Glass Barrier

I'm sitting in the international terminal of the San Francisco airport. It's funny how international terminals always seem to be nicer than domestic ones. The faux leather seats are slightly more giving, the carpets patterned more stylishly, everything seems smoother, cleaner and built with nicer lines. The bubble of languages all around me is enthralling. I feel like a dog with supersonic hearing when I catch a trail of german behind me, a gallop of Norwegian in front of me, perhaps a cough of dutch in my left back corner, and the occasional mandarin piercing the european medley. Understanding little bits of all those different languages sends mini surges of dopamine through my body. It is SO cool to be able to gather meaning from languages that I've never learned.

The view from my slightly more luxurious seat at the end of this faux leather row is peaceful. White and grey hues of smog cloud the sky, to create that unique California pale blue. The sky is different everywhere. It's always interesting to sit in transit and observe the happenings of daily life; Carts pushing and pulling trailers around the tarmac, engines whirring, the accordion-like gangways pressing their folds together and relaxing again, and the fog rolling in. It's busy out there, but in a peaceful way. But I am just a quiet observer behind a thick sheet of clean, fingerprint-free glass. No plan. No thoughts of anything but how tired and thirsty I am. The excitement comes in spurts, mostly when the Swedish men behind me let loose their tongues. Ah, what a lovely language. I want to wrap myself in sheets of Swedish, build forts out of it, dance with it under the moonlight, braid it into the cord of my life, become it.

I have so many ideas about what I could do, but right now they all seem hidden behind this slab of glass. My eyes feel like dark marbles, my cheekbones protruding a little bit too much, my mouth dry. I haven't slept for at least 24 hours. I never made it to bed last night. Well, I did but the thoughts tumbling around in my drum didn't permit me any sleep. At best I entered a state of extreme closeness with my sheets, that pre-sleep cozy feeling, but that was soon dissolved at the ringing of my alarm. I might have snoozed on the plane to San Francisco, but I'm not sure about that either. It's hard to tell once sleep has become a foreigner. That's maybe why it's easiest just to watch what's going on outside the glass barrier. I let my eyes stalk cars and watch planes zip into nothingness, or emerge from a speck in the haze.

Mostly I let my eyes gather all the newly made tire marks from the wide turns of the luggage carts. Mildly amusing. Unlike the darkening of the tarmac, my skin is already lightening up. I haven't spent very much time at the beach or outside while I've been in Hawaii. I guess it doesn't really matter. Two years ago I freaked out when my tan vanished and was replaced with utter pastiness. This time around I am kind of welcoming my natural skin tone, just for a change. I've kind of forgotten what I actually look like underneath the sunshine. I think my tan was in defense of the racism against caucasians in Hawaii. Sad as it is, if I'm not tanned, I feel slightly shunned at the beach. I find it bizarre, first of all, that racism based on skin color even exists at all, because in the end, what does it matter? We live. We die. Why do we bother to care about such inconsequential subtleties? It's weird, nobody in Germany believes that I'm German, because I have dark eyes and hair. I usually get labeled as Turkish or "Hawaiian" if the people don't know any better. I wonder where the Turks think I'm from. Sometimes I feel like a raceless, homeless insect. It's all okay though, because now I'm headed to a place where I feel accepted, despite my completely un-swedish appearance.

This is all just chatter because the glass is blocking out my ability to feel anything right now. I'm just so sleepy.