Airport Connections

In the airport, as in life, it's all about making the right connections, or what happens when you don't. Also, there is poetry in the almosts, in the near-misses, in the I-nearly-didn'ts. 

Arriving at Gate A5, learning that my connecting flight was at A79, I set off on a run that would make my high-school gym teacher proud, I ran fast, keeping my knees low so as to minimize the jostling of my computer, which lay in my backpack, cushioned, but still worth considering. Ran fast between people movers, those electric conveyer belts where people slowed down and let the machine do the walking, jumped onto and off of them like an Olympic hurdler, watching as my shoelaces untied. I wondered if I had time to stop, and inevitably determined that although I didn't have time to tie my shoes, what I really didn't have time for was to get caught in an electric conveyer belt. 

So I stopped to tie my shoes - didn't put my bags doen although my back cried out for a rest. Kept running, kept running; never had a terminal felt so interminable. I made it there, a minute after they'd canceled my seat, and a minute before they closed the gate. I made it through, heard the gate attendant close the door behind me, stepped over the threshhold of the plane door to a greeting of, "oh, we thought you weren't going to make it."

Pulse racing, I found my seat, and found myself in thoughts of "Sliding Doors," and of the dream/anxiety/premonition I had about missing this connection; this led to my reconsideration of all the opportunities in life I might have been a minute too early or too late for, and how those moments, to me, are worse than anonymous - they're non-existent. They're in a split, but parallel timeline; beyond my field of vision or beyond the plane of my cognitive awareness. 

The plane taxis on the runway and takes off into the late-date midwestern sun; condensation on the jet runs across the windows, streaming tears of something - joy (we're so glad you made it) or longing (stay; don't go there, into the clouds, escaping earth and reality before plunging back into routine). 

Those tears, those rivulets of some sort of unclassified emotion, soon succumb to temperature and become frostbitten. Because such is the fate of all tears - the sting, the heat of their beginning, and the flame that boils them until they can no longer be contained, this fire is not so much extinguished as metastasized, metaporphosed into something frozen. Subzero emotion freezes these tears midstream and midsentence, before they say all of what they're supposed to, trapping them in their own misery as they cling to an airplane or a memory that they're very likely trying to outrun.

The freezing makes sorrow easier to deal with for the moment, but the fix is only temporary - the wind always shifts, the air always warms, the temperature changes, and the frozen frosty tears thaw and melt, reverting - as we all do - to that original state, the feeling that we are here again, in the original moment. For all our metamorphosis, we remain - for the greater part - unchanged.

Comments

[Marnie]

I love, love, love your beautifully lyrical turns of phrase. This is gorgeous writing, my dear. And I'm glad that you made your flight! Hope to see you soon.

[Sharone]

Hey Esther...all I can say is it's unfortunate that I hadn't started reading your blog sooner - you are such a phenomenal writer. :-) I love all of your insights.

[Esther]

Thanks Marnie, you've always been so complimentary about my writing, and I appreciate it.

Sharone, the beauty of having a blog capture everything is that it's never too late to start reading. Start in February 2004, and that should keep you busy for a while...