Racing the Sun West (written on the plane on Saturday, Sept. 19)

On another flight, listening to Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell, staring into the clouds outside my window, feeling like them-- full to the brim, in need of release. Maybe it's the change in pressure that always makes me want to cry when I am on airplanes--it's barometrics, science, perfectly understandable...right? But this flight isn't like the others - taking me to or from someone who needs me to be 1000s of miles lower, on the ground, with her. It isn't even taking me to a place that hums and haunts with her memory, not to a place we once visited, or dreamed about seeing together. No, this plane is taking me to a place free of an overwhelming and overly present past. In Atlanta, I've been suffocating, choking on the dark history that hangs heavy in the humid air. California, on the other hand, waiting below the setting sun, buzzes with crisp novelty. California. California.  Here I come.