A Place in the Sky Anonymous

There’s something oddly comforting about sitting in an airplane and barreling through the sky at 37,000 feet. Granted, the food could be better and the seats a little bigger, but I’ve never been able to find a place quite like this one. When I’m up in the sky, it doesn’t feel like I’m traveling at almost 600 miles per hour. I can slow down and relax -- a rare experience today, with everyone always rushing around, desperately trying to get everything done in the shortest amount of time. The sensation is strange: moving so fast but feeling motionless. There’s a blissful absence of chaos, a pure displacement from the pressures of every day. The plane pushes over currents, past sunsets, into the black void of the night sky. Every once in a while a bump of turbulence jolts me out of my thoughts, reminding me of my precarious position in the limbo between space and ground.

I look outside. I watch the switchboard cities and jagged mountains pass beneath me. I cruise over bands of highway with cars clustered together like tiny beetles on a tile floor. It’s like I’m staring down at someone’s toy model of the world. Farm fields look like patchwork, stitched edge-to-edge by hand. Rivers are sewn into the rough green of the landscape like...