Flight risk

Returns and exchanges

It's the first new moon of the year.

It's what J calls an "interstitial day." I'm writing this on my phone on the way from Penn station to Newark to Narita. On the way east, you gain a day. It's an unbelievable spell of precision: Take off at 1pm Thursday from Tokyo and arrive 1pm Thursday in New York. It defies the god of time. The way back west is a bloated black hole: leave Thursday morning and arrive…? Saturday? February?

On this interstitial day I pass through many halls of transit, probably hundreds of faces, none of which belong to a friend.

I carry my things with me. My winter coat, my laptop, my passport, my phone. Hundreds of messages I've left unread until I'm back in the time zone from where they were sent, a dozen books or so, a painting by my sister, new innovations in American trail mix. The elevator shaft at Newark has a man standing where the car should be; I take the escalator. It groans and screams. The sun is blinding, and even so I make bold eye contact with other people just because I can. A man smiles back.

To come home is to be dropped into an endless march toward progress, consumption, money, greed, moar. It’s also a sense of injustice, holding power to account, change, rage, fight. For better, for worse. I flex between compelled, repelled. It plays out in Terminal C, where the vibes are, how can I say, very bad: Lines separating people by class, new lines sprout up since the last trip, so that the super rich can feel their worth. You can always pay more to be separated from the chaff, even the premium chaff. A man at the gate is desperate to sit with the woman he’s with, and condescension drips off the woman at the United counter as she explains every tier he can’t afford. “Who’s going to pay for this seat? You want me to pay for it?” she hurls at him.

We’re told that the usual boarding mechanism is down, so attendants will be confirming each individual boarding pass digit by digit.

“Excuse me.” One last encounter with a stranger before I go home and mask up, socially. The man across from me tells me he’s never flown before. “Ever?” Not since he was a kid, his eyes wide with truth. What’s that line for — is he supposed to be in line with all the angry people?

Transition isn’t easy, but it’s not as hard as it seems. Patience, steely nerves, and noise canceling headphones will get you pretty far. We’re boarding now.