Monday, Nov. 30

Birds: I heard birds. You hear things in your sleep that may or may not exist in the real world, and it’s too bad you have to wake to prove the matter. So I willed myself out of gluey realm and found myself under the sun, flat on my back, becalmed in a sea of stones – with a bird on my right hopping up and down, arguing about something. Turned my head towards the bird: mountains.

Oh. Right. Arizona. The arid, miserable, lifeless desert.

A panoramic of the actual location can be found here, if you’d like.

The trip began as they usually start: the fruitless search for clip-on sunglasses. I went to the Sunglass Hut: they didn’t have any. Why would they, I suppose. The clerk said they had them next door, at the ASAP store. They sold everything you might need. Like, say, sunglasses. Indeed: they had clip-ons, but they were the size of tractor-wheel hubcaps. From the Andre the Giant Collection, perhaps. They were so enormous they made me look like I was channeling the spirit of some bony Palm Springs dowager shuffling around with a yippy Maltese in her purse. Bought them anyway – it was that, or squint. On the plane; listened to my “Bloom” app, which generates Actual Eno Sounds, and fell asleep before we reached cruising altitude. The flight was quick – watched a Perry Mason, which made me renew my vow to devote an enormous site to isolated, dread-fraught screen grabs of Mason Moments. Also watched another show, which managed to compose shots like this in its first season:

Almost Hopperesque for Dragnet. The interesting thing about the Dragnet TV show – and there aren’t many – is how you don’t need to watch it to get it. Just like the radio show. It’s TV for the blind.

Bump, screech, full reverse, full stop. Please remain seated. Everyone stands. Shuffle down the jetway, hit the baggage area, outside to full warm glory. It was going to be an excellent weekend.

And it was. Do you care how my Thanksgiving was? No, and I take no offense. If I’d posted Thursday night with a story about a fascinating foreign guest who taught us the secret of Vodka Stuffing and later jumped in the pool and declaimed Pushkin from the shallow end before picking a fight with a cactus and requiring 87 stitches, yes, it would be worth retelling. But there are good Thanksgivings and there are memorable Thanksgivings, and I am happy to report I had the former. At the end of the day I sat out on the patio and watched the stars and the sky for two hours. Didn’t read, didn’t write. Contemplated. Sifted options, discarded illusions, did one of those middle-aged-toting-up events a man should do now and then.

Didn’t come to any conclusions, except that it could be better, and it could be worse. Razor-sharp insight, that’s my game.

A few notes from the trip: saw this sign in an airport store. Notable for two reasons:

One, the font; it’s stereofidelic, a great font but played out a decade ago. So this is retro retro, I guess. Two: the cheek of it all. The gall. Yes, an airport store will have better prices and selection than you’ll find on the plane in the air, but it’s a rather relative concept, no? It’s like saying down here, we only use one hand to hoist you by the short hairs. Up there they use both.

On the flight back we shuffled through the Comedy of Useless Shoe Removal (every time I take my shoes off I curse Richard Reid and all who spawned and sheltered him; if only there was a statue of the Shoe Bomber right there so you could hit it in the yarbles with your footwear before you put them back on) then entered a segment of the airport that had so few flights on a Saturday night the bars and restaurants all closed at 6. The flight was delayed 20 minutes. We shuffled on, took our seats; the pilot cracked the mike and said they were waiting for a mechanic to sign off on something. Nothing big, any minute now, thank you for your patience.

He said this every, oh, 15 minutes or so. After we’d been sitting for 45 minutes he said, with no small exasperation, that this was a “SNAFU.” The ground crew had not been informed, somehow, that a mechanic was needed to sign off on something in the log book. This was complicated by the fact that no such mechanic was available. Oh, they had one, but he’d gone home. They’d called him.

He was on his way.

We were welcome to leave the plane and walk around if we liked.

Groans and dismay and spiky mutinous emotions swirled around the cabin.

“Hold on,” said the Captain. “Cancel that. The mechanic is here.”

Scattered cheers. We took off an hour later. I listened to music on the way up. Yes, I failed to turn off my portable electronic device. I don’t know how that happened. Miracle we made it off the ground. Once up I was starved, since I’d timed the day’s eating all wrong. I’d had lunch at Johnny Rockets in an enormous Scottsdale Mall. Wife and child were seeing a kid’s play; I was set to meet sis-in-law at 2; had time for a burger and a calm moment in my least favorite mall in town. Unlike malls that have neighborhoods, angles, segments build around anchors, this one is just looooong, and the center has a food court with a personal density of a neutron star. But I found a chair, had a burger, then investigated the new Barneys New York store. I read a marvelous account of the store’s rise and fall a few years ago, from its humble honest you want a suit? I’ll get you a suit beginnings to its hideously expensive and pretentious fashion center makeover, inflicted by the third, or “squanderiffic,” generation of Barneymen.

They had shiny jeans made out of some sort of Japanese metal; $140 a pair. An ugly shirt for $285. Clothes no one would want sold by people who could not afford to buy them. Ugly decorations, too. All very New York, I suppose, but much of what comes out of New York these days in the world of architecture and design I find empty, nervous, unmoored, chattering, vacant. So, no, I didn’t buy anything.

Anyway: hungry. Checked the in-flight mag to see what they snack boxes contained. There were two. I wanted the first one, said the flight attendant. They were out of it. I looked at the list of things in the second box. Included: playing cards.

“Are they edible playing cards?” I asked.

She shook her head. No, not this flight.

So my supper consisted of pita chips and Toblerone and hummus. Not all together.

We landed, and I was in no great mood, because our ride had gone to bed and we’d have to take a cab. Then it was announced that the airline would be giving $50 vouchers for every passenger as an apology for the SNAFU. I brightened: hello! Why, this is new! Hoorah for Delta! Northwest would have announced that they had decided not to snap you in the arse with a wet towel as a way to express their regrets, and we would have taken it with the usual dull cow-like submission. YES, ONLY AIRLINE IN THE WORLD. I UNDERSTAND.

Home. Home! I sat outside consulting a small cigar and looked at the trees and the sky and tried to recall if I’d arrived at any conclusions a few nights ago. No. Not really. Nothing new. But now I was cold. As I said in a tweet: in Arizona I can see my future; here I can see my breath. Nice! Poetic symmetry! Except the future I would have in AZ is completely illusory, based on speculation, leaps of faith, and great bolshy quantities of uncertainty. Unless – well, we’ll see. The next two months will be interesting. Let’s get through the holidays and the next job-related sweep of the Reaper’s Scythe, and then take stock.

A minute of arty useless slo-mo of people walking around a mall: