London Gatwick

[rinue]

International airports are the closest thing we've got to space stations. They are closed environments, carefully regulated and crammed with all the space-saving speed-urging technology we can devise. Despite the colorful shops and the friendly pictograms, the steadiness of over-processed air acts as a reminder that This Place Serves Machines Foremost. Not lovingly, but To Protect Life, with delivery to a point of travel only a distant second. The constant layers of security have the same justified paranoia felt by the astronauts; vista windows open unpaned onto tarmac chaseways where the bustle only hides the uncooperative Environment. Man was not made to fly. The air is not his element, and the flight staff knows it – baggage checks are ritual to raise a metal raptor to the clouds. Floating cushions, seatbelt checks – these are superstition. To distract us from our incipient mortality, we are served food – again and again and again on the plane, in the terminal, at the gate, from restaurants, flight attendants, coffee stands, glowing sarcophagi with coin-dispensed single-serve pre-processed packages. Food, the life-giver, whose comfort we need although we hardly use the energy, sitting patiently behind our tray tables, belts fastened in case of turbulence.

My flight hasn't boarded, yet I'm already jet-lagged.