En route from Singapore to Seattle, via Tokyo.
Air travel lets us experience the elapse of time without locomotion. We remain in our seats while space changes around us. A portal opens, one place is left behind, and another waits without yet becoming real. There is always uncertainty in that interval.
Flying is the suspicion of space and time. We are trapped in a tiny bubble above the sea. A metal shell protects us from lack of oxygen, extreme low temperature, and deadly radiation. Inside, it is orderly. Almost socialist. We follow the same rules, watch the same television, read the same magazines. It is also a market. One can pay for a better seat, better food, perhaps even permission to cut the line to board.
Everyone on board is either going somewhere or returning from somewhere, though destination and departure are only relative. Some passengers are waiting to experience something new, to meet someone they have missed, to present their work, to become someone, or to see someone. Others are already remembering what they have done, regretting what they could have done, and the people they could have been. In the cabin, wishes and commitments are made quietly. Some are about to be fulfilled. Some will be broken.
Time is fragile at 30,000 feet.
Flying makes connections and breaks them. It leaves us present and absent at once. I remember my first trans-Pacific flight, at the end of middle school, from Hong Kong to LAX on Cathay Pacific. I was nervous. There were free cup noodles that comforted me. I remember, too, my first returning flight, when I did not want the summer to end and could not say goodbye to the friends I had made. Somewhere over the Pacific, I made up my mind to come back to that country, where I would spend another fifteen years asking the same questions on every flight across the ocean.
In those years, I came to understand a new culture and pick up a new language, maybe even a new identity. The years ahead would leave me wondering about family, independence, work ethic, love, and freedom. The world seemed to have unfolded from a singularity that existed only on that flight.
Since then, every time I travel, I cross that singularity and face the past, present, and future versions of myself and this world. It always feels as if nothing has changed since the last time. There is always so much I can do.
But each time, a little future has become past.