Terra Firma

In your favourite colours. Keeping your face clean. Downloaded your Jetstar ticket on the drive here. We walked through the sliding doors. Thought I could wait with you till your flight. 

Could see a man and woman waiting in front of the departure and arrival screens.

He was crying, 
Please hug me… please, I don’t like flying.
Could see a frown across his head from when people complain too hard for too long; making life something else and kind of impossible to do anything within.

Her hair was tied up; the long bits falling to the side; 
standing parallel to where he was crying. 
I don’t know, she said. Maybe after we land? 
The blue suitcase wheeling off from their grips. 
Go have a sit, she said. What do you think makes traveling worth it? Why are we stuck here—what’s nice, then?

We stared and listened to them for a moment before looking away as we gathered your bags. 

The attendant said they needed to be put in the undercarriage of the plane. They didn’t charge anything extra. Not going to be a busy journey for you. 

That was a neon green and dark shades next to me. Your favourite colours. Acting without an energy drink. The smell of the cleanser you’d been using for your face. Clung to the car ride now as we people watch. The plant feed we used for the pot plants before having to leave. Those tiny balls of nitrogen coated in a thin layer of plastic. 

Where’s the ground when we keep saying that the world has become hell? 

The merino wool socks I’m wearing to make my feet feel nice. The winding and wriggling path of nature as it begins, persists, and one day ends. The detachment most things seem to feel towards what should even exist. 

But you're not most things. Even as I say goodbye and give a hug. You’re traveling back home on an airplane. Take a Valium to get rid of the stress. You like burning french toast so it caramelises and you like forgetting to brush your teeth on purpose before going to bed. You like knowing that you care about animals and don’t like suffering, but see bleating and carping about progressive politics as romanticising idealisms. Making any moral point hard to connect with beyond its hopeful but often conceited unreality that we must demand from the world if we want to be good.

You seem to say that weighted bodies on the ground and touch and plants are better alternatives. Specifically, deep roots, flexibility like plants, like the sun and water they eat.

Where outright knowing forgets how to ask and not knowing becomes afraid of itself. 

That trying to know even if someone says you are getting it wrong is where care comes back in. Engaging with and discovering what each of us finds meaningful. And the energy to put towards any work there.

Because what are my problems within all of the world. There’s so many people. The crowds—each person cramped against another. The backpacks and hardshell suitcases spinning around on conveyor beIlts. Feeling that size and diversity as it flips back towards entropy. Good to feel miniscule sometimes, maybe. I don't really know.

But have a safe flight; message me when you get there.