Out of Reach

Heathrow: whiling away those limbo minutes before taking off. Every magazine and newspaper is dominated by one story: the end of the stand-off between the militia and the FBI. From the cosy confines of little England it seemed yet more evidence that America was full of heavily armed madmen prepared to die in order to pursue their own happiness. I guess if you have so many guns lying around the place your going to shoot yourself in the foot from time to time.

America. Whatever you say about the place it always seems to hover on the edge of your vision, a familiar set of images that seeps into every corner of your personal map. The promised land turned violent; a utopia turned in on itself. Built on self-confidence: rich, expansive, handing out candy to the rest of the world before the rest of the world realised it actually rots your teeth.

And now it seemed to have proved yet again that it couldn’t ever talk itself out of a fight. What can you say? I’m inclined to defend America over most criticism much as I would defend any idea that I believed in. I owe it so much, like so many pilgrims. How could I not. American art had opened my eyes to the world in ways I can never repay. From the melancholy of Edward Hopper’s city rooms with their lonely, introverted actors, by way of Rothko’s luminous gloomy veils, through to Phillip Guston’s cartoon conspirators, America’s painters had taken me in, moulded me, cushioned me, and spat me out again, a little wiser, probably a little more cynical, but reborn afresh to look again and think again at the world around me.

I guess this is a love story then.

I settled into my seat and watched my final image of England, a church spire, slide back into the distance as we pulled away from the ground. I pressed play on the walkman. The march from Raiders of the Lost Ark blasted inside my head. How cheesy is that? Here I am at the beginning of a six month journey into god knows what, and the boom boom boom of the Raiders’ theme is sending me up into the sky. Thousands of small houses all regimented and corralled into dismal estates and sad terraces began to drop away.

Everything was grey. Everything looked the same. I decided to look forward so I changed my watch to New York time five hours ahead. By mid-Atlantic I would have no idea what was happening anywhere.

I turned and chatted to Edna who was from Fulham. A big black woman off to meet her daughter in Plainsboro New Jersey. Clear Blue staring eyes and podgy hands that gripped tight her little travel bible. Edna kept trying to tell me about the Lord. I have to say I wasn’t really concentrating since there seemed to be a nude sports channel playing on the seat monitor. I usually give Corinthians my full attention, but not when its up against nude volleyball from Santa Barbara.

We all proceeded to fill out our customs declaration forms and visa waivers. This was accompanied by an informative video which cut into the naked sports channel. What a pisser.

To make matters worse the airline (you know, the Worlds Favourite One) also decided this was the right time to serve dinner. It was hard enough eating, avoiding being converted and watching the screen, without having to figure out whether to declare the Fortnum’s and Masons Tea I was bringing over. It was a foodstuff after all and from a plant, so according the form I had to put it down. I didn’t want to piss off the natives with yet another beverage incident. I decided to risk it. Edna was having her own problems. Her spidery writing playing havoc with the carefully designed boxes on the forms. She was tee-total and the dessert wasn’t her cup of tea either. I helped her out with the cake, it was the least I could do since I wouldn’t be joining her spiritual pathway anytime soon.

As we finally settled down again I plugged into the movie. Or rather I settled on the movie, since I had failed to find again the delights of the Santa Barbara Nude Beach Volleyball Festival. I looked around at everyone else who was hooked up to the seat in front of them and thought of all those pictures of dogs in laboratories furiously puffing away on cigarettes. I wonder what happened to all the gift coupons from the packets of fags? You imagine the scene when they eventually raid the homes of the lab technicians to find loads of Hoovers and washing machines and car valet kits still in boxes.

When we finally flew over the city itself and the wings dipped to reveal the skyscrapers I excitedly kept pointing and saying to Edna ‘that’s Manhattan, that’s Manhattan’. She strained to lean across me to see. I felt very knowledgeable until it dawned on me that this was NOT Manhattan at all but probably Brooklyn. I had three or four stabs at it before I actually got the real Manhattan. I eventually spotted the Statue of Liberty, a beautiful luminous green figure striding out into the bay. It was late afternoon and hey guess what?

It all looked grey. Oh well.

As we taxied onto the runaway at Newark and just as my sense of anti-climax was settling in, seven airport police cars ran alongside the wings of the plane, lights flashing and sirens screaming. I laughed. That’s more like it.

Lets face it, New York, like the rest of America is built on myths and stories and make believe isn’t it? The truth hidden in the margins. I suspected this was the same for the people who lived there too. Your life becomes part of the life of the big city, your story gets folded into the slowly turning glop of all the stories going around. You become part of the idea, the project. Part of the flag. Everything is folded into its fabric. Real or not.

And all the fragments of my story would be woven in too - real or imaginary it would be hard to tell as the lines kept being blurred,. The truth was out there but it would always remain out of reach:

Dorothy’s shoes from the Wizard of Oz - lovingly displayed in the National Museum of American History; did I really feel the presence of God while I talked to that reincarnated nun in the woods outside Seattle?; the snake woman at the County Fair in New York, now she WAS real, all the way from Birmingham UK in fact; Romantic evenings strolling through San Francisco; the blow-job on the crowded night train from the wannabe jazz singer on her way to make it in L.A.; rampaging computer generated Dinosaurs; 140 million dollar shopping malls; Insomnia in San Diego that led me to find the seat of my soul; watching the worlds only Major League one-armed baseball pitcher sitting next to some very heavily armed relatives in New York Yankee stadium.

It’s all here. And more. Infinite variety. Infinite ways to live, to be happy, to be who you want to be, where you want to be, how you want to be.

I told you this would be a love story.

Right now my cousins Billy and his wife Rennie are standing waiting for me by the arrivals gate. I hope they like tea

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