And so here I sit on a plane over the Pacific, despite my protestations about not letting the company take any more of my personal life. Drinking wine despite my sinus headache that started when I woke up this morning. Typing by touch despite the soreness in my fingers from a weekend of sewing. Writing despite the need to study for tomorrow’s meeting.

The plane is huge, as are all 747’s. I sit where the leading edge of the wing meets the body of the plane just as I did on the puddle-jumper from Sacramento. The wing undulates like a swimmer’s leg rippling, house-heavy engines pointing skyward and groundward like breasts in the same current. They rotate about suprisingly, and I am fascinated by them as a 10 year old boy might be, seeing his mother’s breasts through a cracked door for the first time as she walks through a bathroom. Replaying it in his mind later in wonder. Heck, as a 34 year old man is as he watches his lover walk unashamed across the bedroom.

The blue Pacific sky below is clotted with clouds. Sky below, a traveller not of that earth. Rugged flanks of white are broken by puffs and clusters. Far in the east over what I take to be Prince Rupert Sound, thunderheads stand above the cloudbase like white hills rising from a blue and ivory plain. The clouds have gathered and swirled here for time inconceivable. A corialis dance of vapor and gravity and water. The spinning earth slipping by in arcs below. The reach and push and snap of a goosewing. The slow curling of a migrant mother about her whalecub. Dirty Tongass rivers meeting Coho at their mouths and entwining with the southwrapping Huboldt current. The teeming fires in the firmament winding about the high polestar, energy unwound in the next day’s sunrise. And when this warm exhuberance has strengthened and streched out in a great spiral carnival across the gulf, it picks up and washes across the low spruce and high crags of Logan and Wrangell, Saint Elias and Wrangall. Brushing shores with sheets of spatter and runnell, sifting flakes thick and heavy upon flanks, and scattering limstone rockfalls with rime and frost.

We are high enough to take in an entire storm system with a sweeping glance. We pass through high opaque fuzz, and later I can see the tight-turning arms and then the central lobe, and then the arms again as we pass to the other side. I check the constantly updated map and see that we are about to pass over Kodiak. At my Captain Kirk chair, I have at my fingertips 10 video channels, 8 audio channels, my own phone, adjustments for head, lumbar, butt, calf, foot, back. There are two tables, large and small. That’s what I will name this story: Two Tables Large and Small.

I think of how nuts it is to be flying like this to Japan for two days. I think of Joseph in his tent deep in the Sonora, comfortable and free. How I SHOULD be excited, SHOULD feel lucky, how I SHOULD somehow enjoy this little ride in the corporate slipstream. I feel mostly numb. It’s all interesting, but I’m just playing the part. I can play it well. I give the solemn beast what it wants, and in return I loose a little sleep, a little more of The Rest of My Life. All this wealth around me. My ticket price alone would probably nourish Joseph for a year. So why am I here? Commitment. Follow-through. Momentum. Cash.

I want to quit so bad I can taste it like sweet blackberries picked in the cool of a willow. I look down and there is purple blood on my fingers. From the vein, not red from an artery. They cannot have my heart. So all of this lamentation plays back and forth and in the end I do what a Schiller SHOULD do. I get on the plane. I give a little more. It’s the right thing to do. I’m really not that tortured, I’m just spoiled. I have choices and that is what makes it difficult. But six months is now five, and after the move in September it will be four. So quit if you can’t do it, says the voice. But I can do it, it’s not all that hard. The only thing that makes it difficult is the passage of time, and the freedom to choose.

I think this trip will dissipate the whining. The company owes me a big one now, and whatever happens I can cut myself some slack work-wise and still be OK. Work half-days through September, except for travel, and get packed for the move. Yeah right, I’ve given even more now, and the beast has the taste of my blood, and will just keep pushing for more. Can I really have a screw-em attitude? Altitude? At least stop yer bitchin.

Anyhow. I look up at the black of space. I used to dream about space travel when I was younger. It seemed vitally important to get Up There. It was a natural progression from where we have come. It was the dream of a young man who believed what you thought was more important than what you felt. That’s not the case anymore. I don’t believe anymore that words spoken, which are just thoughts made vocal, are what is important. In courts of law, they hold it vitally important, but that’s the only way they can know thoughts. In spousal relations, people also cling to things spoken. Things spoken in haste, things spoken in anger, things spoken in frustration. Statements made out of obligation. I have no real faith in these things spoken because frequently they are just short glimpses into the real self. Words are important, yes, and extensive discussions are important to understanding, but isolating a line spoken is usually dangerous. Clinging to a statement is usually only wishing. Turning a statement against is usually only manipulation. Words need action as backup, and facial expressions as enhancement. There is more said without words than with. Which brings me to promises. Are they words or feelings? Action or expression? They are an obligation to action. A contract made in trust. If everything changes is a promise still the same?

I made two promises as a young space man. One to a woman and one to myself. I promised myself that I would get to space in my lifetime. I make the promise because I believed that it was possible, believed enough in myself to know I could make it happen, and believed that promises were important. Like the wedding vows. Both were broken. In a few short years I know that I couldn’t carry through on either. Everything changed. Not around me, but within me. In our society, in our culture, this is not valid. It is weakness and betrayal. It is failure and disgrace. There is the belief that within us, all can be rearranged, all can be tolerated with enough fortitude. I’m not talking about complete permissiveness. Promises do have validity. They are important. But which promise was more significant? It depends upon where your values lie. Is a relationship with another more important than your relationship with yourself? Are the bonds that make up community and culture more important than the stuff of dreams? Space travel is trivial, some would say, just the big dreams of a youngster. Maybe so, maybe so. But then what is a merciless clinging to that which no longer really exists? Does a promise exist without belief? What are big dreams but a belief?