Subscribe« BAA take off the gloves | Home | A rich tapestry of experiences unimaginable by plane »
Wendell Berry on flying
By admin | August 6, 2007
Here are some reflections from the American essayist, Wendell Berry, on boarding a plane from America to visit family in Ireland.
“For me, air travel always has about it an insistent feeling of unreality. I feel that I am where I do not belong, with a totally arbitrary assemblage of other people who do not belong there either. And though I am as much in a hurry as everybody else, I always feel that I am going too fast – incomprehensibly fast. It is as though I am being hurried through a time that is destined to remain a simple blank in my life. And the insistence in the voices of captain and crew that this experience is perfectly ordinary only intensifies the suggestion of unreality. To eat one’s supper 35,000 feet in the air at a speed of 450 miles per hour is an experience that I have never become prepared for. To sleep at such a height and speed is even more improbable. I always wake from such a sleep in the surprise of fearful realisation, such as must have been felt in the old days by those who woke knowing that they had been ridden through the sky all night by a witch.â€
(From: Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry).
Topics: Flying Feels Wrong | No Comments »