That Profound Sky

I’ve been on and off planes a bit lately. The magic of flight and blur of time as we cross kilometres of green, brown, populated, sparce and complex earth. A land dotted with trees and storylines. I sometimes gaze down through lumpy shape-shifting clouds – when I have the window seat, that is.

I now have a small ritual that not only takes my mind off the ridiculous notion that such a heavy machine can lift that many people (and their carry-ons) into the sky, but also passes the time. While I can’t read or write in motion, I can listen and dream. (And airline food tastes better when your mind is somewhere else).

Just after the safety demonstration, on go my headphones that cover my earlobes and swallow my earrings. I flick through the saved Spotify lists on my phone and open my favourite poetry podcast.

Poetry is at times moving, exciting, deeply-connecting and ephemeral. Add that to its place in my ears high above the earth and it’s a profound sky I’m in.

When my boss flies, on the other hand, she opens her laptop and constructs emails, writes documents and is very productive – in a work sense, that is. She relishes the undisturbed time where kids can’t text her from the next room or demanding emails pop onto her screen.

I watch others navigate young ones who don’t want to sit still, negotiate elbow space on ever-shrinking arm rests, nestle against a partner’s shoulder (I assume partner, not stranger), and note TV shows and books that some disappear into. A microcosm of lives, beliefs and mindsets caught in this ‘bucket of bolts’ (as I heard a pilot once say).

In that Spotify space where I set my song list on random, is the great re-setting, re-winding, re-creating and re-visiting of ideas and thoughts previously stored away. Where time is lost but moments are found.

And far beneath us, through the potholes of light, lie the tangled branches of humanity – toiling, living, waiting, agonising, loving, connecting, fighting, singing, crying and laughing.

And it’s here I mindlessly (yet mindfully) find myself above them – in that profound sky.