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australia, airplanes and new york
As mentioned earlier, I started in on Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country. I've never really been one for travel essays, but the book has been recommended to me repeatedly, I'm awfully keen on Australia right now, and everytime I flicked through it in the store, it amused me.
Despite being only twenty-two pages in, I've come rapidly to a number of interesting conclusions. The first is that I'm having an Internet romance with Australia. No, really. It's like, if I feel this way about it when I go, then by god, it's love, but I won't say that about a place I've never been. It's not that it's unwise. It's that it's embarassing. And like all Internet romances, it'll end in tears -- either because it won't live up to expectation, or because distance always leads to some heartache, no matter how you run the numbers or make your choices.
My other realization is that this is bizarre, but not for the already obvious reasons. It's bizarre because Australia is packed with stuff that I don't get along with so well. Extreme weather. Bugs. (Did you know, for example, that ants are descended from wasps, and that the intermediary species, long having been thought to be exitinct thrives in Australia? I find this to be perhaps the most uncontrollably alarming things I've ever read, although I couldn't tell you why. Wasps upset me. They are primoridal and evil and have little chewing mouths. And this is where ants come from? Dear god. No wonder my cats are afraid of them). Jelly fish. Falling rocks. Vegemite.
But yet, I am reading this book and swooning with anticipation, fantasizing about long haul train travel across the continent and ridiculously long days of beachside contentment. And I realized exactly why I seem to feel about Australia the way![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theotoky has always felt about China (and now that she's been, I'm eager to hear how that's turned out) -- it's because Australia is like airplanes.
I used to take flying lessons, mainly in a Cesna 172 (the 150 was like flying a lawn mower). I loved flying lessons, but they were just ultimately something I couldn't afford, but the second I have that sort of disposeable income, I do intend to be a licensed pilot. Flying, all in all, isn't that dangerous -- the risk factor is vaguely proportionate with frequent motorcycle riding, except unlike with motorcycles, the reality is that if you die or are seriously injured in a small plane accident, chances are it was pilot error. You are at all times required to be exceptionally observant and fully responsible for your continued existence on this sphere, which for some people is an attraction, for others, a nasty thing to get past, and for some, just a random fact of the matter.
For me, it was just a fact of the situation, and one I didn't dwell on much. I am capable of, and enjoy, being hyper-focused when I'm interested in something, and it was part of the package, as much as checking the fuel and dealing with log books. Flying requires calm, intelligence, and a reasonable amount of rather serene low-level paranoia. I can't help but imagine with the world's highest concentration of deadly wildlife, Australia is much the same (and to the Australians on my friends list, feel free to tell me to go to hell if I just don't get it at all, but please do so informatively); if something nasty bites you, odds are you weren't paying enough attention or really shouldn't have been poking it with a stick.
So where does my interest in better living through constant vigilence come from? I am in many ways a remarkably risk adverse creature. Dogs make me nervous. The thought of wearing contact lenses makes me nauseous, and I'm really amazingly unfond of heights -- although I can deal with the first and the third when necessary (and I've simply avoided necessary thus far with the second).
The answer, of course, is that New York is filled with as many weird ways to die as a Cesna 172, or Australia. I didn't always accept this. In the 70s, when New York was dangerous, one just got shot. Very boring. And then New York became safe. It was not a place for adventure travel, no matter who you were. When Times Square got cleaned up, there was a brief shining moment where you couldn't convince anyone this city was risky if you tried. But then, in the vacuum left by plain old crime, the seriously weird deaths started to emerge, really just because of a shift in the signal to noise ratio. A woman is smashed on the head randomly with a brick. Construction matterials blow off of a scaffolding and kill two people. The Twin Towers fall down. A woman is electrocuted while walking her dogs. And while none of these fates could really be avoided through the vigilence urged on us constantly by the news, we like to pretend otherwise. We scold people for their inattentiveness, and if we ever really think about the risks of living here, generally do so blithely and with humour, and we love to have those from elsewhere come and face the possibilities. We tell them about the tiger in the housing project, the fictional alligators in the sewers below the subways and the fleets or rats that scurry from construction site to construction site planning their empires.
Living here I know that life is peculiar, random, lovely, cruel and humorous. It's the same when you're flying an airplane. And I suspect ever so strongly, that it's the same on the other side of the world. In all probability, it's the same everywhere else too, but having not decoded or mythologized those places yet, all I can think about is the weird differences in the quality of the light in all the places I've travelled to, and what it's like there.
Despite being only twenty-two pages in, I've come rapidly to a number of interesting conclusions. The first is that I'm having an Internet romance with Australia. No, really. It's like, if I feel this way about it when I go, then by god, it's love, but I won't say that about a place I've never been. It's not that it's unwise. It's that it's embarassing. And like all Internet romances, it'll end in tears -- either because it won't live up to expectation, or because distance always leads to some heartache, no matter how you run the numbers or make your choices.
My other realization is that this is bizarre, but not for the already obvious reasons. It's bizarre because Australia is packed with stuff that I don't get along with so well. Extreme weather. Bugs. (Did you know, for example, that ants are descended from wasps, and that the intermediary species, long having been thought to be exitinct thrives in Australia? I find this to be perhaps the most uncontrollably alarming things I've ever read, although I couldn't tell you why. Wasps upset me. They are primoridal and evil and have little chewing mouths. And this is where ants come from? Dear god. No wonder my cats are afraid of them). Jelly fish. Falling rocks. Vegemite.
But yet, I am reading this book and swooning with anticipation, fantasizing about long haul train travel across the continent and ridiculously long days of beachside contentment. And I realized exactly why I seem to feel about Australia the way
theotoky has always felt about China (and now that she's been, I'm eager to hear how that's turned out) -- it's because Australia is like airplanes.I used to take flying lessons, mainly in a Cesna 172 (the 150 was like flying a lawn mower). I loved flying lessons, but they were just ultimately something I couldn't afford, but the second I have that sort of disposeable income, I do intend to be a licensed pilot. Flying, all in all, isn't that dangerous -- the risk factor is vaguely proportionate with frequent motorcycle riding, except unlike with motorcycles, the reality is that if you die or are seriously injured in a small plane accident, chances are it was pilot error. You are at all times required to be exceptionally observant and fully responsible for your continued existence on this sphere, which for some people is an attraction, for others, a nasty thing to get past, and for some, just a random fact of the matter.
For me, it was just a fact of the situation, and one I didn't dwell on much. I am capable of, and enjoy, being hyper-focused when I'm interested in something, and it was part of the package, as much as checking the fuel and dealing with log books. Flying requires calm, intelligence, and a reasonable amount of rather serene low-level paranoia. I can't help but imagine with the world's highest concentration of deadly wildlife, Australia is much the same (and to the Australians on my friends list, feel free to tell me to go to hell if I just don't get it at all, but please do so informatively); if something nasty bites you, odds are you weren't paying enough attention or really shouldn't have been poking it with a stick.
So where does my interest in better living through constant vigilence come from? I am in many ways a remarkably risk adverse creature. Dogs make me nervous. The thought of wearing contact lenses makes me nauseous, and I'm really amazingly unfond of heights -- although I can deal with the first and the third when necessary (and I've simply avoided necessary thus far with the second).
The answer, of course, is that New York is filled with as many weird ways to die as a Cesna 172, or Australia. I didn't always accept this. In the 70s, when New York was dangerous, one just got shot. Very boring. And then New York became safe. It was not a place for adventure travel, no matter who you were. When Times Square got cleaned up, there was a brief shining moment where you couldn't convince anyone this city was risky if you tried. But then, in the vacuum left by plain old crime, the seriously weird deaths started to emerge, really just because of a shift in the signal to noise ratio. A woman is smashed on the head randomly with a brick. Construction matterials blow off of a scaffolding and kill two people. The Twin Towers fall down. A woman is electrocuted while walking her dogs. And while none of these fates could really be avoided through the vigilence urged on us constantly by the news, we like to pretend otherwise. We scold people for their inattentiveness, and if we ever really think about the risks of living here, generally do so blithely and with humour, and we love to have those from elsewhere come and face the possibilities. We tell them about the tiger in the housing project, the fictional alligators in the sewers below the subways and the fleets or rats that scurry from construction site to construction site planning their empires.
Living here I know that life is peculiar, random, lovely, cruel and humorous. It's the same when you're flying an airplane. And I suspect ever so strongly, that it's the same on the other side of the world. In all probability, it's the same everywhere else too, but having not decoded or mythologized those places yet, all I can think about is the weird differences in the quality of the light in all the places I've travelled to, and what it's like there.
no subject
As for risk, several years ago, Aaron pointed out the dangers we deal with daily and completely ignore. One or two careless steps off of the sidewalk going by a busy street could result in a remarkably messy death, and yet those of us in urban areas almost never even think of this ever-present peril. I think in many cases the truly worrisome risks are simply those that we have not yet had time to become fully acclimatised to. I suppose that also makes them and the events where they occur more exiting.
no subject
just thought i'd tell ya that!
no subject
I hate to hype it even further, but Australia has a good history among myself and my friends of exceeding already-high expectations. We (independently) keep going back (and/or moving there, in increasing quantities.)
Wonderful book, I think Bryson's best, which is saying quite a lot.
no subject
On top of that I am small town Canadian boy and my town had 4 feet of snow and it was -13 F when I left to 110F in the shade. You would burn in under 5 minutes in the open sun. My brother and I were young enough that we acclimatized quickly.
Luckily, because I happened to like bugs, it was an abundant cicada season. I saw many of them, nymphs and adults and heard them, too. A real racket. But harmless.
The worst time with bugs were with regular black flies in a place called Kulangata(sp?) where there are limestone caves. The flies where everywhere, crawling in your nose and mouth and so all the locals spoke with their teeth clamped together. Soon we did, too.
I swam through a swarm of jellyfish and a had a little fit, but wasn't stung once. I just stayed as clear as I could while screaming, too. Maybe that helped.
Australia is beautiful and full of wonders and many of them seem alien and bizarre but are subsequently one of kind, as is the place itself. They are all worth seeing in person.
no subject
a number of years ago I took a very small number of flying lessons. I as in Air Force ROTC and one of the classes constituted 'ground school', so we got to fly those Lawnmowers (Cessna 150's) a few times. I did everything but work the radio and land.
Of course, being in my teens I was convinced I could have landed the second time up, if the instructor would have let me!
I've always had that as something I'd like to go back and do, but then the chances of me ever owning (or part owning) my own airplane are pretty slim, and renting one is just not feasable. Perhaps someday, however...
I am also to understand that since 9/11, Big Brothers' eye has been on general aviation pretty hard, and it stands on the brink of being made a lot more difficult than it used to be. Still haven't decided if that's really necessary yet or not.