On Flying

We stand up to begin the ordered shuffle through the gate. I scroll to my customary airplane boarding playlist (entitled "World Conquering" on Spotify), blast AC/DC through my earbuds and walk through the tunnel towards the plane as if it is one leading to my own personal arena. This is how I remind myself to be fearless when traveling alone. It always works.

There's a silently acknowledged etiquette to be silent, even in the sitting down and removing of jackets and replacing of laptops in overhead compartments. As of this moment, we are between worlds, not in them, and the hustle and bustle of our former and future lives has no place between the rows of oval windows.

For some reason, I always have the urge to cry the moment the front wheels lift and we are pulled into the sky from some invisible force above. Perhaps it is because this is when it hits me that in that moment, I am neither in the place from which I am coming, nor the one toward which I am traveling. I and the hundreds of people around me whose names and stories I do not know are in a world of our own, headed toward our own great mysteries for which none of us are prepared. I think this is always the first moment I realize I am never prepared. But for the next few hours, I am surrounded by people nothing like me and just like me, headed into the huge crisscrossed network of human stories, and for that time I am allowed to be alone and unprepared.

Minutes go by. Hours. Time slows and speeds up and slows again. I might stay curled forever in the cramped, quiet limbo of space between my armrests, my head and knees propped against the wall, songs passing mindlessly through my earbuds, fading in and out of sleep. But eventually, the gentle motion of the plane's descent reminds me how gravity sometimes feels like a mother softly shaking my shoulders, and I rise and fall on a lazy wave. I try to fight it, stay curled in my almost-comfortable position, but gradually the downward movements of the wave become less smooth, mixing with the dull roaring vibrations of the wheels opening and stretching toward our destination.

Our wheels collide with the rushing earth beneath us, bumping, and suddenly I am weightless, the forward inertia of the brakes lengthening my spine and pushing my body back to its upright and locked position. We glide into a gate. My eyes find the window next to me as the people around me begin to rustle back to life. In the distance, framed perfectly and shining against the black night, is the Capitol building.

Welcome home.