Now playing: “Renegade” by ATB feat. Heather Nova

I’m making a flight connection in Pittsburgh and I’ve never been to this city before, much less the airport. It’s a beautiful, clean airport that must have been overhauled in recent decades, because I can still see trace remnants of an older facility– peeling paint, rust spots, rare but telling. Of course, I’m biased for any airport whose terminal hub has a soaring ceiling and high windows (sky!) but who’s counting?

Moreover, after strolling a terminal for ten minutes looking for a power outlet, I discovered a row of seats partially walled off by glass separators with power outlets staggered in between them. An area specifically for laptop users! There were a few of us, but now there are two people in this row of 15-odd seats– a blonde lady on the farthest right end and me on the farthest left. (And she just left. There goes the neighborhood.)

I think the haze of childhood fascination with travel and flight is starting to desert me– feeling like a sardine in economy class is almost not worth being in the sky for, and the sense of acutely adult independence I basked in the first time I flew alone is giving way to even-more-adult grumpiness at the tedium involved in flying.

Incentive #287479 to become successful: Being able to afford business class flights.

Yet I do love traveling, and I don’t even mind traveling alone. True, the enjoyment would be doubled if I were to share it with someone (and the endurance of delays and whatnot would be halved) but I’m consigning myself rather calmly to the fact that I’m young and that perhaps, just maybe, age begets results.

In the meantime, I will ponder that last “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

Even empty words can be nice. Daydreams are fueled by a myriad of sources.

Now, if this airport wireless (which my too-cheerful laptop happily informs me is a public location) would just speed up and stop clashing with my university’s servers…

—

8:50 PM

Now safely ensconced in my dorm room with a steaming container of wonton, I have decided that the fates are playing with me.

Or, to put it less delicately, fucking with my head.

As I walked away from the terminal after my plane landed in the major airport closest to my university, I suddenly put one hand to my left ear. One of my leaves– bronze-colored lace leaf-contour-shaped earrings– was gone. Tracing my steps back, each step taken increasing the sense of panic welling up within me, I found the earring on the floor in front of a deli I had been looking at. My leaves have survived gales and gusts and entry-level physics classes but not a display of apple juice.

As I waited for my train, I lifted my right hand to adjust my headphones and suddenly realized it was light. With a sinking heart, I found that my bracelet– a champagne-colored oriental cloisonne bangle– was gone. It’d always had a faulty clasp, and my gut sunk even further when I realized it could have fallen anywhere between the baggage claim and the train station– which were four tram stops apart. I darted back up the stairs, looking fruitlessly, looking stupid, and thought– if this was fate’s way of telling me that I was wearing one too many pieces of jewelry (I was wearing a ring and the bracelet, both of which I seldom wear, along with my normal beaded bracelet and knot pendant), it was not an amusing method.

As I got back to my dorm and opened my suitcase, my heart stopped. There, atop the neatly folded and organized business suits and coats (I’ve always been terribly organized with packing and purses and backpacks, so why is my room never clean), nestled in a trenchcoat, was the bracelet, clasp wide open. It had fallen off my hand when I’d stuffed my laptop bag into my larger suitcase at the baggage claim.

So now I ask of fate; you’ve had your fun, now can you please let me finish my academic hurdles without giving me heart disease?