pilot’s strike

Well, days later. I sit, house-bound, stewing, steaming, simmering, stressed. An appallingly bad day yesterday dealing with Icelandair and the cancellation of my flight to Reykjavík. The stupid pilots went on strike a few hours before the flight was to leave … I was actually told to go to the airport last night by the telephone reservations people and ended up standing there for three hours before being told nothing would happen … And I was so wiped from that (including riding out there on the subway from Tribeca) I had to take a cab back to Stefan and Ellen’s place, for a cool U$D 39. Faugh! I actually get rather irritated with traveling through NYC each time I leave the country. I think that when I move my belongings from the storage unit in north-west New Jersey to Colorado or Arizona in August, I will rarely come through NYC in further travels. Every time I feel like I am being drained of cash reserves. Of course, I have a number of friends here, and visiting them is important, but it is so expensive just passing through. The suspension of the traveler in-transit is a suspension inanimate. A preservation outside of sanity within the crystal glass of potential movement, disconnection is complete from all possibilities. I shuddered in the jarring stop of this disruption. Angry. Upset. Thinking of the little boy who was/is counting down the days until he sees his Pabby. And me closer but still an ocean apart. I do not understand the torrent of emotion circulating around this permutation. As it is not technology that is the cause, but more, a measuring of the expanse of human greed in the realm of corporations — how those at the bottom are exploited more or less, and those at the top exploit more or less. No, I do understand the emotions. I am extremely insecure about certain aspects of my traveling. There are so many indeterminate things to cope with that I am rather rigid about the big steps like plane trips, and housing (something I have written about before in this travelog), and when these big steps go awry, I feel very vulnerable, and most of all, when disruptions affect my monetary situation. My monetary arrangements are made with basically no slack. And my fund this time is calculated for food for the three months of travel, and small daily expenses like swimming with Loki. Two days in NYC extra blows the entire thing (well, not quite). Money is my only disgressionary tool — but the quantities I work with are so minimal that it provides only the most primitive buffer — for example, the first time I went to the airport (Kennedy) this week, I went by subway, Friday afternoon, plenty of other people on it, so it is safe, and it saves me U$D 20 at least over the next cheapest form of transportation. However, I am so exhausted after the scene at the airport and pissed about the plane not leaving that I end up taking a taxi back into the City and again, the next time I head to the airport, I also take a taxi because it was a Sunday afternoon and the subway is a bit more questionable (safe?) (and a much further walk away from Stefan’s as some platforms are closed on weekends). So I take a taxi again. This really blows the budget. I do not make phone calls to people here in town. I have cut those connections. It is possible to deal with email, but there is no heart in it. I spend the day fixing up the travelog site to begin entries on this present trip that will go on until August where I will most likely end up in Boulder, Colorado, teaching a few classes in Electronic Media at one of the old alma maters — the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado. Long road ahead that hopefully will not have too many potholes like the present one.