{"id":8235,"date":"2023-01-30T07:09:23","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T15:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=8235"},"modified":"2023-01-30T07:09:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T15:09:24","slug":"waiting-at-the-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/waiting-at-the-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting at the Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-8235\" data-postid=\"8235\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-8235 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>An old bearded man sorts though his travel documents. One is a passport. It&#8217;s not American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He drags on a Marlboro in front of an airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His backpacks rest on a steel bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He extricates a phone and checks something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inside the airport, Donna Summer&#8217;s \u201cShe Works Hard for the Money\u201d drifts through the rafters. It&#8217;s a song about a noble, industrious stripper\/prostitute. They sure don&#8217;t write em&#8217; like that anymore!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wrens dart and dash on the sidewalk, eating seeds floated in from somewhere, riding exhaust fumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The man begins pulling gadgets out of one the backpacks. He checks his phone again. He lights another Marlboro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe a ride is on the way. Maybe not. Maybe he&#8217;s one of those travelers who flies to distant foreign lands and walks off the plane and out of the airport and into Cairo or Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did both. My 13-mile walk out of the Los Angeles International Airport has become family legend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The man repacks his gadgets and stashes his phone. He lights another Marlboro. He gears up his backpacks and walks away from my sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wait for my friend to arrive from a flooded and fruited plain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder who&#8217;ll crawl through the rubble of this airport centuries from now.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An old bearded man sorts though his travel documents. One is a passport. It&#8217;s not American. He drags on a Marlboro in front of an airport. His backpacks rest on a steel bench. He extricates a phone and checks something. Inside the airport, Donna Summer&#8217;s \u201cShe Works Hard for the Money\u201d drifts through the rafters. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8238,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235\/revisions\/8238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}