Pax Plena

Floor buffers stalk the terminal, hell bent on their mission to spit and polish the aging tile. Meanwhile, cafe workers stand at the ready to dole out food if only the lines would form. It’s the graveyard shift at DFW. The lone open restaurant in the entire airport is Panera Bread. And calling it open is a bit of an aggrandizement of understaffed, microwaved fare. 

It’s not that the food is terrible. I’ve had much worse. But even the cheese seems pre-fab. Less cheese and more cheese product. The sausage and eggs seem less cooked and more heated. Granted, heated to the appropriate temperature- the perfect temp to be both uniform and servable.

And all the while, passenger carts zoom by. The true enigma of every airport. How does one board such a terminal trolly? Where can a person go? Perhaps it stops at the end of the terminal. Perhaps at the end of the earth. No one really knows. 

The Southwest News across the corridor has turned its lights back on. A new shift crew ready to greet the DFW denizens, and those of us Zombies who have neither come nor gone. We are as much a part of the background as the faux wood chairs and tables. And barely more sentient. 

It matters little. 

The wheels of DFW airport will spin on. It doesn’t matter who is or who isn’t here. Even the TSA Agents change their shift and eagerly hit the doors hidden in the walls. Eager for home, or whatever will serve as home on this early morning. I wonder where they are going. Home to sleep until the grind starts all over again? Home to a lover nestled in bed? Or maybe they’ll go home to an empty apartment to drink and will themselves to wake in the early evening, and repeat the march of the dead. Dead inside. Dead outside. Dead to the world. 

So, where am I? Hard to say. I’m somewhere in between the awakened beast of DFW, and the myriad of lemmings that keep it running. My old religion prof would say that I’m “betwixt and between.” A place of “liminality.” And probably a bunch of other fancy words that I can’t remember at, now, 4:21AM. But it’s true. I’m far from home, yet eager for rest. Awake, yet asleep. Ready to travel, yet stuck in place. 

I suppose, I’m in a space not unlike life. Except that it’s far less comfy. And though I can see Gate A33 from my table, it feels so very far away.