It is painfully clear to me that the methods of modern travel effectively reduce us – or at least our behavior – to pathetic, primeval forms. However self-actualized we may ordinarily be, once we board the airliner, we lose our balance atop Maslow’s hierarchy, and plunge right past ego, social, and security, and crash headfirst into physical. Distilled down to our essentials, we eat, sleep, and eliminate, with a few stabs at reading in-between. And even then, these simple acts are debased. We pick through so-called snack boxes, eating garbage we never touch on terra firma; we endeavor to snooze sitting straight in seats ill-designed for any imaginable purpose; we pee into pitiful pots: low, metal, human waste vacuums that undoubtedly stir feelings of envy in James Dyson himself. It breaks my humanistic little heart to see us do this to ourselves.
A thick layer of turbulence, such as the one I experienced this morning, turns the pathetic into the truly pitiable, particularly where airborne egestation is concerned. If only I’d been readied for this exigency early in life; if only one day Mr. Grady, my fourth-grade gym teacher had said something like:
Okay boys, we’re gonna take a break from floor hockey to practice peeing into airplane toilets. So everybody get up on the balance beam, unzip ‘em, and pee like there’s no tomorrow. Now, while you’re whizzin’ away, I’m gonna shake the beam a little bit this way and that. Just do your best.
Alas, this lesson escaped the curriculum of my elementary education, and so midstream, as it were, today’s turbulance jerked me forward, yawed me into the sink, and lurched me back, halfway out the door, where flight attendant Corrinne was eating what appeared to be a tortellini salad. Only by the grace of God did said door hold; for more than a fleeting moment I imagined myself awkwardly (to say the least) planted in Corinne’s lap, pants open and willie skyward. Perhaps on the flight home I’ll sit rather than stand.
While I was jostling about back in the lavatory, my books up in 17-C were suffering similar insult: Lawson, McLean, Carter (Sebastian), Bigelow, and Frutiger all ended up underfoot, underseat, or in the aisle, affording my confreres, however briefly and unexpectedly, their first taste of fine typography. I had Kinross with me as well; I felt as though I needed a dose of Unjustified Texts for solace and scholarship. Now there are some who speculate openly on the length of the stick that ostensibly protrudes from Kinross’s ass; not knowing the man personally, I cannot say for certain, but I find no evidence in his prose for a stick of any dimension whatsoever. He is an exceedingly thoughtful and well-informed writer, and were I ever to possess half his talent I should be very proud indeed. Kinross, I might add, was the only volume amongst the half-dozen that lay impervious; it remained square on the seat, precisely where I had left it. Perhaps it’s symbolic.
From the letterforms to the loo and back again; such is the journey of a typographic aficionado. Welcome to TypeCon2006, day one; see you tomorrow.