So, with the help of a second vodka and soda since takeoff, I was sitting at 30,000 feet trying to forget that much of what apparently separated me from a sudden and violent trajectory toward certain oblivion was a series of mathematical equations concocted by a series of strangers to whom, in any other context, I would not be entrusting my life. But just as I was settling into the numbness in my head from the drinks and the numbness in my back from sitting nearly side-saddle so as not to allow my flesh to flow over the line in the sand drawn by the division between the seats, I got another visit from my upstairs neighbor.
I’ve mentioned her before. She’s the talkative one with, let’s just say, a well-endowed back porch that I really don’t recall her having enough fun to have earned. I never actually know when she’s gonna pop over, but it’s often when one of us has had too much to drink. Alcohol wags her tongue faster than the hips of a cocaine ho at treat time. And I have to admit the lure of her verbal pendulum spoke louder than the massaging socks offered in Sky Mall. So I invited her to sit down.
On an airplane, all the space is outside. Sure, the same could be said for any vessel we occupy, including our own bodies. But in an airplane, I suspect it’s the same set of strangers who flexed their mathleticism to make the thing fly who likewise designed all the adorable micro-versions of everyday items dotting the interior, doubtless to ensure the success of those flying theorems by keeping things light. I also suspect that there is an inverse relationship between a passenger’s size and his or her perception of a plane’s exaggeratedly microscopic inner accouterments. Seats aren’t designed for big asses. Seatbelts aren’t designed for big tummies. Meals aren’t designed for big appetites. And drinks aren’t designed for big thirst. Somehow the rules of aerodynamics change with a first-class upgrade, but theoretically the proletariat should be skinny. And realistically, that was another matter altogether. So my neighbor and I were left to cramp closer together, drain tiny bottles and ride the wakes of a big sky.
Often when my neighbor visits, setting becomes character. And what this one seemed to want to reveal to us were its frames, the ones confining our view of the limitless firmament outside. Leaning close to the window—again, so that my ass wouldn’t instigate an interpersonal Alamo right there on aisle 26—it occurred to me that I had never, ever, ever seen anything without a frame around it.
There are the obvious ones: picture frames, frames around paintings, window frames—each at once an instrument of focus and a boundary past which what you’re looking at ends. The television show you enjoy weekly has a frame as does the “big screen” blockbuster. A stage play has its edges, its top and bottom, left and right, onstage and off.
Perhaps this is why we’re brought to tearful awe by a big sky or big water, seemingly unbroken vistas before which we stand mute. But our eyes are only so big; they come with their own frames. And beyond that, we bring our perceptions to any sight. Perceptions may be symbolic frames, mental and physiological constructs, but they confine our view no less concretely. Inanely cutesy or not, this would be our frame of reference. And don’t even get me started on timeframes.
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but the issue is about more than finding and naming edges and borders. It’s about limitation. It’s about confinement. And it’s about the social agreement concerning where expression ends.
As writers, our tools are shamelessly limited. Each word is a frame, its meaning contained, finite. So we put them together. Limitation mounts. Once we give a chapter a title, we frame it. Once we give a feeling a name, we frame it. Once we frame something, it’s handily there for posterity, but something fundamental about its nature is missing, cut off, excluded.
No wonder the writer lives in a schizophrenic relationship with the page. Our passion is to create with an instrument that is the very definition of definition. It’s more than trying to birth part of the universe into a frame, which would be frustrating and sad enough. Rather, the act of writing is like trying to give birth through a frame, using a frame, to a frame.
Am I complaining? Yes. Do I have any answers? No. But I do think that part of the point of life might just be to figure out a way through the frame, past the veil. There has to be a way to express without constraint. Endlessly. Tapping in endlessly. Without borders of any kind. Otherwise, aren’t we kinda just locked inside with our neighbors upstairs? If so, I’m not sure there are enough vodka sodas to keep that ride interesting.
Dana Speer 