Flying at night is sometimes as exciting as being stuck in the middle row of the middle row in the midst of a 1976 jumbo in 1983. (Numbers have this special meaning to them, don't they.) Even when by the window, or a seat off, there is not really much to see during the f, except for the glowing stewardess and the tempting -bulb button which turns on the spot that wakes up the smelly traveler next to us. On trans continental fs, there are the movies, the old news on pixelated multi-media slides, the games. On domestic fs, there is some television sometimes, the stale pretzels and the tomato juice with huge cubes of ice in it. But that is all during f. Nobody really cares what happens during the f. There is not enough room in this dark place anyway, and everything fits so perfectly like the baby sister's sock. I never had a baby sister, just a dog, but she never wore socks.
The starts and landings are the most exciting things a plane can do at night. Starting from Miami or from any American city is just each urbanist's dream. Talking about magic-squares. The streets are numbered, the electricity just bursts out of the 110V outlets, there is so much of it on every corner and there are four corners on each block. It is fantastic. It is like science fiction, only completely real and quiet, just magical. Yes quiet. A scene with as much impact in any movie would just be pumped up with some Wagnerian (or how about some Carl Orff?) supermeal. But here there is the piece of four screaming Rolls-Royce engines just outside the window, all just white noise a background layer for the visual feast.
Boy was I glad to fly back to New York. So glad. The pretzels did not matter, the "service discontinued" sticker on the phone receiver in front of me did not matter, the smelly something of the man behind me did not matter. Seeing the Island from a distance between all the man made stars, recognizing the glowing heads of some of the best old friends, being greeted by the perfect smiles of the suspension bridges over the east river. This was what mattered. This was what I had been looking forward to all this time. Home.
It took another three hours to actually get to that apartment door that had the matching lock to my key.