{ chrislip.com/matthew : blog }
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05 April 2006
{ Boarding }
I wake up at 4:45 AM, having slept for an hour and forty-five minutes. Remnants of dreams linger as I dress and get ready to leave the hotel room; my mind is fixed on the hypersensitivity to touch that has carried over from these deep, tingling, counterfeit memories. My real-life movements feel detached and foreign.I clench my eyelids over my stinging eyes as I sit on the E train. I measure the time in distance, breaking down my travel itinerary into fractions and percentages of a day. By the time I arrive at JFK, I imagine that one and a half percent of the day has passed; I always round down. I wonder if there is such a thing as organic mathematics.
Near my gate is a mass of ugly angry people. A wrinkled Chinese woman in a wheelchair sneers at me as she is wheeled past, and I turn my attention to my breakfast options. I choose a 68-gram oatmeal-raisin energy bar that will cost me $3.67. I’ll wash it down with eight percent of the water from the bottle in my bag.
I choose my seat carefully in the dingy waiting area adjacent to my gate. I sit at the end of a short row, next to a pockmarked seat with torn vinyl upholstery; I hope that it will discourage anyone from sitting next to me. I’ve barely sat down when an old Italian man sits down on the seat with the torn upholstery; he wears an Adidas track suit, and a halo of oily, wispy hair frames his tanned head.
Behind the counter, the ticket agent’s words are out of sync with her mouth movements; it’s time to board.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 18:58 :
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1 Comments:
Matthew, your writing is more real than life!
I was missing your sight unto life.
Within a month I will balso board… to Boston where I will stay two weeks to become an American in Boston.
But what did you do in New York? What did you dream about? There is too much suspense in your story…
Pierre.
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