Don’t tell the FAA, but those of you who know me beyond the casual fancy of this blog will know that I worry about losing my mind, about losing the razor-sharp cognition that I never had to begin with.

You see I always loved the construct of “clear air turbulence,” the aviation term for rockin’ and rollin’ in your airplane on a crystal-clear day, typically with no warning.   “Out of the blue” would be an apt idiom here, because it happens when skies are blue and you can see forever.

Clear air turbulence is a sweet metaphor for life as we know it.   It’s aviation’s equivalent to the nautical “Just when you think it’s safe to go back into the water.”

So last week I sat down to write a post about it.   As I neared the end of it, I had this vague sense of déjà vu, so I went online to my actual blog and searched for the term.   Sure enough, merely five years ago I wrote another post about the same topic, and there it was, the creeping shame of dementia working its way back to me, babe.   Add to that shame the fact that when I read the post, I was fully prepared to hate it, as I do most everything I read years after I write it.   But rather than hate it, I thought it was better than the one that I had just written.   Even my writing is diminishing, I thought.  

My father became quite demented, although the worst of it didn’t hit until his eighties.   He had a girlfriend named Cookie in his last few years in the “not entirely lost your mind” section of the facility where he lived until his death.   Once, when I visiting him, he apprehensively mentioned that “Other people are telling me Cookie has dementia, but I don’t see it.”   I was worried that he would be offended by the response that popped into my head, but I said it anyway.   “Dad, that’s because yours is worse than hers.”  He understood the answer, and fortunately, took my comment equanimously.  

If your dementia happens to be worse than mine, you won’t recall anything I wrote five years ago, and frankly, what I wrote about clear air turbulence last week was quite different from five years ago, so rather than consign these poor old pixels to the recycle bin where they will eventually be permanently deleted, here’s a sample:

The wind is calm, the sun not too harsh as it gently washes over the nooks and crannies of earth’s face, feeding the trees and plants that keep our hearts beating.  The air is clear, you can see forever, and the sky is blue.   Then, out of that blue comes a nerve-shattering jolt, as though some invisible Thor smacked your airplane with his giant hammer.   Or, for those of us residing in California, as though this was a few months ago and you were sitting at your desk when the ground around you suddenly shifts and nearly knocks you off your chair, and then shakes, rattles and rolls you while you rise, stand in the doorway, and watch the objects around you shatter as they fall off the shelves.

Clear air turbulence is officially abbreviated as CAT, so to let the CAT out of the bag, here’s a quick rundown of the why of it.   It’s fundamentally about wind shear, which is the thing that happens when sudden changes in the speed and direction of air masses collide with each other.  It often happens on clear days, I think, because some of those masses have chased the clouds away. 

In big airplanes that travel high, turbulence is often caused by the jet stream, which can dip low but usually hovers somewhere around 30,000 feet.   You can’t see it, but when you cross into or out of it things can get shaky.   In small airplanes flying at lower altitudes, wind shear and the resulting turbulence can happen when a strong wind blows along the top or side of mountains.   Those winds typically propagate upwards, so it’s not unusual to experience sudden, unexpected turbulence when flying around the mountains.   But mostly it happens due to convective currents, which create thermals that can cause the air to rise or descend rapidly.   Convection is really another word for moving heat around, and it’s the uneven heating of the earth that in fact causes most of the phenomena we call weather.

Clear air turbulence can be quite the hazard, although it doesn’t happen that often.   Severe turbulence in airliners has caused serious injuries in 163 people between 2009 and 2022, according to the FAA, but that’s only counting the ones on airliners that are reported.  This year, which my computer tells me is 2024, has been particularly bad, likely because weather has become increasingly bad throughout the earth.   It’s the ones in small airplanes that I worry about, of course, well, you know why.

By definition, CAT can come scratching anywhere at any time.   In my lifetime it’s happened often.   It happened when Hillary lost, and when I received my stage IV cancer diagnosis, to name just two out of the many.   For some, the fear of clear air turbulence can lead to avoiding flying altogether.   I prefer to meditate on Tennyson’s reminder that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, because even when hiding in the basement bad things can happen to good people.  I suppose it can be summed up in the classic words of the famous 20^th century philosopher Bumper Sticker, who reminds us: “Shit Happens.” 

So that’s the post, and if you think you have read it before, you may be more demented than I.   Please take a cue from my father, and don’t take it personally.   Shit happens.