I've always loved airports.
As much as the "waiting" part of traveling isn't terribly exciting, waiting in the terminal is one of the places I feel the most calm and peaceful.
Weird. I know. But hear me out.
As I sat staring at a curly-haired man, I began to think about him. He had brown eyes. Maybe his mother has brown eyes too. Big brown eyes that caught a man from across the room, that drew that man in and swallowed him up as he fell in love. And from that love between that man and the brown-eyed woman came this curly-haired man. Now full grown. Probably loved by women, and loved some back. Maybe he's the life of the party. Maybe he's notoriously shy and reserved. Perhaps he likes poetry -- or maybe action movies. Adventure. Hiking. Coffee shops. Jazz. Hip-hop. Maybe he's afraid of heights, or spiders. Maybe he's afraid of being alone or lost. He probably has secrets -- deeds and thoughts he's never whispered to another soul except for that freckled blue-eyed girl he used to spend nights under the stars with. But she's gone now, and he's waiting for a plane to take him from where he was to where he will be.
That's what I love about airports. That last part. Despite whatever else is going on in that curly-haired man's life, right there in the airport terminal he is in-between. And so is everyone else. Each person in that airport has a life of their own -- friends, family, a job, an education, dark thoughts, lonely nights, sparkling aspirations, quiet hopes, and a roaring appetite for something. But here they are -- not in one place or another. Travelling. Separated. Transitory. In-between.
And somehow that is a comfort to me. And strangely intimate. I get the feeling you can learn a lot about a person uprooted from their environment, with their valuables and neccesities packed at their side, waiting to be suspended in the air for a time.
As much as the "waiting" part of traveling isn't terribly exciting, waiting in the terminal is one of the places I feel the most calm and peaceful.
Weird. I know. But hear me out.
As I sat staring at a curly-haired man, I began to think about him. He had brown eyes. Maybe his mother has brown eyes too. Big brown eyes that caught a man from across the room, that drew that man in and swallowed him up as he fell in love. And from that love between that man and the brown-eyed woman came this curly-haired man. Now full grown. Probably loved by women, and loved some back. Maybe he's the life of the party. Maybe he's notoriously shy and reserved. Perhaps he likes poetry -- or maybe action movies. Adventure. Hiking. Coffee shops. Jazz. Hip-hop. Maybe he's afraid of heights, or spiders. Maybe he's afraid of being alone or lost. He probably has secrets -- deeds and thoughts he's never whispered to another soul except for that freckled blue-eyed girl he used to spend nights under the stars with. But she's gone now, and he's waiting for a plane to take him from where he was to where he will be.
That's what I love about airports. That last part. Despite whatever else is going on in that curly-haired man's life, right there in the airport terminal he is in-between. And so is everyone else. Each person in that airport has a life of their own -- friends, family, a job, an education, dark thoughts, lonely nights, sparkling aspirations, quiet hopes, and a roaring appetite for something. But here they are -- not in one place or another. Travelling. Separated. Transitory. In-between.
And somehow that is a comfort to me. And strangely intimate. I get the feeling you can learn a lot about a person uprooted from their environment, with their valuables and neccesities packed at their side, waiting to be suspended in the air for a time.
