May 16, 2005
Monday Musing: I Love Airports
People look at me truly aghast when I reveal to them that I often book flights with the most amount of connections possible. I love airports.
If you had to pick a symbolic structure for the 20th century it might very well be the airport. Through all the disappointments, failures, violence and horror of the 20th century it is also the century that took flight. The airplane, metal birds, improbable sky captains. They are funny things and they are beautiful. I like to watch them, from inside of them and from without. I like the fact that when you enter an airport you leave the particular and enter the universal. I like the comings and goings of the airport because it feels like an intensification of all possibilities.
We imagined a re-writing of literature. "Lady Chatterley's Airport". "Airports in the Time of Cholera". "Catcher in the Airport". "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Airport". "Remembrance of Airports Past". "The Airport of Wrath". "The Unbearable Airport of Being".
I love airports.
Happy Monday.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Comments
i know that this will seem like the most predictable of all responses to your post. but i couldn't resist.
as someone whose parents have made a living for decades in the airline business (father a pilot, mother a flight attendant - does it get any cornier?!), i spent a lot of time in airports as a child and have inherited the avian restlessness running in my family. but i find it rather difficult to see airports as utopic and universal tributes to human wanderlust. if you pay attention to the people who keep the airports clean for you, who have to walk the corridors in the overnight shift sweeping the floors, who make your luggage magically appear on that conveyor belt, you see that airports are also monuments to a class structure that keeps large swaths of the world's population "in place" and preferrably out of sight.
and yes, the twentieth century "took flight". but it also dropped bombs on cities once it was airborne.
Posted by: setare | May 15, 2005 11:42:21 PM
I certainly share your enthusism for Airports. When I was growing up in Karachi, if someone was to be picked up at the Airport in the early morning hours, I would go there the night before and just hang out, snoozing at the benches, having a coke at the bar etc. One of the great memories I have is when I spent a whole week at the Hotel in the middle of Dallas-Fortworth Airport, preparing for my Thoracic Boards exam to be held in the same hotel. I sat by the window reading and watching Airplanes take off and land all day for the whole week. Loved it. Thanks for sharing your love with us. Tasnim.
Posted by: Tasnim | May 16, 2005 6:46:12 AM
Brilliantly original idea, Morgan! I shall endeavor to be an "Airport Man" for the rest of my days. What is your new title for Arthur Hailey's Airport? Maybe, following the sequel to Alien, it could just be Airports? Of course 1903 to 2003 could just be called One Hundred Years of Airportitude. You should also try to isolate the Seven Airports of Highly Effective People and also from the not-quite-literature category: Tuesdays at Airports. This is endlessly tempting...
Posted by: Abbas Raza | May 16, 2005 5:52:03 PM
Love this post, as I share a like for airports, but not a love.
Certain airports give me wonderful, fond memories: Amsterdam's Schipol, London's Heathrow, Helsinki's Vantaa, Chicago's O'Hare, LA's LAX.
On the other hand, I completely detest Dulles, unless I'm going home, in which case I'm delighted to get there and more delighted to leave.
Posted by: Jim Griffin | May 16, 2005 6:08:50 PM
If only Jim had mentioned one more airport, we would have had the required The Seven Airports of Highly Effective People and could start the search for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Airports. I also like the word "aerodrome", which my father used to use. Can I be Aerodrome Man, or does that automatically label me the sort of preterist that proper Airport Man can feel only contempt for?
Posted by: Abbas Raza | May 16, 2005 6:23:40 PM
Abbas there is or was already an 'Airport Man'. So dubbed because he was countryless Iranian and French would not let him in top Paris, so he ended up living inside the 'confines' of Charles De Gaulle Airport for over two years. No drooling please.
Posted by: Tasnim | May 16, 2005 7:51:02 PM
Thanks for the comments, friends.
Tasnim, that's an amazing tableau you set up, I can picture it quite distinctly. Thanks.
Abbas, I love the 'seven airports' riffs and agree that the possibilities are endless.
Jim, I admit that Dulles strains the boundaries of even my irrational love. But we must simply try harder, damn it.
Setare, thank you for being the one to bring up these issues. My much smarter wife Stefany mentioned exactly the same thing right away. To many, the sound of an airplane is associated with doom, not freedom.
Posted by: morgan | May 17, 2005 12:41:28 AM
Morgan, thanks to you I can't stop thinking about airports. I was just now thinking that every single airport plays one of two roles, each having different currency, in my psychological economy: first, there is the "I am very excited because I am going somewhere to do something (new), meet someone (new), etc." frame of mind, which colors your perception of the airport (and everything that your airport metaphor stands for); and second, there is the "I am going home" frame of mind, which Jim brought up as well, and which is completely and distinctly more poignant (though not necessarily better or worse) than the anticipatory state of arousal when one is about to confront novelty.
I think much of our fascination with airports could be traced to these two heightened emotional states in which we always experience airports. I have wept at airports more than anywhere else. I have lusted desperately after random women at airports. I have felt my knees buckle from fear at airports (that, as you have recently learned, is not just a Muslim experience! The scary security services, the terrorists, the possibility of violence, it's always there.) You are exactly right when you say that "I like the comings and goings of the airport because it feels like an intensification of all possibilities." It is, in some way.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | May 17, 2005 2:22:00 AM
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