Reimagining Nietzsche at an airport terminal

by Sneha Subramanian Kanta

your body, what savage is it, aboard this ship? But it is now in air. But that sentiment is from Moby Dick. The mind can fall from air to water in a second. Perhaps that’s why they give you safety instructions before takeoff? Maybe the body is heavier than the mind, but more compact, fits into diameters more easily. That is why the below of your seat houses a floating device, so your body may float like a dislodged lantern upon the sea. Seven hours later, enough dust, germs and steel around, the airplane lands. The airport terminal is only familiar because Nietzsche is—there he stands, with a silent yawp. Your body murmurs but you learn to extrapolate the creaks into joint movements. These scrapes of glue paper and unwanted items – unreal carpet route, real scrap. How less we require. How much we desire, how much we have, how much we keep, of it all, the body is closest. They glamorize much these days. The path of Dionysian music in scraps of collage, its materiality, its inadvertent touch, its outward gaze. Probably the best use of scraps on the precipice. Melville had a word for those, people. Pagan. Our bodies, too. Nietzsche never made way to this airport terminal.