Travel Day
I spent some time at the airport today, waiting for my flight to New York. The Indianapolis airport is probably one of the easiest airports anywhere -- security took me maybe 5 minutes, and all the terminals are in one place, so there's no way you can be too far from where you need to be. By 15 minutes after Michael dropped me off I was sitting at my gate, with an hour and a half to wait.
For some reason writing comes easily in airports. I wrote a thousand words without even really thinking about it, just letting the people and conversations around me fill up my head. None of it really adds up to anything, but it's still fun and good practice.
There's a woman sitting across from me with her nails painted like the Jamaican flag. I think it's the colors of the Jamaican flag. She's got a plaid baseball cap on and headphones in, and whatever she's listening to is so loud that she can't hear the lady across from her, who is trying to tell her she'll watch her bag while she gets ice cream. Jamaica's got on knee-length jean shorts and black shoes with pink shoelaces, and little colored bands around her ankle. I wonder what she does for a living, and what her life is like. Is she happy? Why is she at the airport? At first I thought she might be an artist, but maybe not. Her bag looks nice, her shoes are fairly new. Maybe she's the eccentric wife of a rich guy. I feel like she knows I've been looking at her, so I should probably stop.
The businessman behind me might be talking to his wife now. He said, "You'll think this is really funny. I cut my thumb and reached into my bag for a band-aid and all I have is Hello Kitty and Toy Story."
Does it make me feel kinder towards him to know he has a family? I guess I didn't feel unkind towards him anyway. It's just not the life I want. "Dive in." "Drop the ball."
Once I got to my hotel, I took the subway to S'Mac to meet some friends. Taking the subway by myself and walking around New York alone also made me feel whatever this feeling is that I have no word for. Solitude, in the middle of noise.
For some reason writing comes easily in airports. I wrote a thousand words without even really thinking about it, just letting the people and conversations around me fill up my head. None of it really adds up to anything, but it's still fun and good practice.
There's a woman sitting across from me with her nails painted like the Jamaican flag. I think it's the colors of the Jamaican flag. She's got a plaid baseball cap on and headphones in, and whatever she's listening to is so loud that she can't hear the lady across from her, who is trying to tell her she'll watch her bag while she gets ice cream. Jamaica's got on knee-length jean shorts and black shoes with pink shoelaces, and little colored bands around her ankle. I wonder what she does for a living, and what her life is like. Is she happy? Why is she at the airport? At first I thought she might be an artist, but maybe not. Her bag looks nice, her shoes are fairly new. Maybe she's the eccentric wife of a rich guy. I feel like she knows I've been looking at her, so I should probably stop.
The businessman behind me might be talking to his wife now. He said, "You'll think this is really funny. I cut my thumb and reached into my bag for a band-aid and all I have is Hello Kitty and Toy Story."
Does it make me feel kinder towards him to know he has a family? I guess I didn't feel unkind towards him anyway. It's just not the life I want. "Dive in." "Drop the ball."
Before leaving for the airport, I spent some time working at Expected Behavior, revising my team's Q4 goals while observing my husband and his coworkers in action.
Developers, at least these developers, have a unique rhythm to their language and a special vocabulary. I'm not just talking the technical stuff, the get requests and branches and deploys and workers and gems, but also the references and metaphors and just general expressions -- even the emphasis and speech patterns are unique. The pauses are different, and the punchlines. Maybe that's true of any group of friends.
Being away from home makes me nostalgic and feel like writing*. It's probably being out of my element and being shaken out of the normal, dull day-to-day. It wakes up something.
*(I need an adjective for "feel like writing." "Prolific?" That's not exactly what I want to say. It's some combination of poetic, prolific, sentimental, and willing. It's when you feel open and like everything is flowing through you).
Once I got to my hotel, I took the subway to S'Mac to meet some friends. Taking the subway by myself and walking around New York alone also made me feel whatever this feeling is that I have no word for. Solitude, in the middle of noise.
And then there were friends.
And then there was the hotel, and sleep.
I think I'm going to go with the word "lyrical," which isn't exactly what I mean, but it feels okay: "characterized by or expressing spontaneous, direct feeling."