January 5, 2013 at 5:49 PM

CandGwtc
Got back to NYC safely. Always difficult to leave San Jose. It’s where I’m from. It’s where my people live. It’s where I learned, loved, lost, laughed and cried…a lot. Took a redeye with a crying baby at my back. It cried and cried and cried so I didn’t have to. The only thing that would have made the trip more poetic would’ve been rain. The plane was old. It shook a lot. Just like me. Airports look less and less like the American ingenuity of my youth. Less like the space travel of The Wonderful World of Disney. They look more like hospitals. Cold clinics filled with unhappy tired and coughing people. And Gucci and Burberry boutiques. Long lines of shoeless Joes. Hands up over your head. Take off your belt. Step to one side. Remove your coat. Empty your pockets. Don’t move. I told Caryn that going through security this time reminded me of the spy stories I’d read in the 70s about travel during the cold war; behind the Iron Curtain. Then I asked, “Why do they call it a ‘terminal’?” When we bussed in to NYC from EWR we saw the WTC’s Freedom Tower going up. I thought of what it must’ve been like to actually live here and see them come down. Surreal. And then the whole airport security thing seemed less offensive. But to see the new tower going up was breathtakingly real. I said it looks like it’s flipping off the rest of the world. “A big knuckle sandwich,” Caryn said. Hello New York. See you next time San Jose.

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