up in the air

Things I like/have noted about airports (I write this as I sit in jfk and my fligt has been delayed, once again):
- they're religious places. Flying in itself is a religious experience. I can almost always expect to see someone cross themselves or hold onto a cross pendant as we are takig off. This may have to do with the physical closeness flying brings us to heaven, it may just have to do with fear.
-they're places of lonliness as well as conviviality. You see some people putting up their defenses and sitting, eating, reading, surfing the web by themselves. You see others trying to get someone elses attention, in a desperate attempt to make a very temporarily temporary friend.
-jfk is by far my favorite airport. Handsdown beats mia, pdx, lag, lba, sdq, mad, fll, fco, zsa, ord, den...I really like memorizing airport codes

Things I noticed/wrote while on the airplane:
-it's always good to talk to the person sitting next to you. Right now there's an empty seat in between me and this young man and we were joking about how we were gonna take turns sleeping on it...we ended up putting our coats on it. This airplane is about 40 percent empty. Riiiiidiculous (in that way kanye says it)
-my flight to Portland from new York is exactly six hours, if you add the two hours and fifteen minutes that it took to get to new York it is eight hours and fifteen minutes total travel time. 8hrs15mins. Am I really ready to travel that much at least four times a year? (it could be eight if I really wanted to go back to Florida for those on between breaks)