ack

[lapsedmodernist]

my tickets for russia arrived yesterday; last night i had the second anxiety dream about flying this week. had an argument with my mother last night over the phone about her booking me a non-smoking seat. i know that she hates that i smoke, and normally we practice the don't-ask-don't-tell policy w/r/t that, but considering that she knows (although i am convinced she cannot imagine) what a viscerally terrifying and unpleasant experience flying is for me, she could have fucking gotten me a smoking seat. i don't know how to explain to people who aren't afraid of flying that flying, while afraid, is different from overcoming other fears--in other instances the courage required is just for a moment, to overcome the initial phase, and then voila--victory. i imagine it's more like an unceasing phobia, like claustrophobia, or agoraphobia, which does not get better the more time one spends in an enclosed, or open (respectively) space. for me, a five hour flight is an extended sustained five hour version of those split-second moments at night between sleep and wakefulness when i am sharply aware of my mortality, the kind of feeling sartre wrote about in "nausea," and nabokov brilliantly wrote about in "terror." so on the flight to russia i have 8 hours of that to look forward to. xanax helps some, in the sense that it does not cure that feeling, but it sort of makes me numb to it, like muting the reaction.