We were flying over the Rocky Mountains, but you couldn’t see **** out the windows. I only knew because of the captain’s voice groaning from the speakers. The oval portholes only told of hazy fog and jet stream winds. Winds that caused the cabin to bounce causing babies to cry causing mothers to panic causing the repeated “ding” of the fasten seatbelt sign.
My stomach growled, turning as violently as the plane from over-priced airport whiskey and complimentary black coffee from an artificially amiable flight attendant. I had to take a **** but the overweight ginger sitting next to me was as immobile as a boulder — drool in the corner of her lips, a trumpeting snore escaping her hairy nostrils. Before passing out, she had told me that people from New Zealand where called either New Zealanders or Kiwis. But like the bird. Not the fruit.
Abrasive turbulence had the plane’s inhabitants on edge. Humans always crack at the slightest indication of danger. Like death is so much worse than having to sit next to a stranger who farts in their sleep while breathing in recycled air for 5 hours. It’s like before a snow storm. Everyone rushes to stock up on bread and milk. Fearing for the worst. Except in this case, everyone was checking and rechecking their seatbelts and making sure that the tray in front of them was securely fastened.
I could give two ***** if the plane suddenly lost altitude. Just started plummeting through thick milky clouds, losing mechanical parts like a dandelion being turned to seedlings in the wind. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. I just had so much on my mind. A **** storm, if you will, of anxieties and worries and feelings of inadequacies. I wasn’t wishing for death. I just wanted something more real to worry about than paying rent, or falling in and out of love, or landing my dream job, or which ******* tie matches my shirt.
But as the aircraft sliced through the fog leaving behind a wily jet stream, my window became engulfed by a clear blue sky. Below, the Rockies stretched across the land like a lovely spinal cord. Only the purest white light spilled down from space. In that moment, life was too brilliant for paranoia. The past, as irrelevant as the souvenirs that tourists had stuffed in the overhead compartments. The future, as uncertain as your chances of being in a plane that actually does fall from the sky. The only thing that mattered was I was floating above the clouds and not even Mother Nature — the **** responsible for earthquakes, floods and menstrual cycles — could bring me down.