Travel Plans

Love Actually begins with a voice-over:

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there [...] If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."

And Robert Pinsky has a line in his poem "Ode to Meaning":

"You in [i.e. I find meaning in] the airport rituals of greeting and parting."

I can't walk into an airport without thinking of both of these. Airports really are non-space, consisting of sterile, nondescript waiting areas, chain eateries, kitschy little souvenir shops. Local time, arrival times, baggage claim labels. TSA men and women in uniforms, flight staff, and all the people getting ready to fly. Businessmen, family men, business women and family women. Families. Young men and women headed on adventures. People headed home, leaving home, excited, nervous, bored. Everyone is in transition and alive because of it. Hence, I love airports.

My father and I dropped my sister off at the airport for a trip to Dublin. I've never been out of the country, but I pretended for a few brief moments as I wheeled her suitcase into the airport for her that I was the one traveling to Ireland. In spite of the fact that I was not going anywhere but back to my grandmother's house, I caught something of an adrenaline rush by simply being in the airport. Part of this came from the energy of the other people there; part of it resulted from classical conditioning : I am used to being filled with excitement in airports.

I think I could sit all day outside a terminal, though, and people-watch the rituals of greeting and parting, holding tight to the outpouring of human emotion in its varied and beautiful forms.