05.29.08
Rough Tokyo flight impressions -updated
LAX 5.28.2008 907 AM
It is bittersweet to fly in …past the Cajon Pass…with San Bernadino to the right…thoughts of Rose…of LA 60 years ago…orange groves..trees…fewer people…more water…thoughts of my grandmother at USC around 1930.. 80 years ago…yet the mountains look the same as they do in pictures from the turn of the century…the same where people have not built. but the craggy, water drained ruggedness remains..timeless…the same as when I flew out around March 30th 1990…the same as it did hundreds of years ago when the spanish landed and found paradise. the light has a quality..evven with some smog…though not much today…that sun baked…drenched….blessed…?
City of Angeles…of stars..symbolic..figurative…real.
LA embodies the union of real and unreal..of dream…of hope…of what can be possible…what is lost.
paradise lost.
it is nice to be here..in a way….but I wish I could be forever. it is my home…somehow…for some reason…this amalgam of the world..this melting pot..this crowded wedge of chaos. perched on the edge of the pacific plates…with thousands of miles of ocean seperating it from the next land…the next people…
It has been a fixation for me: how the Pacific extends from LA, how there is a strange calm as you drive from one of thte largest cities in the world west, towards LAX, Marina Del Rey, the beach, the pacific. There is nothing like it in the world. The extent of Manifest Destiny, with all its logical and illogical realities. Now, for the first time in 18 years, I willl depart over the pacific as I have countless times before. First to Detroit, then Pittsburgh, later many times to Austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, On normal takeoff he plane flies toward the Pacific and rises over the bluff where another paradise was removed to keep the flights safe. I remember meeting a tanned and leathery man who spoke of paradise lost, of how he had a garden with every flower imaginable and cascading bougainevillea. But the airport authotrity condmed his house, tore it down, took it away.
The bluff turns to sand and quickly the colors of the coast, the aquamarine, the bullet green-grey, the water. On the right a hint of Malibu and the Costal Range extending to Santa Barbara. The plane soars to the west off the continent toward the hope of new worlds and exotic lands in the Pacific. Then the plane turns sharply to the south and the island of Catalina appears as a sentinel guarding the bay: a last reminder of land for thousands of miles. One of the few remaining places along the us pacific coast that has not been developed on every inch. Then the plane turns sharply to the left again and Mexico and San Diego are visible to the south along with miles of houses in Orange County. The hope of the sea has been left behind and development, houses, commerce, and people loom.
But this time the plane will continue out over the pacific. Perhaps along the coast past Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Seattle, and along the coast of Alaska where I have never seen so many high mountain ranges extend into the distance. Or perhaps the plane will chart a course toward Hawaii over the pacific, over the sea, flying free until a glimmer of Asia and finally Japan is gleaned.
We set out from LAX gleaming in the early afternoon sun. The 777 climbs fast and before I know it we have made a gentle turn to the left, as if we are going to an eastern destination such as Chicago, Dallas, or Austin. We head directly towards Catalina Island, something I never did before. But after awhile we turn sharply north and hug the coastline as we go west of Santa Barbara and just to the North of the Channel Islands. I had never seen them from the air before. They feel untouched, unsullied. Although sheep ranching has forever changed the landscape, there are no houses or developments, just cliffs, coast, some sand, and fields of mustard.
We went along the coast, past Monterey bay, past San Francisco, until we were just north of Santa Rosa. Then we turned due west toward the Pacific and points west. We travelled well south of Alaska, well north of Hawaii, close to the Aleutians as we edged nearer to the International Date Line. It was bumpy as it often is over this part of the Pacific. Wispy cloud layers hide thicker layers that descend toward the sea. There is so much moisture in the atmosphere, even at 37000 feet.
It was an unsettling descent. Bumpy, cloudy, rainy. We could not see the ground until about 700 feet. But the pilot lined up with the ils well and landed solidly on the runway and controlled the stop.
As soon as I descended to the Keisei Line platform I was confronted with that familiar smell. Smokey, woody, perhaps with a hint of those shark flakes “bonito” . I smelled it the whole trip to Nippori Station and notice it especially when I am in the older areas wandering the streets. It is an interesting time.
