Pity for Previews

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I contemplated the population that lives 30,000 feet above us. Those who are always there, always moving, always excited about change or terrified of cramped space. Babies always crying and students always drinking. A privileged population, having the funds to afford the view they get. Those that were at window seats could see the forest below, but not for the trees. As I walked outside, I studied.

The tips of green. The melting of buds into petals falling. The scales of sunshine that scraped against rough bark bites, insects emerging to make it all real. And even though this was the least of the dense (I was only on the airport grounds), it still afforded me the slight touch of something natural. I pitied the population above.

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As the plane skidded to a halt on the runway, my feet scoffed the outside sidewalk. It’s quite funny to know an airport so well and breeze through it, whereas one can wander in the same architecture for dizzying days and not get anywhere. I’ve been stuck in airports abroad for so long that this journey seemed easily elapsed in narration.
I called the appropriate people to report on my safety. It’s easy to forget that the population who lives 30,000 feet up is statistically much more safe than those of us who inhabit the land. But we always lapse it when airborne and thank our lucky eyes when they see the soil again.

My good friend picked me up from the airport, a friend who would be getting married on the last of my four days in town. All along the drive, from the plane to his work, his work to a bar, a bar to a restaurant to his home, every sight conjured up old images of recompense. I even had a sense of nostalgia for those places that I’d never visited, therefore never had memories from except for the fact that I’d seen them from the car many times over. Store fronts with no purchase, restaurants without consumption, benches walked by. Advertisements ignored. I still gazed and wished I’d visited every one of them.