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Published: January 13th 2010
As the end credits of yet another bland (and censored) romantic comedy have long petered out on the overhead screen, the line to the toilet fizzled out and the last unruly passenger has come to rest beside you, hogging the middle armrest and dozing off under his blanket, warmed by the two gin & tonics he had to help wash down that unidentifiable excuse for meat and mashed potatoes (sorry we're out of chicken) from the late night dinner, when the flight attendants have stopped peddling the useless tax free produce and when nothing exudes from the economy class cabin but the stench of 200 uncomfortably sleeping passengers, that is when the world slowly comes back to life.
Looking out from my window (by discreetly and gently reopening the blind that was ordered down by the purser a while ago, I'm such a rebel...) the world around us beckons me to come join its marvels. It is so lonely here, at almost 40,000 feet, even though the stars sparkle and flicker in the distance, the hopelessly long gone lights of Cassiopeia and Perseus fracturing and spreading in the worn and dirty thermoplastic of the cabin window. Darkness is all around.
Racing westward the night came fast, overpowered us with its blanket of silence and now encompasses all. Somewhere down there, far below us, lies the faceless and barren steppe of Mother Russia, or maybe it is Kazakhstan, lurking in the darkness.
Suddenly something -an anomaly- catches my sight. The photoreceptors have registered light in the corner of my eye. I look around but see nothing. There it is again, above me. A red pulse of light quickly followed by one that is white. A continuous and regular combination, communication, life. The distance is hard to judge, half a mile maybe more. Someone else is racing through the night on a trajectory almost parallel to ours. A faint and nearly impossible to see grey trail of cloud is forming behind it. *blink* red. *blink* white. Huddling together above this seemingly deserted realm we press on toward our respective destinations. Minutes pass, and like many old friends we slowly start to drift apart. The threads of our lives interconnected here for but a short while, in a black pit void of sound and smell. She starts to lag behind, fading out of view below me, until nothing remains but darkness. My
thoughts begin to drift and Morpheus slowly overpowers me.
***
Where am I? Baluchistan? Nizhny Novgorod? Delhi? Down there something seemingly organic is glowing eerily through the night. A warm yellow-orange haze pulsating and vibrating slowly. City lights. Or is it a village? Am I staring down at a multi-million capital or a backwater town in the inaccessible mountains that cover Central Asia? Light emanates and creates a blur around the sleeping township. I can see similar smaller satellite communities around, shining like hospitable beacons in an otherwise bleak world. CRACK! Without warning there is light all around us, if for the faintest of moments. Only then do I see the distant barrier of clouds that has snuck upon us, a wall of imposing towers of vapour, anvils of death. A powerful discharge illuminates a majestic cloud formation from within, its dull grey glowing white hot and yellow. The next one strikes out to zap the cloud beside it. This is no small short circuit, but a festival of light illuminating the darkness. Lightning jumps between clouds along a massive front almost continuously but nothing can of course be heard. I don't know if there is anyone else
watching. The sylphs are out to play and I stare at the fascinating spectacle before my eyes, dumbstruck and gaping with awe.
***
Morning. Good morning. But I'm still tired. A quick glance through the window, a window that now blasts stark sunlight into a cabin full of people in a zombie-like state. An unknown landscape, river deltas, meandering waterways, fat brown streams of water becoming one with the surrounding lands. Vegetation, supposedly lush, but everything seems greyish brown from up here. The landscape is dotted with neat little plumes of white cumulus clouds at regular intervals. Down there somewhere it is already afternoon. The cold cabin floor sends shivers through my feet and I retract them and squat in my seat. The lights come on. Soon the cabin will be overcome by the horrid stench of "omelet". I'm still sleepy. I gaze out the window again. Overlaid on the landscape is a long white ribbon that winds itself left and right through the countryside. A dusty road. It looks like somebody dropped a string of yarn and it is tempting to reach out and try to pick it up.
The spell is now broken. Around me
people chatter, waiting at the loo, digicams flash and I begin to glance at the immigration forms with their twenty questions to be filled. Soon everyone will be herded through customs and immigration, people will sigh and tap their feet at those unfortunate enough not to have typed their addresses correctly. And once outside we will scatter into the streets and alleys of yet another metropolis (but not after having been intercepted by a number of optimistic taxi touts). But I know that I will soon be riding my trusty steed once again, and much like Thor rides his wagon across the sky, so we will be carried through the enigmatic kingdom of the clouds.
***
I still vaguely remember that thread here on Travelblog where the users were asked about their preference of travel; train or plane? And I was amazed at the ignorance of the train lovers... 😊 Amazed at their not seeing the beauty unfolding right before their eyes. Ridges, mountains, gigantic faults, river systems... weather fronts, atolls, cloud systems, halos and competing silver bullets racing across the sky. Majestic lightning strikes, craters, glaciers, ships, bridges and cities all pass by below us. Intricate cloud
formations, drawn out sunsets, the curving of the horizon. Ararat, Kamchatka, Baikal, Waziristan. Places we'd rarely have a chance to go. This is my unconditional love of flying.
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Mercurycatcher
Michael Diamond
Wonderful Writing!
Such an enjoyable read, so well written. I really like your desciptions of onboard plane life...I can identify with everything so readily!