When I fly, I like to sit directly behind the wing of the airplane, so that I can watch how the flicks and spasms of the machinery affect the roll and dip of the monstrous vehicle. The landscape beneath becomes comically miniature in comparison to the huge, silver wing, and it seems absurd that such the slightest variation in air pressure or wing position can so perceptibly affect the trip. It makes me feel like I’m in an Ed Wood movie, and I find myself laughing at the half-assed special effects.

My plane departed from Providence last night at 5:50 PM. I sat by a window seat towards the back, watching the landscape change. I said goodbye to the jagged, craggy east coast highways I grew up with, as they glittered with the lights of cars going to and from the malls along routes 1, 90, 95, 295 … their drivers making returns or raiding after-Christmas sales. They looked like a mass of electric ants swarming over rivulets of honey.

The roads on the east coast, both due to antiquity and necessity, are a compromise between landscape and industry. They wind around hills and forests, and in areas that have been cleared away and blasted through to allow for a new highway, they remain uneven and wavy. Many residential roads are quite likely to have blossomed from what was originally a cow-path. The aerial view of these roads, especially on a clear night when they are bejeweled by the lights of traffic, reveals the glorious organized chaos that is New England topography.

I watched the landscape change, as indicated by the gradual straightening of traffic patterns from a wiggly network, into an orderly grid. The plane passed through a nest of inky evening clouds, and when it emerged, the lights of the cars and buildings had structured themselves into helpful lines, separating the endless planes of plains. I was so distracted by this contrast that I failed to notice when the runway welcomed the wheels of the plane, and its passengers. I was home.

The bottom half of my window was blurry, as if it had been slaked over by a thin coat of Vaseline.

The previous evening, I was in the backseat of my parents’ car, returning from a brief visit with my Aunt in the New Jersey countryside.* We had been driving for five hours, and the moon had come up, her sharp, Cheshire scream highlighted along the edge of her complete lunar sphere. I could see not just the crescent, but the whole orb, suspended above the trees, bearing her teeth despite herself. It occurred to me, that’s what I miss most about living away from a city: Cloudless country nightskies reveal a winking, vulnerable canopy of stars. On the clearest night in Chicago, you won’t see a third of the constellations that are visible on a similar night in the country, and the moon seems so far away.

Its as if the sky has been slaked over by a thin coat of Vaseline. But, hell. I don’t live on the goddamn moon.

I find that I’ve become a city girl, despite myself. I stubbornly clung to the dreaminess of pretty lands and nostalgia, which I honestly love and often miss; however, this past week, at my parents’ house in suburban Massachusetts, I was more frequently bored than I was dreamy. There is nothing for me in my hometown anymore. Most of the woods where I and my friends wandered, following old paths and rock walls, have been gobbled up by developments. I used to be able to look out of my mom’s kitchen window and see nothing but forest; now, anything remotely resembling forest-land has been landscaped and bulldozed, sucked into the ever-expanding cul-de-sac jungle. It’s still a pretty town, in an Edward Scissorhands kind of way.

I love the country, and I love the city. I’m not fond of the innocuous in-between. The extremes are better for the imagination.

I’m glad to be home. I missed Chicago. I missed the ever-changing and untouched possibilities of the subway, I missed being able to be a quick El ride away from something stimulating, I missed my friends and my own space.

Hello. I’m back.

Childhood home: a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

So many clichés, I hardly know what to do with myself! Well, slap me in a close-up and call me “Flashback!” (What?)

Can I just say, New Jersey gets a bum rap. Much of it is quite beautiful, and is quite worthy of the title “Garden State.” Yes, there are truly rancid areas along the turnpike, which helped inspire the NJ moniker, “The Armpit of America,” and it’s too bad that those are the areas most immediately associated with New Jersey. A friend and I once got lost in Elizabeth, NJ, on our way to New York City. The ugliness of Elizabeth’s smell was surpassed only by that of her face, poor thing. Bedecked with steamshovels and crackhovels, guarded by a $4 toll to and from the turnpike, Elizabeth was not a friendly-looking town. (Perhaps I exaggerate a little.)

My aunt’s town, and the surrounding areas, are lovely, hilly, and green. There are horse farms aplenty, and wild white-tailed deer literally graze on people’s front lawns.

While my mother and I were walking through my aunt’s neighborhood, we disturbed a flock of orange-and-black colored birds, who exploded from the trees and flew over us in a scattered clump. Their vermillion bellies contrasted brilliantly with the blue sky. Their exodus from the treetops was so continuous; just when we thought we had seen the last of the flock, more would burst forth. I wonder how so many of them could have remained hidden among the leaves.

‘Dis not the Garden State, for it is rife with Keatsian imagery. Fear not the Tappan Zee bridge, for it may lead you to the land of milk and honey. Or, you know, to New Jersey.

Watching birds in flight makes many people wish they could grow wings and alight. Do you ever think that birds look at us and long for humanoid knees that would allow them to run?

Yeah. Put that Deep Thought in your fortune cookie and break it, Bucko!

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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