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The terminal was filled with people, and the plane was scheduled to take off at
2:48 p.m. I was thirsty, and although my watch said 2:25, I figured I had time for
a drink. I was wrong, but it wasn't entirely my fault. The plane had left at 2:40,
right when I arrived at the gate. The 8 and the 0 on the digital time board had
been switched. Had it not been digital, I would have been on time. But, had I not
missed the plane, I never would have met Wayne. We were standing under the same
awning, waiting for the same van to take us to the same hotel. I was going to the
hotel because it was cheap; he was going because there was no other hotel that had
vacancies. It was raining, and dark. The florescent lights beamed down from the
huge white dome of the terminal, and a soft female voice poured down from a loud-
speaker over the passerbys, warning them not to leave their cars. Wayne was looking
up numbers on his palm-pilot and making calls to his secretary on his cell phone. We
began talking about how long it was taking for the van to come, and how long it had
been raining. He said he was the CEO of an internet start-up company, and had spent
the past few days riding around midtown in limos. I said I was a poet, but I didn't
tell him why I missed the plane. He told me he likes to read, and that he collects
colorful pieces of art. The JFK Inn in Jamaica Queens is filled with mirrors and
cheap mosaics. In the lobby is a three-dimensional mural of a silver sequined plane
taking off from a black velvet sky. A turning disco ball makes the plane look like
it is glistening. We had a drink in the restaurant, although it was about to close.
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He ordered pork chops, and I just had a Corona. He told stories about how he used to
be a high-level executive for Sprint during the time when the cable lines were being
laid across the ocean floor. I said that there was a Navajo myth about the end of the
world in which a spider web covered the earth, eventually swallowing it whole. He
told me he sometimes imagines rivers, and how ancient civilizations built their
villages around them and used them as a means of transportation and exchange. He then
said he imagines the Appalachian trail and pathways through the wilderness that
people traversed in covered wagons and on horseback. He then imagines the
infrastructures that were built around those paths, towns growing and expanding as
the trails wore through the ground. He then imagines the railroads that were built
along those paths, and how towns were developed in what used to be wilderness. He
imagines the interstate, passing through cities, forming a tar ribbon across the
world. Then he imagines the internet, making invisible connections in a global web
where messages can get from place to place within seconds. I imagine spiders, and
the weaver who imagined all of this thousands of years ago. I imagine the world
woven into a tightly knit enclosure of wires, cables and central network hubs that
eventually will obliterate the need for cities. Eventually instead of cables, we
will traverse the globe through radio waves, and then sound waves, and then suddenly
we will realize that all this progress is moving us closer and closer to telepathy.
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