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part 1: boston to the mid-atlantic, in which our narrator experiences the technological marvel of flight for the first time and becomes somewhat discouraged

i have to leave for logan straight from work, where i've been x-raying (that is, wrestling) dogs for eight hours, so i'm not daisy fresh to start with; this may be an important fact for you readers to keep in mind as things progress. i've never been in an airport before, but toadie knows her way around plenty well, so i follow her wherever she goes and take advantage of my being mindlessly led, as it gives me a greater chance to observe the decor. the place is generally a madhouse, naturally, but the air-france corner is calm and organized, if more crowded than we'd expected. above the check-in desk there are enormous christmas wreaths, easily ten feet in diameter, decorated with frost-finished red glass baubles the size of human heads. because it is the day before thanksgiving, i resent the wreaths initially because i think they've gotten ahead of themselves; if the airport feels compelled to hang ten-foot anythings the day before thanksgiving it should be turkeys—huge, plucked, raw, headless turkeys, strung up by their vestigial wings, with their carefully packed baggies of innards dangling down between their drumsticks. as the line oozes forward i continue to stare at the wreaths and realize i have no idea what they have to do with the birth of the christian savior. i assume that, like the tree, the christmas wreath is a tradition wrenched from the burning hands of persecuted pagans, and now i resent them for their smug indifference to their own irrelevance. if we are going to celebrate an event we should celebrate the brutal honesty of that event. i begin to feel very strongly that the terminal should be festooned with monstrous, fully dilated vaginas with pointy, goopy, corona-ringed infant scalps bulging out of them. i'm also suddenly immensely pleased to be leaving the united states for thanksgiving and think next year i'll try to be absent from columbus day until january 14. the decorations are hung at regular intervals farther down than i can see, and presumably their path continues around the corner and throughout the entire airport, which i have no sense of the full size of. the corner i'm in is about a dozen times the size of my parents' house, its unjustifiably high ceilings filled with fluorescent-lighted nothing. i start wondering how many airplanes will take off from logan that night, or how many will take off from the east coast, or from every airport in the united states over the next hour, or the next fifteen minutes. i wonder how many passengers glanced at gargantuan christmas decorations on their way to those planes and thought, isn't that nice. i wonder how many didn't notice them at all.

i loathe the wreaths and am shamed by the ridiculous opulence of my people.

on board, two children are already crying as i squeeze myself into my window seat, which i'm able to do only after i retract my head into the space between my shoulder blades and curve my body into a compact s-shaped coil. this is fine with me; i'm comforted by the snugness. there's no room in the compartment above us for our bags, so toadie follows a very pretty stewardess (she looks like she could be the child of mary-louise parker and a twenty-something stockard channing) six rows up and forces an indignant couple in their late fifties to hold their coats in their laps like the rest of us. i look across what from this point of view is an edgeless expanse of lights as we taxi around for a long, long time. at the far end of the lot a cluster of smokestacks is chuffing placidly, their exhalations absorbing the golds and blues of the city's bulbs as they stretch and thin out over it. my seat is directly above the right wing, and when the larger engines fire up i smell a blast of fuel so strong it's like someone spilled butane on my shirt. we gain altitude and the lights coagulate into a beaded fabric inlaid with chintzy drugstore topaz. we rise and rise and rise, and until the angle makes it impossible for me to lean far enough to keep it in my line of sight, there is no end to it. i remember this:



this is a new kind of shame, the one that dries my mouth when i realize that i am, just by being on this plane that averages a fifth of a mile to the gallon, multiplying my personal contribution to the selfish decimation of my planet by about 100,000. i feel sick and terribly sad. i wonder if my roommate will water my lemon tree. i miss my cat. there's nothing to be done at this point about these things, so i close the window and put on my hat. i notice the children have stopped crying.

it's close to nine p.m. now, and since i woke up i've eaten a granola bar, a bowl of soup and two tangerines, so i'm hungry. to distract myself i watch toadie play shanghai on her tiny inset monitor for 35 minutes and never figure out what the hell she's doing. i'm relieved when she quits and takes up chess, which i already know i don't understand. i have zero motivation to attempt to play a game on my own, or even plug in my headphones. when my meal comes, i am so enchanted by the tiny silverware and cups that i don't even notice that my entrée is missing. the stewardess does, though, and when she returns with it i push things around to make room for it and then ignore it in favor of the applesauce i am gleefully slurping from my miniature spoon, which i stash in my bag after i'm finished. toadie's meal comes with a pinkie-sized wedge of foil-wrapped brie (mine was vegan), and we coo over it for an unnatural length of time. we *heart* tiny. she tastes everything on her tray and ultimately eats nothing but the small cheese. she doesn't complain, because that isn't her style, but i'm sad for her and regret not thinking to save her some of my rice and curried lentils, just in case. when they take her tray i offer her my spoon. all is right in her world, and she goes to sleep.

the lights go off in the cabin, but enough people turn on their overhead reading lights that the difference is negligible. i dig my right knee into the inconsiderately slanted seat in front of me and listen to malcolm gladwell tell me my new favorite bedtime story. as i wriggle impotently in my no-longer-comforting slot of a space, i wonder if some version of the aeron chair could be fitted into jet cabins. i don't sleep, but that isn't uncommon, and i feel okay about it.