On the Jet Plane...

WHAT is it about these rare, long looked-forward to days of departure transit arrival that always serve to tie the disparate, tangled yet intertwined, threads of my existence together in my mind? Perhaps it’s the altitude of my vantage point here—37,000-odd feet above the landmass I’m ever striving to rise above, a higher-than-birds-eye view from which the buildings roads farmfields forests that loom large while on the ground fade away into a tiny toy world soon to be obscured by clouds—that allows my lens on life (like my view of the structures that usually define it) to zoom out for a glimpse of the big picture.

Or, perhaps, these rare periods of relative relaxation that come with sitting in airport terminals (so sterile and all-the-same, but, because of the possibilities they represent, among the most thrilling places for me to be) and restlessly idling away the hours on airplanes (despite the inevitably exhausting scramble of the string of days leading up to my departures, I’ve never been able to sleep on planes: I’m convinced that the stuffy, stale re-circulated cabin air is infused with a gaseous form of adrenaline) offer an uncommon opportunity for reflection.

Or, is it the underlying theme of travel, this drive to rise above and move beyond the borders of hometown and state and country that provides an undercurrent of my life, that works to tie threads of fate together? Or a combination of the above? As I sit miraculously suspended in mid-air (and as the mighty aircraft, vehicle of my destiny, spews out more greenhouse gases than I choose to imagine into that very air), preparing to hit the ground running once I touch down in Shanghai, so much seems to come into focus.

Thoughts of my next couple days making my way from Shanghai to Nanjing are dwarfed by the scope of journeys that will follow, journeys planned and the possibility of those not yet imagined. This has been my ideal kind of summer: 9 days in California followed by almost a month of adventure in Australia; then, back to Bloomington (a town that has won me over in spite of expectations linked to its location in the state of Indiana) to plan and rehearse for the Silk Road Festival and lay the groundwork for an institute—also music- and Silk Road-related—that has the potential to strengthen my ties to that Indiana town for years to come; and now, finally, on to China, where I’ll spend a semester studying; then further afield into India, Bhutan, and Tibet. Then… Then? Into the thrilling expanse of the unknown, and beyond.