And so you learn the only way to go is underground

I composed this entry on the flight from Boston to Baltimore, intending to post it once stationary at chez strange_selkie and darthrami:

Ways to determine you have not institutionalized the proper climate of fear: Show up to a major airport with a flick knife in your jacket pocket. Realize this while waiting on line to obtain your boarding pass. Be very grateful that one of your parents dropped you at the aiport, so that they can be called and the knife handed off to them before you are arrested. Get your bags searched and your laptop opened anyway. (Bottle of water, goodbye. How nice there's a café on the other side of the gate.) Be even more grateful you realized the knife was in your pocket before that point. Notice a few seconds later that now you have nothing to do with your hands in your pockets while waiting around. Decide you need a better nervous habit.

Of course, then I checked my e-mail while waiting for Selkie to meet me at a stop on the D.C. Metro, and saw what had happened to Peter Watts. The climate of fear is worse than I thought it was. papersky has intelligent things to say about it. I probably don't, but that doesn't mean I like living in this world.

(I don't mean I want to cancel my subscription to the planet in the next twenty-four hours. At the minute, I'm quite tired, but more or less content: Selkie and Rami introduced me and copperbadge to awesome Chinese dinner at Mama Wok's and three different kinds of bun from the bakery next door; the conversation is all slightly travel-stunned, but delightful; there is a shameless brindled cat trying to balance on my shoulder as I write. I'd just like these things to coexist with a world in which it is not common practice to arrest and beat someone not even for having the wrong papers, but for not being frightened enough. I'm left with Menotti: To this we've come . . .)