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Day Twenty Two: Redux America
New Zealand, approximately the size of California, population almost 5 million. We fly over L.A. on Saturday, January 15, 2005, 10:30 am, approximately 8 hours earlier than when we left. A neat trick. Also neat are the rows and rows and rows of houses stretching out through Los Angeles as far as the eye can see, stopped only by the steep mountains inland and the sea. Los Angeles, within California, population almost 10 million. There is no land left untamed, or if it was it is a neatly surveyed square of green. Not content with the flatlands, there are houses attempting to climb the hills. An earthquake, a tsunami in these parts would wipe out half of the entire population, approximately the number of people as in the whole of New Zealand.
We land and go through immigration. Determinedly cheerful signs instruct foreign passengers to be fingerprinted and photographed—we manage to breeze right through, on towards Customs, who also waves us by even though we actually have items to declare, and we discover the reason is that they have set up a yet another x-ray of re-checked baggage, littering the walkway and causing havoc. The odd thing is this havoc seems new when in actuality this confusion must happen six times a day, anytime a flight comes in. We leave our luggage to be x-rayed for the third time today, and then follow the sheep to the next security outpost where we stand in line for half an hour. The amount of people and the number of security checks seems to work against the system. Rather than rebuild the airport to allow passengers to remain in a secure area, they are trying to retrofit their old systems in impossible ways. Maybe in the back of their heads they are thinking still that the Big Brother syndrome is only temporary.
My disenchantment with my own native country surprises me somewhat. The only thing holding me here at the moment is an attachment to my dog and the house where all my things are. But I could easily have stayed. While in line a woman ahead of us chatted to her line-mate about inconsequential things, letting it casually be known that she had been on business in Australia and hadn’t had time to see the country. Before she opened her mouth again I knew what she was, despite the casual speak and the jeans and brightly covered bag and sneakers—she was the up and coming, the next vice president of whatever software company she was currently working for. I found myself wondering if that was really her there speaking so confidently to the stranger next to her about her line of work, or if in reality she’s dreaming of home and her cat or wide open oceans. I can’t claim that my own aspirations are any nobler than hers might be but they seem more real to me. What is it to be tied to a title at a company you don’t even own? Why bother to strive for it? I’ve climbed glaciers and volcanoes now, traveled half the world over, and who cares what I do to buy the plane ticket? Stu, the fishing guide, made it clear that he didn’t care what made money as long as you were happy doing what you were doing. Leave the VP-ships to those who don’t know what they want. I’ll take kayaking on Doubtful Sound, or even running my own farm in cold New Hampshire, anytime. All I’m doing is living, after all. Trying to make the most of it.