In the Stream

My friend cancelled our meeting this weekend, but I couldn’t see any reason to cancel the tickets. I just find the opportunity to sit in an airport too much to pass up.

I find that the insides of airports are intricate communities. Like malls and themeparks, they’re populated by small armies of loyal employees, each with their own jobs and responsibilities, held together by the bare thread of prolonged physical closeness, if not community. The janitor in his converse and navy jumpsuit--accustomed to the rhythms of the candy girl’s workday—wheels his cart past her as egress and homecoming ebb and flow. She’s porcelain and velvet, clothed so carefully to match the black and white boxes around her. She gleams as positively as the floor her admirer will polish when she goes home.

The pizza shop dispenses nourishment by the slice, a hot, bustling mitochondria in the center of the concourse. The ticket counter is flush with impassive faces and joyless refrains learned by rote. The scales tipped toward efficiency over comfort. Pilots come and go, walking like rock stars, and garnering smiles from their earthbound coworkers. They represent purpose so singularly, that they are familiar, even when foreign. There is a uniformity to these places, but a differentiation (a specialization?) as well.

Magazine racks teem with generic periodicals, but bold faced newspapers and kitschy souvenirs tell you where you are. Geography and culture are only set dressing here. Imperfections that leak through the cell membrane. Windows look out on tarmac that could be anywhere, but information sinks in nonetheless. Signage is customized. The employees share an accent, a style, a home.

Airports around the world are united by purpose. Like cells throughout the body graciously hosting blood from the capillaries as it makes the rounds. The pilots, the attendants, the airlines, they unite these points with their glowing network of jet-fueled beasts. Each airport—as each cell—possesses its own identity, but owes its continuance to a constant flow of sameness from place to place.