Thursday

if you're going abroad, i can't help you






Pursue the crowds at an airport. Be it international or domestic, you are certain/guaranteed to see a zoo of people. It’s quite an honest place to get a sense of a person’s character; what they’re like, at an airport. This all depends on different things. Are they the passengers who travel for leisure in jeans and a t-shirt  or are they the business type – in a suit, working away on their laptop sending away the last piece of email before they get on the plane? Are they the coffee drinkers? Or the homemade sandwich eaters? 

I like the sound of the operator reminding a Mr. Peter Knapp that his plane is about to board. The the sounds of baggage wheels sliding off an escalator. The sounds of people briskly walking to reach their gate. These sounds are reminders, pleasant reminders, that everyone is getting from A to B. Either they are almost home, or soon to be somewhere new and exciting. 

But the best part lies in what an airport symbolizes.  Airports are more than just a place for arrivals and departures. They are bookends. Places of new beginnings, long-awaited endings. Hellos and goodbyes. Starting in one city and only to end in another place thousands of kilometers away. Ah, but my favorite is when you close the airplane door on winter, and open it on summer - only seven hours later. 

I don't think you are the same person as when you leave somewhere. I'm not entirely certain if it is good or bad, but there is a certainty that you change with each departure/arrival. Once you start, you can never truly finish. It's the way it works and I'm not complaining.