There has been a mystery since day one, since he rode down the escalators to his announcement podium. It exists mostly as blind rage, a little gray buzzing hornets hive somewhere in my head that I’m scared to draw near to. How could anyone, with a laundry list of typical thoughts and feelings we might describe as “normal,” could want this man to be President of the United States?
Then, a few weeks ago – a few tensions having thawed – I faced a scene. My laptop screen was thick with planes; a Google image search of of his 757, to be exact. I had been gaping at his plan to repaint Air Force One, and there they were: dark red and blue; nose up, gliding against a faint blue sky; or flat against some tarmac, in front of a dark sky, and orange glow around buildings in some cold state, steam rising. “Look at the plane,” the moment said. “Take a breath. It’s all about the plane.”
What was it about the plane? Well. I can’t but reveal myself to have the class of a bag of cheetos but to say that a plane is sharp; a plane is elegant; a plane is cool, dammit. There is no high-spoken defense here. I, Chris, the hater, the writer, the arguer, do not think his plane is cool, of course – how could I? (The psychodrama sticks like maple syrup on fingers). But I can’t help it. If I allow the talkative parts of my brain to drain down to low feeling; if I look only with my cheeks and my forearms; if I blur my peripheral vision so that all that stands out are big shapes; if I consider the plane like it’s in another universe, like IQ84; then the plane is fucking cool.
Cool how? It’s hard; words with soberly considered meaning can only desecrate the originality, the hot warmth, the sensation of “go,” the stepping down on the gas of your brain’s energy reward, that the plane can give you. Its deep and trusting colors; the fact that it’s a passenger-scale jet, not an effete private charter like weak-kneed automotive CEOs take to Washington to be for their bailout; the name on the tail, is overtones of card-table triumph, one consonant-baked syllable. Just silly-sounding enough to create the barest wisp of possibility for mockery, only for the plane itself, the person it it, to make silly all silliness potential.
So if you know voting, and politics, through local news anchors; as formalistic clenching; as earnest, truly unfathomable promises; as the do-gooderism of a shitty teacher that wants to be seen as cool. And if the civil rights movement isn’t at the center of the story your heart relies on; if your mind is not the type to pinched with dissatisfaction at abstract problems. And here comes this jet, and the person it is, the builder of buildings, a wearer of suits and gold and red ties; why not feel led, why not feel roused, by a President?
The hornet’s nest remains; the rage is mostly blind, still. But in what looks to be his last days, for now at least, I feel life in the knowing what might be going on in the colored memories of his supporters’ minds, and in their bodies.