Everyone has thoughts in an airport. The same sights parade as if they were new—holiday clothes, crumpled Texan hats, fake tans, weary parents. The posing swagger of the beach—already being practised in the squares of plastic chairs. Older women—fattened by childbirth and over-eating. Younger women—resplendent and self-conscious.
An older woman—red and white lines around her neck, testifying to the failure of her pre-vacation attempts to cultivate a tan—holds out her wrist to a tired companion in a tartan shirt. She does not even ask; he knows what to do. He inhales deeply. ‘Yes, beautiful,’ he says. ‘Lemony.’ His eyes follow a young woman already flouncing the hem of her short beach-side skirt. Children throw themselves on the floor. Mothers think of Valium—they can see the shape and colour of the tablet, and the amount of diazepam inscribed on the front—‘5mg’. Their eyes roll upwards with delight. And mobile phones send incessant messages—‘I’m here. I’m here. I’m here!’ And a story is being read to a sprawling child. And a ticket for a glamorous car—mused over excitedly by the latest hapless prospective purchaser. I’m offered a chance to win my dream. I say I already won last month and I gave the car away to a stranger in the street. But the man beside me still hands over his £25. ‘It will change your life if you win,’ says the tout. ‘Imagine! You will be a different person at the wheel of this beautiful red Ferrari!’ Different people—in time, different from themselves.
I have this strange thought. Perhaps I died a long time ago. I am just continuing in my own strange ‘living’ world—a colourful animated exaggeration of the fantasies of my disembodied mind.
McTaggart’s words come into my mind—‘The longer I live, the more I believe in three things: truth, love and immortality’. Could he be right, I wonder? Are we truly, lovingly, immortal? Or are we just lost in an airport, not even knowing if we are alive?
