Escape

Leaving – home, city and responsibilities,
For the singular job of travel
The company of anonymity and strangers,
Retreating into a bubble of one’s own invention:
linear, predefined, insular and temporary.

The anxiety of departure times and the potential for forgotten items.
Controlling communication and inputs
The needs of getting from A to B to C
Since when did this become the escape from daily life?

Overhearing strangers stories and morality,
with accompanying and suitably indulgent food.
Unfamiliar music genres of Lyft drivers
Statements of masks, how they are worn, their type, their absence
This is 2021 travel.
Strange in its familiarity.

Nexus points of stress and change
Followed by the simplicity of “going with the flow.”
We are all here for the same reason, but different purposes
Carry on excess, and the discomfort of other people’s extreme comfort
Ludicrous due to the uniformity of uncomfortable seating
Backwards baseball caps, way too may shorts, the horror of flip flops and bare feet
A people at “just don’t care.”

Room service awkwardness
The Inexplicable mystery of strangers meeting and bonding
Overly polite interactions
Explaining to underpaid staff that they are wrong
Trying not to be the asshole.

The lost hours, the lost days,
The cancellations, the change in plans.
The reduced capacity, and reduced services
Making do is anathema to a people sautéed in excess and privilege.
Just not as much fun as it used to be.
But escape is still escape.

Perhaps the need is the problem
Both in context and in situation
Routine of ones own making and direction
A lack of judgement and guilt
Comfortable in ones own company and skin
Affable but aloof
A flight of less than fancy
A purge of grind and mind.