ABSURDITY AT O'HARE

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD?
Blame it on the French.   Seems this approach to typifying life began with them.  On stage every thing is more than a little weird (clocks run backward and other strange effects come and go).  It all looks and sounds as of a species of insanity.

Sometimes this sense of the absurd  forces into the 'normal', when it really does assume a sense of the insane.  Perhaps to doubt the 'normal' is upsetting...'Am I loosing my mind?'

Here I am in Chicago Airport, waiting for a plane to take me to las Vegas so that once there and half a night to run, another will take me to San Francisco.  Does seem a little odd but, at times, airlines must suspend the simple approach in order to get everyone where they want to go, more of less.
After a day or so, I will board a flight to get to Sydney.  Three days later, I will catch another flight to get to Adelaide.  A week later, another flight will take me to Canberra.  Bliss, oh bliss, I shall catch a train to return to Sydney...how normal that will be.  Then it will all run backwards and, a month away, I will be back in Corning.
As Bill Clinton once confessed, I am doing this because I can.  Does seem a profligate use of energy, not to mention many other resources.  Is it not amazing that i can do such a thing?  The rationale?  I get to see family and friends I have not seen for more than two years.  Hey...I am coming up to 78 years. who is to say that I will be able to do such in a year or two more?
According to its magazine, this one airline completes almost 6000 flights a day, to places all around the globe. Perhaps as many as six million people are in the air at any one time!

Wait for it...When I was a young fellow, this was not 'the normal'.  Very few traveled internationally,  Most who did went by sea (six weeks from Australia to England); only the very rich flew (big old flying boats, seats on which cost a mint).  For most, the best chance to travel was to go off to war.  The odd friend to two who sailed away would only do this once, on their return they would settle down, get married, have children, resuming the mundane.

Amazingly, since 1985, I must have flown across the Pacific thirty or so times, not to mention other trips. So, is this not absolute absurd?

In my grandfather's time, a person who emigrated rarely returned to the land of their birth.  One said a final goodbye, shedding copious tears, then necessarily content to send and received letters to maintain contact with family and friends 'back home'

The absurdity to descends on me, sitting here in the airport, has a greater dimension; I wonder how to express it.

At base, flying is a wonderful thing.  I should know, a thousand hours or so in gliders and small planes...I have been so fortunate and had experiences, some a little hair raising, that beggar description.  There is a core of self-indulgence in this, but I would have it no other way.

But this business of huge airports, hordes crammed into tens of thousands of flying cylinders, the security rigmaroles, the noise, the inconvenience,  the sheer in humanity of it...is certainly absurd.
Not the only absurdity by any means.  We could continue onto motor cars...

How much more pleasant in the very fast train (of course (a long air trip if one lives in the US, or Australia). One buys the ticket, the train glides in on time, we find our seats, the train departs smoothly and noiselessly.  Outside, the beautiful country side, or occasional picturesque town, flashes by.
Or even the noisy, smelly, steam trains of my childhood.  Such panache, such wonder, such excitement, such wondrous noise!!!

Five overnight hours await me in Las Vegas; how about that for an absurd place?
With the wonders of the Internet, I sense the day may come when I will forgo all this and be content to see and hear loved ones.

But I will still travel...it forms the mind.

As the French have it, Les voyages forment la jeuness.

My take on this, travels keep one young.