Cleared for Landing
June 19, 2023
IT WAS 890KM (553 MILES) FROM ST JEAN PIED DE PORT TO FINISTERRE. THE FIRST, A SMALL VILLAGE ON THE WESTERN EDGE OF FRANCE. THE LATTER, ONCE CONSIDERED THE WESTERN MOST POINT OF THE IBERIAN PENINSULAR, WITH SEASIDE CLIFFS LIFTING OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. BETWEEN THEM, SPREAD THE WHOLE OF NORTHERN SPAIN.
WHEN I WAS 22, I WALKED FROM ONE TO THE OTHER. IT TOOK FIVE WEEKS, AND A BEST FRIEND FROM CHILDHOOD, LILY, ALONG MY SIDE. IN SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, THE ENDING POINT OF THE THOUSAND YEAR OLD CAMINO FRANCES, I CELEBRATED MY 23RD BIRTHDAY. AFTER THAT I WALKED A FEW MORE DAYS TO THE COAST. I FIGURED, TWO YEARS LATER NOW, I COULD TRY TO TELL THE STORY.
I ARRIVED IN SPAIN ON JUNE 19TH, 2023. MY RETURN FLIGHT WAS BOOKED FOR JULY 26TH. SO, FASTEN UP, BABY, THE SEATBELT SIGN IS ON AND WE’RE CLEARED FOR LANDING.
The plane touched down after eleven hours. Eleven hours - during which mine and the fate of all these strangers had been resting on the engineering prowess of cold assembly lines and predictions of the wind. We deboard the plane in Madrid. We went on, strangers again, despite our recent almost pinky graze of heaven.
In the previous eleven hours I had confirmed that there is no feat stronger than crying babies on a plane. I arrived sleepless, the kind of tired where eyes spin dizzy and head slips in and out of dreams. So. Bounced, sagging in and out of the wrong customs line. Head empty, shepherded through the waiting game. A failed navigation of the train ticket kiosk. From the airport, to Madrid Puerta de Atocha, to catch the evening train to Pamplona. Tired and confused and somehow not unveiling any preordained fluency in Spanish as I had naively hoped.
First sight of danger came as a torn lily pad in my inbox. My landing for the night, the hostel in Pamplona, sent me an email suggesting that the reservation check-in closed at 10pm. Problem being that my train was not set to arrive in Pamplona until 11pm. My boney ass ached from my seat on the marble floor, train station, fading, and now feeling word that there would be no bed waiting for me that night.
WE CROSS THE OCEAN IN EVOLUTIONARILY UNFATHOMABLE TIMING, BUT STILL POWERLESS AGAINST MINUTE INCONGRUENCIES. LIKE CLOCKS AND POLICIES AND THE RIGHT THINGS SAID IN THE WRONG RHYTHM. THE NARROWING MARGINS OF RAPID MODERNITY COULD DO ME IN JUST YET.
I emailed back, asking for mercy, and figured well, fuck, I would sleep on the stoop of a church with the unhoused folks if I had to. Or, or, was this pathetic tumble through the corridors of Madrid a sign that I had fooled myself entirely? A sign I should just call it all off? Turn back to the airport, change my return flight to tomorrow, and go home. Though, back in the states it wasn’t quite clear that there was any real home for me to return to…
Anyway, the ordeal of an eleven hour flight back to LAX was such that I figured it would be easier to stay sitting on this train station floor. Slipping in and out of hypnagogia. This was good for me.
The cluttered shelves of my own entitlement were washed clean in the rush of indifference that the city was offering me. When every basic maneuver proved an obstacle, my hand was forced toward humility. I welcomed it, folding towards it like a mother’s embrace.
Squandering time in the station lobby, unsure what kind of fate neared me with each passing moment. This is the sort of context that proves the spiritual wisdom of surrender. When all that’s in your power is the fifteen minute search for a water fountain, and the three minute water bottle chug. There’s a bliss in tending to material survival. A permission to abandon all forethought and predictions. To sit, and negotiate with your dehydration, and wait for the train. Wait for the train.
I mustered the last muscle of conviction. Parceled out enough insight from information screens and PA announcements -- which I translated by intuition alone. Found my way through the station and to the gate of the track where my train rolled in.
And, look at that, the hostel had emailed me a gate code for after hours check in. In some way, maybe things would work out.
The train crossed the countryside. I watched unspectacular farm land roll past until it got too dark to see. We were left with the sound of rain on the windows and the buzzing white train car light. I slipped in and out of sleep on the plastic food tray on the back of the seat in front of me.
FRESH FROM A PLASTIC PILLOW DREAM I TURNED AND I ASKED HIM, “LA HORA ES DIFFERENTE AQUI DE MADRID?” THE CLOCK ABOVE THE DOOR WAS AN HOUR SEPARATE FROM THE CLOCK ON MY PHONE. MY VOICE WAS RASPY. I WAS NOT EMBARASSED. HE ANSWERED IN ENGLISH BECAUSE LETS FACE IT - AND HE KNEW - “NO” HE SAID “I THINK THAT CLOCK’S JUST BROKEN.”
The pitch dark out the window disoriented my sense of time. I closed my eyes and felt the train surge and slow along the track, until arriving in Pamplona near midnight. The plan to take the city bus to the hostel was dead by the fact that the train was an hour late, and so the city buses were done running. What to do?
I considered that I could walk. What was 30 minutes of walking to cap off over 24 hours of transit endured so far? What harm was a 30 minute walk, as a woman, past midnight through the streets of an unknown city, carrying all 13 pounds of my possessions on my back? My judgement was so tunneled at this point, and my heart so fixed on a shower and a bed, I almost did it.
I almost did it, and I didn’t only because of the rain. The rain, which sounded apologetic from inside, but was, in actuality, dropping heavy from the sky in big wet omens. I noticed a line form, heard a mention of a taxi, and joined the procession of travelers in the midnight rain to wait for my final carriage before sleep.
I stayed back under the awning, out of the rain. Waiting past the end of the line which meant I would be last, which I was okay with. Better than soaking. I waited with a mother and her baby carriage and three old ladies. On a few instances they tried to talk to me but they got too advanced and I had to say sorry. Say my Spanish was limited to small talk. Whatever patchwork of verbs and ideas picked up through friends, reggaetón music, overheard in Los Angeles, and familiarity with French. “You look Spanish” The mother said. And then we left it.
Three taxis looped around, swerving back through the city and around again. Three taxis, and one by one each train passenger was taken off to separate heavy front doors and bedrooms and windows. Separate temples of rest.
THE MINUTES OF THE HOUR LOOPED LIKE THE TAXIS - A SIMILAR SPIRIT OF THE VAGABOND. IMPOSSIBLE TO PIN DOWN AND CLAIM. I WAITED. THE MINUTES, THE HOURS, THE TAXIS. EVERYTHING WOULD CIRCLE BACK IN ITS TIME. THE MOTION OF PARTICLES WOULD NOT CEASE. THE TURNING OF THE COSMOS. THE PRESS AND LIFT OF EVERY BREATH. AND I WOULD STAY WAITING UNDER THE AWNING, WITHOUT MUCH SAY, FACING FATE WHICH DARED ME, ASKING, WHERE ELSE DID YOU EXPECT TO BE?
“Somos tres!” the young mother told the taxi driver when there were only three of us left. Three more rides until finally the people of the train would be nestled away.
The rain was pouring down by then. Lightning flashed bright purple against the orange haze of the city. Trees lined the avenue across from the station, reaching wide crowns between the old stone buildings.
When it was my turn, the taxi wound along dark streets and tight roundabouts. Wet windows made it feel like the alley of an automatic carwash. A black tunnel until finally pulling over at a corner outside of Dominos Pizza and pointing a little up the road. “There,” he said in Spanish, “The door there”. I nodded. I paid him, grabbed my bag from the trunk, and walked the final meters to the hostel.
Two smokers stood on the stately front steps. They mumbled to each other and I nodded as I passed. Up a marble staircase and into the high ceiling, and a door on the right with a keypad. I entered. Inside was a boxy room, lit by one yellow overhead light, lined in locked doors and dark hallways. It seemed everyone was asleep, and my heavy steps creaked the wooden floors.
I dropped my bag at the bathroom stall. Lined the shower ledge with soap. Shampoo (2 in 1). Hung fresh clothes and underwear on the hook outside the curtain. Brushed the grime off my teeth.
Then, in a series of stances, crouching and balancing, I pulled my feet from their sweaty socks and stripped naked. Trusting, or hoping, or not really caring either way anymore whether a stranger might walk in on me. The water was room temperature. I watched it pool at my feet. I had made it.
My key unlocked the bedroom, which was dark, narrow, and cupped on one side by a bay window. There were two bunk beds. Vaulted ceilings. My claim was to the top bunk on the left. I ghosted through the dark to hang my wet towel on the wall and prop my bag beside the radiator. There were bodies on the beds, hidden under blankets, dreaming.
I fished to the bottom of my pack, pulled out the mass of my sleeping bag and climbed the bed gently. Unraveled it over top of the bedsheets. A shift on the mattress below mine unleashed a clattering snore. Then another. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
I laid on top of my sleeping bag. It was too hot to go inside. The snoring continued, heavy and wet and somehow drenched in mockery. The rain splashed on the empty streets outside, dripping like static through the light of the street lamp.
Somebody was shouting in the street. They were angry. Or. Calling to someone far away, I wasn’t sure. A different voice called back. Something in the tone of the second voice added the possibility that the shouting was drunk and joyful. I had been awake for so long I wasn’t even tired. My eyes gazed sharply at the ceiling. The shouting stopped before I could make sense of its nature.
The snoring, though, continued. My earplugs were making their debut as useless blue foam. I thought back to when all of this had started, some moment in LAX, waiting to board the plane. I’d been speaking on the phone with my mother. The last thing she said was to make sure that, above all else, I had packed my sense of humor.
So I considered the rain. And the heavens. And the bowling ball of thunder and the pin strike of lightning. The cosmic game. I watched the static lamp light and listened to the snoring. I found my sense of humor, and I laughed myself to sleep.