I’ll Take It

I’ve never done this before. There’s a wine bar at Metro airport, Vino e Volo. Wine and Fly. It’s pricey. In the past I’ve given myself an expensive glass of airport beer. Today a pricey glass of a Spanish wine the producer describes as “brooding.”

Just a second while I taste to confirm.

Yes. I taste brooding.

This is the second year I’ve gone to Italy by myself, to spend time with grandsons and to live for a week or so the very very hot dolce vita. I had my doubts about the trip, especially as departure day got closer. Old guy stuff, in the form of a toothache. Was it a toothache? Would it become a toothache? Did I want to be in Italy with a toothache? I checked with my dentist. She x-rayed me, she tapped around back there with a metal device. She wasn’t sure. Here, she said, get this prescription filled.

Tizi was nervous about me traveling alone. She sees me as easily rattled and readily confused, like a large child who should not be allowed to go without a chaperone. Not without reason. I definitely rattle. But I’m going to try to be extra chill on this flight and in the passage through the airport at Paris. I didn’t bring a computer. I didn’t bring “work.” Just phone and my funky little keyboard. My goal is to sit and watch and think new thoughts. Is that even possible? Can I think new thoughts?

While I enjoy the brooding wine, I tell myself, don’t think. Try that. Empty your mind. In a book I read a few years back about mindfulness, the way to mindfulness involved emptying your mind. Sort of like meditation.

I focus on a mantra I give myself. A mantra, I think, is supposed to be a Sanskrit syllable. I don’t know Sanskrit so I make up a mantra in English. Gum. I say that with my inner voice and concentrate on my breathing. You’re supposed to do that. Gummmm. And think about my breathing. It’s definitely calming, pleasant, breathe in, breathe out.

Gummmm, Gummmmm. A thought pops into my head, the way they do. It’s not a new thought. I was going to think new thoughts, or no thought, but Gummmm has taken me to June Fritz. I’m ten years old, I can picture her chewing a piece of Doublemint gum, cracking the little air bubbles she makes, and smiling in her amiable June Fritz way. One thought leads to another. I liked Doublemint okay, but I was more a Spearmint guy. One morning I woke up with a wad of bubble gum stuck in my hair. I don’ t recall what we did about it, if my mother had a way of getting gum out of my hair without cutting my hair.

All these are old thoughts. I wanted new thoughts. There’s nothing new. Tizi enjoys saying that, quoting her favorite man of letters (not me).

No new thoughts on the long flight. At the airport in Paris, waiting for my flight to Bologna I watch people. A little girl braiding her mother’s hair. People with nice shoes. Guys with giant biceps. I see an Italian couple take two chairs across from me. I know they’re Italian. They’re dressed for cold weather. The gentleman leans over and opens his suitcase and pulls out a jacket. He’s wearing a pull over, also a sweater zipped up to his throat, and a Pashmina. Now he puts on his jacket and zips it up, straightens the collar around his throat and the back of his neck. When I look back he’s pulled the hood on as well. There might be a draft in the terminal. Italians are terrified of drafts. I’m wearing a t-shirt. When we land in Bologna it will be in the 80’s.

Don’t think about the heat. Don’t think. And if I must think, think new thoughts. That’s my program.

The terminal in Paris is sprawling. There’s a long walk from where my flight arrives to where the next one departs, where I’ll see the Italian couple. Security looks at luggage, then officials invite you to show your passport a few more times. I’m looking for terminal 2F. It’s a long walk. I’m also looking for a bathroom. I make a point of answering nature’s call as soon as possible on one of these international trips. The six hour time difference can throw you off, mess with your rhythm. When I get to terminal 2F I find a very nice Paris airport bathroom with a free stall, and voila, as the French say. When I’m walking out of the bathroom, the old Bob Marley song comes to mind—“I Shot the Sheriff”—at the exact moment a verbal thought occurs to me—I pooped in Paris. I sing “I pooped in Paris” to the tune of “I Shot the Sheriff. Try it. I congratulate myself.

I thought a new thought. I’m satisfied, elated, and quicken my pace to find a seat in F29, where my next flight awaits. It could be a new thought is actually two old thoughts put together. If you’re the first person to put them together (I shot the Sheriff and I pooped in Paris) that’s a new thought. A poet I know compared a writer’s drawer full of old poems to old beans. “Your poems are like old beans,” he wrote. He spoke of the poet’s “bean-puffed pride” in those old poems. My hunch is never in the history of the English language, never until Mark Halliday had a person used the phrase “bean-puffed pride.” A new idea. “I shot the sheriff,” made new, repurposed.

Okay. Let it go. Tomorrow I hope to have an another new thought.