Paris is now a recent memory and the hard work of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival shimmers before me like jet exhaust on the tarmac. I’ll share a few thoughts on travel and Paris in a series of blogs.

Bouncing around on a British Airways jet, I yielded my aisle perch to a young woman who wanted to sit beside her boyfriend. Stacked in a middle seat like a prisoner in a California penitentiary, my new seat mates welcomed me and remarked on my kindness, but  they soon came to regret my generosity.

Sardined between them, I managed to spill the red wine the crew plied us with (free, and in unlimited quantities) on myself, the passenger to my left and the passenger behind me, when the flight attendant slid an over-sized tray of pasta and cheese across my lap.

To keep from panicking, I dialed up a free, personal movie, Great Expectations. When the movie got intense, my elbows landed on the volume button hooked to the personal movie of the passenger to my left and blew her ears out, repeatedly. Wine, water and tea sloshed in my bladder, but the seat belt sign was on and we were prohibited from visiting the loo. 

No reflection on British Airways, this is more a reflection on great expectations. Pip tried to turn a blind eye to the discomfort around him in his effort to reach highers rung on the social scale. Travel was lovely when only the super rich embarked on the adventure. Now that the masses travel, the experience is not unlike how I imagine the streets of London in the Industrial Age–crowded, noisy, uncomfortable and dangerous.

Lights out and it was time to simulate sleep. The young woman I ceded my seat to reclined in her chair in front of me and I couldn’t move my knees. I pulled my elbows in close to my sides to keep from turning on my neighbor’s overhead light and tried to meditate myself into an alternate state of being. Please, God, I prayed, I hope some young person who skipped college is working on a time travel app.

A final comment on airports: Charles De Gaulle looks like a movie set. It seems designed to mask the chaos of crowds and lines from view. Should the merest question pass like a cloud across your visage, someone is at your side to point you in the right direction. On the other hand, JFK pours people off planes into the anteroom to hell. TSA officials give conflicting directions, argue with passengers and with each other, and can barely contain their fear over the possibility that they might turn from predator to prey in a heartbeat. The sad thing is that people do get through the lines faster than it would appear possible, but the appearance does not make for a warm fuzzy welcome home.