Departure

I'm waiting at the airport.

How many times have we all waited at airports, either in the arrivals area, anxiously scanning the gate for our loved ones, or the departure area in tears from all the goodbyes, or waiting impatiently to board a plane that will take you to your lover whom, of course, lives far far away.

I love airports.

You'll never see so much sadness, pain, exhilaration and pure joy in one place. You'll never feel so connected to strangers, or so hopeful. Or so heartbroken. You'll never wish you could go back in time so badly, or force yourself into an unknown, but certainly happier future. There is, at times, as much grief in airports as there is at funerals, as much pain as in hospitals, as much uncertainty and fear and panic as there is in your own imagination.

Airports are places to transition. They are transformative. Whether we're shopping on ebay during that 3 hour delay, or running from one end of Pearson to the other to make our connection, there is nowhere to be in an airport but the present. A state of limbo, a place of unconditional acceptance. There is nothing to do in an airport but sit and wait with your own thoughts.

Ironically, my love is on his way to the very airport I am in. By the time he arrives, I will be on another plane, always one step ahead of him. I will see him at my final destination, an hour after I arrive, when time becomes fluid and inconsequential, as everything else is.



The airport in 6FU only ever features in the pilot. Yet it is essentially the beginning of several story lines that change several people's lives.

Everything is a near miss, hindsight, a what if or if only. Here I sit, waiting for my lover. Waiting to depart as he touches down.