Up in the Air
Up in the Air
This Etgar Keret story is wonderfully funny. A quote to tantalize: "And strangely enough, for me, those flights don’t just mean eating the heated-up TV dinner that the sardonic copywriter for the airlines decided to call a “High Altitude Delight.” They’re a kind of meditative disengagement from the world. Flights are expansive moments when the phone doesn’t ring and the Internet doesn’t work. The maxim that flying time is wasted time liberates me from my anxieties and guilt feelings, and it strips me of all ambitions, leaving room for a different sort of existence. A happy, idiotic existence, the kind that doesn’t try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it." The irony of our modern connected existence is of course just this, that you have to be flying at 28,000 feet in order to be free. Keret's description of reading the inflight catalog recalls a recent experience when my son Ari and I entertained ourselves during take off and landing with a contest of who could find the most ridiculous product in the catalog. We laughed together during take off. Then the iPods were turned back on. We laughed together during landing. Then we reconnected to our wired world...
This Etgar Keret story is wonderfully funny. A quote to tantalize: "And strangely enough, for me, those flights don’t just mean eating the heated-up TV dinner that the sardonic copywriter for the airlines decided to call a “High Altitude Delight.” They’re a kind of meditative disengagement from the world. Flights are expansive moments when the phone doesn’t ring and the Internet doesn’t work. The maxim that flying time is wasted time liberates me from my anxieties and guilt feelings, and it strips me of all ambitions, leaving room for a different sort of existence. A happy, idiotic existence, the kind that doesn’t try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it." The irony of our modern connected existence is of course just this, that you have to be flying at 28,000 feet in order to be free. Keret's description of reading the inflight catalog recalls a recent experience when my son Ari and I entertained ourselves during take off and landing with a contest of who could find the most ridiculous product in the catalog. We laughed together during take off. Then the iPods were turned back on. We laughed together during landing. Then we reconnected to our wired world...