By Julia Jacquette
Transits and Meditation
“It was one of those trips in which you feel like you’re in a movie about your own life. At Arlanda, on the moving walkway, I pretend I’m Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, when he’s gliding through the long corridors of LAX while “The Sounds of Silence” plays. I’m wearing a single-breasted black wool jacket, just like him, but no tie.”
Dan acts as the travel agent in our family and manages to get the best bargain possible on airplane tickets. For my trip to Spain the ticket costs were low, but it meant a lot of flight connections, including a nine hour layover in the Stockholm airport. But I didn’t mind. It was one of those trips in which you feel like you’re in a movie about your own life. At Arlanda, on the moving walkway, I pretend I’m Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, when he’s gliding through the long corridors of LAX while “The Sounds of Silence” plays. I’m wearing a single-breasted black wool jacket, just like him, but no tie.
Dan taught me that in Sweden, it’s traditional that even fancy restaurants have an inexpensive lunch special, and sure enough, a fancy place in the airport offered a special of schnitzel with unlimited salad and bread. The restaurant was situated on a big interior balcony in an area called Sky City, which was a kind of multistoried atrium. I sat at a table looking over a concourse that streamed with travelers wheeling their bags over a light-colored wood floor (how Swedish, I thought). I ate alongside groups of airport workers in fluorescent vests with name tags hung around their necks who, it seemed to me, had made this posh venue their unofficial canteen. I liked Sky City.
I asked at the information desk if the airport had a prayer and meditation room and, for the first time ever at an airport, I went to find it.
There was a rack for shoes at the entryway, a carpeted area with benches, and a wall of cubbies that even had prayer mats if you wanted to use one. The assorted security guys must have noticed my shoes—and it must’ve been part of their jobs to check and see who was using the room—since they each looked in as I sat in there. Each time, I waved hello and they’d nod back.
After the overnight flight that landed me in Sweden and the nine-hour layover, I flew to Amsterdam where I had another layover, a quick overnight. I slept in the city that night, but had to be back at Schipol Airport by 7 am the next day. So at 4:30 am I was calling for an Uber on my phone from a dark Amsterdam street and watched the little car symbol on the little map on my screen not move at all for 20 minutes. Did the driver respond to my request and then go back to sleep? Couldn’t they add a little bed icon with zzzzz’s coming out of it, to make clear the situation? I canceled that ride and booked another which was there in a matter of minutes. The driver’s name was Salim.
Schiphol was packed at 5 am and I went directly to security since I’d already checked in the night before and, if you’ve never flown out of Schiphol, you should do it just to see the carousel-like design of the machine that conveys your carry-on stuff through the x-ray machines. I had put my big silver bracelet in my shoulder bag, which must have looked strange as it went through the x-ray machine, because a security officer went through my stuff as I stood across a counter from him. When he pulled the bracelet out of my bag, he smiled and said, “beautiful”.
I shopped for perfume and the store was so full of people, it was actually hard to maneuver through it. I bought a bottle of Tom Ford’s Black Orchid at 5:30 in the morning, and immediately took it out of its plastic and box and sprayed some on—it’s heavy, floral sweetness deliciously inappropriate for early morning.
Then I was on a short flight full of Dutch people to Seville. A guy peeled and ate an orange on the flight, inevitably spraying a bit as he peeled it. It smelled wonderful.
In the arrivals hall in Seville, while I waited, I ordered a coffee and “sandwich de atun” from the only cafe there—both were delicious. For many months I hadn’t been able to eat chewy bread like this, but now I can. I had had numerous teeth extracted and replaced by fakes in the past year—I had shattered them by clenching my jaw so strongly and so consistently. But now I had new metal screws in my jaw holding new ceramic teeth, and now I could chew a crust like this.
I had four hours in the Seville airport until the boarding of the bus that would take the group of us to the retreat center with the name that was hard to pronounce: Suryalila.
In the WhatsApp group which had been set up a few days before our arrival and included all the about to be students, we were told we should bring a mala with us. At that point, I didn’t know what that was. Someone named Chinyere wrote to the group, “I’ll bring extra ones” and included a photo. They looked like necklaces or rosaries.
Then Chinyere, from Los Angeles, was there in the Seville airport in person. I hold that mala she gave me now . And Yulia, from Estonia but who lives in Helsinki, and Juan Pablo, from Chile but now working for Ikea in Malmo, and Mohammad, from Qatar, speaking strikingly unaccented English, with huge eyes and a huge smile, along with 37 other people.
The bus taking us to Suryalila bottomed out on a gully on the dirt road taking us there, so vans came and picked us and our luggage up, and shuttled us to the, I don’t know exactly what you would call it, compound, I guess. Our teachers had gotten there a day earlier from New York City and greeted us when we arrived.
I had already attended our teacher Hector’s talks in New York City, and so already had experienced him to be effusively affectionate, to tease people in the audience, to jokingly disparage ex-boyfriends, and to bring up his sex life in his lectures.
I wondered if this was disconcerting but no one seemed aghast and we all sat cross legged, listening to him talk, in this big domed meeting room.
We closed our mouths, and sat side by side in silence for five days.
Julia Jacquette is an American artist based in New York City and Amsterdam. Her work has been shown extensively at galleries and museums around the world. She is currently on the faculty at the Fashion Institute of Technology (NYC).
