Leaving Earth

There was a group of twenty middle school kids, shepherded by chaperons, urgently cascading through the departures section at Seatac. All of them were wearing sharp, sky blue sports Jackets and half the girls were crying. Red faced and wiping their noses with their sleeves, they made for a very sad, hurried procession. I watched with amusement as they passed a newly reunited couple kissing and swooning over each other. I always wear a quiet smile in airports; my own way of opting out of the stressful atmosphere fellow travellers succumb to.

The sun set by the time we reached the state-size ice shards of the Canadian Atlantic. It wavered on the horizon before in fell–a filament glowing orange and burning out in the frosted glass bulb of the accelerated night–and cast one long, cherry-orange reel on the clouds as if there were a forest ridge burning beneath. This was not a night in the bodily sense, the body does not cycle with the sun when you take your feet off the ground for nine hours and race against the spin of the world.

I didn’t sleep two out of the first three nights on this trip. I missed my first night when I left Seattle at two in the afternoon and reached London at seven in the morning, nine hours later. Two nights later I stayed out at a Pub with a local running club until it was time for me to pack up and catch a train back to the Gatwick Airport. I do not do well without sleep and at several points on my walk to Victoria Station the simple motion of walking made me feel like I was in an elevator that had just started moving. The train station that was supposed to be my point of departure was closed and after wandering the circumference in a very sleepy haze I ran into two other people with bags and a 3-in-the-morning-confused look about them. Together we asked a rather smug English security guard what the deal was and he explained that the station was closed and that the ‘transfer’ indication on our tickets meant that we ought to fuck off and find our own damn ways to the Blackfriar Station. I am still fairly certain that is not what it meant but three a.m. is a poor time to get into a shouting match with a security guard through a locked gate. The two other travellers and I caught an Uber to the next open station and I listened to a podcast about the modern day bootlegging Pappy Van Winkle Whiskey on the train ride.

In London Gatwick, the hall that passengers must follow to reach the departure gates takes a long arcing detour through the heart of a shopping mall. I found this mandatory tour of sexy posters and weaponized perfume to be a surprising new dimension to capitalism. Not surprising that it exists, but surprising that I had never been forced by security checkpoints to peruse a store.

Planes always dissociate our bodies from our minds and our souls. Despite their shopping mall aesthetic, airports often feel like a mix between a funeral and a wedding, and it is not altogether unexpected to see a parade of crying school kids weeping in their blue blazers shuffle passed a couple in blissful reunion. We intuitively know, before we ever pass through TSA, that we are beginning something entirely new and that the inevitable result will be our bodies leaving earth.