Angeleno Femme

Fear Of Flying

Face next to mine, there is a closeness that I can only understand through the idea of loss. To be so close, the pendulum must eventually swing back, I think to myself. I wait for the other shoe to drop and contemplate lacing up my own runner’s kicks — quit before I’m fired, or something that could make my vulnerability taste like pudding and go down smooth. But for now, he’s here. And I wonder if and when he will find distance, and then be gone. That’s what most do. I say to K, “What if you leave?” His left hand rests on my waist, an airplane tattooed on the fleshier part between joints. It needs a few touch ups, he knows this. “I’m not going anywhere,” K half whispers with the lights low, even though hours later I find myself alone in my bed, telling myself, you can still run, you can still run.

He drives freeway upon freeway back to West Los Angeles where planes fly so low you can read the safety precautions painted on the bottoms of the jets. His line of work involves glorified, mechanized pens and the art of permanency, but I had spent month after month settling into impermanency, into the single life and all that it stands for. While he tattooed others, and while his own body became a shrine to his values and journey, I instead sought life’s temporary tattoos, the kind of relationships I could rub off with a wet towel and replace with a new one, the only remnants being a reddened, tender mark that would fade within hours. Though I myself sport my own ink, I chalked up my inability to embrace the permanent to commitment issues and an urge to avoid the pain of the needle sinking into my flesh. Something stable, something that lasts, to me that involved a heavy sack of emotions that twist around each other like knotted necklaces that I cannot untangle. I decided after a heartbreak that I could not sit through another session, because a tattoo began to feel like nothing more than a scar in the making. K tells me he won’t leave, he’s close to my eyes, and I can hear the buzzing of the tattoo gun and worry about it hurting. I chicken out and take long strides away from him, trying to wipe off a stencil he’s hand drawn over my heart.

You could call it fear of flying. Being alone kept me grounded. But it is never the act of flying that frightens, but rather the act of falling. It is the potential of the fall, that scares…but even that can be reduced once more. It’s impact that alarms. “It seems like you just don’t want to feel those emotions,” and that’s true. Because to leave the ground means, to me, an eventual return — only with the brutal force of gravity and self-fulfilling prophecies. I stop by the shop one day and see his hand slathered in Aquaphor, the black inked plane a testament to his upbringing near LAX, the land of departure and arrival. Three months since he’d dipped into the atmosphere of my life, and I’d been searching for his return flight’s boarding pass, convinced it existed. I’d been trying to rub him off of my flesh, but something wasn’t working and he smeared more Aquaphor on his scabbing, tattooed skin and kissed me like tomorrow was assumed.

Here is what it has felt like in the past: a smooth take off, an ascent past the clouds. A light headedness even though the cabin pressure tried to remain stable. Taking in the view from above, eating cheap food and watching ice form on the window… Then, turbulence. Slight at first. Then building to a violent shake. Oxygen masks dropping from overhead compartments, white knuckling the seat and wondering when it would end. The plane sailing downwards, my ears popping as we fall. Doing a mental inventory, asking myself why I’d ever get into a relationship in the first place. The plane accelerates as it falls. The last thing I see is a memory of the clouds, beautiful and billowing beneath me and my wrist with surrender tattooed across it. And then, impact.

“Want to come over and watch planes with me?” K asks. I reluctantly navigate the freeways towards him and out on his deck we see the lights of airplanes, of journeys, of people coming home drifting towards us in the night. They look like fireflies in the distance, hovering in place and watching us. His fresh ink healed without a scar, smooth and crisp. The lights morph into planes and roar overhead.

Weeks later I almost run again, fleeing from what could be permanent. My legs begin to carry me, knees aching as I sprint, my baggage piled on my shoulders slowing my determined pace. I tell myself the single life is all that makes sense, that I could never lose control and leave the ground, that the notion of permanency in my life sounds difficult and unnecessary. I run until I’m out of breath, folded over and tired, but as I do I turn around and can see behind me K standing in place near LAX, near home. I think back to all of the times I’ve ran only to look over my shoulder and see a blank, personless horizon. But this time, the person I’m running from kept his word. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It took a few days but I walked back, and when I arrived at the airport, we hugged and I was told, “I missed you.” He helped take my baggage off my shoulders, and we walked through security, through boarding, together. He asks if I want to get on the plane while we lie in bed next to one another, and after months of saying no, I nod my head and mouth “okay.” We find our seats, fasten our seat belts and as the plane taxis I tell him, “I’m really scared. I’m really, really scared.” He strokes my hair and says, “I figured you would be. It’s alright.” I hear the engines begin to whir, we’re pressed back against our seats as the jet speeds across the runway. He takes my hand before we lift off the ground. I feel every concern rush through my body: all fears of being lied to, screamed at, fucked with, betrayed, replaced. But as we hold hands, right as the wheels leave the ground, I catch sight of his tattoo and find solace: fingers laced around mine, his plane, darkened and forever there, points towards me.

LAX —> JFK.

Alright, alright.

* * *

Blah I’m working on something, on editing. Running a couple of sentences in my head, trying to pluck out the ones that could actually fit into a piece that never seems to be done. My mind just keeps wandering, is all, so I get lost and stop writing. But, rambling here since I couldn’t fall asleep. Maybe it’ll still seem okay come dawn. Or I’ll just delete it. You know, same old.

I stare at my transparent reflection as the night grays to black. In the distance, planes taxi, devoid of humanity that has been packed away like a carry-on bag, negated to nothing but a flying piece of metal with windows punched in the side like college-ruled paper. We travel between ourselves — to ourselves, away from ourselves — with the inflight moments existing like a blackout on a television station. Land, and it’s back to your original programming. When staring out that tall terminal window, the lives of strangers vaguely reflected back from behind me, I am neither here nor there, so to speak. Airports can do that to you. Yet, like an old, familiar lover, I fall back into the terminal’s arms and wrap my hand around the back of its neck, burying my face into its chest — the smells, the sights, the sounds, the rhythms, the habits are all the same, each time I have to fly back to the west from the Big Apple of my eye out east. I feel at home amidst the homeless wanderers with boarding passes in hand. What New York could never provide, the kiosks, moving sidewalks and soiled leather chairs can. Some may say I’m settling, to love something that I always must leave, but if home is where the heart is, then I find myself romanticizing the dirty carpeted floors while awaiting my flight at JFK. Here, my heart resides.

Ante Up

My luck was on the up. While sitting at the penny slots, I let a flashing machine suck in a dollar bill and waited for my flute of fizzy, sweet champagne. I had barely showered the scent of car seats and traveling off of my shoulder blades but my girlfriends and I were ready to gamble away our singles on the Casino floor not because we enjoy the slots or the thrill of spending money, but because it’s the cheapest way to drink in Las Vegas. It was my first time in Sin City and we were ready to poison our blood. You sit down at a slot and a woman who looks as if she’s just left her gig on a chorus line approaches you in character heels and a fringed dress and says, “Whatdya like to drink, girls?”

“CHAMPAGNE!” we said. I don’t drink champagne but This is Vegas, right? The land of doing things you don’t usually do. We clinked our flutes together and started to play.

I didn’t understand the slots. I’d recently used my grandparents’ “one-armed bandit” and the odds seemed to be in my favor. Place nickel in, pull arm, and wait to see if the mechanics of the machine will leave you with three oranges, limes or bells. In Vegas, at the Wynn Encore, the computerized slots flashed bright images, setting your flushed face aglow with light. If this is a computerized system, I thought to myself, could they stack the odds against you more so than a mechanical one? But I put my dollar in anyway and pressed buttons. The screen spun a faux slot and I watched shapes, colors and pictures blip onto the glass in rows. I didn’t know what was happening, chugged my champagne and saw a line flash through a row of boxes. You won.

I left the slot with a $1.55 voucher, proud only in the way a Vegas Virgin could be.

To be “lucky” in Vegas has many connotations — there’s luck at the craps and roulette tables, on the slot machines; and then there’s getting lucky with a stranger you met at a Vegas mega-club; there’s the luck associated with not getting alcohol poisoning even though you drank half a handle; and there’s the luck of not losing your wallet while dancing mindlessly on a laser-lit dance floor.

I kept my wallet close while I sweated out vodka on the Hip Hop floor at Marquee. The sexual, frenetic energy of Vegas clubs reminded me of going out to all ages spots in LA as a high school. Back then, hormones surged and making out was the only way to cope, to release the tension built up from far too many close calls in locker halls and gym class. In Vegas, the sentiment felt the same. Party patrons eyes, slightly glazed over from too much tequila, scan the crowd for a fix. Girls are objectified down to mere physicality, men seen as bank accounts ready to spend money on bottle service. The sexes sink into stereotypes but it feels okay because the music is loud, the faces attractive and the liquor is flowing.

I wasn’t any different. As I teetered around in thigh high boots, dodging hands of men that reached out from dark corners of the club, I wondered — who could I flirt with? I felt warm with drinks, friendly. I wandered the club looking for my group or a dance partner, but felt overwhelmed by the crowd and the space. As I went to the bar to get a glass of water, I saw him — it was hard not to. At almost seven foot, he had to height of a basketball player with the looks of a model. I, five foot two and feeling slightly soft, felt my shoulders sink forward a bit as I shrunk into intimidation. We made eye contact as he walked away from the bar. I wondered if I should turn around, see if he was looking, and leaned away from the thought — no, no, why even. But then the saying that is the catalyst for most bad traveling decisions came to mind, and I heard This is Vegas! and craned my neck around.

There he was. Scruffy face, beer in hand, looking at me. Smiling.

Shit.

Maybe my last shot had just hit me, but I walked over and he introduced himself not by name but by, “You are gorgeous.” I ducked my head, unsure of what to say other than, “Wanna go sit down?”

Meeting people often feels like a lottery, a process in which luck remains a key, undeniable component. Those in relationships often remark, “Could you imagine if I hadn’t gone to that bookstore that day? Or if I hadn’t missed my train and had to take a later one? We wouldn’t have met — we got so lucky.” Indeed I have felt that stroke of luck when I meet someone who I feel a spark with. How lucky we are to have found one another, we’d say. How lucky I am to have you. You feel as if, somehow, by crossing paths with a compatible person, the odds weren’t stacked against you, that the bells lined up and the pay out was much bigger than you could have ever expected.

But we didn’t talk about luck in the corner of the club. Instead I learned that he too was from Los Angeles, and I asked about his socks. He played ball, and writes too. Our faces were so close as we chatted over thick bass that our noses almost touched. After over half an hour of talking and realizing his hand hand been on my leg, I realized this Tall stranger was someone I could like — “I hope you aren’t like all the other guys in Vegas,” I said.

“Like what?”

“You know, meaningless. I don’t do well in these big crowds, it’s nice to find someone cool and down to earth.”

He smiled and said he understood, that he felt the same about me. At 3am we decided to part ways and as he asked for my number I felt relief — like I’d defied the odds in Vegas and met someone of substance, someone with whom I could grab some tea with on the Westside back at home and get to know. I’d put my money on red and came out double. He kissed my cheek and said I’ll call you tomorrow, and then he was gone, leaving me with chips stacked high, swaying a little in my spike heels.

The next day, after a pool party, a monsoon, an expensive dinner and even more alcohol, I dragged a friend over to the Sex And The City slots and put in a five. “I don’t know how to play this!” I yelled, buzzing from the Skyy. I hit a big red button and watched the glass move. The pink screen flashed pictures of shoes, bags, Mr. Big and the Empire State Building, and my total winnings in the corner remained at zero. I continued to press buttons like a toddler with a TV remote, laughing, knowing my luck had run out. The house took the five, and I headed back up to the hotel room.

The Tall stranger hadn’t called. And something in my gut told me he wouldn’t. This is Vegas, after all. The sense of spontaneity creates a reverb in a “now you see me, now you don’t” sort of way. Before we left for a second night of clubbing, the liquor made me curious and I searched for him on Facebook. After some scrolling, I found him. There his profile was — a photo of him, “Lives in: Los Angeles,” and the branding:

In a relationship.

I suddenly understood.

Relationships are ambiguous out in this glowing corner of Nevada. I watched men who I know have significant others pull girls down onto their laps, giggling, as if an emotionally sterile bubble existed around the hotel and whatever happened in there did not count, and would not be spoken of. Loved ones remained at home cities away, staring at cell phones, waiting for a call or text. It made me glad to be single, to not be caught in that heartache of wondering, wondering, wondering. I thought about the Tall stranger’s girlfriend — what would she have thought, to see her boyfriend’s hand on a young girl’s leg? To see him talking so intimately with a girl he did not know? It was just my luck to stumble upon a man in a relationship. And it was just her luck to date someone with whom the boundaries of single/taken blurred based on location and alcohol consumption. It’s common in Sin City — in Vegas, the house usually wins.

So, relationships exist as a gamble. The more that you put on the table, the more you have to lose. Some find themselves at the penny slots because they cannot afford to give or lose anything more than bare minimum. I am one of those people. Drained from years of a relationships’ ups and downs, I now hold my cards close to my chest and gamble only on the penny slots, on guys like a Tall stranger in low stakes games.

Others are willing to bet — they put down hundreds in the hopes of winning big. In truth, we are all in search of that jackpot connection, the one that makes you never want to gamble again, but it feels once in a lifetime, something almost unattainable because of the odds — find that one person with whom you truly connect with on a planet of six billion. Intimidated by the odds, we instead settle for the influx of money-in, money-out, relationships forming, relationships ending, as Vegas’s gambling mentality follows us back home to our jobs, our friendship circles, our dating lives. We want to win, but losing is frequent. “I don’t know how to play this,” I’ve said on the phone to a man who had just pulled my chips away. I haven’t felt lucky at times, and though I have learned how to lose, I continue to play the game like any gambling addict — because I’ve had a taste of the win and I want to feel it again, even if just on penny slots. I pull the arm and hope for bells until I am broke.

At 5 in the morning on my last night in Vegas I stood with a handful of guy friends as they gambled at the roulette tables. Black chips were put down on red squares — one hundred here, one hundred there. I hadn’t touched anything but the penny slots where the stakes were significantly lower. My friend Pete continued to win — “I was down $800, now I’m up to almost $1500!” he shouted as he speed walked to another table, grinning. For him, he was willing to take the risk. I kept my wallet and cash safe in my purse and watched quietly as money was passed back and forth in front of me.

Back in Los Angeles, after what felt like days of sleep, I met up with some of my friends from Vegas. Pete introduced me to his girlfriend, who lives in Paris but was visiting for a week. He looked happy as she held his hand. I’d known Pete for almost 10 years and I told him the next day, “I’ve never seen you with such a good match,” but he lamented her departure date that loomed in the near future.

“Just my luck to fall in love with someone who lives in another country,” he said.

The house had won, we knew that — long distance relationships have that tough luck feeling pervading every phone call, kiss, hello and goodbye. But as he went on about how wonderful it is to have her in his life, I thought to myself,

But Pete, you won too.

(At Marquee with a girlfriend)

Have any of my followers lived in Paris? For short or extended periods? Please privately message me if you have, with your living experiences or tips, etc..

Thanks :)

Tapping Heels

[[I’ve finally blogged a somewhat polished piece of nonfiction. I wrote it initially in December as I tried to come to terms with leaving New York. Yes, it’s long, but it’s more thought-out than a fluffy blog post — give it a read.]]

TAPPING HEELS

On the Airtrain, next to the disgruntled business man, the jetlagged Italian family, the Delta employee, the confused Midwesterners, I’ve arrived. The escalator lowering me to the ticketing counters; the TSA agents asking for ID, examining the hologram on my California driver’s license with a magnifying glass; removing my shoes first, grabbing an extra bin for my laptop, and sending my belongings through the x-ray machine, it’s all soothing habit, it’s all a going-through-the-motions that lulls me. I keep my credit card, photo ID and boarding pass in my pocket so I can grab them easily when asked. I pace myself. I know the rhythms of this pulsing, coursing junction. I trot down the “Expert Traveler” line at security, rolling leopard print suitcase in tow, because after three and a half years of cross-country back and forth I can and will tell you about every nook, every store, every vending machine, every nuance in the JetBlue terminal at JFK.

 It is only at the airport that I begin to feel at home.

            It wasn’t always like this. Once, traveling was mysterious, not commonplace. Once, traveling was a luxury, not a task. This was back when traveling meant first class seats and Hawaii and Radio Disney on my airline-provided headphones and my feet not touching the floor as I awaited take off. Traveling was window seats because I wanted to see the clouds, not aisle seats because I wanted to pace. Traveling wasn’t worrying about how I’d get to the airport for my 7am flight – it was my grandparents hiring a limo driver to pick us up from home and whisk us away to the airport. Security was an opaque, formalized system that I could not comprehend. Checking a bag was standard, not inconvenient. Traveling was a group outing brimming with memories, not an isolating journey back towards the arms of those I love. I liked to travel. And I didn’t mind airports.

            My father, however, had a different perspective. Airports were where his soul went to die. Bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way to the airport. Flight delays. Being snowed in at Dulles. Food poisoning from a poorly plated in-flight meal. Fellow travelers hacking out flu germs into the air. A passenger seated next to him wearing a ski mask for no apparent reason. Crying babies. Crying adults.

 My dad traveled for work, making grueling 48 hour round trips, sleeping in barren hotel rooms, subsisting off Doritos and mixed nuts alone. He hated airports. They were the preamble to days of company-funded misery. He could expense out all his travel purchases, but could never get back the hours spent dragging his feet through endless lay overs and red eyes. As a six-year-old, I couldn’t understand why my dad didn’t like going to LAX: But Daddy, when we go there they give us food and we go to Hawaii!! And we go in a limo! But I “didn’t understand” because I “didn’t travel out of obligation.” I suppose that’s why when I decided to attend NYU, my father gleefully listed the hell I was bound to endure:

            “There will be miserable flight delays.”

            “Get used to awful food.”

            “You’ll probably end up sleeping on the floor in airports, waiting for your flight.”

            “You’ll get sick. All the time.”

            “Forget ever having an arm rest to yourself.”

            He’d stare off into the distance, pursing his lips, shaking his head, thinking about the airport.

            “Those poor bastards stuck there right now…”

            Excited by the prospect of no curfew and New York City, I was unfazed and blindly optimistic. While traveling home from NYU’s summer freshman orientation, I experienced my first Oh shit I’m going to miss my flight! moment. Sprinting through the airport, I felt the kind of invincibility that’s common in people my age, too young to assume the worst. Adrenaline carried my legs and carry-on bag to the boarding gate. I made my flight, feeling accomplished, amped and out of breath, plopping down to my seat with a fine sheen of sweat across my forehead.

This isn’t that bad, I thought to myself.

Well into my career at NYU, once I wasn’t running past all that my terminal had to offer, I realized I actually liked airport. A little city, JFK was self-contained and plentiful – food, books, shopping, television, attractive guys, purse dogs. At airports, I argued, time, money and responsibility don’t exist. Your only obligation is to get your body in a seat when an announcement is made on an intercom. Everything else is nonreality. As I turned my watch back at JFK, I rested in a strange state of three-hours-behind-but-three-hours-ahead, straddling both eastern and pacific time zones. I was somewhere yet nowhere, neither in New York, nor in LA.

The airport is a place of unplaceness, a location that – though on a map – isn’t defined by its own coordinates, but rather by the coordinates of where you are traveling to. At the airport, you have left life behind and you have life in front of you, but for a few hours you exist in limbo — homeless in your airport home, eating snack packs and reading rag-mags and falling asleep on your carry-on bag. You exist somewhere in between.

New York, the place of all places, the city that technically hosts JFK, stood as a contradiction in my heart. New York and I were failing one another, and I could never grasp it like I could the handle of my rolling suitcase.The airport, though, meant home was on the horizon. It was the kind of metropolis I could grip and understand . With Manhattan and all of its complexities a forty-five minute cab ride away, the airport was the one place I felt I could be mine. It gave me the comfort of home before I’d even set weary foot on Los Angeles soil.

            Though I’d moved to New York with bright-eyed enthusiasm, I didn’t meet the standards of the archetype I’d been painting myself to be. I was supposed to love New York because I spoke quickly and with scathing wit; I was supposed to love New York because I wore all black and possessed a level of independence that my other friends could not understand; I was supposed to fall for New York like the man of my dreams, marry him and have three kids. Start a life, start a something, and make it permanent.

            So, I was a believer with a virginal track record of airline miles. I believed in this determined future, this destined romance with the dirty streets of New York. I was to be the brunette Carrie Bradshaw, navigating the city and complex romantic relationships with pen in one hand, the other hailing a cab. I was to fall in love with New York like the shirts say in Chinatown.

But by the end of my freshman year at NYU, I wasn’t hoping for more time with my metropolitan beau, but rather longing for the airport, for the spring that would catapult me back towards the west coast. I was surviving in NYC – blossoming, even — but I couldn’t connect with the city. New York was the man I’d lie in bed next to, staring at the ceiling, wondering Why isn’t this working? Is it something I said?  I could not understand the city and its vast cultural intricacies. I could not navigate my way through all the boroughs, I could not connect with the sidewalks and feel warm, even after winter had passed. The expansiveness intimidated me, making me feel smaller than  I already was at five foot two. Friends and fellow NYU students laid claim to New York – “This is my city,” they said. I never felt like I owned New York. I didn’t even feel like I was renting. I was subletting the city like somebody else’s home only to return the keys each time the wheels of my Jetblue plane lifted from the tarmac.

            At one of the shops in the JetBlue terminal, I eyeballed big bags of sugar-coated candy and noticed next to the snacks an assortment of “New York City souvenirs”: Empire State buildings the size of my index finger,             snow globe’d skylines, the Statue of Liberty on key chains. It was late November, and I was coming to the close of my time at NYU – I had mere weeks till my early graduation. I picked up the snow globe and shook, watching big chunks of salt-like snow drift gently back down over hand painted buildings. The snow globe didn’t look like New York and was littered with geographic typos, but it was trying to do what I had been trying to do for years – somehow allow New York to be held within my hands.

But, airport souvenirs are notoriously unauthentic. At the shops, vendors try to sell you what are assumed to be the integral elements of a city that is already so far away from JFK in Jamaica, Queens that you can barely make out the shapes of Manhattan buildings, even on a clear day. They are selling to the tourists who neglected a distant family member during city shopping sprees. They are selling you New York during your last footstep in the city. They are selling you New York not from New York itself but from the transition out of New York. They are selling you New York so far away from the reality of the city that the glaring abnormalities of Lady Liberty’s crown leave you not up in arms, but feeling defeated before your flight.

            With the snow globe in my hand, I checked my watch. A storm was approaching New York, the kind of storm that dumps snow for days and days, blanketing the city in a thick coat of white. I didn’t know if I’d make it out of JFK and get to LA in time. I’d seen the news clips of people sleeping at the airport – living at the airport – and I realized I did not want to be them. Where would I sleep? Where would I charge my this-or-that electronic device? Are any of these restaurants open late for us hungry night owls? What about the bathrooms?

Departing flights on the giant screens within the terminal were getting cancelled swiftly and without real warning. Travelers slung profanity-laced insults at tired airline employees. People stretched out on stiff seats near their gates, feet dangling off the sides, heads resting on Jansports or bunched up scarves. I didn’t want to stay here. I wanted to go home – to my real home.

            I’d always assumed the airport felt like home because I’d come to know it – but how could a place that only hosts me for an hour or two ever be a home? It was an illusion, I was beginning to realize. I encountered the same problem with NYC where I also faced time limits – a limited undergraduate career left me still scrambling to embrace the biggest city in the United States after a mere three and a half years of residing beneath its expansive skyline. It felt impossible. I could make nooks within New York my home – Union Square, the blocks around my apartment, Washington Square Park – but in the end, there would always be an avenue a few blocks away that remained unchartered, always a restaurant I never ate at, always a train I hadn’t taken, always a borough with more to give. New York would remain elusive, even as I drifted through its sidewalk veins.

            JFK was not a home, but rather a reminder that home – Los Angeles — was just hours away. The airport rituals were soothing, but with a storm on the horizon, I remembered how uncomfortable it is to call the airport home against your wishes, to be caught in limbo between places. I wanted to get on the plane and get out of the holiday insanity surging through JFK. The last chunks of snow settled back onto the faux New York skyline, the snow globe glistening with fluorescent light. Like a call from the God of Travel, my flight’s boarding was announced and I set the snow globe back down, jogging towards my gate.

On the plane, we waited for the wings to be de-iced before taking off. I stared out my thick window, my feet finally touching the floor, traveling alone as I now always did. Squinting to see the city lights one more time, New York seemed easier to understand from afar. But my window faced westward, towards my palm tree’d home, and I could see nothing but limbo. I tell myself I’ll come back, I tell myself that I can make New York home in the years to come – just not right now. It’s the kind of self-deception that calms me as the plane taxis on the runway, about to jet away from the land of “supposed to.”

Perhaps it wasn’t about finding home in New York – perhaps it was about understanding my relationship with location instead. To hold a location within one’s hands is to believe that that is even possible – it’s like a snow globe naively telling us that New York is just a few tall buildings painted with bright colors. In reality, our hands are too small, our grip too weak to hold a city. I was only now beginning to grasp the thought, but even that slipped out through my fingers.

The cabin crew lowered the lights. Everyone settled in with magazines, headphones, snacks and sleep. I strained my neck to catch a glimpse of New York through another window, but couldn’t find the specks of light in the distance. New York was already gone. I hugged my knees to my chest, lacing my fingers together as best I could, and held myself – the traveling girl – in my hands.

We prepared for takeoff, and crossed the in between again.