Southern California – Summer 2014 – Regarding Planes

Regarding Planes:

I. Love. Airplanes.

I find the hassle of traveling through airport security to be the start of a welcome adventure, tinged with exotic excitement so apart from daily life. There is a childish excitement in the panic of shifting time schedules, delays and final departures. Growing up, my Dad’s insistence on arriving three hours early for every flight (five if international) never lessened the urgency with which we moved, every second counting, an exhilarating if exhausting hurry up-and wait. The confused and vicious hierarchy unique to these massive common areas it is at once as lawless as the Wild West, where the fastest draw is matched only by the most ruthless shot; as mysterious as medieval times, where wise Queens and Kings drift past, untouched by guards, crowned with gold memberships, inspiring rage and awe in the masses who claw at one another; and as quaint as the 50’s, filled with charmingly clunky electronics, dapper and sneering staff, hysterically blatant racism, mass misinformation, and above all, children first.

Once on the plane, I am, for want of a better word, comfortable. I am small and often prefer curling my legs beneath me to stretching out. I rarely find I need to use the bathroom while in flight, freeing me to jump for the window seat. The window seat is where the magic really happens. One friend, recounted her annoyance at a small child who spent the first and last hour of their flight repeating, “WHEEEEE! WHEEEEE!” Needless to say, my friend utterly failed to gain my sympathy, as I strongly identify with the anonymous child.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is a little under 500 meters tall. The world’s largest swimming pool is around 1000 meters long. Mount Olympus in Cyprus peaks at approximately 2000 meters. Lake Vostok in Antarctica is under 4000 meters of ice. Mount Everest rises 8,848 meters above sea level. Commercial airplanes fly, on average, at a height of 12,000m. In a plane, I have gone higher than history’s gods among men. Higher than anyone can walk or climb, in and above clouds. To where the ground is no more and my head pulses without the weight of the air that has spent generations pressing in the skulls of humanity. On this trip, I saw a storm being born, clouds growing together and higher and darker till our metal ship shook.

At the end of the flight I picked up my bag and retraced my steps from the start of the flight. I dodged the same overhead luggage as before, shuffled slowly past the same seats, on the same sticky floor, nodded goodbye to the same attendants who greeted me, carefully stepped out the same door, down what appeared to be the same jet bride, into another manic airport, and outside, somewhere completely new.