. My name was the only one on the list. A panic swept over me, one that is embarrassing to admit. I don’t really like working international trips, I don’t like feeling incompetent, and surrounded by senior flight attendants who work these trips and only these trips constantly. 80 hours in Senegal? What would I do if the crew were a bust? I nervously start packing, and moments later am alerted by scheduling. On the phone with mom and dad, I’m not sure what I’ll need to bring, so have a small array of everything. I share a jumpseat with Susan. Former Pan Am stewardess, she is British, about 75 years old, and brassy in a way that seems utterly graceful and elegant. I love her immediately. We were delayed and oversold, and Susan and I do everything we can to calm and appease the needy herd on the plane, and we commiserate our loss of crew rest and the impending exhaustion we all no matter is creeping in. To keep each other awake, Susan and I swap stories, huddled on the 2L jumpseat, directly across from sleeping passengers. Watching them lightly snore makes me want to weep with jealousy. Susan’s stories have a similar effect. She tells me about her youth in Egypt, how she was raised on Water Buffalo milk and used to play games by the Nile. She speaks lavishly about years spent living in Beirut and Kabul, and frequent layovers to India where she was friends with a Maharashtra’s daughter. Later in life she developed cancer, more than once, and she spent a few days in hospital after drinking radioactive iodine. There she befriended the father of one of the real life men who died in "the perfect storm."