I am a writer who for the past three years has been working on an ongoing installation titled "Airport Novel."

It's not a novel at all. Taking into account the extraordinarily public conditions, as well taking for granted the captive readership (thousands of people with nothing to do), I began leaving manually-reproduced, limited-edition broadsides and essays in airplanes and airport terminals in 1992. The text objects are ticket sleeves, insurance forms, and air sickness bags covered with scribbles and pictures. People pick one up, believing it a discarded or misplaced notation, and are addressed in a more or less apocolyptic authorial tone: oila! you're in the middle of "Airport Novel."

The pieces transcribed below were largely composed on airplanes or killing time in the terminal before a flight, then disseminated in aircraft toilet compartments, magazine nets, upright tray tables, and airport jetways, waiting areas, admiral's clubs, or news stands.

The fact of the matter is, inflight is the best time to invoke the intervention of the muses . . . not merely for the lofty station of the poet, but because, as we've known for millenia, the muses like libations. And talk about intoxication: did you know that, while the practice is not often reported, many airlines enrichen the pressurized, breathable cabin mix on major flights with anywhere between ten to forty parts nitrus oxide per thousand? This takes the edge off the experience for even the most claustrophobic of acrophobes, making the whole harrowing two to ten hours tolerable, if not downright merry! Some of us with pen in hand and scraps within reach make the stoned moments inspirational.

Especially enjoyable for the artist is the narrocast (not 'cast at all, as Negroponte would remind us, but put there on the net' for anyone to go get) and instantaneous medium of inducing neighbor (unknown) to read over the arm rest. "Writing that leaves the airplane stranger unable to wrest her attention back to anyday's paper, forgoing all customs of decency and discretion, actually oggling and verily clawing at the scripture on another's tray table" -- now that's a good airport novel!