“The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.” ~Aldous Huxley
You can't really tell, but the picture above is of a female airline pilot. You can see, not only is she a woman, she's young. You can also see, I found her so awesome and cool, I had to take her picture. Meeting her reminded me of this "Candid Camera" episode with Fannie Flagg posing as a female airline pilot, which always makes me laugh.
Having spent a fair amount of time recently humping my way through airports with my belongings bouncing along on wheels behind me, I reflect upon The Traveler as an archetype. As I sit here in the airport of the City of Brotherly Love, blogging on my Iphone, I observe the Travelers around me. Perhaps they observe me too.
What sort of Traveler do they see? Am I the disgruntled lady bustling along with a scowl on my face? Am I the dreamy neophyte, wandering around with an expression of wonder and awe? Am I the businessperson, shuffling spreadsheets, laptop and cell phone as my work day carries on in spite of my travel schedule?
I suppose I am, at times, each of these.
My favorite Travelers are the old couples, the ones who have been on a few dozen trips together in their lives, so many that they've got the rhythm down, they carry each other along in a fascinating display of affection, appreciation and annoyance. Traveling with the one you love is quite an exercise in ambivalence. You want to shove him out of the plane one minute, but then you also want to sneak off into the lavatory when the flight attendant's not looking and get your official entry into the Mile High Club. And then you also really appreciate having him there to hold your purse while you go potty.
So I'm sitting here watching people, and many pirates go unnoticed by me as I find myself noticing women instead. I saw a woman in New York who was so beautiful I couldn't stop watching her. What do you imagine when I say that? I don't know how to say "beautiful woman" without causing you to imagine...something this woman was not. In Dallas, you can't swing a dead cat on a string without knocking over four or five beautiful women. They are everywhere you look. Their beauty is in their features, their perfectly kept bodies and faces and fingers and toes, lips and tits and hair. All of it as flawless as it can be. This woman, I don't know, she had an aura, something really unique about her. The term "glamour" was once a word used by witches to describe a spell that they would cast upon themselves to bring about this sort of effect--a glow, an aura, something that captures the eye and pleases without being predictably pleasing or flawless. This woman wore a glamour about her, though she was not young and perky, nor was she stylishly dressed. She was in her mid-40's I guess, dressed in cute jeans and a blouse, comfortable sandals. She had golden hair, not blonde, not red. Her face was aged in a fascinating way. Simply gorgeous.
I sat near her and listened as she chatted with her husband (Bob--he was beautiful too), then called her daughter and conveyed a request from Bob to the daughter to "shock" the swimming pool with chemicals and to mail some letters he had left on the bureau downstairs.
When traveling, you tend to hear others' cell phone conversations quite easily, whether you want to or not. For instance, right now a woman is about five feet to my right in front of me discussing loudly the various methods, stages and advantages of inducing labor. To my left, another woman is talking about a client of hers who learned during past-life regression that she drowned in a past life and that's why she has lung problems in this life.
The express flight I was just on was piloted by a woman. She too was a remarkable lady with a fascinating aura. I was not the only passenger who noticed the gender of our pilot. A business traveller seated nearby rolled his eyes and made a clever comment about her landing, but I was quite proud of her and her bumpy landing. Right on, girl, you dribble us down the runway like a basketball and you'll still be the coolest chick on the plane cause you're the one flying it!
