November 23, 2018:
The clouds moved me. It wasn't as simple as mere thrill. There was a sense of grand connection, as though the perspective of altitude proved that our world and all its people really are one.
They were beautiful. I wanted to swim in them. To soar around inside them as in dreams, where your arms are out sideways like airplane wings and you steer by tilting left or right.
Decades later I had that experience, not in dreams but in a small commuter jet between Dallas and Houston.
It should have been a quick jump, but weather had the Houston airports backed up, so that we circled around Texas for a couple of hours. It was a small jet, maybe twenty seats, so we were not in a high-altitude airliner lane, but were vectored up down and around hundreds of miles of gorgeous cumulonimbus and cumulus congestus formations. Through cloud canyons, around thunderheads, up through gaps and around again, breathtaking, until low fuel eventually forced landing in El Paso. The passengers, all men in business suits, were pissy like four-year-olds, whinging over the unfairness of it all. "Don't be rude to the nice lady," I eventually barked. That shut them up, and I guess as reward the flight attendant let me sit with her in a jumpseat up front, where the view from the cabin door was spectacular.
There were hints of that, on this first day. My first experience in an airplane. Right down to today I always book window seats.