I heart flying

I don't fly a lot for work or vacations, but even so, I'm always surprised to hear how some people hate flying. Personally, I love to fly.

I'm a big reader, writer, and like to listen to music on my iPod. A coffeehouse person, essentially. Flying is basically an isolation chamber that allows me to do some of my favorite activities for long, uninterrupted, unplugged stretches of time—time that for me literally flies. Give me my Coltrane MP3 library on shuffle, a great book or novel like my current pick, Michael Chabon's "Kavalier and Clay," and I'm pretty much in heaven.

Another thing I love about flying is the window seat. I always find it fascinating that they don't charge higher prices for the view, and that there isn't more competition for window seats. How can you fly and not want to enjoy that view? I've seen some pretty crazy cool scenery while looking out the window: mysterious outposts in the middle of nowhere (Central Mountains at night), an aerial tour over Los Angeles all the way to LAX, the San Francisco Bay, Lake Tahoe, Philadelphia, the Great Lakes... I even enjoy that lovely menagerie of lights when coming in for a night landing.

It's when I'm looking out the window that I have some pretty deep thoughts. Being up that high, along with the isolation, perhaps, makes me sentimental and insightful at once. A passage from my book or song in my ears might suddenly move me to tears. I'm seized by an uncontrollable urge to thank people I hadn't thought about in years. I feel a groundswell of gratitude for everything I have, of how beautiful it is up here, with most of humanity quiet and snoozing peacefully in their seats. There seems to be some unspoken, sometimes expressed, sense of camaraderie, perhaps because we're all in it together. Like that one passenger on every flight that allows themselves a bit of applause upon landing.

One thing I don't invite when I'm flying is chit-chat with fellow passengers seated next to me. And like me, for the most part, people tend to keep to themselves. Tonight I made an exception (or the other way around) for a very nice grandmother from the Main Line of Philadelphia; she struck up a conversation that eventually revealed mutual beliefs in animal rights, past lives and auras. I learned about her family, her seat on the board of a local children's hospital, her grandson's football game, her visiting her daughter in Chicago, and that her own mother is still alive—102 years old! We talked about fracking, political candidates and our mutual concern for the future of this country and our world below. After the fasten-your-seatbelt sign went off, she politely told me she had to continue reading her Julie Oringer book for book club, and I said of course, and went back to reading my book. What a great seat-mate.

Upon deplaning, we exchanged names again and said our goodbyes, with me wondering how many past lives she'd lived and why I felt our conversation had some sort of meaning or purpose. Maybe up in the air, they all do.