En route part two

This airport is enormous. There is literally a food court in the middle of the concourse I'm in, and that's only one of 5 !
I'm sitting at a Los Angeles gate... I might jut be projecting but the people waiting here seem to look very stylishly LA. I don't know what I look like. Travel days like these are always just a grin and bear it kinda thing. It is something like 5 hours until I'm in Managua... Wow. I am down to the hours now, never mind days or weeks or months. That's over now.
Crazy.
But it feels really good to be on my way. I watched Canadian territory disappear beneath my feet, the plane, and suddenly everything gained a lot of perspective. Like- hello, you are ACTUALLY doing this. No more dreaming and planning. Just doing. Taking it moment by moment because I literally have no idea what's in store for me. I always get so meta about things like this, about looking back in a week, eight weeks, seeing how wrongly and foolishly I thought, how I had (have) no idea or clue or anything about this trip.
But this is amazing. Full stop. I am here and I am doing this.
I'm quite enjoying my view here, watching all the brightly-vested airport workers do their machine-type things. There is such a fascinating other-world that works away to take us places......definitely some kind of metaphor for life there.
Down one of the quieter wings of this concourse E empire, there sit probably thirty soldiers all dressed in their army colours, not talking, waiting. I passed them as I walked around this place. I wanted to say something, to sit down and ask them where they were heading, where they're from. Some were really young... And no this is not me swooning over men in uniform. More like just wanting to know their stories, their names.

Airports put me in strange moods. We are all these solitary strangers but also exactly alike, breathing and sitting and waiting in lines. And I just, I don't know, sometimes I just want to know these other human beings around me. And sometimes not. And most times I will just muse about it in some quiet corner, staring into space and wondering.

At any rate, here I am. I'm writing this at 4:30 in the afternoon in Atlanta. Who knows when it will go live, who knows when I'll write next.

Be patient. Also be kind to one another. We are all just humans in transit, one destination to the next.

dftba
-k

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I have less than an hour left on this essentially empty plane ride to Managua. Out my window is a glorious moon and a night sky; across the aisle, the remains of a sunset, lingering in peach-orange-fire streaks on the horizon.
I am listening to the playlist I called "motivate"...I'm looking for a final boost of courage before I enter this entirely new world miles beneath my feet.
WOW! Wait wow! I just noticed this but we are flying on top of a thunderstorm right now. A huge towering anvil cloud with flashes of lightning illuminating the skeleton of the clouds. Wow. That's incredible.
Moonlight and the first stars, a sleek airplane wing and electrons jumping, highlighting the sky, this earth.

On that note, I leave you. Time to arrive.
-k