I arrived early to Schiphol Airport so after going through passport control I sat on a cafe, had coffee, ate a sandwich and texted my boyfriend I love him a thousand times.

I miss Tesco's sandwiches. Cheap and good. This one was a "Dutch Special" with hard bacon and dry "artisan bread". It did the job anyway... I was starving and anxious.

I made a quick stop at the ladies toilet to freshen up and I walked to the gate while taking snaps of the airport with my phone. God I love airports. The landscapes I love the most from the modern world are festival crowd views and airports.

I was randomly assigned a window seat on the plane. I felt lucky.

After leaving my bag I opened "M Train". Patti was taking a plane to Mexico. She described a stressful situation during check-in when a member of staff insisted in her using the kiosk to get her boarding pass. Patti was growling about the 21st Century while searching for her reading glasses and hoping the machine would be more reliable than what she assumed. It wasn't.


I felt it is right to read M Train at the speed I am reading it. Here seating on a plane, I accompany Patti on her first visit to Casa Azul, former home and resting place of Frida Kahlo. I thought it was a sign. My Mom always tells me that I see signs everywhere and I interpret them as I wish. But aren't signs exactly that, and Life nothing more than what we make of it?

So I read and looked out the window and I cried a little:

"I sat before nearly two hundred guests in the garden. I scarcely could say what I talked about, but in the end I sang to them, as I had sung to the birds on my windowsill. It was a song that came to me while I lay in Diego's bed. It was about the butterflies that Noguchi had given to Frida. I saw tears streaming down the faces of the director and the women who had administered to me with such tender care. Faces I no longer remember.

Late that night there was a party in the park across from my hotel. My headache was completely gone. I packed, then looked out the window. The trees were strung with tiny Christmas lights though it was only the seventh of May. I went down to the bar and had a shot of a very young tequila. The bar was empty, as nearly everyone was in the park. I sat for a long time. The bartender refilled my glass. The tequila was light, like flower jouice. I closed my eyes and saw a green train with an M in a circle; a faded green like the back of a praying mantis." Patti Smith - M Train