“I felt…as if I were made of some bright, airy, musical substance and that in my chest was a source of power that would any minute explode releasing thousands of singing birds.”
– Robyn Davidson (Tracks, 1980)
I’m traveling to a major city in the Eastern United States, and for some reason, the book I brought with me to Pittsburgh is Tracks by Robyn Davidson. It’s a memoir about her solo crossing of the Australian desert. With camels. So, nothing like my trip. But it was the next book on my To-Be-Read pile, and I’m on a ravenous memoir bender, gobbling them up like a racoon drunk on sweet, fermented berries.
As it turns out, all journeys have at least a few common waypoints. In this case, a starting point. The departure. And with any beginning comes the anxiety, the nerves, the elation of heading off into the unknown. I’m watching Tucson shrink beneath me, my perception switching back and forth between micro and macro. Flipping from recognizable landmarks–there’s downtown, Tumamoc Hill, La Cholla High School–to abstract pattern. The city becomes a circuit board, a Klimt painting. I struggle to hold onto recognizable landmarks, but it is futile. I am flung into the world of in-between.
My third great-grandfather, Emmanual Wertheimer arrived in New York the summer of 1853 after sailing from Germany aboard the Sea Queen. (At least that’s what ancestry.com says. I can barely read the handwriting on the log.) Assuredly, he felt the same pressure in his chest as the sailing vessel pushed from Bremerhaven out into the North Sea. He wasn’t alone. Traveling with him was–I believe–his mother his brothers and his half-brothers. Like many emigrants, they were escaping the tumultuous mid-19th century in Germany, where life for the Jewish merchant class was becoming increasingly difficult. The United States was an opportunity for a young businessman to make a name for himself. But I can’t help wonder what it was like on that boat. Probably crowded. Probably a chunky stew of rich and poor.
Turning away from my window, it takes several long minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dark cabin. Why is no one looking out the window? Just the faint blue glow of screens and sweaty necks. We’re just headed from Tucson to Phoenix. It’s a small plane. I try to crane me head around to count (yeah, that’s not weird), and I estimate only about seventy-five people, but we are packed in here like sausage filling. The smell of bodies. I’m a big guy and I have to fold my limbs in close to my chest, opening my pack of Biscoff like a praying mantis. Praying. I fall back on a mantra given to me by my wife for times when my social anxiety piques, for times when all I want to do is retreat into my intricately decorated mind.
“Hello, fellow humans.”
The desert ripples and buckles underneath me. I recognize nothing.
Porter McDonald 