Spitball Army

(continued from Reunion Journal: 31 July 2008, part 1)

I sink deep into my window seat, book in lap. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a slim book, and the typeface is medium to large, each finely wrought word and phrase luxuriating in the white space on the page. It is easy to identify with the book’s protagonist and author Jean-Dominique Bauby, in full-body paralysis, as I am wedged between the triple-pane airplane porthole and Diane and Walter, curled up in a human ball next to me with their DVD player.

As the DVD logo fades and the film begins, I turn from the screen to the book. The prose reads quickly, and the pages turn steadily. I look over at the DVD screen from time to time. Babel is strangely involving as a silent movie, with its striking color palette and widescreen landscapes. I watch for a few minutes at a time, but the book pulls me back.

The lighthouse and I remain in constant touch, and I often call on it by having myself wheeled to Cinecittà, a region essential to my imaginary geography of the hospital. Cinecittà is the perpetually deserted terrace of Sorrel ward. Facing south, its vast balconies open onto a landscape heavy with the poetic and slightly offbeat charm of a movie set. The suburbs of Berck look like a model-train layout. A handful of buildings at the foot of the sand dunes gives the illusion of a Western ghost town. As for the sea, it foams such an incandescent white that it might be the product of the special-effects department.

I could spend whole days at Cinecittà. There, I am the greatest director of all time. On the town side, I reshoot the close-ups for Touch of Evil. Down at the beach, I rework the dolly shots for Stagecoach, and offshore I re-create the storm rocking the smugglers of Moonfleet. Or else I dissolve into the landscape and there is nothing left to connect me to the world than a friendly hand stroking my numb fingers. I am the hero of Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, my face smeared blue, a garland of dynamite sticks encircling my head. The temptation to strike a match drifts by, like a cloud. And then it is dusk, when the last train sets out for Paris, when I have to return to my room. I wait for winter. Warmly wrapped up, we can linger here until nightfall, watch the sun set and the lighthouse take up the torch, its hope-filled beams sweeping the horizon.

Eventually, I crest the 100th page. Almost in time with my milestone, I hear a gasp from the seat next to me. Diane has her hand over her mouth, stifling a gasp, while Walter is flipping a switch back and forth on the front of the DVD player. He eventually stops and announces that the battery power has expired. I listen to their conversation about it, and imagine how hard it must be to sustain a conversation for more than 30 seconds about a DVD player losing battery power. It occurs to me that my laptop computer has DVD play capability and is fully charged. I tell them so. They accept my offer to use it to finish the film.

Once the film is set up on the computer, I return to my book.

About fifteen minutes from Las Vegas, the battery power on the laptop fades. Diane and Walter are ten to twenty minutes from the end of the film. There is a collective groan of “Aahh!” in our row. I pack up the computer. As we taxi toward the terminal, I pull the BlackBerry from my backpack and check my e-mail. There is a form-letter message from Bill Clinton’s office, pushing the Democratic agenda for the upcoming election.

“Whaddaya know, I just got an e-mail from Bill Clinton!” I say, out loud.

Walter leans forward and looks past Diane toward me, a raised eyebrow accenting his haughty facial expression. Diane leans into the back of her seat, spine rigid, seeming to brace herself for the shitstorm to come. Walter then launches into a verbal attack that is borderline personal, seeming to portray every American with an annual take-home income below $300,000 as sub-human, blaming the Democratic Party for every ailment from terrorism to corporate failures to venereal disease.

At this point, mercifully, a voice comes over the plane’s intercom system.  “This is your Captain Haphazard.  We regret to inform anyone continuing on to San Diego that this aircraft will not be flying the remainder of your route as planned.  Please disembark and the airline representative at the terminal gate will direct you to your connecting flight.”

We gather our belongings and march off the plane into the Las Vegas airport terminal, the vestiges of abandoned, unsolicited political rhetoric flopping with the last impulses of life on the cabin floor.

(continued at Reunion Journal: 31 July 2008, part 3)