Flying

Fulfilling family obligations in 2022 means long haul flights of long hours. By “long hours,” I mean because everything has already been on Netflix, each in-air hour is longer than others. The only thing that makes in-air time tolerable is Inflight Fight Club. The first rule of Inflight Fight Club is you can talk about it; what else is there to do for seven hours? Yet as much fun as it is to watch someone combat it out with a flight attendant, all this is unnecessary. And for the lawyers, this article in no way condones violence in the air, whether it is the 800th passive aggressive reference to seats being in the upright and locked position with the deadly tray table closed, or something criminal.

At the start of this year, I took a flight from London to DC. For its duration, I wore a cloth mask that I had been given for free at a bookstore — the kind of mask that Most Experts now say does not meaningfully prevent viral spread. At one point, shortly after I’d finished eating, a tall male flight attendant asked me to pull my mask up — I, of course, did as asked. A few hours later, while the lights were dimmed and I was drifting off for a nap, my mask slipped to just below my nose, the same flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a pamphlet from the airline.

I flew from Seattle down to Las Vegas the other day to watch the Rolling Stones in action. Great show, Kafkaesque journey. There are times in life when the miseries of the world threaten to engulf us, when the precariousness of the human condition, far from appearing a worthwhile and even noble struggle, seems an infinite rebuke. That’s the way I feel when I pass through a modern-day American airport. Many Spectator readers will be familiar with the ordeal. It was shortly after 6 a.m. when I boarded my outward flight, and my reporting skills perhaps weren’t at their best. Nonetheless, I made a note of some of the many exhortations, appearing in either written or spoken form, that enlivened the morning. Stand here. Look at the camera.