Entries published during August, 2023

August 20, 2023

Entry 50: Magnetic North (III)

Friday, June 9
SAS 347 TRD > OSL

Heimdalsgata 35, Gamle, Oslo

Carla Harryman

According to my source, there are three kinds of space: absolute, relative, and relational. Looking for the proper airport code for Trondheim, I became enmeshed in the military and aviation history of its location in Værnes (not, evidently, the Værnes where the village church is located; the place name is repeated at two locations on the coast). Reading the entry, I stop at the exact description of the runway, its length, manner of construction, and what kind of air traffic it serves. “The main runway is 2,999 metres (9,839 ft) long, and runs east–west at 09/27. It is 45 metres (148 ft) wide, plus shoulders of 7.5 metres (25 ft) on each side. The runway is equipped with instrument landing system category 1. . . . ” In absolute terms, the runway thus materially exists. Should an airplane positioned at one end of the runway develop sufficient thrust, given the mass of the airplane and the lift of its wings, it will take off. Pilots know this and rest assured at the controls while passengers suffer through the mysterious event time and again. “Værnes has a theoretical capacity of 40 air movements per hour, but this is reduced during bad weather, so the airport has a registered capacity of 25.” In a given year, three to four hundred military aircraft are served by the facility, the entry goes on to state. What follows is a history of the transition from its use in the German Occupation to an important outpost for NATO, with continuing American military presence, likely being increased as I write.

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August 13, 2023

Entry 49: Magnetic North (II)

Monday, June 5
Icelandair KEF > OSL

Sjøgata 4, Oslo

Carla Harryman

Travel consists in the denial of any goal for travel. Often one travels from point A to point B, but the experience of travel is otherwise than reaching the destination. This is why, for agéd traveler William S. Burroughs, “It is not necessary to live; it is only necessary to travel.” An interstitial space, the Interzone, the in between points of origin or destination, with the sensation of and material means for movement. One can become addicted to travel. Moving from a point of origin, it is often impossible to discern where that is—the “mooring of starting out” John Ashbery recalled as a condition of his availability at the outset, wherever that may be. We certainly did not begin our travels in Rochester, N.Y., though we passed by there recently on return from celebrating Ashbery with his tribe. One can adapt the field of aesthetic experience to the road map of travel and its discontents. Thus the rental car outside our hotel in Reykjavík must be returned directly to the scrappy terminal at Keflavík, site of former American airbase built on bare lava fields, roughly an hours drive south. The difficulty of locating the final gas station turned into a near catastrophe, but was masterfully overcome. Our transition continued through ticketing kiosks, baggage drops, crowded spaces, and passport checks where a border official tried to personalize each succeeding applicant before giving them a stamp. Once in the air it was normal, or anxious, or asleep. Then out the window the clouds parted and we saw the Farœ Islands, now the destination of a lifetime, soon to be passed by. After an intermission of blank time the massive coastal ranges of Norway loomed, with substantial snow cover, frightening in their immensity and lack of any habitation. The dramatic muscularity of glaciated ranges and valleys resolved into a flat plane of arrival and modern transit to an overpriced and inconvenient city and its arranged destination for one night. Whose amenities were mainly its proximity to the renovated harbor zone where one could find something to eat at a substantial price.

 

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