On Intentions and Airports

Stating intentions for my new Substack and sharing a small piece I wrote while at the airport

Intentions

I stopped writing creatively when I took my first philosophy class, which required focusing on writing structure, pretenses, legal language, and limitations on hyperbole or generalizations at large (I was very excited by the concept of penumbras - still am). It required that I articulate a line of logic concisely and address complications with anything I said. After philosophy class number two, I internalized the idea that everything I said must be conditionalized by limitations, complexities, context, and intent. I hope that this substack allows me to graduate from my rigid and sterile writing style to one that is more certain and emotional.

I also intend for this substack to provide a space for me to follow a thread of thoughts or ideas until its very end, and maybe even come to a complicated and thoughtful conclusion-like thread tie. I hope to put my thoughts to rest.

Airports

I am currently on a flight, sitting in the aisle seat with a neck pillow that secures my air pods into my ears. There’s a lot of turbulence and I’m listening to a podcast about Ayahuasca (surprisingly unhelpful in quelling my plane crash anxieties). I’ve been in this seat many times before: sometimes with a book, sometimes with a digital coloring page from Notability, sometimes with a Quizlet set that stares me down throughout the flight, and sometimes — in rare and spontaneous instances — with nothing besides the dimly-lit, populated, and completely under-stimulating plane aisle ahead of me. In those instances especially, I’ve contemplated everything that I would ever consider contemplating. And then some other curiosities that appear in a yarn ball-like thought cluster in my head: my eating habits, my relationship with men, my relationship with my mother, when I will engage in hobbies (and uncertainties about whether or not I have hobbies), if I’d be prepared for death via plane crash, if listening to ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ makes me an asshole, amongst other things.

I’ve never found flights pleasurable — in part because being forced to contemplate anything about myself for several consecutive hours in a plastic armchair feels eerily similar to what I would imagine the death penalty is like — but also because I really, really do not like airports.

My feelings toward airports have evolved dramatically over time. I’m only ever in airports about four times a year — Thanksgiving, Christmas, usually sometime around March, and once in the summer months. My flight range has only spanned from Detroit, Michigan, to Oakland, California, typically with a surprise one-hour visit to the Las Vegas airport (always a treat). When I was younger and before I used to fly with such frequency, I would ask my mom late at night if we could go to the San Francisco airport just to observe other passersby who were about to board a flight. I was compelled by the animation and liveliness that I imagined would be found in airports; Liveliness amongst people who were in between one place and another, among excited people who were going to see their loved ones. It appeared to me like a whole sample size of people who were awake at late hours of the night the way that I always found myself to be.

• Footnote (not at the foot): I had trouble sleeping when I was younger, so I think my interest in airports was likely spurred by being lonely at night when my family went to bed.

The idea that I ever thought airports were animated or lively, presently, makes me laugh. Airports are purgatory. I can confirm that there is no livelihood or well-being in the airport — just dry air, airborne illness, and fatigue. The in-between space that all airport-goers share has too many potential meanings to make me excited to participate. For the past four years, airports have granted me nothing but loss, grief, and complete and uncomfortable uncertainty.

Airports mean that I have successfully packaged up one part of my life and cast it aside to make room for another that I formerly retreated from. I lived in California for the first seventeen years of my life. I grew up, became a person with thoughts and values, made dear friends, endured unforgettable traumas, and eventually decided that it was best for me to leave. When I went to Michigan for college, I took a carefully curated handful of experiences that I would like to remember from California and brought them with me to the SFO airport. Since then, everything has just kept changing. Nothing is the same. I can’t put my finger on a single thing that has remained the same since I left for college four years ago — including my relationships with airports.

I’ve cried many times in the airport. Mostly in the Oakland airport, but I remember crying twice in SFO and once in Colorado. I cried at the realization that my memories don’t fit neatly in my hand like I intended them to, and sometimes they spill out as I look the source in the eyes while I’m traveling back home. I cried because sometimes memories — but mostly people — are too big to come with me wherever I go, and as long as I fulfill my restless ambitions of traveling, I will always have a lot to leave behind. And leaving things behind, for better or for worse, is always unsettling (and, in my experience, usually takes place in airports).

My complicated resolution to this thought dump is that I don’t like airports because they make me sad and sick. However, I will continue finding myself in them for the foreseeable future, so at least sometimes they have Margaritaville restaurants inside and also (more frequently) a Peet’s Coffee. I love silver linings, even when they’re found inside airports.