It’s 6am and I sit leaning against the curved airplane walls. Squirming to find comfort in the confined space I find myself enclosed in for the next two hours, I stretch out my legs under the seat in front and adjust my headphones, angling my head so the left speaker wedges with graceful awkwardness between my head and the smooth windowed wall. Having finished reading several chapters while the plane was on the ground, I close my eyes, looking to regain some sleep lost in catching my early flight. My breathing slows into a coordinated pace as my chest expands against the fabric of my thick desert-coloured hoodie. As my head vibrates in the subtle turbulence emanating from the other side of the airplane wall, I turn my focus towards the classical piano and violin nullifying the bearing hums of whirling engines. My eyelids become heavy and, slowly, my conscious slips away…
When I wake up, the plane continues its quiet hums. I straighten my body and check my watch- only 30 minutes have passed. I again lean against the cabin and shut my eyes. The most graceful placement of the left speaker remains awkward as the headphone’s headband pokes at the lowly curved ceiling. I take off my headphones and am immediately flooded with the plane’s noise- jarring ambient noise which displaces any thoughts of sleeping from my waking mind. I put on my headphones again. So much for making up lost sleep. Rubbing my eyes, I let my pupils adjust to the plane’s lighting. The darkened cabin is punctuated by streaks of the morning sun’s natural light emanating from the few windows of rebellious passengers who pass sleep for more engaging activities. I slide my window’s plastic cover up and join the rebellion.
I remember when I was a child, I would always close my cabin window. I was terrified about the prospect of falling through the sky and an uncovered window was simply another step towards an undesirable spectacular death. Battling motion sickness from any trace of turbulence during flight, I could only concentrate on the seat in front of me, the window being a source of imaginative visualization for winds which quicken the air sick process. Soon the motion sickness culminated in me vomiting into the paper bag packed neatly away in the front seat pocket and a rummaging for another paper savour. As a child, I saw flights as a mortal enemy- its next to impossible failure plunges me to death and its success discombobulates me into a state of sickness laster hours after both feet are firmly planted on Earth.
Now that I’m older, it’s different. Irrational fear being outweighed by the cold impartial overwhelming statistics towards flight safety and air sickness being covertly eliminated by age, I do what I previously thought was unthinkable: read novels, write thoughts, and watch movies all uninterrupted. Cut off from any internet service (I am too frugal to purchase internet for $10), flights offer a dedicated period of time when I am free from all the world’s distractions and forced into welcoming boredom if not for pre-prepared entertainment.
I look out the window and am greeted with a landscape only observable to the few million people flying across the world in any given day. As I cut through the howling winds and hurtle 500km/hr through the high altitude air, the clouds rolled out under me, beautifully uneven, stretching forever horizontally into the infinities of the pale blue atmosphere. Underneath the sky, the clouds layer upon one another, pure white and soft like exposed cotton filling seeping out from the confines of a pillow cover. The clouds look oh so welcoming. I imagine myself escaping the safety shackles in the flying metal tube and walking towards the ends of the sky, my feet supported by the fluffy layer of condensed water vapour suspended thousands of feet in the air. Is this what the proverbial walkway to heaven looks like, a secretive serene layer of clouds gleaming under the sun and hidden from the gloomy reality of the real living world below?
Yet if this view is the sight of heaven, it is merely the basecamp below the peaks for there lies another layer of clouds floating higher and in unison with its siblings below. Where the bottom blanket of clouds are exuberant in defined soft structures, its parallel twin is dark grey and hazy, a foreboding warning for the trespassers who desire escaping further from the laws of Earth’s gravity into the void space of the universe and the heavens above. It serves as a reminder that I am still on Earth and still inhibited not only by the Earth’s gravity but also the subtle hinting melancholy of dark skies and hidden sun.
Soon the plane pitches forward as the brief interspersed sensation of falling through the sky permeates upwards though my body. My suspicion of being close to my final destination is confirmed when the PA system is revived by the voice of the pilot. 30 minutes until landing. As the plane descend from altitude, my view sinks lower; the once supportive fluffy white clouds turn against me as they progressingly drown my imaginative wonders. Soon, the window pane becomes saturated with grey- a constant unstructured fume offering no indication of the journey travelled once unthinkable and unexplored in human history. After 20 minutes or so, the view breaks as the ground below rises and the sky above grows distant. I return to civilization again- the bustling of cars along a 10 lane highway and the formidable of skyscrapers housing a segment of the world’s economy grow ever so apparent.
When I finally touch down, I am no longer on heaven’s early basecamp but simple flat asphalt. I unbuckle my seat belt and a combination of anticipation festers in the depths of my psyche. I am ready to off board, to stretch out, and, once again, to attack the outcomes, the pursuits, and the experiences life unrelentingly pushes until I once again stand at heaven’s basecamp.