home.
Here I find myself once again at an airport. I'm not complaining, because as soon as "traveling" becomes a viable hobby, I most certainly will claim it. But here I am, at MCO (quick... name that airport!), staring at the flat screen TV and just guessing what our friends at CNN might be reporting on, because even though the picture is pretty, the sound is terrible, and sadly, the time-delayed closed captioning is off.And here I am, fresh off of debriefing, at the airport, and probably thinking too deeply for my own good. Let me wax philosophical for a minute. (Please, indulge me. I'm at the airport alone and I don't think the six-year-old girl next to me would appreciate me interrupting her foray into the video-gaming world to ponder the nature of air travel with her.) Airports can be fun (on your way to a tropical vacation), sad (leaving your family), tiring (on a layover in Frankfurt on your way to who-knows-where), or fascinating (when you sit next to the former governor of North Carolina, for example, like I did a few days ago). But they're always an in-between. They're nexuses of transition. (I told you it'd be deep.)
Lately I've been playing a little game with myself. As I'm in an airport flying to some destination, I ask myself... "Where do you think you're going?" Now you might be thinking to yourself, "If you've made it all the way to the airport, checked-in, claimed your boarding pass, made it through security and found your way to the corresponding gate, you should probably know where you're going by this point." And I agree. Of course I know where I'm going (after a quick glance at the afore-mentioned boarding pass). But, my life is so jumbled around these days that internally, I've kind of lost my compass.
It's like when you wake up in the dark at the hotel and it takes you a few minutes to realize why your sheets are extra-starched and why the air conditioning is set to an arctic temperature... and then you vaguely remember the friendly Doubletree Hotel staff handing you your warm, chocolate-chip cookie... and you say, "Oh, right. I'm at a hotel." It's not that you’re lost, per-se, it's just that you're not quite sure where you are.
My game is really just like that. I think quickly... where do I think I'll get off the plane? Most of the time, if I don't think too much about it, I think it'll be EZE. But sometimes it's my default DFW. SAN is familiar enough, as is, ironically, TUL. MIA wouldn't be too far of a reach, and, since I lived there one time for three days, DEN might even be a good option.
But here's the crazy thing. Today I played the game and my first thought was... RDU. That's right, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. I'm not sure if that means I won my game (the ground rules haven't officially been established yet), but it might just mean that "home", after a hiatus in the world of intangible theories, is starting to find itself once again on a map.
posted by Courtney @ 12:04 AM
3 Comments:
Love your blog, your thoughts, your expressions, your words. Love you! Thanks for sharing. I can imagine transitions are hard. Praying for you, my friend!
So many steps to walk through...praying for you and all that a transition brings!
Sweet Chocli! I was in La Plata on Friday and ran into Iri's brother. Good memories of New Year's Day a few years back filled my brain. Then a bit of sadness that I couldn't just go to your apartment and give you a hug. Who knows when/where our paths will cross again but wherever in the world it is I look forward to it :) Love you friend!
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