Flight Turbulence Quotes

A song of despair The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold.

I pretend to reach for them, but before he can guess my intentions, I catch one of his wings instead. He flutters, trying to break loose, his one free wing batting my hand. I draw out the decanter and stuff him into it, careful to fold his wings. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to better him. Once he’s settled inside, I shove a paper towel into the bottle’s neck. No need to worry that he’ll smother. After all, he spent that night in a bug trap last year and survived. “Looks like you’re going to have some turbulence on your flight,” I tell him through the glass. His voice fills my head, an angry, scolding growl. When I don’t respond, he yells Chessie’s name. Chessie flits over to the car and sits on the side mirror, licking his paw, amused and uninterested in taking sides. I hold the decanter up to get a closer look at Morpheus. “Game, set, match, luv. You do realize that my human side defeated you, right? No magic required.” Unlike a real moth that would beat itself against the glass walls until exhausted, he hangs under the curved neck, dignified, glaring with his bulbous eyes. If he had a mouth instead of a proboscis, I’d be able to tell if he’s snarling or beaming with pride. Knowing him, it could be either. Most likely, it’s both.

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It’s amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then you understand the purpose of a personal mission statement. It is the picture of where you want to end up—that is, your destination is the values you want to live your life by. Even if you are off course much or most of the time but still hang on to your sense of hope and your vision, you will eventually arrive at your destination. You will arrive at your destination and usually on time. That’s the whole point—we just get back on course.

Oh God, the relief felt like oxygen. The relief felt like getting off a plane, after a long winter and a turbulent flight, and finding yourself outside the airport in a tropical clime. The relief was so profound, I felt undone.

She had to steel herself to meet his gaze. It took courage but she managed to raise her lashes to meet all that dark blue. It was like looking at a turbulent night sky. Every time she did, he robbed her of her ability to breathe.

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It’s amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then

Close your eyes,” I say again. She closes them. I look at her. I wish her everything good. A friendly cab driver and short lines through security. A flight with no turbulence and an empty seat next to her. A beautiful Christmas. I wish her more happiness than can fit in a person. I wish her the kind of happiness that spills over. I place the bell into her open palms.

That done, we could finally relax about the baggage and start seriously to worry about the state of the plane, which was terrifying. The door to the cockpit remained open for the duration of the flight and might actually have been missing entirely. Mark told me that Air Merpati bought their planes second-hand from Air Uganda, but I think he was joking. I have a cheerfully reckless view of this kind of air travel. It rarely bothers me at all. I don’t think this is bravery, because I am frequently scared stiff in cars, particularly if I’m driving. But once you’re in an airplane, everything is completely out of your hands, so you may as well just sit back and grin manically about the grinding and rattling noises the old wreck of a plane makes as the turbulence throws it around the sky. There’s nothing you can do.

At this point, the sequence of my memories is disrupted. I sank into a chaos of brief, incoherent and bizarre hallucinations, in which the grotesque and the horrible kept close company. Prostrate, as if I were being garrotted by invisible cords, I floundered in anguish and dread, oppressively ridden by the most unbridled nightmares. A whole series of monsters and avatars swarmed in the shadows, coming to life amid draughts of sulphur and phosphorus like an animated fresco painted on the moving wall of sleep. There followed a turbulent race through space. I soared, grasped by the hair by an invisible hand of will: an icy and powerful hand, in which I felt the hardness of precious stones, and which I sensed to be the hand of Ethal. Dizziness was piled upon dizziness in that flight to the abyss, under skies the colour of camphor and salt, skies whose nocturnal brilliance had a terrible limpidity. I was spun around and around, in bewildering confusion, above deserts and rivers. Great expanses of sand stretched into the distance, mottled here and there by monumental shadows. At times we would pass over cities: sleeping cities with obelisks and cupolas shining milk-white in the moonlight, between metallic palm-trees. In the extreme distance, amid bamboos and flowering mangroves, luminous millennial pagodas descended towards the water on stepped terraces.

A flutter of bright green drew Deanna's focus out of the turbulent realm of her head and onto the flame-damaged storage shed. From the hold below the scorched eaves she saw the male paloma emerge and take flight. A few seconds later the drab brown female popped out. She soared after her mate. Deanna gasped in shock, amazed that any creature could have survived.

As far as her parents could tell from their vantage point behind the spire, Psyche plummeted to her death. They never found her body, but that didn’t mean anything. It was a windy day, and they were too upset to launch a full-scale search. Besides, if Psyche hadn’t died, that meant the monster of the prophecy had taken her, which was even worse. The king and queen returned home, brokenhearted, convinced they would never see their beloved daughter and favorite tourism magnet again. The end. Not really. In the long run, Psyche would’ve suffered less if she had died, but she didn’t. As she fell from the rock, the winds swirled around her. Forty feet from the valley floor, they slowed her fall and lifted her up. “Hi,” said a disembodied voice. “I’m Zephyrus, god of the west wind. How ya doing today?” “Um…terrified?” said Psyche. “Great,” said Zephyrus. “So we have a short flight this morning, heading over to my master’s palace. Weather looks good. Maybe a little turbulence on our initial ascent.” “Your master’s palace?” “Please remember to keep your seat belt fastened, and don’t disable the smoke detectors in the lavatory.” “What language are you speaking?” Psyche demanded. “What are you talking—AHHH!” The west wind swept her away at a thousand miles an hour, leaving behind Psyche’s stomach and a trail of black flower petals. They touched down in a grassy valley blanketed with wildflowers. Butterflies flitted through the sunlight. Rising in the distance was the most beautiful palace Psyche had ever seen. “Thanks for flying with us today,” Zephyrus said. “We know you have a lot of options when choosing a directional wind, and we appreciate your business. Now, you’d better get going. He’ll be waiting.” “Who—?” But the air turned still. Psyche sensed that the wind god was gone.

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time.

Mrs. Rita Graul, one of Mrs. Hicks’s principal lieutenants, had just introduced two figures in chicken masks—“the white chicken, Senator Kennedy,” and “the brown chicken, Senator Brooke.” All of a sudden, there was Kennedy himself—that distinctive mop of brown hair, his face tanned from the late-summer weekend on the Cape. There was a brief but heated discussion over whether to let the Senator speak. Ultimately, Kennedy advanced to the microphone, but when the crowd realized who he was they booed and jeered: “Impeach him. Get rid of the bum!” “You’re a disgrace to the Irish!” “Why don’t you put your one-legged son on a bus!” “Yeah, let your daughter get bused, so she can get raped!” “Why don’t you let them shoot you, like they shot your brother!” Kennedy’s face tightened and his fist grasped the microphone more closely, but each time he tried to speak the clamor grew. Some in the crowd chanted, “No, no, we won’t go.” Others sang “God Bless America.” Then, slowly at first, more quickly as the idea caught on, the crowd turned row by row to face the Federal Building named for his brother, the late President. Kennedy abruptly left the platform and started across the plaza toward his office, a few women pursuing him, shouting further insults. Then out of the crowd sailed a ripe tomato, smashing on the pavement, splattering his pin-striped suit. “Ahhh,” sighed the crowd. Another tomato and several eggs rained down on him. Kennedy quickened his pace, head down. With the object of their resentment in full flight now, the pursuers closed in.

When I boarded the plane, I found to my surprise that Tatum had decided to return to Norman with the team rather than go to Maryland. .... When I saw Tatum on board, I had momentary regret that I had abandoned [my other flight]. I had no desire to spend several hours on the flight with him; I had learned from past encounters that he could talk endlessly, with exhausting intensity. Hoping to avoid him, I walked to the front end of the DC-4 and took a seat on the right side next to the window; but I had scarcely sat down when Tatum plumped down beside me. He spent the first few minutes telling me how unethical he thought I had been to offer one of his assistant coaches the head coaching job at OU before he resigned and only hours before his team was to compete in a bowl game. He was offended and hurt, he said, by such treatment. I listened patiently, with the unhappy thought that there would be several hours of such conversation before I could find relief at the journey's end. However, shortly after takeoff we ran into turbulent air. The plane rose over a series of updrafts and dropped violently between them. Tatum, who was not a good air traveler, soon began to feel the effects. When he stopped talking for a moment, I glanced at him and noticed that he had begun to turn a little pale. The paleness soon turned to a greenish cast, and I had a feeling that my problem might be solved. Finally, when he became noticeably ill, I signaled for a hostess and suggested to my sick friend that we remove the armrest between the two seats so that he could lie down. I would find a seat elsewhere. He accepted the suggestion, and when I left him he was in a semireclining position with his head on a pillow, holding a sick sack. We soon got out of the rough air, and I enjoyed most of the rest of the trip, visiting with as many members of the squad as I could.

Holidays. Don't have to be a turbulent flight. If you embrace the light, over the fight.

The bureaucracy of a big company like Citi often led to bad policies. Such a large firm is basically forced to make decisions for a whole organization that don’t necessarily apply well to the individual business units. Is it better, one wonders, to have uniformity of authority in decision making at the expense of flexibility? It was a demonstration of the challenges of size, the difficulty of managing a large business with hundreds of disparate units. In the mid-2000s, for example, the firm developed new rules for air travel, insisting that employees reach their destinations on the cheapest fares available, even if that meant multiple connections to get to smaller cities. Saving money was not a bad inclination in an industry notorious for profligacy, but there was no flexibility in the rule, and so my assistant, Angela Murray, was engaged in frequent battles to make sure I could arrive at out-of-town meetings on time. If I had a ten o’clock morning meeting in Omaha to discuss a deal with a potential $6 million fee, Citi still insisted on saving a few hundred bucks by booking me on a flight that arrived in the afternoon, which meant I would miss the meeting unless I traveled the day before. And because those cheaper flights often required an overnight stay, more work hours were wasted as well as any potential savings, since the firm would have to pay for a hotel and meals. I knew for a fact that the policy was revenue-negative.

After a flight with heavy turbulence—so terrible that I was compelled to send a text to my best friend, Cami, telling her that if I died she’d need to delete all the books on my Kindle

Mei is watching her face the way she watches flight attendants during turbulence: if they keep pouring the coffee, she knows things are fine--some kinds of tumult frighten only the unaccustomed or the untrained.

Joseph Conrad, of whom Roth would write that his books are ‘turbulent like the sea and calm like the sea and deep like the sea’.

That she was his wife seemed rather unreal. Inconsequential. The fact he was married would occasionally pop into his mind during turbulent flights, when the slim possibility of his own death bounced into view; but rarely before, and never after. Even then, he only remembered it in a distant, oh yes sort of way, as if it was something he’d seen on holiday once—a waterfall; an ostrich.

Each of the passengers has had the feeling before, in an instant of worry during unexpected turbulence, of breathtaking dread, that sudden confrontation with the all-too-real possibility that life could end, not somewhere in the distant future, but here and now, right now. On other occasions, those thoughts have been fleeting. Now they have come back, dwarfing those earlier shivers like the sun outshines a spark.

chaos in her eyes Sitting with Christine, thinking about the chaos in her eyes, his emotional chaos, plotting to lure her out for a weekend of love, he wished in a chaotic, physical logic,” I wish I could count the number of causes and their probabilities that affect your feelings about me and that will determine what kind of answer I get if I ask you out for a date.” -What? What is that you just said? (An internal voice). By knowing the causes and the probabilities of the order in which they occur, you predict emotions Is that possible? Can we treat human emotions like the weather? Are there sensors to measure our emotions across time points in our history from which we can predict our future actions and their impact on us and others? Is there a computer with enormous capacity that can collect, analyze, and predict them? Do human emotions fall within this randomness? Throughout their history, physicists have rejected the idea of a relationship between human emotions and the surrounding world. Emotions are incomprehensible, they cannot be expected, what cannot be expected cannot be measured, what cannot be measured cannot be formulated into equations, and what cannot be formulated into equations, screw it, reject it, get rid of it, it is not part of this world. These ideas were acceptable to physicists in the past before we knew that we can control the effect of randomness to some extent through control sciences, and predict it by collecting a huge amount of data through special sensors and analyzing it. What affects when a plane arrives? Wind speed and direction? Our motors compensate for this unwanted turbulence. A lightning strike could destroy it? Our lightning rods control this disturbance and neutralize its danger. Running out of fuel? We have fuel meter indicators. Engine failure? We have alternative solutions for an emergency landing. All fall under the category of control sciences, But what about the basic building blocks of an airplane model during its flight? Humans themselves! A passenger suddenly felt dizzy, and felt ill, did the pilot decide to change his destination to the nearest airport? Another angry person caused a commotion, did he cause the flight to be canceled? Our emotions are part of this world, affect it, and can be affected by, interact with. Since we can predict chaos if we have the tools to collect, measure, and analyze it, and since we can neutralize its harmful effects through control science, thus, we can certainly do the same to human emotions as we do with weather and everything else that we have been able to predict and neutralize its undesirable effect. But would we get the desired results? nobody knows… -“Not today, not today, Robert”, he spoke to himself. – If you can’t do it today, you can’t do it for a lifetime, all you have to do now is simply to ask her out and let her chaos of feelings take you wherever she wants. Unconsciously, about to make the request, his phone rang, the caller being his mother and the destination being Tel Aviv. Standing next to Sheikh Ruslan at the building door, this wall fascinated him. -The universe worked in some parts of its paint even to the point of entropy, which it broke, so it painted a very beautiful painting, signed by its greatest law, randomness. If Van Gogh was here, he would not have a nicer one. Sheikh Ruslan knocked on the door, they heard the sound of footsteps behind him, someone opened a small window from it, as soon as he saw the Sheikh until he closed it immediately, then there was a rattle in the stillness of the alley, iron locks opening. Here Robert booked a front-row seat for the night with the absurd, illogic and subconscious.

plane. Bill was putting gas in the left wing when he looked over at us and said, "You okay with a little turbulence?" Without hesitating I answered, "Yeah, no problem." I thought about it for a minute then asked, "How much turbulence are we talking about?" "It shouldn't be too bad." Then why did you mention it? I thought to myself. Now I was the one worried. I dug through my backpack and found my tube of ten-year-old Dramamine. Karen had a full water bottle so I swallowed a pill with a couple of long gulps. Bill asked which one of us wanted to sit up front with him. I looked at Karen and she said, "God no!" Karen climbed in the single back seat and Bill placed our backpacks next to her. Karen kept the plywood Kobuk sign at her feet. With the co-pilot seat pushed back into Karen's knees, I wriggled my way across the pilot's seat and settled in the front right seat of the plane. It was hard getting in without bumping against the controls and switches on the dashboard. I could imagine the windshield wipers flapping and the radio blaring like a high school practical joke when Bill started the engine. Or worse, that in flight he wouldn't find that one critical setting that I'd changed until it was too late and the plane was plunging to the ground. I decided to not say anything and assume he would check them before the flight like pilots are supposed to do. Besides, I'm sure he's had more clumsy passengers with bigger butts than me shoehorn themselves into the co-pilot's seat before. Bill taxied the plane slowly to one end of the pond giving us room to takeoff and allowing the engine to warm up. When Bill turned the plane toward the direction of our takeoff and gunned the engine, I was surprised at how close we were to the trees on the approaching shore. But my concern was unnecessary; by the time we reached the trees we were well above them. In an instant, we were high enough in the sky to

But I’m not Dad’s therapist. I’m his child, and I still want an “I’m sorry.” An apology for why I imagine burning in Hell on turbulent flights, after I jerk off, and after naps. For why I have a hole in me so large only Christianity can fill it. For why my journey to find myself has been polluted with the poison of eternal doubt.