Are you watching?

[MANICHAEAN]

ARE YOU LOOKING?
18.3.11.

I think I must have been the only one, as I looked around the departure lounge. No one else was looking. Sixty per cent of the assembled purgatorial gathering was on lap tops, and it seemed like thirty nine per cent on mobile phones. Even the airline ground staff were looking, but not looking. Their minds were absorbing and sifting and collating information over bits off plastic electronics squared off against their inner ear membranes. Incoming into outgoing, via fashionable speaker stems, that hovered centimetres away from moist lipstick mouths.

Was I the odd man out? Away to my left, a distinguished gent with combed back silvery hair was immersed on his IPod, a forty-five year old something or other, further towards the windows tapping away on his notebook, oblivious to his coffee getting cold.

What sort of lives did this grey mass have when not multitasking? Did they have moments of passion and reflection? Dark nights of the soul perhaps? Was making love like a video game with points scored and a burst of simulated fireworks across the retina when you hit the jackpot?

A fresh nubile blond, with long legs right up to her tight butt walked through. Not a head stirred.

Fast forward and I can already imagine the plane landing after a seven hour flight and the panic rush to switch on the mobile phones.

“I’ve landed, I’m in the terminal. Oh dear, sweet Jesus, I’ve been out of contact for eternity. What’s happened while I’ve been at 40,000 feet? Is everyone still there? Has the $ fallen, the weather changed, any messages on Face book, what about Twitter? Has Gadaffi advanced, President Salah retreated? What’s happened on the Hub? Has Nik Gowing missed me? CNN, Sky news flashes. I must be informed!”

The hired limousine is at Terminal 3 and we slide away onto the M25 travelling clockwise. I sit next to the driver and am briefed on; the traffic, the price of petrol, the size of his tomatoes and last night’s true episode of Eastenders.

But I’m still watching outside all the chatter. The different landscapes from the desert I’ve come from, the aged wedding ring on a veined hand, the sound of the engine.

Perhaps I’ve always been a watcher?

At meetings is a case in point. The person across the table. If I stop talking, how will he cope with the silence that will lie between us? Was that last line of his a gratuitous throw away, or is he more cute upstairs than he looks? The guy in the corner is definitely gay. Play him a smile and aspire to an advantage. The chief negotiator, heavy eyes, slow precise movements, each response measured and weighed.

Now he is a watcher. Kind meets kind. A fellow traveller.

Thank God there are some of us left.

[AuntShecky]

Okay, I've read this, and here are my thoughts, which, as usual, should be taken with the proverbial grain of yadda-yadda, yadda.

Overall, I would say that the point of view and the quality of the piece are inconsistent. By that I mean, the focus shifts a bit too much. There are portions which are vividly expressed and others banal and prosaic.

I'm not sure I would describe this piece, strictly speaking, as a short story. (It's a little short on plot and, despite the number of people described, there is very little character development.) I'm not even sure it is fiction, yet--

But as a descriptive sketch of an airport, it may work if you included a few more details about the setting. For instance, this could be any airport, anywhere in the world. We need some more specifics of the place as an airport, even if you're loathe to identify its precise location. I really would prefer to see, hear, and smell the place.

Specific suggestions:

I would open with the sentence which appears late in the piece:

I guess I've always been a watcher.
That may "hook" the reader more securely than the way in which the piece opens now.

Your verbs are a tad lackluster, mostly progressive participles and gerunds overly dependent on some form of the verb "to be." Try to choose more expressive verbs. A writer can speak volumes merely with his word choice.

There are a few too many sentence fragments. I use them myself, occasionally, in a misguided attempt at dramatic emphasis. But sentence fragments lose their "oomph" when they have lots of company.

Speaking of participles, you've got misplaced modifiers. One example is the sentence in which the Ipod appears to be forty-five years old.

The paragraph that begins "What sort of lives. . ." is an interior monolgue full of philosophical speculation. For all its specific vivid imagery, it sort of just sits there, telling rather than showing.

I've got more to say, but I'm being yanked away from Pong 2.0 in order to get tonight's vittles a-cookin'. But you get the idea.

I do think your piece is on to something. It's a worthy attempt that deserves some reworking.

Auntie

[AuntShecky]

Okay, I'm back, just about 24 hours later. As I said this time yesterday, I had more to say, and here it is:

Here are the two extra comments I wanted to make.
1. Check the punctuation in thes line two lines:

The hired limousine is at Terminal 3 and we slide away onto the M25 travelling clockwise. I sit next to the driver and am briefed on; the traffic, the price of petrol, the size of his tomatoes and last night’s true episode of Eastenders.
I think you'd prefer a colon : rather than a semi-colon after "am briefed on" as it introduces a series.
Cf. Punctuation (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=964825#post964825)

and in this one:

Perhaps I’ve always been a watcher?
You don't need the ? I do hope the narrator hasn't adopted the rather effete habit of ending his declarative sentences tentatively, like a insecure female?

2. If you want to read really expressive descriptions of the ambience of airports with verisimilitude, see if your public library has Up in the Air by Walter Kirn -- I mean the book, not the film version. (The movie is okay, but Hollywood totally eliminated important secondary characters and expanded one character who, if she appears in the book at all, it's only briefly. Incidentally, George Clooney, who is a good actor, was none the less much too old for "Ryan," the narrator/chief character of the original novel.)

[AuntShecky]

Here's a definition which I've found which may help to explain more succinctly what I meant about the use of a question mark in the second critique above:

" Uptalking.

Women's voices often rise at the ends of sentences as if they're asking a question even when making a statement. For example: "On that report I completed? It says that viral marketing is more effective?" It implies you're asking for approval, rather than stating a fact. Most women are not aware that they do this, and it's a particular habit with the young -- students and the freshly graduated. Speak with authority and periods, not with tentativeness and question marks."

(Source: America Online)

[Emil Miller]

Grammatical and technical errors notwithstanding, this is a very good piece of writing. Airports have always been impersonal places and that comes across clearly in this description. It is too short to qualify as a short story and is probably closer to reportage, but it does highlight the important fact that we are becoming depersonalised by technology to a much greater degree than ever before. It also points up how a shrinking World leads to a sense of disorientation as we move between extremes of location within a short space of time. Yet beyond this kaleidoscopic time frame, lies the mundanity of tedious smalltalk that, instead of acting as a palliative, actually make us feel more disoriented.
Reading this brought home sharply to me similar feelings I have experienced when travelling by air.