Flight

Man, I love flying. Its one of those singular experiences of modern times that I think people have become way too jaded by. When you're flying, you can see a great deal many things that normally you wouldn't see either on the ground or on a map. Developers can't fool you up here, you can see that they tried to pack as many houses as they could into their piece of land, that every house they built is an identical slice of the American dream.

The borders between one property and the next are clearly visible by the effect each owner has had on their land. One square is forest, the next a mowed field. A few squares form a golf course, pockmarked with sand traps. A big lake, clearly artificial, ends in a dam at the edge of the property line.

In a place as flat as Oklahoma, with nothing to curve around, the land is an almost evenly spaced collection of squares. Look away for a second to get a drink, and the plane will have
flown over the cloud line, blocking your view of the land but revealing a skyscape of blues and whites, tinged with the greens and browns of the land below. Sitting at the exit row, you can see the wing, floating and bending and bouncing its way across the landscape, reminding you that you're not just a floating head but a real, sentient being riding in a giant metal case. How does anyone sleep on flights?