07.16.09: What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks

I had to fly to a meeting and went through the 'normal' routine - take off jacket, shoes, valuables, computer and run them through the chunnel for 45 seconds only to replace them where they belong, while both hurrying and breaking a sweat.

During the course of my trip, at least on outbound, I was struck by routines and habits of fellow travelers - go to the bathroom twice before a flight, clench fists at takeoff/landing, pray, and other ways that seemed to pass the time and perhaps ward off anxiety pre-flight. And the others - jump in the aisle to block others, tighten seatbelt when turbulence occurs, check cell phone and email up until the last second, etc. - that seem to be the anxiety of life while flying. The superstitions - my word - or frantic behaviors that some embrace around flying, despite the statistics, seem sort of funny and ironic in the modern world.

Some of it makes me hope that web and email access never comes to planes, which I view of one of the last bastions of escape. And I even got to sit in row 13, but not in the middle seat.