We transfered planes in Chicago and found our new seats but one of them was missing. Only the metal frame was there. Apparently someone had puked in that seat and they were replacing it. The Mexican attendant asked if we wanted her to spray a product on the arm rests to combat the odor. We decided to stick with the faint scent of barf. The oversize couple in front of us put their seats back immediately on take off and our quarters lost half their cubic space. The guy bought a pizza on board and his wife had a big sandwich and a macaroni salad on her tray table in a matter of minutes. The stewardess served coffee and gave us a napkin that read, “More legroom than any other US airline.” I asked if this was a joke and she said, “Totally.”
The two in-flight movies were so lame we could glance up every fifteen minutes or so without the audio and not miss a thing. My wife was reading “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and I was reading Susan Sontag’s rant, “On Photography.” “Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world—all these elements of erotic feeling are affirmed in the pleasure we take in photographs.”
We took a walk in Bel Air and I grabbed this poignant shot of tourists on a star hunt.
great tags. Your pic reminded me of a great movie — Star Maps (where a vision of Cantiflas says “You only need three things in life, something to do, something to look forward to, and someone to love.”)