1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html
class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head>
<title>Living In Airport Terminals - by Scott Gilbertson</title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta name="description"
content="Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be.">
<meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson">
<link rel="alternate"
type="application/rss+xml"
title="Luxagraf RSS feed"
href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/">
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="/media/screenv9.css"
media="screen">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" />
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="23.009675285624738, 72.56237982693523" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="23.009675285624738; 72.56237982693523" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Ahmedabad, India">
<meta name="geo.region" content="-">
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Living in Airport Terminals" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be." />
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-27T11:56:20" />
<meta property="article:author" content="Scott Gilbertson" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" />
<meta property="og:image" content="/media/images/post-images/2008/ceilingfanindia.jpg" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/>
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be."/>
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Living in Airport Terminals"/>
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/>
<meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/>
<meta name="twitter:image:src" content="/media/images/post-images/2008/ceilingfanindia.jpg"/>
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals"
},
"headline": "Living in Airport Terminals",
"datePublished": "2005-11-27T11:56:20+04:00",
"dateModified": "2005-11-27T11:56:20+04:00",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Scott Gilbertson"
},
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Luxagraf",
"logo": {
"@type": "ImageObject",
"url": "https://luxagraf.net/media/img/logo-white.jpg"
}
},
"description": "Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be."
}
</script>
</head>
<body >
<div class="wrapper" id="wrapper">
<div class="header-wrapper">
<header class="site-banner">
<div id="logo">
<a href="/" title="Home">Luxagraf</a>
<span class="sitesubtitle">Walk Slowly</span>
</div>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="/jrnl/" title="Stories of life on the road.">Jrnl</a> & <a href="/field-notes/" title="Short stories, snapshots of daily life on the road.">Field Notes</a></li>
<li><a href="/guide/" title="Advice, Tools, Tips and Tricks for Full Time Van or RV Life.">Guides</a></li>
<li><a href="/newsletter/" title="The 'friends of a long year' newsletter">newsletter</a></li>
<li><a href="/about" title="About Scott">About</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
</header>
</div>
<ol class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList">
<li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"><a itemprop="item" href="/"><span itemprop="name">Home</span></a> →
<meta itemprop="position" content="1" />
</li>
<li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
<a href="/jrnl/" itemprop="item"><span itemprop="name">jrnl</span></a>
<meta itemprop="position" content="2" />
<meta itemprop="position" content="2" />
</li>
</ol>
<main>
<article class="h-entry hentry entry-content content" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
<header id="header" class="post-header ">
<h1 class="p-name entry-title post-title" itemprop="headline">Living in Airport Terminals</h1>
<div class="post-linewrapper">
<div class="p-location h-adr adr post-location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place">
<h3 class="h-adr" itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><span class="p-region" itemprop="addressRegion">Ahmedabad</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India"><span itemprop="addressCountry">India</span></a></h3>
– <a href="" onclick="showMap(23.009675285624738, 72.56237982693523, { type:'point', lat:'23.009675285624738', lon:'72.56237982693523'}); return false;" title="see a map">Map</a>
</div>
<time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>27, 2005</span></time>
<span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span>
</div>
</header>
<div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody">
<p><span class="drop">W</span>ell I’ve learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn’t really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. </p>
<p>So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn’t as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <img alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" class="postpicright" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160"/>I’ll grant them the smoggy bit; I’ve never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn’t so bad for one day. I figure if you’ve seen the worst it’s all uphill from there.</p>
<p><break></p>
<p>But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. </p>
<p>Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler’s god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. </p>
<p><a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled “wered,” as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. </p>
<p>Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.</p>
<p>The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. </p>
<p><img alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" class="postpic" height="190" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143"/>The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. </p>
<p>Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.</p>
<ol class="footnote">
<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it’s me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you’re now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li>
</ol>
</div>
</article>
<div class="nav-wrapper">
<nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top">
<ul>
<li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span>
<a href="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" rel="prev" title=" Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a>
</li>
<li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span>
<a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" rel="next" title=" The City Palace">The City Palace</a>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</div>
<div class="comment--form--wrapper ">
<div class="comment--form--header">
<p class="hed">Thoughts?</p>
<p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p>
</div>
<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form">
<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type">
<input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="20" id="id_object_pk">
<input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp">
<input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="382be43988ba695f3162a5cdd9809026269e45bf" id="id_security_hash">
<fieldset >
<label for="id_name">Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name">
</fieldset>
<fieldset >
<label for="id_email">Email address:</label>
<input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email">
</fieldset>
<fieldset >
<label for="id_url">URL:</label>
<input type="url" name="url" id="id_url">
</fieldset>
<fieldset >
<label for="id_comment">Comment:</label>
<div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment">
</textarea></div>
</fieldset>
<fieldset style="display:none;">
<label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label>
<input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot">
</fieldset>
<div class="submit">
<input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" />
<input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" />
</div>
</form>
<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <code><b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a></code>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice. </p>
</div>
</main>
<footer class="bl">
<ul class="footer-nav">
<li><a href="/blogroll" title="Sites that inspire us">Blogroll</a></li>
<li><a href="/contact/" title="contact luxagraf">Contact</a></li>
<li>Follow Along:
<ul>
<li><a href="/jrnl/feed.xml" title="RSS feed">RSS</a></li>
<li><a href="/newsletter/" title="Luxagraf Email Updates">Email</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/luxagraf" rel="me" title="luxagraf on Instagram">Instagram</a></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div class="support">Support luxagraf:
<div class="donate-btn">
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="HYJFZQSBGJ8QQ">
<input type="submit" name="submit" title="Donate to luxagraf via PayPal">
</form>
</div>
<div class="donate-btn">
<a class="liberapay-btn" href="https://liberapay.com/luxagraf/donate"><span>Donate</span></a>
</div>
</div>
<p id="license">
© 2003-2020
<span class="h-card"><a class="p-name u-url" href="https://luxagraf.net/">Scott Gilbertson</a><data class="p-nickname" value="luxagraf"></data><data class="p-locality" value="Athens"></data><data class="p-region" value="Georgia"></data><data class="p-country-name" value="United States"></data></span>.
</p>
</footer>
</div>
<script>
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) {
var leaflet = document.createElement('script');
leaflet.src = "/media/js/leaflet-master/leaflet-mod.js";
document.body.appendChild(leaflet);
var lightbox = document.createElement('script');
lightbox.src = "/media/js/lightbox.js";
document.body.appendChild(lightbox);
leaflet.onload = function(){
var detail = document.createElement('script');
detail.src = "/media/js/detail.min.js";
document.body.appendChild(detail);
detail.onload = function(){
createMap();
var open = false;
}
}
lightbox.onload = function() {
var opts= {
//nextOnClick: false,
captions: true,
onload: function(){
var im = document.getElementById("jslghtbx-contentwrapper");
var link = im.appendChild(document.createElement('a'))
link.href = im.firstChild.src;
link.innerHTML= "open ";
link.target = "_blank";
link.setAttribute('class', 'p-link');
im.appendChild(link);
}
};
var lightbox = new Lightbox();
lightbox.load(opts);
}
});
</script>
<script>
<!--
// Register our service-worker
//if (navigator.serviceWorker) {
// window.addEventListener('load', function() {
// if (navigator.serviceWorker.controller) {
// navigator.serviceWorker.controller.postMessage({'command': 'trimCaches'});
// } else {
// navigator.serviceWorker.register('/serviceworker.js', {
// scope: '/'
// });
// }
// });
//}
//-->
<!-- Piwik -->
var _paq = _paq || [];
_paq.push(["disableCookies"]);
_paq.push(['trackPageView']);
_paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']);
(function() {
var u="https://stats.luxagraf.net/";
_paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'piwik.php']);
_paq.push(['setSiteId', 1]);
var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
g.type='text/javascript'; g.async=true; g.defer=true; g.src=u+'piwik.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s);
})();
<!-- End Piwik Code -->
</script>
<noscript><p><img src="//stats.luxagraf.net/piwik.php?idsite=1" style="border:0;" alt="" /></p></noscript>
</body>
</html>
|
