It’s Gorgeous. Who Cares?

I never fly by the window seat unless I’m in business class.  Today I’m up in the bulkhead on a flight back home to Beijing from Shanghai.  I’ve traveled on the train six times in the last three weeks.   It leaves on time, arrives on time.  And there are ugly places to queue for cabs and an especially long cab ride through the center of the city on the Beijing side, to and from my home.  I would have been on the train today.  But there were no tickets left in any class when I checked on line earlier this afternoon and I reluctantly bought an Air China ticket. 

Reluctantly and only because I have thick callous pads form all the countless times the flight has been delayed.  I couldn’t help but imagine the stated arrival time as real for a moment: Cool.  I’ll be there at 7:10PM.  It will still be light out.  In point of fact I’d be late.  Who knows how late, but the stated time would never be met and I’d be lucky to arrive by midnight.  On the way out to the airport, after a very interesting lunch discussion with a person I suspect will be a new friend, concerning business models and ethics in technology, I spoke with my wife and she clarified that it was pouring rain back home in Beijing.  The likelihood of any on-time departure suddenly evaporated.  This was confirmed when I got to the airport and they told me that although the plane had arrived in Shanghai, (very important data point) it was unclear precisely when it would depart. 

Later, after a slow plod over to the lounge, through security, they told me my plane would begin boarding in three minutes.  I hadn’t been expecting that.  “In thirty?”  I asked.  “No.  In three.”  “Three minutes?  Well then.  I’ll have to make it quick in here.”  Air China have introduced a bit of a modest upgrade since the last time I was here in this lounge a few months ago.  No, the wine selection is still, strictly Great Wall.  But the chair lay out seems more crisp, the counter appealing and there was a noodle bar manned by a nice lady who proudly announced each of the ingredients as she dropped them into my bowl of noodles.

Flying, and the clouds outside are epic.  We slowly came up upon this massive, fleeting mountain shaft of a cloud and were it not for the fact that it was made of moisture one should certainly want to climb it.  Were it not for the fact that the water molecules shift so much faster than mountain molecules, we humans would otherwise name this water mountain.  It’s only because I intellectually know, as did I suppose my Cro-Magnon ancestors that a cloud is here for now and gone in a moment.  Because I know this I can conveniently disregard the otherwise singular beauty before me as ephemeral.  It’s gorgeous.  Who cares?  No one else will ever see it.  And perhaps more importantly, no one will ever really touch it, either.

Perhaps that’s why great artists were drawn to capturing clouds.  Ta da:  the moisture is a thing of permanence.  That cloud can be considered for the ages.  Light cutting through a field of spongey whiteness just now.  Dazzling. At  27,500 feet there’s an uninhabited world of rapid change that we’ll never know but for the fleeting visual. 

Wednesday, 8/16/17