I love airports. I particularly love airports when I have an international flight to catch.
Partly this love stems from the fact that I am always at least half an hour late, and therefore always in an excited rush. But mostly it’s because airports are huge and puzzling, and I am good at solving them. The puzzles are both navigational and bureaucratic, and like good genre movies, they are almost always resolved in less than two hours with the hero flying off into the sunset.
Boarding passes must be issued and collected. Identification produced. Luggage tagged. Claim checks safeguarded.
Televisions screens hang oracularly overhead. Information must be decoded from flat-panel displays; clattering boards; multilingual, color-coded, symbol-crowded signs.
Security checks, x-ray machines, customs inspections, passport control, airport taxes, quarantine forms. On these latter, I am careful not to check the “Mental psychosis” checkbox — won’t fall for that again. Each waypoint presents a small hurdle, each stamp or receipt a small satisfaction.
I press on cheerfully, feeling the flow, aware of the passage of time. Aware of the small part I play in a convergence, a great choreographed event that will take place regardless of whether I am present at the appointed hour.
Escalators climb, trams loop infinitely between terminals, moving walkways glide silently down corridors.
The solution of the puzzle brings me to the airport lounge, a glassed-in oasis, a pause for breath. Then, finally, with the thrilling inertial tug of takeoff, the journey begins.
