Airport

I’m about to get all Love Actually on you, but I really do like airports. Once I get checked in, I find the whole process very soothing. My inner calm rises in opposite correlation to the turmoil around me. As we snake our way through the security line, families get themselves all wound up and business men stamp their shiny tasseled toes like they have a right to move more quickly through the line than the hippie backpackers in front of them. Parents start to harangue their children: if you hadn't let the cat out; if you would only have packed last night like I told you to; please untangle your sticky self from the lane divider and move 3 feet ahead with the rest of us – we’re going to miss our plane!  Whereas I tend to hyperventilate on a regular basis – running late for work, running late for a movie, the sudden realization that my life has no financial stability - it is ironically in the airport security line watching cowboys and lovers and families sending their daughters off to college and women in power suits clicking along the interminable corridors that I am washed by a sense of what-will-be-will-be. Where it comes from I couldn't say, but I work this sentiment like a toddler on his thumb.

Clearly I was too in the zone, though. After all of the announcements about staying on the plane if you’re heading to Las Vegas and thanks for flying Southwest, yadda yadda, I disembarked with all but 33 other passengers to catch my next flight. My next flight wasn't set to take off until 6:25pm, meaning a four-hour layover in Nashville; but lucky for me I checked the departure screens before heading off to placate my now roaring stomach. No flight to Sacramento was listed there, so I sauntered over to the ticket counter to inquire into my mystery flight to California. Ah, you mean I have to go through Las Vegas like it says right here on the ticket I didn't look at? I have to get back on the same plane? Oh, ok. No big deal – no one would even notice and I could find a new seat up towards the front. Except for the fact that upon reentering the aircraft, the attendant at the doorway got on the loud speaker to announce to the attendant at the back of the plane (and everyone else on board): #34 is back. She was confused. I repeat, Number 34 has returned to the plane. Passengers smiled at me softly with a pitying look as I trudged by them, clunking my briefcase on seat backs as I went.   

I don’t think I’ll ever weasel my way into the romance comedy scenario in which Ryan Gosling takes the seat beside me and proceeds to tell me his lifelong dream of saving the world through small-scale farming initiatives, at which point I tell him MY lifelong dream of saving the world through writing about small-scale farming initiatives (whilst married to Ryan Gosling) and we join the mile-high club, sip bloody marys, laugh our way to the runway and live happily ever after. So in the meantime, my what-will-be-will-be attitude makes me very grateful for the solitude of staring out at the landscape below, or the company of a little old lady who tells me all about her visit with her grandchildren. The couple I sat with on my trip to Las Vegas told me all about the terrain below, and kept unbuckling to let me look out the north side of the plane to catch glimpses of the Grand Canyon. I've never seen the Grand Canyon, and felt totally like a kid in a candy shop sticking my face very much in 18C’s personal bubble to see out of the tiny window pane. From up here the world looks invulnerable. Miles above the land it’s impossible to detect our smog, our plastic bottles and spilled oil. We’ll fuck it up for sure, but the world will be around long after we do ourselves in. The thought makes me smirk – we think we’re so almighty, but it’ll probably be the world (and the cockroaches) that have the final word.

The airport feels like an asylum from the reality. Some run through it, some are wearing too nice outfits to actually run but are glistening as they speed-walk to their gates. And like the scene of Love Actually, there’s a heightened buzz at the baggage claim where passengers reunite with family and friends and cross from the traveler’s portal back to the real world. California welcomed me with its nippy breath as I stepped from the threshold of a previous chapter. I dutifully took my place in the long line of wanderers looking expectantly into the bleary headlights, waiting for an agent to carry us into the night.