Two doses of Dioxylamine drowned out three crying babies and their Balkan entourage for me to garner almost ten hours rest on the long haul from Melbourne. Wide eyed with foreknowledge of each of the inevitable steps that would mark this cinematic torment, I queued “The Book of Eli”. Denzel Washington was admirably stoic, in this Ragnorak style defeat of character, actor and audience- all merely playing out our parts, without hope of redemption or release, each blow leading the film closer to wherever it is that such films go to die, and me to dreamless, chemical sleep.

I awoke to a sunrise over a very different part of the world and a concert of crying that unfortunately had not found better harmony despite admirably long hours of practice. I found partial reinvigoration in fruits, a vivid awareness of my lack of progeny, and in the Keats romance, “Bright Star”. Before the conclusion of the narrative, we began descent to Abu Dhabi, so in my imagination Keats is eternally bound between the sufferings of insufferable romance and the creeping “condition” of a pre-Florean pathology. I have no desire to see the remainder, nor for any reconciliation toward unity or deathly division, nor to break the frozen amber dance of Pathos and Thanatos, which says more about Keats than any final falling of life or love.

I transited through the airport and my first taste of the Gulf was an acute awareness of the decided lack of expected decadence. Where is my gold dispensing machine? Where is the retro steam engine whisking me away for an indoor BASE jump, or the Emirati “skill-tester” featuring falconry and Rolexes hidden inside of lesser birds? Perhaps my expectations are based on fantasy and advertising, or perhaps there’s another airport- constructed on a manmade island shaped like JFK (the man not the airport) where the pharaonic desires of the rich in transit are born and met.

The bareness of the gate suggests both a fear that some obviously non-citizen types may take quiet refuge on a bench or other horizontal plane, and that the seat-loving elite are being led elsewhere. I take short solace with a well-travelled Italian coffee brand and some carrot cake that reminds me of playgrounds and being eight.  I open the Economist, which once again predicts the demise of Hugo Chavez, whilst openly mentioning that that the conservatives leading the fine British coalition received less of the popular vote than the demagogue in his land. I take both points as signs of exceptional quality. An electronic board, lacking even a baroque golden frame and semi-precious studding, flashes and I shuffle my goods to the next leg, a casual seven-hour ordeal this time, and then at last the Grande European Summer shall begin.

Flowing into the memorable opening monologue,

‘Mankind, probably the most mysterious species on our planet. A mystery of open questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How do we know what we believe to know? Why do we believe anything at all?

‘Innumerable questions looking for an answer, an answer which will raise the next question and the following answer will raise a following question and so on and so forth.

‘But in the end, isn’t it always the same question and always the same answer?’

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