Once a week I go to Tel Aviv for a writers workshop. There is usually a plane flying just over the highway, above the traffic jams, and it causes my heart to race.
I so sorely miss flying and the whole experience of aviation. This is a somewhat bizarre fact because I am generally not an abroad-kind-of-person. Only when I was 32 did I actually fly outside Israel, to northern Italy. This was not so long ago. Who would have thought that in 2012, eight years later, the skies would close and the humming of the planes would sound like a beautiful cantor's prayer?
Before the first flight I was very scared of flying, but after a physicist graciously explained how an aircraft flies and told me about the four different vectors (I moved to "flight mode" when he started talking about equations), my fear was replaced with expectation.
Michel de Montaigne wrote in his essay On Solitude that when Socrates was told that someone did not have fun on his journey, the great Greek philosopher said, "Of course he didn't, he brought along himself."
This is perhaps why I miss traveling so much. When I arrive at a foreign country, I can imagine myself peeling off my identity, even if it is just for a week. I can give up my opinions, stop with the posing, and adopt a character that I have always wanted to adopt.
I like every minute detail of going abroad. Even the thought of how to reach the airport: by train, by taxi or with a private car.
At the airport itself, I like the grilling of security with the question "Did you pack by yourself?" After being asked this question I get a slight sense of fear that I would not be allowed to leave, but then I get calmed down when the luggage gets sent on the conveyor belt and get a pat-down and go through passport control, and then the sprint begins: the liberating, wild run toward the departure gate.
In this mad dash all the wheels on everyone's suitcase participate. And then there is a bizarre walk between the various letters: A, B, C. And eventually you find the gate, and you board the plane, and you get the welcome greeting by an airline crew member as if this was their first flight.
I like that walk in the aisle, passing by the business class with all the big seats and wide legroom until I reach my place, worried that I won't get a window seat.
Since I am a disorganized person, I am very much attracted to the well-defined systematic approach of the flight attendants.
The small meals wrapped with aluminum foil, containing food that I would never ever eat in any other circumstances, the collection of trash and the calm words they tell the anxious passengers when there is turbulence. I exchange a nod with my neighbors sitting next to me and turn toward the examination of the world wonder before me: floating cotton is all around, giving me the sudden drive to just sail around them. Luckily, engineers are in charge of building aircraft, not some people with fantasies.
Because of the monotonic noise, I enter into staring mode, as if it was some magic potion that helps move plots forward. During my flights around the US I began drawing up my storyline for my latest novel. "It's me, Iowa." During my flight to Shanghai I completed a short story dealing with the mourning of a lost baby, and during my flight to Alicante the roots of my current novel began.
As soon as I hear the wheels slamming on the runway I get transported to a new world. English becomes my language of choice and with great enthusiasm, I tell the clerk at passport control about my itinerary. This always gives the clerk a smile as he stamps my passport.
Every week I go to Tel Aviv and think about the writers workshop and the topic of the meeting and wonder how the participants will react. On the coronavirus and its damage I no longer think, but all it takes for me to get nostalgic about flights and the airport and passport control is for one plane to pass overhead.
I miss all this so much that I am willing to give up a windows seat in my next flight.
