In-Between Places
We spend so much of our lives in in-between places.
Airports, cars, train platforms, subway systems. As a child, I felt they were places of waiting. Events waiting to happen. Relationships waiting to be. Lives waiting to change. Every place was a window into a different world.
On long road trips, I used to lie down in the backseat of our family car and stare out at the skies that passed. Telephone poles connected voices and big neon signs gave way to the quiet confidence of forests and cliffs. I would imagine that at any second, I could tumble out of the car and onto the shoulder, and simply start walking. Or perhaps at the airport, I had a different ticket, not a wrong or right one, simply a different one, and I'd walk through a separate gate into a new life I'd have to invent from scratch.
As I got older, I was waiting in airports and on subways more and more. When the surprises on your identical morning commutes merely produce inconveniences, waiting becomes more of a chore than an exciting path to the unknown. Long airplane rides make your knees seize up no matter how many times you walk up and down the aisle. The soundtrack of 'Please mind the gap' or 'Next stop Copley' becomes less a charming jingle and more a tiresome wheeze. 'Jet-setting' means knowing how to breeze through airpot security within half an hour, and to pack in about just as much time. Airports and cars were never places to be, of course, but even as a child I thought they held some magic of possibility. Now they have become delays.
Yet I still love in-between places. When you're a kid, your dreams are more abstract, so 'in-between' feels more like possibility. It's better to imagine the promise of something amazing rather than expect life to bring you no more than what you faced the day before. With more experience though, as if by symbiosis, in-between places have changed along with me. I am an active variable in the airports and platforms and stations that serve as microcosms of humanity. I'm not wondering what's next, I know what's next, because I'm planning it, I'm changing it, and I'm responsible for it. My itinerary is my own, weather and technical difficulties notwithstanding.
A few weeks ago in Logan, I sat up with a start from my Monocle and foolishly, stupidly, began to smile. Passengers were bustling around, children were glued to the large windows overlooking the tarmac, and I was waiting. Not for the unknown, but for what I knew was next.
Instead of possibility, in-between places now have purpose.