Plane Jane Quotes

Lincoln: When your girlfriend is the hottest woman on the planet, you don’t take chances. Meeting you on a plane—that’s fucking romance book shit. Not happening.

Happiness There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a tree’s contact with the outer world, the tree’s interpreter, and to some degree the tree’s companion. So should man’s ego be. When man’s ego turns instead into a shell, when instead of interpreting outside conditions it reacts too violently against them, then it hardens, becomes an imprisoning form that begins to snuff out important data, and to keep enlarging information from the inner self. The purpose of the ego is protective. It is also a device to enable the inner self to inhabit the physical plane. It is in other words a camouflage. It is the

Erections and guilt can’t exist in the same plane. One makes way for the other.

Without constant clairvoyance on the part of every man and woman, existence on your plane would involve such inner, psychological insecurity that it would be completely unbearable. Individuals are always warned of disasters, so that the organism can prepare itself ahead of time. The day of death is known.

The physical organism itself then, even as you know it, exists and moves and reacts and influences, and is influenced by, many fields or planes of actuality; and its existence as you know it in your universe is determined by and dependent upon its existence within other fields, of which man is still intellectually ignorant.

Ese contraste entre los planes y las decisiones de los mortales que el tiempo se encarga siempre de resaltar para instrucción propia y diversión de los vecinos.

She and the other witches probably turned themselves into bats and had bat sex one hundred feet up, or had sex on the spirit plane, or with fire elementals or whatever.

But it's too late. She could live another fifty years, love and leave a hundred cities, press her fingertips into a thousand turnstiles and plane tickets, and Jane would still be there at the bottom of her heart.

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 could live another fifty years, love and leave a hundred cities, press her fingerprints into a thousand turnstiles and plane tickets, and Jane would still be there at the bottom of her heart. This girl from Brooklyn she just can't shake.

It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily - a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest. 'Here we go, baby!' he shouts, teeth bared. 'Now I'm going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain!...' There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock - and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage. ("Jane Browns Body")

Who else had ever met the business-end of a bolt of lightning in mid-flight, as he had just now, flying blind through a storm, lost a wing, managed to come down still alive even if it is on a wooded mountainside, to cut the contact at the moment of crashing so that he wasn't roasted alive, and crawl out with just a wrenched shoulder and a lot of cuts and bruises? He couldn't bail out because he was flying too low, hoping for a break through the clouds through which to spot something flat enough to come down on; he doesn't like bailing out anyway, hates to throw away a good plane. ("Jane Brown's Body")

Before she knew it, the moment was there. Slap, bang. Like the foam dropping from a fire-bombing plane onto a roaring bushfire, stopping the flames dead in their tracks. Lee had seen the backpack. She took a step back and before she could stop it, a sob worked its way from the pit of her stomach into the fresh country air. FROM Write About Me

It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table - how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years ago. Men have cut the isthmus of Panama and joined the two oceans; they have bored tunnels that run below rivers; built aluminum planes that fly from Frisco to Manila; sent music over the air and photographs over wires; but never, when the heartbeat of their own kind has once stopped, never when the spark of life has fled, have they been able to reanimate the mortal clay with that commonest yet most mysterious of all processes; the vital force. And this man thinks he can - this man alone, out of all the world's teeming billions! ("Jane Brown's Body")

Life was transparent, literature opaque. Life was open, literature a closed system. Life was composed of things, literature of words. Life was what it appeared to be: if you were afraid your plane would crash it was about death, if you were trying to get a girl into bed it was about sex. Literature was never about what it appeared to be about, though in the case of the novel cosiderable ingenuity and perception were needed to crack the code of realistic illusion, which was why he had been professionally attracted to the genre (even the dumbest critic understood that Hamlet wasn't about how the guy wanted to kill his uncle, or the Ancient Mariner about cruelty to animals, but it was surprising how many people thought Jane Austen's novels were about finding Mr Right).

He just lingers long enough to see his plane put to bed properly, then grabs a cab at the airport-gate. "The Settlement" and forgetting that he's not inland any more, that Shanghai's snappier than Chicago, "Chop-chop." "Sure, Mike," grins the slant-eyed driver. "Hop in." A change has come over the city since he went away, he can feel that the minute they hit the outskirts, clear the congested native sections, and cross the bridge into the Settlement. Shanghai is already tuning-up for its oncoming doom, without knowing it. A city dancing on the brink of the grave. There's an electric tension in the air, the place never seemed so gay, so hectic, as tonight; the roads opening off the Bund a welter of blinking, flashing neon lights, in ideographs and Latin letters alike, as far as the eye can see. Traffic hopelessly snarled at every crossing, cops piping on their whistles, packed sidewalks, the blare of saxophones coming from taxi-dance mills, and overhead the feverish oriental stars competing with inter-crossed searchlight beams from some warships or other on the Whang-poo. Just about the right town and the right night to have fifteen thousand bucks in, all at one time. ("Jane Brown's Body")

So it's important to know where you are in your cycle?" "What?" She had no idea what the man was asking. "The poltergeist!" Xander stated, then seeing her confusion carried on. "Are you ovulating?" As the plane levelled out and the engine noise dropped abruptly stunned silence blanketed the jet, until Nate's voice sounded from the back of the plane. "Dude, one head injury wasn't enough for you this week?

Inside the pages of each and every book was a whole other world. He could disappear inside that world whenever he needed to - - whenever he felt the outside world, and other people, pressing in on him - - a pressure from social contact and expectations that was surely routine for everyone else, but affected him much more intensely and inexplicably. But he could also experience things from other people's points of view and learn their lessons alongside them, and - - most important to him - - discover the key to living a happy life. He had a feeling that, outside his rough farming family, people were existing on a very different plane, with their emotions and their desires telegraphed along lines never - ending, vibrating in as - yet - unknown ears, creating little frictions and little sparks. His own life was full of little friction, and even fewer sparks.

Intellectual truth alone will not make you free, though it is certainly a necessary preliminary. If this were the case your walls would fall away, since intellectually you understand their rather dubious nature. Since feeling is so often the cohesive with which mind builds, it is feeling itself which must be changed if you would find freedom from your particular plane of existence at your particular time. That is, to some extent a change in feeling will allow you to see variants. Since feeling is a cohesive, to change it completely would hardly be of any advantage since your world of present existence would fall apart.

But wait, stop, it’s not supposed to end this way! You’re the fantasy, you’re what I’m leaving behind. I can’t pack you up and take you with me.” “That was the most self-centered thing I’ve ever heard you say.” Jane blinked. “It was?” “Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?” The jet engines began to whir, the pressure of the cabin stuck invisible fingers into her ears. Henry gripped his armrest and stared ahead as though trying to steady the machine by force of will. Jane laughed at him and settled into her seat. It was a long flight. There would be time to get more answers, and she thought she could wait. Then in that moment when the plane rushed forward as though for its life, and gravity pushed down, and the plane lifted up, and Jane was breathless inside those two forces, she needed to know now. “Henry, tell me which parts were true.” “All of it. Especially this part where I’m going to die…” His knuckles were literally turning white as he held tighter to the armrests, his eyes staring straight ahead. The light gushing through the window was just right, afternoon coming at them with the perfect slant, the sun grazing the horizon of her window, yellow light spilling in. She saw Henry clearly, noticed a chicken pox scar on his forehead, read in the turn down of his upper lip how he must have looked as a pouty little boy and in the faint lines tracing away from the corners of his eyes the old man he’d one day become. Her imagination expanded. She had seen her life like an intricate puzzle, all the boyfriends like dominoes, knocking the next one and the next, an endless succession of falling down. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. She’d been thinking so much about endings, she’d forgotten to allow for the possibility of a last one, one that might stay standing. Jane pried his right hand off the armrest, placed it on the back of her neck and held it there. She lifted the armrest so nothing was between them and held his face with her other hand. It was a fine face, a jaw that fit in her palm. She could feel the whiskers growing back that he’d shaved that morning. He was looking at her again, though his expression couldn’t shake off the terror, which made Jane laugh. “How can you be so cavalier?” he asked. “Tens of thousands of pounds expected to just float in the air?” She kissed him, and he tasted so yummy, not like food or mouthwash or chapstick, but like a man. He moaned once in surrender, his muscles relaxing. “I knew I really liked you,” he said against her lips. His fingers pulled her closer, his other hand reached for her waist. His kisses became hungry, and she guessed that he hadn’t been kissed, not for real, for a long time. Neither had she, as a matter of fact. Maybe this was the very first time. There was little similarity to the empty, lusty making out she’d played at with Martin. Kissing Henry was more than just plain fun. Later, when they would spend straight hours conversing in the dark, Jane would realize that Henry kissed the way he talked--his entire attention taut, focused, intensely hers. His touch was a conversation, telling her again and again that only she in the whole world really mattered. His lips only drifted from hers to touch her face, her hands, her neck. And when he spoke, he called her Jane. Her stomach dropped as they fled higher into the sky, and they kissed recklessly for hundreds of miles, until Henry was no longer afraid of flying.

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

How Could You Not - for Jane Kenyon It is a day after many days of storms. Having been washed and washed, the air glitters; small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower visible against the firs douses the crocuses. We knew it would happen one day this week. Now, when I learn you have died, I go to the open door and look across at New Hampshire and see that there, too, the sun is bright and clouds are making their shadowy ways along the horizon; and I think: How could it not have been today? In another room, Keri Te Kanawa is singing the Laudate Dominum of Mozart, very faintly, as if in the past, to those who once sat in the steel seat of the old mowing machine, cheerful descendent of the scythe of the grim reaper, and drew the cutter bars little reciprocating triangles through the grass to make the stalks lie down in sunshine. Could you have walked in the dark early this morning and found yourself grown completely tired of the successes and failures of medicine, of your year of pain and despair remitted briefly now and then by hope that had that leaden taste? Did you glimpse in first light the world as you loved it and see that, now, it was not wrong to die and that, on dying, you would leave your beloved in a day like paradise? Near sunrise did you loosen your hold a little? How could you not already have felt blessed for good, having these last days spoken your whole heart to him, who spoke his whole heart to you, so that in the silence he would not feel a single word was missing? How could you not have slipped into a spell, in full daylight, as he lay next to you, with his arms around you, as they have been, it must have seemed, all your life? How could your cheek not press a moment to his cheek, which presses itself to yours from now on? How could you not rise and go, with all that light at the window, those arms around you, and the sound, coming or going, hard to say, of a single-engine plane in the distance that no one else hears?

You don’t have to decide anything now. If you will allow me to be near you for a time, then we can see.” He rested his head back, and they looked at each other, their faces inches apart. He always was so good at looking at her. And it occurred to her just then that she herself was more Darcy than Erstwhile, sitting there admiring his fine eyes, feeling dangerously close to falling in love against her will. “Just be near…” she repeated. He nodded. “And if I don’t make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don’t deserve to be near you.” Jane breathed in, taking those words inside her. She thought she might like to keep them for a while. She considered never giving them up. “Okay, I lied a little bit.” He rubbed his head with even more force. “I need to admit up front that I don’t know how to have a fling. I’m not good at playing around and then saying good-bye. I’m throwing myself at your feet because I’m hoping for a shot at forever. You don’t have to say anything now, no promises required. I just thought you should know.” He forced himself to lean back again, his face turned slightly away, as if he didn’t care to see her expression just then. It was probably for the best. She was staring straight ahead with wide, panicked eyes, then a grin slowly took over her face. In her mind was running the conversation she was going to have with Molly. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I found a man as crazy intense as I was.” The plane was moving, that scatty slow motion that seemed to go both forward and backward at once. Jane kept looking back and forth between the window and the man next to her, checking to see if he was really there. Was this a better ending than tallyho? “So,” he said, “is New York City our final destination?” “That’s home.” “Good. There’s bound to be work for an attractive British actor, wouldn’t you think?” “There are thousands of restaurants, and those waiter jobs have high turnover.” “Right.” “Loads of theaters, too. I think you’d be wonderful in a comedy.” “Because I’m laughable.” “It doesn’t hurt.

You don’t know me! You know Miss Erstwhile, but--” “Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life. All three weeks, that was you.” He smiled. “And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace. I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship. And then to find you in that circus…it didn’t make sense. But what ever does?” “Nothing,” said Jane with conviction. “Nothing makes sense.” “Could you tell me…am I being too forward to ask?...of course, I just bought a plane ticket on impulse, so worrying about being forward at this point is pointless…This is so insane, I am not a romantic. Ahem. My question is, what do you want?” “What do I…?” This really was insane. Maybe she should ask that old woman to change seats again. “I mean it. Besides something real. You already told me that. I like to think I’m real, after all. So, what do you really want?” She shrugged and said simply, “I want to be happy. I used to want Mr. Darcy, laugh at me if you want, or the idea of him. Someone who made me feel all the time like I felt when I watched those movies.” It was hard for her to admit it, but when she had, it felt like licking the last of the icing from the bowl. That hopeless fantasy was empty now. “Right. Well, do you think it possible--” He hesitated, his fingers played with the radio and light buttons on the arm of his seat. “Do you think someone like me could be what you want?” Jane smiled sadly. “I’m feeling all shiny and brand new. In all my life, I’ve never felt like I do now. I’m not sure yet what I want. When I was Miss Erstwhile, you were perfect, but that was back in Austenland. Or are we still in Austenland? Maybe I’ll never leave.” He nodded. “You don’t have to decide anything now. If you will allow me to be near you for a time, then we can see.” He rested his head back, and they looked at each other, their faces inches apart. He always was so good at looking at her. And it occurred to her just then that she herself was more Darcy than Erstwhile, sitting there admiring his fine eyes, feeling dangerously close to falling in love against her will. “Just be near…” she repeated. He nodded. “And if I don’t make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don’t deserve to be near you.” Jane breathed in, taking those words inside her. She thought she might like to keep them for a while. She considered never giving them up. “Okay, I lied a little bit.” He rubbed his head with even more force. “I need to admit up front that I don’t know how to have a fling. I’m not good at playing around and then saying good-bye. I’m throwing myself at your feet because I’m hoping for a shot at forever. You don’t have to say anything now, no promises required. I just thought you should know.” He forced himself to lean back again, his face turned slightly away, as if he didn’t care to see her expression just then. It was probably for the best. She was staring straight ahead with wide, panicked eyes, then a grin slowly took over her face. In her mind was running the conversation she was going to have with Molly. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I found a man as crazy intense as I was.

Meeting you on a plane—that’s fucking romance book shit.

This visual of two different worlds and planes of existence converging on a mountain top was actually quite amazing and eye opening to witness. The “haves” and the “have nots.”  It gave me a new perspective. More perspective than I feel I’d gained on the journey so far. People simply don’t know how good they have it, even when things seem terrible or difficult. Although I’d chosen to do this hike and live this way temporarily, I understood there were people out there who lived like this permanently, without any choice, while in much worse conditions and circumstances. Any Dick and Jane can say, “Yeah, I know there are people out there who live like that, and I understand and feel sorry for them.” I’m sure some people reading this are thinking that same thing. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been to third world countries and you can see it, sympathize with it, and think you understand it; but in reality, you may not. Not until you’ve experienced and lived it for yourself. I thought I understood it simply by seeing it, but it wasn’t until I’d lived parts of that “have not” experience, that I realized just how much I didn’t understand it. Defecating outside and maybe not having toilet paper. Sleeping outside, not having running water or hot water, not having showers, and being miles from the nearest help. Not having whatever you want to eat every day or possibly running out of food, or not finding water. Not having electricity, not having climate control, and having your feet as your only means of transportation. Dealing with any and all elements whenever they should arise, as well as having limited hygiene products and smelling terrible every day. This only scratches the surface. I won’t pretend to know exactly what it’s like for people who are stuck in this lifestyle permanently, but in making this journey I certainly gained a much better understanding. I knew that even though it was the life I’d chosen to live at that time, I still had it better than probably half the people on the planet. I could get a reprieve (for a price) anytime I went into town. I could end any suffering, discomfort, and pain I experienced on any day I chose... but I didn’t.  I was enjoying the experience and perspective I was gaining on an almost daily basis. The time for personal reflection and the thousands of moments I had each day that belonged to me and only me was intoxicating. The whole experience was surreal, yet at the same time more real than anything in the modern world. Everything around you out there “is what it is” and isn’t trying to be anything else. It’s simple and honest, which is more than can be said for the “modern” world, where many things are never as they seem, and most everybody wants something from you. 

Jane tried to keep the despondency to herself, though Mr. Nobley seemed to be keeping a pretty good eye on her, as usual. She took another bite of…poultry of some sort?...and decided she’d pull the headache excuse out of the bag and dismiss herself to bed as soon as the dinner torture was over. She hated to waste a single moment of her last days, but she felt pulled inside out and couldn’t figure out how to right herself. She returned Mr. Nobley’s gaze. His eyebrows raised, he leaned forward slightly, his mannerisms asking, “Are you all right?” She shrugged. He frowned. When the women stood to leave the gentlemen to their port and tobacco, Mr. Nobley rose as well and made his unapologetic way to Jane’s side. “Miss Erstwhile, too long have you been asked to walk alone. May I accompany you to the drawing room?” Her heart jigged. “It’s not proper,” she whispered, the fear of Wattlesbrook in her. She didn’t want to be sent home, not before the ball. “Proper be damned,” he said, low enough for just her ears. Jane could feel all eyes on them. She took Mr. Nobley’s arm and walked across that negligible distance, stately as a bride. He found her a seat on a far sofa and sat beside her, and except for the fact that she couldn’t kick off her shoes and tuck her feet up under her, all felt pleasantly snug. “How is the painting going?” he asked. Of course it had been him (the paints). And of course it hadn’t been him (Colonel Andrews’s unseen smoking companion). Jane sighed happily. “How do you do it? How do you make me feel so good? I don’t like that you can affect me so much, and I find you much more annoying than ever. But what I mean is, thank you for the paints.” He wouldn’t acknowledge the thanks and pressed her for details instead, so she told him how it felt to manipulate color again, real color, real paint, not pixels and RGBs, like the joy in her muscles stretching after a long plane ride.

Which parts of Pembrook Park had been real? Any of it? Even herself? The absurdity bubbled up inside her, and she laughed out loud. The woman next to her stiffened as if forcing herself not to look at the crazy person. “Excuse me.” The sound of the voice flattened Jane against the back of her seat as though the plane had taken off at a terrifying speed. It was him. There he was. In the plane. Vest and cravat and jacket and all. “Holy cow,” she said. “Pardon me, ma’am,” Nobley said to the woman beside Jane. “My girlfriend and I don’t have tickets together, and I wonder if you would mind switching. I have a lovely seat on the exit row.” The woman nodded and smiled sympathetically at Jane as though pondering the sadness of a crazy woman dating a man in Regency clothes. The man who was Mr. Nobley sat beside her. He lifted his hand to remove his cap, discovered it’d been dislodged during the scuffle with Martin, and then inclined his head just as Mr. Nobley would have. “How do you do? I’m Henry.” So he was Henry Jenkins. “I’m still Jane,” she said. Or, squeaked, rather.

How do you do? I’m Henry.” So he was Henry Jenkins. “I’m still Jane,” she said. Or, squeaked, rather. He was trying to fasten his seat belt and his look of confusion was so adorable, she wanted to reach over and help, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the…wait, they were on a plane. There were no more Rules. There was no more game. She felt her hopes rise so that she thought she’d float away before the plane took off, so she pushed her feet flat against the floor. She reminded herself that she was the predator now. Tallyho. “This is a bit far to go, even for Mrs. Wattlesbrook.” “She didn’t send me,” said Nobley-Henry. “Not before, not now. I sent myself, or rather I came because I…I had to try it. Look, I know this is crazy, but the ticket was nonrefundable. Could I at least accompany you home?” “This is hardly a stroll through the park.” “I’m tired of parks.” She noticed that his tone was more casual now. He lost the stilted Regency air, his words relaxed enough to allow contractions--but besides that, so far Henry didn’t seem much different from Mr. Nobley. He leaned back, as if trying to calm down. “It was a good gig, but the pay wasn’t astronomical, so you can imagine my relief to find you weren’t flying first class. Though I’d prefer a cargo ship, frankly. I hate planes.” “Mr. Nob--uh, Henry, it’s not too late to get off the plane. I’m not writing an article for the magazine.” “What magazine?” “Oh. And I’m not rich.” “I know. Mrs. Wattlesbrook outlines every guest’s financials along with their profiles.” “Why would you come after me if you knew I wasn’t…” “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.” “I am not.” “I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years--a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then…” “You don’t know me! You know Miss Erstwhile, but--” “Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life. All three weeks, that was you.” He smiled. “And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace. I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship. And then to find you in that circus…it didn’t make sense. But what ever does?” “Nothing,” said Jane with conviction. “Nothing makes sense.

Fuck,” I whispered when I saw how awful I looked. My hair was a mess. I swore I’d at least patted it down before getting off the plane. But it looked like I’d been fucked and then fallen into a bird’s nest where I’d been pecked to death.

My uncle explained about the four hijacked planes that had taken flight, two of which had crashed into the Towers. It had just happened, that morning, on the eleventh. My flight had left JFK the night of the tenth, and I touched down in Seoul before dawn on the twelfth. As I flew west, the day kept trailing behind me. I never experienced September 11; the day was lodged in a space-time vortex, hovering somewhere over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. And here in Korea, 9/11 was literally yesterday’s news.

Ich kann nicht länger schweigend zuhören. Ich muss durch die Mittel mit Ihnen sprechen, die mir zur Verfügung stehen. Sie durchbohren meine Seele. Ich schwanke zwischen Qual und Hoffnung. Sagen Sie nicht, dass ich zu spät komme, dass diese kostbaren Gefühle für immer verloren sind. Ich biete Ihnen noch einmal meine Hand, mit einem Herzen, das noch mehr das Ihre ist als vor achteinhalb Jahren, als Sie es fast gebrochen hätten. Wie können Sie sagen, dass Männer schneller vergessen als Frauen, dass ihre Liebe früher stirbt. Ich habe nie eine andere geliebt als Sie. Ungerecht war ich vielleicht, schwach und verbittert war ich bestimmt, aber niemals unbeständig. Sie allein haben mich nach Bath gelockt. Für Sie allein denke und plane ich. Haben Sie das nicht bemerkt? Können Ihnen meine Wünsche entgangen sein? Ich hätte nicht die letzen zehn Tage abgewartet, hätte ich Ihre Gefühle verstanden, so wie Sie meine durchschaut haben müssen. Sie senken Ihre Stimme, aber ich kann die Laute dieser Stimme unterscheiden, wenn andere sie nicht einmal hören würden. Unvergleichlich gutes, unvergleichlich edles Geschöpf! Sie lassen uns wirklich Gerechtigkeit widerfahren. Sie glauben, dass es wahre Zuneigung und Beständigkeit unter den Männern gibt. Seien Sie versichert, dass sie glühend und unerschütterlich ist bei Ihrem F. W. Ich muss gehen - im Ungewissen über mein Schicksal. Aber ich werde hierher zurückkehren oder Ihrer Gesellschaft so bald wie möglich folgen. Ein Wort, ein Blick von Ihnen wird darüber entscheiden, ob ich das Haus Ihres Vaters heute Abend oder nie wieder betrete.

With better and still better fruits, nuts, grains, and flowers will the earth be transformed, man’s thoughts turned from the base, destructive forces into the nobler productive ones which will lift him to higher planes of action toward that happy day when man shall offer his brother man, not bullets and bayonets, but richer grains, better fruits, and fairer flowers.

Oh, she says gravely, when a bell chimes or a phone rings, we simply take the opportunity to switch off and abandon all our plans and emotions - all our thoughts about other people and ourselves. Abandon all our human perceptions? I ask indignantly. In that case, what’s left for us? No, she says with a shake of the head, I only mean our conception of the world. I like the way she pronounces the word ‘conception’ in her Dutch accent, as if it were hot and she might burn her lips on it. I wish I could speak a foreign language as fluently as you do, I tell her. Please say ‘conception’ again. Explain it to me. What’s the difference between my perceptions and my conceptions? Resolutely, she makes for a cafe beneath some plane trees whose leaves are casting decorative shadows on the white tablecloths. She sits down and regards me sceptically, as if gauging whether I’m bright enough to merit an answer. Most of the time, she says, we form an opinion about things without really perceiving them. She points to an elderly woman waddling across the square laden down with plastic bags. For instance, she goes on, I look at that woman and I think, How bow-legged she is, and that skirt! A ghastly colour and far too short for her. No one should wear short skirts at that age. Are my own legs still good enough for short skirts? I used to have a blue skirt myself. Where is it, I wonder? I wish I was wearing that blue skirt myself. Where is it, I wonder? I wish I was wearing that blue skirt right now. But if I looked like that woman there... She props her head on her hands and regard me with a twinkle in her eye. I laugh. I haven’t really ‘perceived’ the woman, she says, I’ve merely pondered on skirts and legs and the ageing process. I’m a prisoner of my own ideas - my conceptions, in other words. See what I mean? I say yes, but I’d say yes to a whole host of things when she looks at me that way. A waitress of Franka’s age takes our order. She’s wearing a white crocheted sweater over her enormous breasts and a white apron tightly knotted around her prominent little tummy. Her platform-soled sandals, which are reminiscent of hoofs, give her a clumsy, foal-like appearance. Now it’s your turn, says Antje. French teenager, I say. Probably bullied into passing up an apprenticeship and working in her parents’ cafe. Dreams of being a beautician. No, Antje protests, that won’t do. You must say what’s really going through your head. I hesitate. Come on, do. I sigh. Please, she says. OK, but I take no responsibility for my thoughts. Deal! Sexy little mam’selle, I say. Great boobs, probably an easy lay, wouldn’t refuse a few francs for a new sweater. She’d be bound to feel good and holler Maintenant, viens! That song of Jane Birkin’s, haven’t heard it for years. I wonder what Jane Birkin’s doing these days. She used to be the woman of my dreams. Still, I’m sure that girl doesn’t like German men, and besides, I could easily be her father, I’ve got a daughter her age. I wonder what my daughter’s doing at this moment... I dry up. Phew, I say. Sorry, that was my head, not me. Antje nods contentedly. She leans back so her plaits dangle over the back of the chair. Nothing torments us worse than our heads, she says, closing her eyes. You’ve got to hand it to the Buddhists, they’ve got the knack of switching off. It’s simply wonderful.

A city is different things to us at different times - of the day, of the year, of our life. Many years have passed since I was in the backseat of the car, taken with the razzle-dazzle. Today, I'm more drawn to the neighborhood coffee shops, or modest old parks like Abingdon Square in Greenwich Village, where farmers come to sell cheese and eggs under the London Plane trees. I have a soft spot for the little urban island like McCarthy Square, with its birdhouses - some with simple peak roofs; others with multiple stories and decks, made of miniature wood logs, like ski chalets - that poke out from shrubs and evergreens. I like the quiet of the West Village in the morning, where sidewalk chalkboards outside restaurants and coffee shops promise caffeine and better days, and streets paved with setts - Jane, West 12th, Bethune, Bank - feed into Washington Street like streams emptying into a river.

Huge up-draughts – invisible forces – tossed our little plane like it was an insect.

Sitting on my balcony one night, sipping a cold beer and watching the bats circling over the rhododendrons, I let myself feel the weight I had carried with me all my life, that I had run from, humming under the surface. It was a feeling of worthlessness, a deep-seated shame. In that moment I was at the same time a recognized, celebrated thirty-year-old international TV correspondent and a little girl hiding under the stairs from her parents and incapable of loving herself. I knew well how to escape this feeling—head out on a plane, to a place with no cell service, a place where I didn’t really belong—but this time I would not. I would sit there and feel it. And it didn’t kill me. Those months felt like a cease-fire. A fragile peace emerged. Even my plants began to survive.

Movies and aviation also attracted risk takers like Howard Hughes, who combined a career in both fields by investing millions he inherited from his father’s drilling patent. Hollywood lured the future head of TWA into flying in the first place. At the age of twenty Hughes moved from Texas to Hollywood to produce Hell’s Angels, the WWI flying epic.72 He used vintage biplanes and hired over 130 pilots to perform the dangerous stunts in which several died. Hughes learned to fly and performed one of the stunts himself. In 1932, he started the Hughes Aircraft Company, took control of TWA in 1939, and bought the RKO studio in 1948. He would put as much energy into designing a half-cup bra for Jane Russell as he did to fine-tuning the Pratt & Whitney engine of his H-1 racing plane.

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