We begin to descend over Lake Michigan. The pilot has offered free TV. My seatmate watches Real Housewives of New Jersey but in the small screen flush with the seatback in front of me I have been tuned to the channel that shows our elevation and approximate location. We are now at 9,000 feet. I press my forehead against the window and look down at the wing, the lake.
I am immediately taken in. The plane begins to turn so that my gaze is nearly perpendicular to the water. A little sick, I keep looking. The lake has become impressionistic, like we are flying not over water but over the enlarged petal of a Lupine or Vinca. The tip of the wing looks deceptively close to the water. We continue to turn and the water slips into focus. I can see ripples, but the plane's direction and the opposing flow of the current have canceled out any sign of movement. Now it appears as if we are circling down onto the back of some exotic reptile, a skink perhaps, not just blue-tongued but blue-skinned, its cracked scales the color of water through a descending plane's window.
The scene blurs again. I must become an insect in a soda can hurled across a field, my brain a few simple nerves, in order to process what I see when I travel by plane: a reality show I just can't believe. Suddenly I would not care if we continued to circle down into that periwinkle haze. Like a bee approaching a flower, I am tuned to a single color and nothing else--no fear, no hope. Just aim.
