Strangers on a Plane. Or Waiting for One.

I love the airport. I LOVE it. It's like a museum somehow. A billion walking works of art, all asking questions. Questions to each other, questions about each other, and most importantly questions within themselves.

Everything a person wears is a part of their story, telling a little piece of who they are.

I look down at the jeans I am wearing right now, and instantly memories pop into my head. Memories I never would have recalled if I hadn't worn these today.

I recall the Winter's day in college. Sitting in my 'Bible as Literature' class. I was depressed. I was going through a horrendous breakup. Freezing snow and ice outside. The crotch had ripped and my leg fat seeped out of the hole. I sat in the class obsessing over my inadequacies, trying to shift my position so the fat would go away. How is that for a divine moment? I was supposed to be learning the history of the Old Testament and all I could think about was my leg fat. How sad is that?

So interesting to track one's own thoughts. Where our mind drifts and wanders. The messages we miss out on because we are so lost in a resentment or wound or question from the past.

I look around me and think about the stories of the people that surround me. I listen to my thoughts. Many of them are not so nice this morning. I wonder why. I have a lot to be grateful for today, and there really isn't anything for me to be angry about. But when the curly haired lady next to me sits down and rocks the whole row of seats off balance, the thought that runs through my head is, 'This is my corner sport bitch! Find somewhere else to sit!'

I'm mean.

But then my distaste for her grows to an affection because I am constantly launching people off of chairs when I sit down, and I realize that it is my own lack of self acceptance that I am angry at in her.

There's a man in front of me. I wonder what he does. He has a carry on suitcase, but it's hardly packed. It's one of those business ones. He's either going somewhere overnight or he doesn't change clothes very often. He's long and skinny and his 1990 nikes, (the white, nerdy kind) are laced very tightly and are dirty. He's reading. his legs are crossed. He seems like a colorless intellectual. Very frugal. He's wearing a wedding ring. I wonder what his marriage is like. What are his sentiments towards his wife at this very moment? Not the answer he would give to an inquisitive stranger. His real feelings. He's watching the people while he reads. Maybe he's a writer.

Who are all these people going to see?

I feel like the airport is a waiting ground of life changing experience. Every trip I have ever taken changes me. Even if I just go or come home. I feel like I discover something every time.

Someone is whistling a Christmas Carol. It's a little haunting. I love how he has the courage to share so shamelessly.

And then there is the fat mother with her daughter. I hate describing them that way. Probably because I am sensitive to defining terms. Once you put a label on someone, vision narrows, and although certain things are brought into focus, a general beauty is lost. That first sight beauty that is the closest thing we ever get to a clean slate when we meet people.

It's just the two of them, the mother and the daughter. The mother's jeans are tight and she wears comfortable shoes with white tube socks. Her daughter has a matching sweatsuit and a pink plastic princess backpack. She doesn't seem divorced or widowed. I wonder if they are flying to go see the dad. Maybe he works in a different city. The little girl seems sweet, but she has been silenced with food. Not because her mother doesn't love her, but because her mother learned how to deal with her own feelings by quieting herself with sandwiches. So when her over sized six-year-old begins to wail, the easiest remedy is a bag of chips or a candy bar. 'Shes' just a kid. She'll lose the weight.' She tells herself. 'It's just baby fat.'

I wonder about parents who pass their issues down to their children. When they see that their child shares their same ailment, does that comfort the parent or does that cause self hatred that manifests itself into hatred towards the child? I hope it's neither. I hope I'm just ignorant and imaginative and none of these problems exist.

The sports bar around the corner just turned on their John Mellencamp to start the day. Why do sports bars always play classic rock? Does it make men feel more like men? Only in sports bars is it possible for music to actually smell like beer.

So back to the mother and the child. I imagine the little girl's future and I feel pain for what she will have to endure. She will experience a loving, yet addictive home. She will feel alienated and ostracized by a world who sees her first and foremost as FAT. Great wisdom will come to her as a result, if she allows it. But if her anger gets the best of her, it will cloud her clarity.

Why does it always feel so much easier to tell someone else's tale instead of our own? Sometimes it's easier to make someone into who we want them to be instead of facing who we are.

A red head sits on my right. She looks about 35... She's petite and fashionable and from LA. A black and white tweed coat, tights and boots, and a short black skirt. Only her hands and the circles under her hungover eyes reveal her age. Her voice is a little jaded. She's slept with one too many a discarding man. Sophisticated and tough. She's traveled all over as a lone wolf. She started out as an actress, maybe? She reads 'The Atlantic.' She's a business woman now. She works in Burbank, probably at a studio. She's going to Tokyo in a few months to visit her brother who is getting his PhD in South Asian Studies. She's going to run a marathon. It's her third. She's a fighter.

All these lonely, fighting women. Another one sitting to my left. She looks like a designer. Cowboy boots folded over with different colored bracelets or straps or something covering the boot. Black skinny jeans with a hole in the knee. An army coat. An Ipad in her lap, big Indian Silver earrings and an African safari print bag. She's rich. All of her items immaculately kept. Trust Fund. I don't know why my instinct says that. Maybe it's because she's comfortable in her wealth. It's all she's ever known, and she feels no shame about it. She views herself as a treasure.

I wonder what she is reading on the Ipad. Maybe the New York Times so that she has good conversation prepared for the dinner table at home. She is single too. She is a woman of many men. She is the free spirited, alcoholic, gypsy, ex- dancer who let's them fuck her any way they want and then complains to her friends the next day about the residual back pain. She's been better though, recently.

All of these women are beautiful. Holding on to something in some way. The mother, her security. her protective layer that keeps her removed and unable to fully engage in all that she desires. No roller coasters. No swimsuits. No cocktail dresses. No beautiful hikes. No putting herself out there.

The one to my right, the business woman, is afraid of her vulnerability. She runs the show and doesn't let people in. Deciding what goes and what doesn't.

And the designer. She's afraid to stop the craziness. What if she wasn't wild? Would people still love her? What would she have to do? Now she can write all that mindless babble off as networking, but what if she really gave herself a chance to find true love instead of settling for every slight attraction that comes along.

I hear the loudspeaker announce my flight and I am jostled out of the concocted personal lives of my neighbors. And I realize, of course, all of these people are a reflection of me. As is always the case. Everything we see is a manifestation of our own existence.

That's why I love airports. So many different people rattling through, it's just enough to rattle me into waking up and realizing how I really feel.