I Told New York Hello, And It Flipped Me Off

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: airports are, objectively, one of the coolest places in creation. There are people from all over the world on their own little adventures, walking with a purpose and a $15 water bottle grasped firmly in their hands. It’s like whichever city you’re in, the airport is the building version of that. Atlanta is very large and intimidating and somehow always humid. Austin is growing in patchwork, but the art is divine and the coffee is local. New York is giant and beautiful, and literally nobody cares about what you are doing in any point of your life.

Not literally, of course. I am a little bit prejudiced, as I’ve met several New Yorkers before. They will walk and talk with an intensity that makes one think of how in earlier times it wasn’t out of the ordinary to duel someone on any given day, but the second you mention a party they will throw down their swords and dance like the world is ending. I have received some of my most cherished insults from a New Yorker.

I’ve never actually been to New York, or even the airport, until today. I have been to the Newark airport, so I used to just say that name really fast for people to think I’m saying New York, and maybe earn some street cred. This city will only have me for a few hours while I’m waiting for my next plane to come in and take me across the ocean, but I fully intend on telling people that I am now someone who has visited the east coast before. 

It is so like airports to remind bring your deepest hopes and dreams to the surface. The entire purpose of an airport, after all, is to take you to the place you next want to go, or that you are being told to go. They take you out on adventures, and bring you home safe and slightly worse for wear. Unless you’re a particularly obnoxious person, you keep to yourself and your thoughts unless necessary, and the only thing to do to fill up those hours sitting in perpetually uncomfy chairs is to reflect on where it is you’re going, and why.

I do not know what I’m going to be doing when I get to France. I have plans, of course, and a list of classes available to me. There is a vague idea of going to experience things that I still am trying to wrap my head around. All I am following is my heart that beats faster when I think of going. Even I don’t know exactly why it does that, and yet I walk towards it without a second thought. You’re always told to follow your heart, but nobody tells you how to understand why it wants you to go somewhere. 

If I find the secrets to the universe on my plane ride, I’ll be sure to tell you.

Do you want to know the best part of this? I am sitting at my gate, occasionally glancing up to make sure the plane didn’t leave without me, and I am pouring my soul into a digital document and asking for the answers to life’s greatest questions, and not one person cares. There is a little relief to be surrounded by people and feel like you want to be profound, and have no one expect anything of it. Sometimes it pays to be anonymous.

That’s New York for you.