I Want This Plane to Crash

“I’ve been flying a lot,” Jack tells Kate in the season 3 finale of LOST. And if I still have to tell you SPOILER ALERT for this epic show a decade later, let’s be real: you’re never gonna watch it at this point.

“Every Friday night I fly from LA to Tokyo or Singapore or Sydney,” Jack says in the dark. “And then I get off and I have a drink and then I fly home.”

“Why?” Kate asks.

“Because I want it to crash, Kate.”

Jack wants his plane to crash. Wants to return to The Island. Wants to escape a Los Angeles life of lies and sloppy beards.

Wants life. Magic.

This year, I’ve boarded flights for nine destinations. One for each month. I plan to reach at least four more before the year ends: the Midwest, West, even international destinations.

I’m not hoping my plane crashes onto a mystical island (per se, though I’ve had many-a-discussion with friends about this literal notion), but I am hoping for more of a crash into life, magic. Landing. Being picked up. Reuniting with long lost friends. Making new ones. Seeing the forests and mountains and cities and talking about emotions and Jesus and struggles and sexuality and board games and movies.

Embracing the motion, embracing the silence together.

Embracing life. Together.

My most recent trip to Minnesota was one of my favorites of the year. Among my favorite excursions ever. Cliffy drives along Lake Superior, a campout on the lapping shore amid a fierce lightning storm, wanderings through the Mall of America in search of new books and waffles.

Tears spilled into the shoulder of another, prayer with one friend on a street corner and with two others in a living room, and some of the widest smiles I’ve smiled in a long while given a lot of heartache back home.

I couldn’t have asked for more in a taking to the skies.

One day in Minnesota, I walked with my friends into an outdoor Minneapolis art exhibit. A covered walkway that led to a chamber with an exposed roof. Slanted pews along the walls that allow you to lean back and look up and simply . . . watch.

At first, I didn’t get it; it’s a box with a hole in it.

“Art.” Okay.

But then I shut up and did the thing.

I realize I don’t do this enough. For such a shy quiet guy, I sure do talk a lot.

When I shut up and put away my phone and leaned back and looked up, I noticed things. Things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Things that have always been there but things I don’t see when I’m checking Twitter or dwelling on broken relationships.

The gradient, for one. The blue sky in the top left corner of the box clearly turning into a different shade by the bottom right.

Clouds move. Of course they do, but when you look up and block out the rest of the sky, the rest of the planet, you notice them more. Sometimes they crawl like a speck of dust in an August attic; other times, they sprint across the heavens before their vapors can expire.

Other things enter the picture. A plane. A dragonfly. Again, you don’t notice those things when the backdrop is the entire planet. But when the backdrop is a single box, you notice. You latch on. You welcome the change of detail, the action, before the picture turns back to placid blue.

After twenty minutes, one of my friends suggested sitting on the opposite side of the chamber for another vantage point. So we did. And the details only escalated from there. The gradient actually quite different from the opposite side, not nearly as strong or contrasting. Shadows shifting on the wall below.

And then twenty minutes later, another change to the last remaining wall, the view evolving all over again. And then my friend took things to the final level, lying down on the floor — the rest of us following suit like children of the Pied Piper.

I lay down. Felt incredibly self-conscious at first.

What if someone comes in and sees all of us just lying there? What if it’s a security guard? Worse — what if someone enters and doesn’t say a thing?

There I lay on a cold hard floor, considering all the changes occurring: changes above, changes around, changes within.

I lost myself in the deep blue above as clouds and planes and birds and dragonflies drifted across the box. As other people did indeed descend down the corridor to these dudes lying there, reverent in their whispers as they sat and looked up and then grew tired of the thing after two or three minutes, leaving us to our mesmerizing gaze.

From whispers and silence within to sirens and cell phones beyond. Strangers came and went. Kids and instructors on a class trip. Some stared up, lost in a daze; others closed their eyes a while. Perhaps some even nodded into sleep.

We started inside as three friends, then later grew to a fourth, each of us knowing one another with varying degrees of closeness, the twos and threes and fours on the floor.

Evolving in positions from one corner of the box to the other before sprawling on the floor. Evolving in friendship from one side of the floor to the other, of years-long to mere months.

Nothing is static, I realize. Everything is shifting. Time and friendship and travels and stability. It is all in gradual flux, and it is dramatic like the dragonfly.

I may be friends with those three the rest of my life.

Or we may part ways somewhere beyond this box. Amicably. Violently.

Who knows.

All we have is this moment. The key is being present. It’s always being present. Not giving more weight to the past or more to the future but just enough weight to all three. Whatever that perfect ratio is, I have no idea.

I do know the present must get the largest piece of pie.

I travel because I know the likelihood of moments — like four friends entering a sky box — is quite high. I travel because I never struggle to be present when I do so. Where will I sleep? What will I eat? Who will I see, what will we talk about, what will we do, how can we make the most of this racing cloud before it exits the box?

How I yearn to be more present back home — back when the plane touches down once again and I clink my keys onto that shelf. Back when the beard grows sloppy and I feel like I’m living a lie. Desperate for another crash into magic.

I want to be present with this boring blue sky here and now because I know if I wait long enough — if I turn off the phone, if I lie down with my friends, if I lie back and look up — I won’t miss the dragonfly flitting into the scene.

And whether for the dragonfly itself or for all else this box illuminates, I know it will always be among the most beautiful skies I’ve ever laid back and witnessed.