On the other side of the Air World...

I am writing this sitting in the Denver Airport. Just after 3 PM local time. Thousands of people throng the broad corridors and concourses. Planes taxi regularly past the window outside...slow and ungainly on the ground. Shuttles, service trucks, tankers, and carts and cart pullers are scattered around the edges of the buildings or buzzing by like metal insects. This morning I left home very early to accomodate everyone's schedules and still provide me a ride to PDX. I had enough time in the comfortably appointed airport to have breakfst, read the paper, take an invigorating 15 minute walk, and conduct some business via email and phone.

I had an 'ah-ha' moment of sorts as I passed through the TSA's clutches and put my shoes back on. I suddenly thought of myself as having crossed a border, not just gone from outside world to passenger. It occurred to me that I was now in Air World, the 24/7 universe populated by the millions of people who are in some phase of transfer from one place to another. The many thousand nodes in air world are geographically separate but, once inside, you could conceivably travel indefinitely, getting food and supplies through the commercial outlets within Air World. And at some level everyone else in Air World shares a commonality that those earthbound outside do not. The globe in Air World is become small.

I wouldn't claim that this is a profound observation by any means but it was an interesting perspective shift....Air World