#64: No No Aeroplanes
Happy Friday!
So the big news here is that Foiled Series 2 is now officially underway. It must be: I just told a "mindfulness thought leader" (and total stranger) all about it on the 19.19 train home. That's one more audient in the bag.
Away from the professional world of entertaining mindfulness thought leaders, and arguably of greater personal import, comes the news that, for the first time in 98 months, I am getting on an aeroplane.
I last took a flight in January 2010. I was still in my mid-to-late 20s, of no fixed abode (no change there) and had only been taking writing seriously for a year. I didn't own a bicycle, had never worn a beard or grown my hair, and knew Cairo better than I knew any town outside London and my county of birth.
In the 27.5 years until January 2010, I had taken 78 flights in my life. As illustrated in the mindblowing chart below (the yellow bars are flights, the red are holidays):
In the 8.1667 years since January 2010, I have taken precisely zero flights. Not because I give a shit about the environment (I've wasted more than my fair share of electricity, water and gas in that time), but because I find that flying means I travel less, and with less creativity.
Without wanting to blow my own, but rather as an illustration of the breadth of my travel in the last 8 years, I have:
Hitch-hiked to Ben Nevis in Scotland and back, and to the Lake District and back.
Walked to Canterbury, and the other way to Winchester.
Cycled 4,110 miles around Britain, and another thousand around Tunisia; also from London to Vienna, and numerous other short day or weekend rides.
Travelled by ferry, bus, train and car through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria (3 times), Spain, and the Netherlands.
The last 8 years have taught me everything I need to know about life: that it's not about always being somewhere special; but that you can always find the special in anywhere.
Having said that... I'm now taking a flight from London to Vienna so that I can go to the Elevate Festival and basically have a party with my friends.
And it's blowing my mind.
Since buying that ticket with Austrian Airlines, I've felt moments of existential panic. Not flying has been a part of my personality for so long and I'm only a little ashamed to say that sometimes I've felt quite smug about it. What part of me am I destroying by flying again? This flight feels sometimes like an obliteration of self.
But I think that's a good thing. We shouldn't hold onto ideas of ourselves forever: that only sets us up for disappointment sooner or later. Create a vision of yourself and then rejoice in tearing it down!
But I am worried about what will happen when I board that plane. I'm glad that a friend will be sitting next to me to hold my hand. After 8 years, it's only natural to feel trepidation, but I'm also excited to feel the engine power of take off, the thrill of the clouds and beauty of the sky, to revel once more in the miracle of flight.
Less than two years ago I cycled from London to Vienna - it took six weeks. The return journey was made by bus and took 36 hours. I've actually been to and from Vienna 8 times in the last 8 years and each time the journey has been an adventure: bicycle, coach, ferry and train. This time it's the turn of the aeroplane.
Aeroplanes aren't evil. Nothing is evil. I never stopped flying because of the environmental impact, but because flying was an impediment to my own experience, it blunted my own imagination. I'm a totally different person thanks to my 8-year rejection of flying: I never travelled less, I travelled more, and more again. I learnt that travel is as much a factor of the mind and body as it is the displacement of either.
Cycling to Vienna was a unique sequence of memories and experiences that have gorged themselves into my mind in unforgettable rivers. A displacement of being that no flight to the same destination could ever come close to matching.
And there is no suggestion that this will open the departure gates. One flight every 8 years seems to me to be a good balance. For my life and lifestyle, I have no need to fly for work or family reasons, but I see no reason not to value flying as a thrilling, carpe diem experience in itself.
Flying is one of those spectacular miracles that all too easily subsumes itself into the humdrum - as you can see from my chart of flights. 11 flights in one year? That's commuting. But as a very occasional experience, a trip in an aeroplane is a call to wonder; an acute reminder that life is fleeting.
Or it might be a complete nightmare.
Either way, here's to another 8 years!
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The Sins of Sir Isaac Newton
When he was 19 years old, Isaac Newton wrote out a list of sins he'd committed "before Whitsunday 1662", including:
Eating an apple at Thy house
Making a mousetrap on Thy day
Making a feather while on Thy day
Denying that I made it.
Squirting water on Thy day
Making pies on Sunday night
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Punching my sister
Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Via Kottke.org, original source at the Newton Project.
Is Facebook Spying On You?
This is an extract from an excellent Reply All podcast about how Facebook definitely aren't / definitely are listening to your private conversations. Either way, they're able to build an astonishingly detailed profile of you.
JULIA ANGWIN (a journalist from ProPublica): So, we were able to put together a big database of about 52,000 attributes that Facebook was collecting about its users.
ALEX: (laughs) Oh my god.
JULIA: Right.
ALEX: 52,000?
JULIA: So they had some categories that were just mind boggling. There was one that was just my favorite called, “a person who likes to pretend to text in awkward situations.”
ALEX: (laughs) How did they even figure that out?
JULIA: I have no idea.
ALEX: There's actually a page on Facebook where you can see how Facebook categorizes you.
...
PJ: I want to check mine.
ALEX: Ok, so when you go to your Facebook, you go to settings, and then you click on ads. And then, uh, there’s a section called “your information,” and under that you can click “your categories.”
Go on, I dare you!
>> INPUT
Five things that have inspired me this week. What kept you going?
COMEDY / WRITING: Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame tell you about therefore / but writing technique. (Youtube, 2m14)
TRAVEL & THE SELF: Bundle of Perceptions on Tea & Epiphany
ZEN PHILOSOPHY: Who Knows What’s Good or Bad? by David G. Allan
POSITIVE NEWS: Norway’s Parliament Votes To Decriminalize All Drug Use on HuffPost
THEATRE: Jesus & Lucifer: The Greatest Love Story Never Told at the Canal Cafe Theatre. Fabulous performances and a funny script make for unforgettable Fringe theatre. Follow them for more dates coming soon...
OUTPUT >>
As you may have noticed, this mailing list is the engine room of my writing. Here's some you might have missed:
Carpe Diem: Dancing with Death (February)
No Phone (Before Noon) (February)
Bothy Bothering (February)
Unfinished Animals: A Novel (January)
Your 5 Things (January)
...COMING UP...
Polishing up 3,000 novel words for an evening of drinking with real live agents.
Plenty of Foiled writing...
Also: tickets for Jokes and Spokes, the annual Bike Project fundraiser are now on sale. With Sara Pascoe, Andy Zaltzman, Robin Ince and Phil Wang. June 12th in London. Funny guaranteed.
Fly, fly my pretties!
- dc
p.s. You know there's always a pretty picture if you scroll to very, very end, don't you?
davidcharles.info // @dcisbusy
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That miniscule dot in the middle of the picture is an atom. One whole atom.
The photo won an award.
See it bigger on Kottke.org.