Distance Displacement and Delilah

Here’s a bit of prose I’ve been working on.

I miss you. I love you.

Be excellent to each other.

—

I’ve always hated airplanes. It is entirely illogical to surrender my life and safety to two, probably underpaid, probably sleep deprived, completely regular people. 

I don’t trust doctors or surgeons–too self assured–and I don’t trust teachers, preachers, priests, parents–anyone who tells you what they believe as if it is fact. 

I don’t trust people who sit and think all day, then spew from that muck a kind of manifesto on living. So then, I do not trust philosophers, or anyone who has ever written or read in earnest, a self-help book or Walden-esq memoir. 

I don’t trust compliments, or most insults. I don’t trust bartenders, cooks, baristas, hotel or restaurant staff–but not for any fault of theirs. They are underpaid and sleep deprived too. Trusting them would be unfair to all of us. 

I trust hard, scientific research–the people who do it correctly–and I trust mathematicians. I like that they can show me their conclusions with no uncertainty. I can follow their thoughts from beginning to end, and nothing is hidden. 

I trust the game of chess, and the people who play it. There it all is on the board, nothing concealed. 

I trust people who gain nothing from my choosing to believe them. People make mistakes, and choosing to trust someone whose margin for error is wide by nature is not particularly easy for me. 

People are imperfect, and to sardine myself into a pressurized, metal tube with a hundred other imperfect people, while two more imperfect people launch us into the air, is not something I’m willing to do. I get the science behind it, how air pressure and the design of the plane’s body are such that they are made to coast instead of plummet should anything go wrong. But it isn’t air pressure that I don’t trust.

So, I drive across the country. Mostly at night–less imperfect drivers–and mostly in the company of late night radio show host, Delilah. Delilah’s voice begs absolute trust from her listeners–trust that the song she’ll choose to dedicate to you, and whoever you’ve written to her about, will heal whatever it is that’s hurting. 

I listen to her dedicate an early 2000s rock ballad to a woman dating for the first time after a divorce, and it feels sincere, and I’d like to trust her. 

For a long time, I could not get past my suspicions surrounding her location on January 6, 2021. I don’t know why, really–I’ve been conditioned to be wary of radio hosts who mention god even semi-regularly. 

I decided enough was enough–I was being unfair to Delilah. I begrudgingly deep dove into her political affiliations, and as of April 2021, Delilah lives on a farm outside Seattle with her ex-husband’s parents. 

Delilah is safe, for now–but I’ve been burned before.  

For this reason, among others, I keep Delilah at arm’s length. 

I do not cry while driving, and I do not think about much of anything except distance and displacement, the difference between them. How I wanted both to be large enough to scare me. How far out of place I feel. How much ground I’ve covered. 

Whenever I feel the ache in my chest, I imagine I am wounded instead of chemically imbalanced. I’d been rescuing a puppy from the mouth of an alligator. I was brave, actually. 

People, imperfect and needy and hurting, are incredibly easy to understand. Their lies are easy to spot, and worse, I don’t hate them for it. I get it. I understand why we lie and cheat and act imperfectly. We’re following the curriculum, we’re trying to pay rent, we want to be held. They want to feel better. 

I want to feel better too.

Delilah–anybody–If you have a song for that, I’m all ears.