Like It Never Happened

I see you during the night
You come to me every so often
We're together for a little while
Like it never happened...

My heart feels so warm when I hold you
I can still smell your hair
We could stay here forever
Like it never happened...

I never hear you speak
And as you lie in my arms, I still know
What's going to happen...

We stay together in silence
The pleasure holding back the pain
And I wonder if you know 
What's going to happen...

Like a plane fading into the sky
Our time is over
I don't say goodbye...once was enough

I'll wait 'til you come see me again
Another bittersweet visit
No words spoken, no memories shared
Just us
Like it never happened...

Contradictory Travels

I’ve been traveling by car through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska this week. I’ve always been drawn to bleak landscapes for some reason so driving through the vast nothingness of places like Kansas, South Dakota, and western Nebraska stirs up many different, often contradictory feelings.

My bladder forced me to take a brief respite at a rest stop in Nebraska earlier today when this inner force took control of my brain for a few minutes. Normally I treat any such interruption as a pit stop during a NASCAR race: how fast can I conceivably get this task completed and get back on the road? How much time will I lose? How fast will I have to go to make up for the lost time?

However, as I strolled out of the rest stop, I noticed a strange dichotomy: the constant, interminable roar of cars and trucks screaming down I-80 to my right and, to my left, amidst a sea of concrete and fossil fuel, a peaceful, bucolic oasis that proved to be the undoing of what, up to that point, was me making good time.

My inner force steered me away from the parking area onto a patch of soft, green grass, which led me to a trio of concrete benches. The inner force said two simple words to me: “Sit down.” So I sat down and let my eyes be drawn to the sad branches of a willow tree being whipped around in the noticeably cooler brisk autumn wind.  From those branches, my eyes went across a pasture that obviously hadn’t seen any four-legged visitors in months. The grasses bristled sharply in front of a tree line that naturally led my eyes up to an aggressive squadron of cumulus clouds that approached quickly from the north, one after another.

My inner force spoke again: “Get up and walk down to the fence row.” I did as my force suggested and was rewarded with the scent of grasses and plants. Not being a botanist, I couldn’t identify them. Hell, they could’ve been weeds for all I know but the scent was a welcome remedy to the residual odors still hanging around my nostrils from my visit to the men’s room. The hiss of tires on concrete was nearly inaudible by this time.

I turned around to walk back to the car but stopped at the bottom of a mild hill in the middle of the grass. I looked across the concrete river and saw hills of long prairie grass slowly undulating in the wind like underwater vegetation. The effect was hypnotic: contradiction right in front of me.

On a contradictory highway in NW Nebraska...

Several hours later, in northwest Nebraska, the grasses gave way to rocky ledges and stone formations. One minute I found myself in a valley surrounded by these natural walls and the next I found myself at the crest of a hill with a vista to the horizon. This bleakness has always made me think two distinct thoughts:  “How could anyone live here?” and “It would be amazing to live here!” In my head, there is a palpable hopelessness that hangs in the air here. “What do these people do” I kept asking myself. “Don’t they feel totally alone and isolated in this god-forsaken place?” I’ve never felt so depressed yet so stimulated by a place at the same time. It’s maddening.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Chadron, NE as I write this. The view from my window is a rising prairie plain that stretches for an eternity to the west. It’s so inspiring yet so sad.

Contradictory view from a bleak hotel room...

I never want to come here again but can’t wait until I come back.

Thanks for stopping by…

Travis

The Jinn

Jinn – In Islamic mythology, any of a class of spirits, lower than the angels, capable of appearing in human and animal forms and influencing humankind for either good or evil.

There’s currently a jinn residing in my backyard. When the moon allows, I see him standing outside my window where the birds gather, watching me move about my home. I don’t know if he knows that I see him, though. To the untrained eye, his body looks like a newly-planted sugar maple, dressed in clumps of ill-fitting leaves. To those who don’t understand, his arms bear the curves of a shepherd’s hook on which birds find their morning meal. To those who would mock, his head is not a sinister orb of deception, broken only by menacing eyes, but a tray of sustenance for the sparrows so closely watched by God.

Appearing only at night, the jinn is unsettling and beautiful at once. It is difficult to look at him but even more difficult to turn away. 

On certain nights, the jinn influences me for good. “Happiness is already yours,” he whispers. On other nights, the jinn stokes fires of discontent. “That which you seek will never be attained,” he hisses in my ear.

In spite of his duplicitous nature, I believe the jinn understands me. He embraces my different characters and acknowledges my search for truth. However, like a physician studying the cancers of life who becomes obsolete once he finds the cure, so, too will the Jinn lose his purpose if or when I discover the truth. To this end, he will push me to both sides of the river; today, good but tomorrow, bad.

Someday, perhaps the birds will find their seeds elsewhere and the Jinn will leave this place. Someday...

The Way to Jeddah - Pt. II

Faraj saw the landscape in his window disappear as the massive Saudia jet banked to the left and hugged the coastline of the rolling hills of Rancho Palos Verdes. All he could see was the infinite blue palette that was the Pacific Ocean and it took him back again to the ports of Jeddah. He had always been fascinated by the size of the cargo ships when he saw them up close but was equally as fascinated by how small the ocean made them look once they had departed. The same was true of this airborne ship he now rode. What had a few hours ago seemed to him an enormous flying metal tube bearing 400 people with room to spare was now barely a blip on the radar over the largest body of water on the earth. He suddenly felt very small.

As the plane leveled out, Faraj took out the bottle of medication recommended by several friends as the best way to travel: unconscious. He popped a couple pills and hoped he would sleep for at least half of the 15-hour trip to his home. By the time the lights of Las Vegas were visible, he was fading fast.

Six and a half miles below, on the desolate plains of western Nebraska, Jonah waited with anticipation as the flashing lights came closer into view. With the help of his smartphone, he knew whenever the big jets were about to fly overhead and never missed the opportunity to watch them, even at night. He would try and guess the type of plane first and where it was going, then he would check his phone for the answer. The more exotic the airline and final destination, the better. He was excited tonight as a massive Boeing 777 was headed right towards him. There wasn’t much to do in Sidney, Nebraska and this was the only way to indulge his love of aviation. From the icon on the app, he knew it was a 777 but he didn’t know the airline yet nor where it was headed. His first guess: “It’s gotta be out of LAX; probably a United 777-200 heading to JFK or Boston at this time of night.” He checked his phone. “Holy shit!” he said out loud, even though he was alone in the pasture behind his house. “Saudia Airlines 777-300 headed to Jeddah! Big sonofabitch!” This was a rare treat. Usually those big planes on international routes didn’t fly over Nebraska. It was as if they were too good be seen flying over this part of the state, he thought. But tonight, for whatever reason, there she was, a flickering giant in the sky. He could see the distinct triangular pattern of the white lights underneath the plane. It wasn’t long after he could see the lights that he heard the unique rumble of those enormous General Electric engines, the biggest in the world.

This activity had recently become a sort of church service for Jonah. His wife didn’t even ask anymore when he would put on his coat, grab his binoculars, and head outside late in the evening. After the death of his daughter, who had suffered for several years in her battle with leukemia, his faith had slowly worn away and was now nothing more than a tattered garment where a regal robe used to be. He no longer desired to believe in a man-made construct in which a loving god intervened for some but not for others. Those biblical stories he had once read to his daughter now seemed laughably foolish. It had never occurred to him that, according to his long-held sacred beliefs, the world was populated from the womb of one woman; the only men available to procreate being her husband and her two sons. This was one of many such stories that, in the light of new ways of thinking, he actually regretted sharing with his innocent, naive little girl those many years ago.

What he couldn’t shake, though, was his love of certain religious rituals: the Catholic Mass, the Sacred Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodoxy, the history of Judaism, and the mesmerizing musical drone of Islamic worship. He had, however, walked through that forbidden doorway and knew that once he had passed through the door, there was no going back. Those rituals and the comfort and hope they brought was nothing but a pleasant memory; just like the images of his little girl, filed away for future reference but of little use now.

Jonah took a quick look on his phone to confirm the location of Jeddah. He knew it was in the Middle East but wasn’t sure exactly where. “Ah, the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Wouldn’t have guessed that.” he thought to himself. The exotic allure of Jeddah now resonated sharply inside his mind. He could picture the sandy landscape, dotted with mosques, minarets, weathered old men drinking tea, and dusty shops with Persian rugs hanging on the walls. What he wouldn’t give to be on that plane. He thought of all the passengers floating miles above him and wondered if there were any looking down on him at that moment. He wondered if any of them new how lucky they were to be headed to such a unique and, in his mind, mysterious destination.

At that moment, in seat 28L, Faraj was jolted from his Ambien-induced coma by the harsh voice of the captain on the intercom. Irritated but not yet completely coherent, he used his sleeve to wipe the drool that had started to run down the side of his face, checking to see if anyone noticed. He looked out the window and saw a tiny group of city lights surrounded by boundless darkness. In his stupor, he again thought of the ships he used to watch and wondered if anyone among those lights was watching his ship pass by in the night.

As the rumble of the engines began to dissipate, Jonah sat in his lawn chair, completely alone and surrounded by dark silence. As he prepared to dismiss his church service and let the hopelessness of his new life return, he watched the flickering lights of the large ship disappear into the clouds and dreamed of being a pilgrim…on the way to Jeddah.

The Way to Jeddah - Pt. I

Faraj stepped across the threshold of the jet bridge into the cabin of the massive Saudia Airlines jetliner with its two-tone paint, tan on top and white on the bottom, and distinct yellow palm tree and crossed-swords logo on the hulking blue tail fin. He was immediately struck dumb by the seemingly endless rows of seats divided by two aisles that stretched back as far as he could see. He knew many of these passengers and also knew how many made the long pilgrimage each year but it was still difficult for him to comprehend that this plane would be filled with nearly 400 people, all going to the same place. A Saudia flight attendant, mysteriously efficient in her round hat and signature scarf draped around her face, directed Faraj to Row 28, Seat L. After an irritating stop-and-go trip down the crowded aisle and a brief struggle finding his seat belt, he sank into his seat and thought of how much had changed over the past year and how improbable this trip had been one year ago.

It had been 12 long months since his wife and young son were killed in that car crash, the image of which had been seared into his brain like a brand and which he relived many times each day. He had been following them home from dinner when it happened. The mangled wreckage, the smell of gasoline, the blood of his own family flowing down the road; these memories were inescapable and had driven him to near madness at times. The only thing that saved him from planning and executing his own demise was a return to his faith. Those long hours at the mosque, five times a day, prostrated on his prayer rug, fervently praying to God for the strength to make it through the next hour had borne fruit in a renewed religious fervor that, one year later, now manifested in this mandatory Hajj, or pilgrimage to the holiest place on earth: Mecca, near his beloved seaside home of Jeddah.

The Kaaba...House of God.

In the few moments each day he wasn’t reliving the accident, Faraj would relive his youth in Saudi Arabia. Jeddah was on the western coast of the country, right on the Red Sea. As a boy, he would often walk alone to the sea port and watch the oil tankers and container ships come and go into the harbor. He daydreamed about being the captain of one of these gargantuan ships, plying the trade routes of the Red Sea, south to the Gulf of Aden, and out into the vast expanse of the Arabian Sea. He dreamed of returning to a hero’s welcome, his ship full of exotic cargo from faraway lands. But, like the dreams of many kids whose parents struggled to provide for their family, it slowly vanished into a harsh reality of a job he didn’t like to make money for a life in which he found little joy.

Early in his third decade, Faraj decided he’d had enough of the heat, the sand, the wind, and of Jeddah, and applied for a scholarship to study abroad in the United States. When the letter arrived, informing him of his new future, he excitedly contacted his relatives in California to make living arrangements. It was here that he met his future wife, Rana. They married after a brief courtship and, within a year, welcomed a baby boy, Amir. After graduating from the University of the Pacific in Sacramento, Faraj had turned his Data Science degree into a nice middle-class living for his new family. It was a short-lived American Dream, however. Within two years, his wife and child were dead and his life was without direction and hope.

Now, a year later, he was on a plane at one of the busiest airports in the world, standing at the precipice of a new life. The Saudia 777 powered west out of LAX and was immediately over water. From his window seat on the right side of the plane, he could see the smoky hills of Topanga State Park to the north and the serpentine crawl of the Pacific Coast Highway winding along the shore. It was in stark contrast to the desolate, arid landscapes of Jeddah, a place he thought he’d never miss when he left so many years ago. Now he was invigorated by the thought of the dry desert air on his face and the short journey from Jeddah eastward to Mecca, the Holy City and birthplace of Muhammad. The anticipation of seeing the Holy Kaaba, (the “House of God”), the black granite cube in the middle of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, was like an innate driving force that led him blindly on this pilgrimage. Faraj silently wondered how many others on the plane shared his passion or if, for them, it was merely a religious duty to be fulfilled and no more. It didn’t matter to him. In 15 hours, the wheels of that plane would be landing on holy ground and his new dream would become a reality.