Washington Dulles Airport: To remain suspended within this moment, this fifteen minutes before landing, 8pm Eastern Standard Time, Indian Summer, sky this exact gradient of flat grey-purple, distant glow of city lights flickering beneath undulating clouds, Ø playing in plugged ears. To remain. On the ground, another nondescript airport. Another queue. Another destination yet. / London Heathrow Airport: The usual clinical cafeteria smell. Feels like I’ve never left, maybe. It helps that LHR hasn’t bothered to switch out its ad campaigns in over two years. The city continues its obsession with the Gill Sans typeface, continues with its eyes in train window reflections, with the everything wilting regretfully outside, with the white trainers, with the tacky adverts I managed to forget, the ceaseless humidity, with the idling and consequently the pace, with the effort being made, the throngs, the anonymity. With the usual trainbounce at Turnham Green, sailing eastward along the track toward old habits, old haunts. Even the same book in my lap. / Airports, like this city - enough content to illustrate one or two hundred lifetimes and yet nothing particularly solid to hold onto; just an image or a sentence on the verge of forming, soon to be replaced by the next haphazard revery as we round this corner / board the plane.