Screaming On a Jet Plane
by Dominic Pettman

It is my firm belief that Australians still suffer from the stigma of living in that section of the map which used to say "Here Be Dragons." The reason that New Zealand and Tasmania have become the butt of our insecure jokes is because they are even further away from a presumed centre, radiating from somewhere above the equator. After all, it was only relatively recently that Australia cemented its place on the world circuit for artists, musicians and writers seeking to promote their material. While air travel and the Internet have helped to ease our sense of tottering over the edge of the world, the sheer distance from the cosmopolitan buzz continues to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in terms of a visit by Fila Brazilia, Vikram Seth or a rare collection of Goya sketches, but a curse in the case of C-grade Hollywood starlets pushing their latest teen-tripe on Hey, Hey It's Saturday. It seems the times have changed since the only positive side to "the tyranny of distance" was not having rabies.

Our grandparents must be bemused by any complaints concerning the time and inconvenience involved in getting to England, America, Italy or Bangkok. Even the 36 hour STA milk-run seems like a breeze compared to six spume-filled weeks on a steamer. The choice seems clear, one day of low-level fear is far better than a month-and-a-half of green-faced boredom (and given our cultural heritage, I'm sure there's an inherited aversion to sea-travel, what with the scurvy and all). Yet even in this accelerated era, a wind-assisted concord can seem like a limping snail to the busy executive or homesick ex-pat.
At least these were the thoughts rattling around my head on United's red-eye flight to the land of the brave . . .

* * * * * *

I've been on this plane for over ten hours already, but there is a still another movie to play, and yet another "meal" before we even start to descend. It's the Sydney to San Francisco direct flight, and it unfolds like a practical lesson in entropic decay. The fresh-faced, if slightly apprehensive, passengers who sauntered on board at the beginning of the flight - courteously giving way to their fellow flyers and making polite jokes about seating arrangements - have become noticeably worse for wear. The young couple I spied earlier making coo-coo in the departure lounge look like they've already mapped the emotional bell-curve of married life to its lawyer-led conclusion. The respectable business man who was previously heard discussing his nuanced appreciation of Californian architecture has begun lobbing his empty minituare whiskey bottles at the embattled stewards and swearing at the creature he sees taking large bites out of the wing. What began as mere boredom has become palpable and barely controlled panic as the hours stretch before us like a Hearse.

Air travel is as commonplace in the modern world as toothpaste and e-mail, however it is not as easily assimilated by the psyche for the simple reason that "if god meant us to fly he or she would have given us wings." Even the most secular among us feel this to be a kind of timeless and universal truth, no matter how many frequent flyer points or duty free gadgets we manage to rack up. Relatively short hops across to Perth or Tokyo enable us to repress the innate fear of flying, however the fourteen-hour-plus flight I am on manages to grind through the repressive apparatus of the mind and confront you with the full claustrophic revelation described so well by Conrad's Kurtz: "the horror, the horror." As the sands of time seem to drop through the hourglass grain by grain, the full gravity of the situation seems to seep into the collective mind of the economy section like a swarm of bees who are trapped in the hive as it cascades over the Niagara Falls. The cabin seemingly becomes increasingly pressurized - or is that just in my skull - to the point where I expect the oxygen mask to come down at any moment.

Ok I confess, perhaps I am projecting just a little. After all, I have had some bad experiences while in the air. One occasion, during meal time, the plane hit a pocket of turbulence so severe that the stewardesses (remembering their early training sessions) simultaneously knelt on the floor and managed a strained smile which was replicated all the way down the aisle like an exercise in perspective using Cheshire Cats. I didn't know what was more terrifying, the fact that these women were doing some "official maneouvres" which were only meant to happen in an emergency, or that these soon deteriorated into their own idiosyncratic foetal positions behind the food-trolley. Luckily it passed and we only had to sedate a few passengers and clean up all the orange juice stains. But still that moment of pure terror stays with me, the moment when death taps you on the shoulder before saying, "oh, sorry . . . I thought you were someone else."

And, not to get too morbid about it, this is what ultimately lies behind all these fine upstanding citizens regressing in front of my eyes today, and presumably every day, on the Sydney to San Francisco route. Being buckled-up inside a plane is a vivid metaphor which we cannot tolerate without alcohol, movies, toxic fruit-cake, and all the other trappings of distraction and denial. It is a metaphor for life and its sudden end. Here we are, flying towards "the terminal" with no control whatsoever. Just like life! I don't mean to come on all existential-nihilist, but it's a truth you glimpse in the crazed pupils of a Phillipine Air-stewardess when you feel like you are a pea in a bottle being shaken by some angry child. We like to pretend we're in control, but on a plane (unless you happen to be the pilot) it's just not like that. As pop-philosopher Mark Kingwell says, "We follow the safety instructions, the belt-buckling and life-jacket activating and air-mask pulling, as though it's an elaborate and really rather boring game of Simon Says. We all know that this is pointless. If this behemoth is going down over the North Atlantic, we are all instant sharkfeed." In his novel Staring at the Sun, Julian Barnes discusses the fact that the aeroplane recognizes and magnifies "the claustrophobia of the coffin":

Screaming, enclosed, ignorant and certain. And in addition, it was all so domestic… You died with a headrest and an antimacassar. You died with a little plastic fold-down table whose surface bore a circular indentation so that your coffee cup would be held safey… You died watching a film from which most of the sexual content had been deleted. You died with the razor towel you had stolen still in your sponge-bag. You died after being told that you had made good time thanks to following winds and were now ahead of schedule. You were indeed: way ahead of schedule… How, in such circumstances, could you see your own extinction as something tragic, or even important, or even relevant? It would be a death which mocked you. (p.96-7)

Yes indeed. The more I think about it, the harder it becomes to just sit there faux-calmly, rather than join the drunk and dishevelled business man in a game of "Johnny Squawker." The only way you'll get me on one of these bloody things again is if they introduce those Gautiér attired stewardesses from The Fifth Element. I promise I'll never do anything bad ever again if I just get to San Francisco in one piece, and then I'll stay on the ground forever. I'll catch the boat. Six weeks of sea-sickness versus half a day of nervous tension. Hmmmmm. On second thoughts, maybe I could do with one of those duty-free digital cameras.