I’m being required to take a flight that’s also a test of my creativity and the flight attendant, a compact asian woman wearing a dark blue suit with a chiffon scarf, is leading me down the aisle. It’s our last empty seat, she’s telling me, and it’s so wonderful they could seat you with your father! and I’m saying, My father died many years ago, but it’s too late, she’s several paces ahead of me and the lights are dim and we’re passing row upon row upon row of shadowy figures, passengers, all nearly motionless, quietly waiting for the plane to taxi onto the runway and take us on our journey, and I’m hurrying along the aisle behind this prim little stewardess and wondering, is it possible that my father somehow stayed alive all these years, and now I’ll be reunited with him?
Toward the back of the plane an aisle seat awaits. The flight attendant is already there, gesturing with her open palm, bowing, turning away, and just as I arrive she melts into the darkness.
I see the profile of the man in the seat next to mine, a much larger man than I recall my father having been though he’s the right age—an elderly portly man wearing his suit jacket and tie even while he’s seated—staring straight ahead, not noticing me at all. Excuse me, I say as I try to sit down but he’s not budging or saying anything.
I doubt very much this is my father. There’s no way my father could have become so bulky as this, taking up half my space as well as his own, and now I’m lowering myself into my seat and feeling myself crushed between the armrest and his body.
There’s something wrong, I say aloud, thinking the man will engage with me, thinking he’ll scoot away from me a little, but he’s mute, maybe he’s deaf, and I’m wondering if there’s some malfunction with the seat itself, and with great effort I dislodge myself, I step back into the aisle and start yanking on the armrest in an attempt to elongate the bank of seats, and as I do this I’m observing him though he still refuses to look at me. He only faces forward like a tombstone.
My idea of expanding the seat is a futile one but I keep tugging as a way of making a show of things. No one is interfering with me, no one is interested, and the man, the father figure, though I can see his chest rise and fall with his breathing and though I watch as he raises his dwarfish hands to straighten his wide red tie, does nothing to assist me. He’s not in the least curious about my predicament.
The captain’s voice is coming through the overhead speakers now: Stop doing what you’re doing, he says in his warm midwestern voice, get into airplane mode, fasten your seatbelt, breathe in, prepare for your take off, thank your god, breathe out, revert to an upright position.
I hear the powerful engines throttling up and I’m hurriedly squeezing back into my narrow chair with my back hunched and my shoulders pinched together, clicking my seatbelt just as the plane and everyone inside it are thrusting forward, and very soon we’re cruising all together high above the earth.
I see the teacher moving down the aisle now, a kindly-faced white-haired woman, fiftyish, wearing a boxy gray suit with squared-off shoulders.
She’s a high priestess of art, her necklace is a string of chromium triangles, she’s coming closer, examining the work of each artist individually, smiling, pointing, bringing every art object to her face, sniffing it, beaming her smile at its creator, elaborating on her thoughts, licking her lips, making little circles in the air with one finger, engaging with the next artist and the next one and, after waiting for a very long time, she’s arriving at my seat and I’m handing her my pile of sketches that I’m so proud of—it seems I’m doing my very best work these days!—and the teacher is looking through them, holding them up one by one, whispering, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, over and over, and I’m feeling gratified and for the first time I’m hoping that the stoic inexpressive man sitting next to me really is my father.
But when the teacher finally addresses me, her smile has vanished. She’s taken on a new persona now, the persona of a pedagogue, a hero in a drama of discovery, a finicky scrutinizer who is uncovering a special talent that the poor naive artist has yet to recognize inside himself and she’s handing my sketches back to me, two or three at at time, and I watch as she takes out her pen and makes a yellow circle around one of them. Redo it, she says, in a lofty tone, it’s high time you turn one of your trinkets into a gem.
And as she dispenses her instructions, I’m thinking, okay, whatever… I can do that in a minute, and so confident am I that my abilities are second to none, I laugh a little and say, easy-peasy! which is a stupid thing I’ve never said before and I’m seeing her face as it changes from the helpful den mother one to the indignant taskmaster one, and just before she turns away to confer with the next artist down the row, I hear her mutter, Make sure to get it done before we land.
My seat, besides being so narrow, has no console and no overhead light. I’ve brought my pencil case but I didn’t think to bring any paper with me, and now I’m wandering through the aircraft to find an artist who might lend me a sheet or two. The cabin is extremely dark. Are we flying through the night or are there no windows in this plane?
Many of the artists are sleeping though I notice one shadowy figure, standing on his seat, rolling lengths of wire into balls.
There’s a woman with a tiny flashlight dangling from a ring in her nose, it illuminates her snake-hipped statue, indecipherable, balanced on her knees, wet clay splattered across its eyes.
Ghostly silhouettes are making artistic gestures with their hands and arms, and one artist, wearing the mask of a grinning fox, is spraying political slogans on the backs of the seats in front of him.
At the very rear of the plane I find a door, so small I need to stoop down and squeeze my body into the narrow room, a brightly lighted nook where six or seven of the small-boned flight attendants are gleefully chatting over a little table.
They turn their faces towards me all at once. Why are you here? What do you want? This is off limits! But I can barely hear them because it’s so painfully loud. The stratospheric winds are buffeting the walls. The prim little stewardess who showed me to my seat is face up on a cot squeezed between ribs of the tail, busy adjusting the stabilizers with knobs and levers made of wood.
I’m traveling up the aisle on the opposite side when the authoritative voice of the teacher comes crackling through the intercom: Attention, artists! We have so many world-renowned artists gracing us with their presence.You have the special honor to be seated next to one of them. Learn! Learn and be respectful!
No one is reacting to this exciting news. All the artists seem deeply asleep, and I’ve reached the curtain that separates us from the first-class cabin, a thick plastic curtain with several layers, and I need to dig my hand deep inside to penetrate it and finally I slither through.
Bright sunbeams stream in from the windows. The first-class passengers are wide awake, they all wear red caps and they’re fraternizing, laughing beneath golden chandeliers, drinking cocktails from plastic cups, engaging in a game that involves rolling white marbles down the aisles, shooting them through narrow holes in little plastic boxes strategically placed, cheers and laughter break out when someone scores a point, and the pilot in his pilot suit is rushing towards me, furiously dancing in his pilot shoes so as not to obstruct the rolling marbles.
Turbulence! he shouts in his kindly mid-western voice. Turbulence ahead! Return to your seat! I raise my hands to stop him from barging into me. But I’m looking for a restroom, I say as he thrusts me back through the curtain. On your left! are the last words I hear before the curtains swish closed again.
It’s in the restroom that I find the seat protectors made of paper. They’re the perfect size I think, octagonal, with a perforated flap. I remove ten of them from the dispenser and make my way back to my seat.
My newest drawing will be of my father, an elaboration of the sketch that was circled by the teacher with her yellow pen based on a blurry old photo. My father’s face was lean and angular, lined and careworn, bushy eyebrows, easy-going smile, shining eyes. My father was a complicated, sunny, brokenhearted man, and I feel I captured his personality extremely well. Dad thought wanting to become an artist was idiotic, but he never made any move to deter me. In gratitude, I’ll make his newest drawing all the more soulful. I’ll make his eyes sparkle even brighter. This will be the work of art, among the many created on this plane, that will most astonish and delight the stern and demanding teacher.
I’m working on it now, hunched over with my shoulders up against my ears. It’s difficult to see in this gloomy darkness, and why does the world-renowned artist beside me never concede the tiniest bit of space? Why does he ignore my existence? I pivot my hips away from him and cross my legs. Now it’s my spine pressed up against him instead of my ribs, and I slide my wrinkled toilet cover back and forth across my thigh so that my pencil tip can make contact.
The drawing is not proceeding well. Maybe it’s because I’m forced to draw against the curvature of my leg. My father’s long lean face gets flabbier and flabbier. The creases in his cheeks and around his eyes have taken on a waxy sheen, his finely shaped lips are twisted into a pout, his eyes are too tiny, his look of amusement has become a scowl. I’m left with more erasure smudges than pencil strokes. I’ve redone it seven times and this one is the worst of all. His thinning unkempt hair has turned into a ridiculous bulbous pompadour.
No artist should be forced to work under these conditions! How can anybody be expected to make art pressed between an oaf and a metal armrest? I fold my stack of toilet covers into quarters, drop them in the aisle, and turn my full attention to my neighbor.
The flesh on his face sags and vibrates as he snores, a shiny line of drool descends from the corner of his mouth. His suit is too dark to know its color. His off-white dress shirt might be silk, the tie is a solid red. His hair is arranged in a sort of elaborate comb over, topped by a puffy wave. I never could have guessed that any person who looks like this could be a world-renowned artist, but I admit that in recent years the word art has been stretched enormously. People say, the art of this, the art of that. All you need to do is fill in the blank. The art of taking out the garbage. If art can mean anything, I suppose he might be a famous artist of something. But famous or not, I want to wake him up and tell him how he’s ruining my creativity. Hey you, I say. Hey you! There’s no response.
I’m punching him hard on his shoulder now. His flesh is soft beneath the worsted wool but there’s no reaction to my blows. He’s like a wall—immovable, unbudging, and I soon exhaust myself pounding against him. I slap his pudgy thigh over and over with the flat of my hand. Still nothing.
I have four pencils in my case. My HB is the sharpest, since I hardly ever use it, but now I use it to poke him on his ear… I poke him a little harder. Not only is he indifferent, he appears to be physically numb. I’m sticking the tip of my pencil in his ear now. I push it in far enough so that when I let go, it doesn’t fall out and I sit observing him like this for a while, a big slumbering man in a business suit with a pencil stuck in his ear, and I’m reminded once again that sometimes the best art happens spontaneously.
I’m wondering how far I can go with this. I push it in a little deeper, expecting to encounter collagen or bone, but it slides in easily.
What am I doing? I don’t really know. But an artist must always trust his artistic instincts, so I push it the rest of the way. It’s like sliding into mud, into oatmeal. When my pencil’s gone, I step into the aisle to look around. The aisle’s vacant. No one is moving. All I hear is the hum of the air circulation system. I seem to be the only artist still awake. I have three pencils left and I insert two more into his head, then I go for a walk.
When I return, nothing has changed. I try sitting sideways in my chair with my head resting on his shoulder, my legs bent over the armrest. My eyes are closed but I can never quite manage to fall asleep….
Suddenly the voice of the teacher startles me. She’s picked up my drawings from the floor and now she’s waving them in front of my face. Her eyes are narrowed, her brows are pinched together. You flunk! she hisses. We wasted a perfectly good ticket on you!
As I yawn I stretch my arms and fingers. It’s no biggie, I say. It’s another thing I’ve never said before.
The airplane keeps flying and flying. We’ve been flying for a very long time—days, weeks perhaps. Usually I lie on the floor next to my seat and no one pays me any mind. All the flight attendants have gone home. The door to their little nook is locked. The man with the pencils in his head is still snoozing. The teacher hasn’t reappeared since that time she flunked me long ago. Sometimes I go to the restroom and stare at my face in the mirror. My hair hangs over my eyes. My shirt sags. It’s easy to see I’m losing weight. There’s no more toilet paper. The seat protectors are all gone and the only thing that connects me with my vocation is my 2B pencil. None of the other artists speak to me. They all avoid me for some reason. I especially wish I could find out our destination. Is it in this country or a foreign one? Wherever it is, I know I’ll need to get a job, and hopefully I’ll be able to find a few like-minded artists there.
Oh well. It’s not unusual that artistic endeavors come to nothing, and the only thing an artist can do is remind himself not to feel discouraged.
I can't stop thinking about the pencils in the muddy, oatmeally head. So disturbing yet feels so right.
Your HB plane was obviously manufactured by Boeing — the experimental model that abandoned all quality control and was equipped with off-the-shelf AI bots. I wonder about the nightmares the other passengers were having.