Another early rise, though not as early as the flight that brought me here. Eleven nights in Marbella, and 21,000€ including the taxi from the airport. One new-ish top third of a face, recovery periods of days, weeks, fortnights, six weeks, months out to a year. Slow, slow, slow. Slow time. I look like me, but me that I recognise more. I feel like me, when I close my eyes and touch my forehead. Already a year just to get to here, already the fourth attempt on top of a lifetime of turning off hoping so I could ride out the disappointment of those previous failed attempts and the ocean of need to do this that preceded all of them.
Finally fucking did it. Finally fucking was able to do it. Alhamdulillah.
Marbella to Berlin – 1: sunrise on the coast heading to Malaga Airport
Marbella to Berlin – 2: Malaga Airport waiting to Speedy Board
Marbella to Berlin – 3: one of the pilots
Marbella to Berlin – 4: holding on the runway
Marbella to Berlin – 5: take-off, ascending, heading south over the Mediterranean before hanging a u-turn east
Marbella to Berlin – 6: landfall, Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama, with Acantilados de Maro-Cerro Gordo
Marbella to Berlin – 7: still ascending heading back north-east-ish
Marbella to Berlin – 8: an island somewhere east of Spain, Formentera
Marbella to Berlin – 9: the north coast of that posh island rich white people buy homes on, Majorca
Marbella to Berlin – 10: Brandenburg, coming in to land, south-west of Berlin
3:30am up and off to Flughafen Schönefeld, cheap easyJet and exit row seat for 3 hours to Malaga, taxi pickup to Marbella and further on to Puerto Banùs, 3 hours being scanned and having consultations while squalls blow in and beat the mountains behind the town into a dark haze, back to Marbella for a museum, because of course I do, fall asleep in an apartment by the marina early-evening, up again in the darkness for another pickup back to the airport, another flight and exit row seat, and Berlin’s loveable bus and U-Bahn home, 36 hours later. Yes, I did go for a ride after. Yes, that is the Matterhorn almost dead centre, flying over the border of Switzerland and Italy.
I’ve landed this one so many times. From sun and warmth and Naarm to grey and cold and Berlin — You talking about the taxi drivers, Frances? I’m talking about the … never mind.
I thought it was called a Sun Dog. Similar, but different. It’s a Glory. Last time I saw a glory was flying into London to work with Onyx on Take This, For It Is My body, early morning end-October last year. That time, the plane raced along at its centre, as a shadow on the ground.
It’s an early morning thing, and cold morning one. This time I wasn’t sure it was real or just my eyes diffracting the scratched plastic and glass of the window. It came and went for some minutes, waning and waxing then departing as we altered course. It wasn’t very pronounced, but still, sun glory over the Baltic, flying from Helsinki to Berlin on the last leg of my first return to Naarm / Melbourne in a decade.
I find a quiet byway and stretch myself out. Old habit of transfers, me on the floor in an airport. Later, I go to the bathroom and give my face a scrub and moisturise, brush my teeth. New habit of transfers. My nose is Australian Red from the sun, and compression socks scratch my sunburn. Also a new habit — the socks, that is.
Home for the next nine and an half hours. Tail Cam view of Cathay Pacific Airbus A350–900 flight AY5834, Melbourne to Hong Kong. The food was well up to remembered standards of Cathay.
Next week, I’ll be flying to Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. It’s been a long time. I’m going over to work with the deadly S.J Norman at Arts House for their two pieces, Rest Area (which I did production for in Linz last year) and Stone Tape Theory, doing production and performing.
Straße des 17. Juni, Tiergarten and Siegessäule, Potsdamer Straße, Unter den Linden, Alexander Platz and the light of Berlin smudged across my eyes at 1:30am.
