La La Land

The airport is busy with travelers. The clouds are grey with deliberation but the planes are still flying, I watch one touch down, coming out from the clouds. My parents are going away somewhere, but I haven’t asked where too. I’m there with my friends, two of them, but I didn’t ask them to come and wonder for a moment if they’ve followed me. They would never follow me to say good bye to my parents so I think I’ve probably invited them and have just forgotten.

We’re all in a place where we’re bored, I think. I haven’t asked them. Our reluctance to talk about it is what affirms this thought. We’re too bored to talk.

Then they go away, my parents. They board something and go somewhere. I won’t see them again, for a while.

Now I’m sitting in the airport watching through a wall of windows as the planes land and take off, amazed by the seamlessness of everything. It all seems to work to well and nothing seems to work this well so it surprises me that something does.

Then we go to Paris.

I don’t know why we go to Paris but I think it is because I suggested going. I think I said in the midst of our silence, Lets just go to Paris. A few minutes later we were up in a plane looking down at a city that could be anything. We could already be in Paris but I suspected correctly that we weren’t.

It’s the strangest plane I’ve ever been in, because I’m not in it. I’m on it. The wings are like an old fighter jets, a Red Baron. The seats are in between the different platforms, except on this plane there are a lot of platforms and a lot of seats. We’re in the open air, clouds smacking against our faces. I am always sliding about my seat and I think I’m going to fall down to my death, but don’t.

We don’t land in Paris. For some reason we land in Belgium, which is more like Prague, it seems. I’ve never been to Prague but it’s the Prague I have in my head. It’s dark and sinister. Industrial. I don’t know how we got here but I want to go to Paris because we only have one week. There is a fat man with a white tank top cleaning his ear with a pocket knife. He runs after me for a bit but I think I’m safe, unstabbed.

I know that isn’t a word but I use words I know aren’t when I’m in Belgium because what’s the difference. We watch two children dressed like an elderly couple rob an actual elderly couple and steal their car. We go into a 7-11, which I was hoping to escape by going to Europe, but haven’t. I ask a man how to get to Paris and he says we need to take a train which will take about thirty hours. I ask how to get to the train and he says we need to take a bus. It will take about thirty minutes.

Then we go back out to the Prague looking streets of Belgium looking for a train to Paris.