A peerless September morning.
Never forgotten.
Archive for the ‘Airplanes’ Category
In Memory
Posted in 9/11, Airplanes, tagged Sorrow on September 11, 2023| Leave a Comment »
The Illusion of Earthbound (or—the view from a flying machine)
Posted in Airplanes, Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Airplane travel, room with a view on October 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »
The airport. Untethered, reasons differing, luggage struggles, life-worn faces, regardless of age.
Sunrise behind stratocumulus cliffs over an ocean of clouds.
The pilot announces a two hour and 52-minute flight at 38,000 feet. Plenty of height for perspective.
Excellent cloud day. Cotton soup with tiny towns below. Cloud handshakes reach across the aisle and march on to the west.
Bejeweled circuit board subdivisions far below.
Hills and slopes stretch into prehistoric fossilized leaf prints.
Piano key agricultural strips.
Popcorn clouds dense, render deep and dappled shadows on a bone-dry landscape.
Souls aloft for this moment, in this lifetime, sustained by a metal can. The illusion of earthbound.
Clouds changing and taking form. Despite its seemed impermanence, water vapor is as close to immortal as anything on this planet.
Below, one cannot resist the thought, when looking at sprawling, spreading cities, that humans are an invasive species.
Modern agriculture: Wind farm
The perfectly rendered eye of a hippopotamus in the landscape, then quickly covered by clouds.
Dense, vaporous clouds below the horizon, bright blue sky above. Horizontal duality as far as the eye can see.
The broken routine—by travel, by incursion—specializes the moment outside of our routinized world. Frees the mind to the new scope, what is arriving on the horizon.
If I had my way, I would traipse this firmament more often, exist outside the tunnel, work at seeing the invisible patterns to better describe what is visible to me.
Escarpments licking down plateaus, red orange against limestone yellow, grand anthropomorphic illustrations, courtesy of erosion.
Reverie concluded. The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign to begin our descent.
From the Window Seat
Posted in Airplanes, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Air travel, memory, time on April 16, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Flying through the sky I saw the distant shadow of this airplane against the clouds. The shade tracked us into the distance and disappeared. I began to look closer and I saw…
A flock of cirrus clouds plying their way eastward beneath us
Endless rows of expressionless houses far below
The next state over, expansive tracts bisected by lonely roads
Still further, the checkerboard irrigation patterns of farming
A small town, a cluttered magnet from above
Wind turbines dotting in distant rows
Passing over the marshmallow fluff of a beautiful cloud deck
Wrinkles in the landscape below, a tribute to old elementary school salt dough maps
A jet passes us with ease at a lower altitude
The wrinkles pile up, then spread into flatlands
Small mountains look like exposed fossils of dinosaurs that once traipsed there
Arid, rolling brown land
Strips of brown and green soil, like a long row of exotic piano keys
Building clouds mirror mountains below
Another jet, passing through
The confused noodle of a dry streambed
Wheeling over mountains, the palette of the place I called Home. It’s spaciousness and tendency of quiet in magnificent wild spaces always present, even if I am not
The sun tracks across the lake, a blazing comet beneath me
New subdivisions, identical monopoly pieces
Old subdivisions, all colors, shapes, and conditions
Scrapyard, trucks and cars piled and peaceful in their final resting place
Rail yard, parallel lines stretch toward distant destinations
Rubber hits the road, touchdown.
Shouldn't...but Do 