Music for Airports

(Creative Nonfiction) I’m wearing my jean jacket. It makes me feel young. I must be delusional because I am young, but I feel middle-aged, the way I’ve felt all my life.

Finals week (2017)

Spring, 2017 (Age 26)

The shaded lawn cushions my compressed spine, kinked from a lifetime of sitting in chairs, hanging my bag over one shoulder, and feigning inanimation on the modeling stand for hours—years—twenty minutes at a time. The artists would get a good pass on the canvas if they could see me now.

I listen to Brian Eno’s Ambient Music I: Music for Airports and watch the seconds turn into minutes. I wish I had a little more time for me—but isn’t this all for me? I’m working more than one job to survive college, and though I’m optimistic I’ve learned what I need to know, I wouldn’t mind sinking a few feet further into the ground.

I squint at the silent, distant figures shuffling on the perimeter, just beyond my ability to hear them. Their faces are blurred in noontime light. How individual each freewheeling soul, spiraling wildly toward their respective destinations, fulfilling whatever goals they have set for themselves as I do. None would consider disturbing me, or any of the other casualties of academia on the college lawn. I am grateful to be left alone.

I wonder who we are without each other: student and teacher, child and parent, me and the kid at the corner market who wishes he had the privilege of getting a college degree but instead must work in his family’s store. Who am I to anyone? What will this liberal arts degree do for me, for my family, for the world?

I’m wearing my jean jacket. It makes me feel young. I must be delusional because I am young but I feel middle-aged, the way I’ve felt all my life. I have a lot of baggage, but at least regret is not packed. There is evidence I’ve been living life to the fullest. I have the photos to prove I went skydiving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing—okay. That’s not true. I’m quoting “Live Like You Were Dying” by Craig Michael Wiseman, James Timothy Nichols, and Tim Nichols. I’ve never visited the Rocky Mountains, but I have jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet.

Skydiving with friends circa 2009

I remember the day I dangled my legs out of the open door of the small plane. I opened my mouth to take the sun in one last time before spreading my arms like wings and tipping over and out. I plummeted toward the patchwork of partitioned grass, a pressure gauge strapped to my wrist and a man with a parachute strapped to my back. I didn’t scream. I laughed. What an absurd privilege it is to shake hands with death, to ask: If I died today what would life look like without me? Who am I to anyone? To my family? To the world?

More Creative Nonfiction by Annie Hendrix: