Thoughts on a Plane

A slightly delayed, assorted collection of thoughts from my way back home:

• It’s 4 am. Why am I awake?
• I’m waiting in the short line at customs because I have a Lebanese ID. It’s from when I’m four and I don’t look particularly happy in the picture. That’s weird. Most of my toddler pictures are pretty smiley. I kind of remember going to the photographer to get that picture done, but I don’t think I knew what it was for at the time. I remember that green dress.
• The whole Lebanese citizenship thing gives me mixed feelings. I mean why should I have one and not people who have lived here forever and want to use it for things like employment and healthcare, not just waiting in a shorter line every couple of years (it’s paternally inherited)?
• I don’t have to take off my shoes at this security check? Awesome.
• I really don’t mind sitting in the economy section, but why do we have to walk by those beautiful first-class seats on the way there?
• Was that a First World problem?
• No SkyMall on international flights. This duty free catalog only has expensive-but-not-fundamentally-ridiculous things.
• Layover in Germany. I’m still not sure why European women wear tutus to the bathroom.
• I can’t figure out how to rest my head on the tray table without causing neck damage.
• I read The Fault in Our Stars, and I really loved it. Even more than the love story aspect, I appreciated the honesty and realistic cynicism which stripped away the heroism-speak/”Everything Happens For A Reason” sugarcoating which typically surrounds discussions of tragedy. (I get that the “EHFAR” approach is comforting to some people, but I personally find it dismissive). It’s sometimes nice to see acknowledged that tragedy actually really sucks and is just as likely to bring out the worst in people as the best. And that neither adds to or diminishes the fact that there is still humor and love in the world (just not the perfect fairy tale kind).
• I tried to read Gender Trouble and got to about page 30 before my brain unraveled.
• I played Candy Crush until the app on my phone decided to stop functioning. Maybe these things would stop happening if I gave in and downloaded the current iOS. Yup, I still haven’t done that.
• What time is it? Where?
• Is that a glacier? Damn this earth is beautiful.

• And that. Woah.

• Is that an estuary? It kind of looks like veins running through lungs.

• Maybe I don’t give the Bay enough credit for being awesome.