I wrote this from a fourth tier airport lounge in between a layover from Seattle to Bozeman Montana. It’s all very Pacific Northwest. Anxious racist white people jostling for position in long lines.
I landed at SeaTac from Frankfurt and mostly breezed through customs. The evident benefit of being American with white privilege again. But the undercurrent of the frustrated business traveler was visible everywhere. Travel sucks
I was just happy I had a machine made cappuccino to keep me awake with a side of carrot cake. I wrote this at 3am for me in Frankfurt but 6pm in Seattle on Tuesday. I am publishing this on Wednesday at 2pm Mountain Time as I figured I’d be too jet lagged to do any real writing after an all nighter of flying. What is time anyways.
I wanted to intake the liminal space of the shrinking middle of business travelers. Everyone and everything feels shabby. Any glamour that travel had for me is long washed out.
The cosmopolitan sadness of travel that William Gibson wrote into Pattern Recognition has come to life in the slow decay of the globalization consensus. Souls strung out on strings behind road warriors.
My entire aesthetic on the road is based on subtle semiotic cues I learned from Gibson. His Blue Ant trilogy era. A bitchy high end urban gym and laptop work bag that doubles as a weekender. In subtle grey. Aer. My shipped direct from the Tokyo Muji grey soft four wheel roller. They don’t make it anymore.
My gear doesn’t show signs of aging but everything else around me looks worse for wear. If the jackpot is coming it’s here the little dislocations all around us. The annoyances build. The trouble adds up. And when travel isn’t good for business anymore that sets up a cascade for everyone. Lucky number 888.