Thanksgiving was over.

Thanksgiving was over. I brought our luggage downstairs while my mom said goodbye to her brothers. I was relieved to finally be going home. I wanted to escape my family. Why did the tender joy of unifying with them always end with a feeling of isolation and resentment?

Everyone said their farewells, and my mother and I made our way to the taxi. On the road, the surrounding trees were pale and naked. As we drove along restless early evening traffic, dark rainclouds, rich with temper, shrouded the cityscape with deep grey.

When we finally boarded, the clouds were black as tar, full of suppressed anguish, like they were waiting to demolish something savory. I made my way down towards the back of the plane, where I noticed a 20-something flight attendant with mascara-laden eyes and bright red lips look right at me as she spoke through the intercom. And I, entranced by her imminence and the consequent eye contact, withdrew from her eye-line and felt a sudden heat wave flood my whole body. Everything slowed as I fantasized of a wild future with her. Trips, karaoke, beach-sex, marriage, family. But my courage didn’t muster to any new heights, no fantastic leap, and no conjured new bravery, just peddling behind a cue of passengers arranging and filing into their seats in a slow laborious fashion. I sat down in my window seat overcome with helplessness. A middle-aged couple quickly filled the two empty seats to my side. We buckled up and flew up into the oily dusk.

After takeoff, I reclined my seat and read a passage from The Catcher and the Rye. I read less than a page before I caught myself reading the same sentence over and over again for no particular reason other than I was still thinking about the flight attendant.

The distracting mini-screens placed on the seats in front begged for my attention, so I turned mine off.

“It’s a long flight, you’re not going to watch anything?” Asked the elder woman in the seat next to me.

“No, I’d prefer to read.”

“Oh, lovely. What are you reading?”

I showed her the book.

“Goodness. That’s heavy material for such a young man.”

“Have you read it?”

“Once before. I remember thinking, what an odd character that they can’t seem to accept help from anyone.”

“Maybe he’s just angry because it’s the world that doesn’t know how to help itself. He proves people are inherently selfish. We all just pretend to live above this putrid self-interest and then learn to mask it as love” is what I wish I said. Instead, I could only muster a measly, “Yeah, I guess.”

My body turned away.

“What’s your name?” I looked past her at the husband, engrossed in old Seinfeld re-run.

“Paladin.”

“That’s an unusual name.”

Shrugging my shoulders I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Cindy.”

“Hi Cindy.”

“Hello,” she said with a kind of excitement as if there was a request or question she was hoping to receive.

“What are you watching?” I finally asked.

“Hmm. I was going to watch this show Love Island, but... I think I’d like to make some progress on my book instead.”

“What are you reading?”

She smiled. “The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.”

“I like that book.”

“Isn’t it just marvelous? I love the writing and how he invites you on this journey for lost treasure. Oh, it is delightful.”

“If only we were constructed to experience life like someone reading it for the first time and who’s truly receptive to it,” is, again, what I wish I said. Instead, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m going to continue reading my book.”

“By all means.”

Some time passed, and my eyes were beginning to tire. The captain of the plane spoke into the intercom commanding that we fasten our seatbelts as we were due for some turbulence.

Then, scratching some taboo inner delight, it dawned on her she might die because in the next moment the plane started shaking like God grabbed the plane and started playing with it. We had flown directly into the raging storm. The clouds churned and rubbed like sandpaper, thunder strikes tearing through the sky around us. The elder woman seized and gripped the armrests. I looked around at the rupture of adrenaline and fear about the passengers. Where did that feeling reside for me? Sure, there was a gnawing uncertainty and dread of the unknown, but it felt pointless under the circumstances, so feeling it had lost the same meaning.

Eventually, things quieted down, and the seat-belt sign turned off. From the airplane window, I could make out the distant, red-banded horizon, which pulled further and further away as we sunk into the cusp of night, slowly falling behind until red became blue and the blue became black. I took my headphones off and the plane’s mechanical hum played like white noise, with everyone now talking to their inert selves about life and chance and the hazards of flying and what kind of mark they’d left on this prickly world.

I tried writing a poem then.

I ripped the page out of my notebook and folded it three times. I let it sit there on the mini-table and closed my eyes while listening to “Baba O’ Reilly” by The Who. I wanted to look at the poem with more objectivity. I’d been noticing that my poems weren’t really poems, but were, instead, my feelings in verse under the mask of poetry. Maybe this prose is also hiding something. With my noise-canceling headphones and a basic understanding of breathing techniques, I practiced a deep breath from my diaphragm and a slow exhale. I did this until everything firing off in my head had settled.

...

...

...

The simpler the thought, the more clarity the action predicated upon the thought has, but already my thoughts were hazing me into that oblivion of doubt and uncertainty. Then, like a war that had resumed on a silver screen, something came to mind that obliterated every other thought in its wake, including my delusion to apply some objectivity to my poem--especially my desire to have objectivity. What sprung to mind churned and chugged an anxiety that made me rip through chunks of my fingertips. Suddenly my guard was down and the fear I thought I had kept so distant was opening up and gaining hold somewhere between my gut and my chest. I have to act now.

“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself, grabbing the notebook paper. “Excuse me, ma’am, I need to use the bathroom,” I asked of my neighbor.

She turned to her husband, “Reggie...” She tapped him. Reggie, begrudged, made some space.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

Reggie grunted as I passed in front of his TV screen and stepped into the walkway. I looked down and up the aircraft but couldn’t see her, the flight attendant. I went towards the back first in hopes of avoiding my mother. Suddenly I felt my hands clamming up and my forehead surging with a sudden heat. I wiped my hands up and down my pants. I noticed I was the only person standing. Near the back, I saw a pair of feet extending onto the walkway from behind the lavatory. It was her. I knew it was her. My guts started to contract and split. As soon as her syncopic eyes cleared the corner and she glanced at me, my mind blank yet overheated, and my guts felt splattered alongside the rest of my innards, forgetting entirely about the poem still clutched in my balmy hand. 

What am I thinking? I’m only 16. Why is my lust driving me towards such a person who is not only older than me but has no bearing on my existence in the grander scheme of things? No, she has everything to do with the bearing over my existence. I’ve put myself in this self-imposed knot that only she can untangle; only she can jettison my pathology of cowardice by showing how wrong my life has become. I need her. I’m that lost and bewitched. Those dark brown eyes highlighting her mascara, how they can tear a desperate man’s spirit! I found myself looking at the floor, groveling with the frailest of confidences. One so frail it felt like one wrong move would crush my hopes forever.

“Ah...excuse me? Can I have some water?”

She turned from the conversation she was having with the other stewardess, who I could tell was already sizing me up. It was like a flash-fire blazed across every cell of my skin. I tried to remain focused on her. She breathed quickly and adopted a courteous smile and said, “Still or sparkling?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I blurted out. “So,” I started again immediately trying to recover from my response, looking at her stewardess friend because I started to feel like the worst kind of imposition, the kind where it’s not even clear that’s what you’re being but you know they’ll figure it out eventually and so you’re counting the moments until they realize it “... what are your names?” 

The stewardess friend gave a sardonic yet quirky smile and said, “Lucy.” My eyes fell upon the forward-facing shrine of my heart, who saw my eyes twitch to meet hers and replied, “Salina.” She handed me the cup of water she’d poured.

“Pretty.”

“Are you alright?”

“No--I mean, yes--I mean, thank you--Thanks for the water.” I said. Salina sat back down and buckled her seat belt. “How do you like working as a stewardess?” I started up again.

She looked at me for a moment, confused. “Stressful, especially when flights become as bumpy as this one,” Salina answered.

Then Lucy added, “Please return to your seat, hun. We’ll be landing shortly.” Fucking Lucy. Yet somehow, I was grateful she released me because I couldn’t move on my own.

“Right.”

Is it some kind of cruelty or divine balance that something as trivial as a woman’s stare can cause so much pain? I wonder if there’s someone in my class who feels that way about me? Meanwhile, I’m going off losing my mind over a woman that I’ve got nothing to do with. How tragic and stupid!

I was too seized up afterwards I couldn’t turn around anymore to give her the poem. I was desperate too, but my legs kept moving back toward my seat as my body shut down with self-pity. My heart had also completely shut down. Why do I burden my heart with these misguided attempts at affection? How can I walk the path of life when I yearn for more than the boundaries of my nature? I’ve become so guarded against Death that it has already devoured me and I can’t do anything, like I’m already in the depths of its gravity but with enough of that good old “spirit of youth” to wade through the calamity like I’m wearing an embryonic-bodysuit. It’s just a matter of time before I get worse and worse than my tweaked mind can bear. You don’t need a crystal ball to figure that out.

I shut my eyes as tight as a clam protecting its pearl. And I stayed that way until my thoughts stopped churning like a machine and I felt more assured of these hands and feet and the flesh extending from them, these legs that attached themselves to my hips, and the tension that extended within every fiber of them; this heart and mind that tried to hold it all together, and the darkness that lived there… this heart… I opened my eyes and glared outside the window.

Before I knew it, I was slumped in my seat again more depressed than ever.

Then an abrupt yell came from the seat next to me. The mini screens caught the heart of Reggie. He was now jeering at a football game he appeared to be gleefully watching unfold. He broke the silence of the plane with his wails and claps and grunts of frustration and ecstasy. I might have laughed if I wasn’t so mired in self-pity. I saw, however, that this was the sport that completed him. And it was at that moment I started to realize that people dedicate themselves to all kinds of things, but the question I asked myself, is the seed of their passion inherent in them? Do passions, truly cultivated, exist more for others than ourselves? The variety of passions that humans bring to the world… What does it take to hand a desire over to someone else?

And what about Salina? Why did I find it so infuriatingly difficult to talk to her? She was experiencing a horizon that I would never be privy to. In the grand scheme, she would be a blip in the radar of my life. I read somewhere that the average number of relationships we can cognitively manage is about 150 people. Was that person who bore the passion and experience to match her horizon, her Orpheus, somewhere in that network? What if the person who I should dare to hand over my love to already exist in that network and I am so blind, self-absorbed, and selfish to take any good action?

His wife’s few attempts to mute him only lasted a moment, then Reggie was right back into the program of who gained how many yards. And I was left wondering what any of it meant, for what purpose did these useless thoughts come to the forefront of my mind? I couldn’t say how much time passed, but we were thrust into another series of abrupt jolts. Cindy quickly gripped my arm as the plane dived. When we leveled out again, she noticed and let go and held the armrest instead. I smiled at her and she looked back briefly with a glimpse of knowing fright.

“I’m a worrywart of a flyer,” she said, with a degree of embarrassment that I appreciated.

Then I turned away and looked back out of the window towards the night sky. I could only see the white light flash repeatedly behind the thick layer of fog.

The rain moved as hard as ever against the plane, quickly racing down from the nose to its metal body all the way to the tail. The plane continued jostling, and the passengers continued praying for their lives. I was on the edge of my seat with my face smeared against the window now, waiting for something to happen besides what was already happening. I wondered what my mother was feeling then. She had probably taken a handful of Melatonin and was zonked.

Glowing civilization cleared into sight and the plane finally settled.

The Everglades ran rampant, indistinguishable in the night that swallowed it, quickly moving away from our heels, while the cities ignited the impending landscape into a Monet of dispersed orange lights. Before I knew it I could see streets extending in every direction. We were due to land among this ugly mess. I wanted to stay up in the air. Maybe it wasn’t too late to become an astronaut. But it was too late. My life was in motion, my ambition to write carved in stone. Even so, the fact I could exist in this body and could fly in an airplane across state-lines and atmospheres left me longing to exist in a different spirit, someone less rife with a multitude of baseless desires that collapsed upon themselves. I couldn’t contain my desire to be free-spirited and boundless no matter the cost, nor my desires which topple the last in search of a better, prettier conclusion. This was so much the case that I found myself envious of the Everglades as a massive body of land and swamp. Even though I knew the Everglades had its own delicate ecosystem, from the vantage point of a mechanical high flying bird, I grew envious of how much more free in its nature it seemed to be than I was in mine, as an individual carrying a myopic perspective in a conglomerated network. Maybe I was simply yearning for Mother Nature herself, another chance to grow from her as an assured piece of our collective race. Such fool-heartiness is so unbecoming.

The mass of wheels finally connected onto the wet, concrete runway. Upon landing the captain and flight crew gave a duteous apology for the turbulence and the plane soon started emptying out with nervous laughter and sighs of relief. As I exited the aircraft and the captain said goodbye to the long line of sky-sick passengers, I told him, “Don’t apologize, there are a lot worse things than death.”

...

...

...

10 years later, I return to this entry... ashamed at the conceit on display. I want to say something hopeful and also pose a challenge for humanity. The real test of humanity is to learn and accept the nature of love so that we can accept the nature of peace. And if we can hold fast to the teachings that drive these natures and live by them, there is no serenity we cannot find.