The way I see it is that when people are at home, sitting in the tailored comfort of their duvet covers and stocked refrigerators, they are their own person. They are individuals living in their own environment. When they are abroad on vacation, even, there is a sense of ownership and territory. However, when people sit in the waiting area of an airport terminal, it is a no-man's land. No one has claim anywhere. No one has authority. Most importantly, no one is home.
It is an awkward place, the airport terminals. It seems as though everyone wants to seem content with his or her position and, thus, no one talks to one another. People try to seal themselves in an imaginary isolated world smack in the middle of a melting pot of comers and goers with no consistent inhabitants. It is, to make an awful joke, a foreign world for everyone.
What is it about airports that make people so uncomfortable? Is it the seats that always have just enough room for you to feel secluded but nowhere near enough to make you feel alone? Is it the routine announcements that blast through the unseen overhead speakers, notifying you for the umpteenth time that you shouldn't say, "Yeah, sure. I'll take your bag with me on my plane that you aren't even on. Hey, are those Federal Marshals? I bet you don't even have a social security number."
Airports are the limbo of this always on-the-go world. You aren't at home but you aren't quite where you're going. We, the travelers, are lumped into one faceless herd of idle beings; confined by the bad coffee, fake sleep, and ambiguous odor of the abyss that is an airport.
Maybe it's an innate desire to claim things for our own or a selfish inkling to always think we have an upper hand somehow that makes us sit in silence, watching others to see if anyone's watching us. But the fact of the matter is, everyone in this terminal is going to the same place and we all just want to call somewhere home.
-Written 5/17/08
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