All One Horse

be sploshing over your seat

Flying north. Day swirling with cloud and fog. Craft trembling, can’t make out land at all. Friendly passengers. Some one starts up a song. Coming in to land at Copenhagen. Won-derful won-derful Co-penhagen. Approach so low down narrow street, that immense wings must sweep over rooftop terraces of the tall buildings on either side. Pilot must know his town like inside of hand. Yet just suppose somebody left a potted palm or his coffin cooling out there for the night! Stopover, leg stretch for those who so desire. Make nodding noises at fellow passengers in airport lounge. Exchange words with old bearded Indian philosopher and another person. Immediately excise other person from narrative. Ancient sage has gentle moist eyes, but with turban resembles some other Ayatollah Fannattick. Tell him about situation back home. Class analysis. Sorry, but Indians will never fit into Africa. Must evacuate. ‘I’m sorry to have to do this to you but it is all in the cause of self-knowledge.’ The elderly traveller’s headcloth trembles. Back to the plane. Long time in taking off. Travelling through landscape. Plane not quite fitted out completely. Work continued during stopover, left undone. Part of pilot’s cabin still in plywood. Old Indian sage strapped in back there whispering sadly to young woman to his right. He’s suffering from abdominal pains now. Long eyes and whiskers shivering. No time at present for young woman in this story. Pilot points out pictures rushing past: confused cemetery, rubbish heaps with disparate objects sticking out. The way it all goes, the blue-eyed pilot says, terrible, into the earth with no distinction: books, cartons, mouse-shit, corpses. But ah, you must answer, exactly why it’s wonderful; we all decompose similarly — corpses, mouse-shit, cartons, boots; couldn’t happen unless we all share same thought, life; couldn’t happen to a nicer guy; seamlessness! (All one horse.)And up. Day silvering with fog and cloud. No see nothing. Dangerous? Phantom ships bumping along in the void. One hostess starts handing out glasses of champagne, moving up and down aisle with her comfortable and friendly Tina Turner body. Is she forgetting you? Saving you for last? You to back, to toilet. In passing attract hostess’s attention with one-finger-raise. She will indeed serve you. Toilet uncompleted. No throne to sit on. You urinate. And now prick breaks off in your hand. Oh no! Asafoetida! You there with half the appurtenance lying in your palm, puckered, pinkish, perfectly shaped, long like palm. No bleeding. Try flushing it down. Won’t go — swimming sluggishly on grey-green surface like sickly goldfish among detritus. You think: this can’t be happening to me. You think: if this were a dream some fool would be sure to give it a Freudian reading. Zip up. No bleeding. Must matter-of-fact return to seat without raising eyebrows. Thought flaking through head: some unprimed passenger will by and by be sure to come screaming out of the head. Purser will have to cock an eye at all the company’s privates. Will have no handle on you, no way to point you out. No bleeding. Could be naturally smallish organ. Discreet charms of the bourgeoisie. Must return. The yellowish champagne will by now be sploshing over your seat.