Midnight Flight

I had spent the first half of the flight drifting in and out of sleep, the cramped quarters and uncomfortably vertical seats no match for exhaustion. However, something had drawn me back into consciousness. My head lolled upright as my eyelids reluctantly broke the sleep seal that had filmed them shut. Through my post-nap grogginess, I glanced out of the tiny window beside me, certain of seeing nothing but nothing.

Instead, an orange and onyx world flowed below me. Glowing complexes of city lights had stitched themselves into the fabric of the ground, like amorphous emblems. Street-lamps, hideous and mundane from the ground, transformed into fireflies meandering across a velveteen blackness. I caught my breath at the sight of it. At over 10,000 feet, the hard, straight lines of city blocks melted away into something organic and glorious. I recalled the clusters of green fluorescent E. coli I had cultured in Biology, how captivating the fluorescing colonies had seemed. Out my window, I could see the same lovely triumphs of nature; people collect together where they can thrive and shine with their own vivacity.

For the next hour, I watched the world twinkle past. As the plane descended, the emblems grew a third dimension; the curves gave way to lines; the multitude of fireflies froze back into street lamps. New York looked like New York again, unnatural and unattractive. Which is true, the city from below, or the city from above? I choose to believe in the world of flowing lights only visible on a midnight flight.