macro

The engine roars under the wing, behind me out the window. The seat vibrates lightly with soothing consistency. Were it not so cramped it would be incredibly comfortable.

We ascend through the clouds and level out at tens of thousands of feet. Looking down, the clouds cover everything like a thick white quilt, down spills from hundreds of holes in its surface. The quilt reaches as far as I can see.

A summit in the distance stabs through the blanket of clouds. Further east the clouds spill over a range of mountains like frozen rapids. The mountains, standing thousands of feet, look small, insignificant. They’re jagged stones in a giant, foggy, white river.

On the other side of the mountains the clouds are scattered and thin. Through them, acres and acres of crops look like the green and beige squares and circles of an immense board game. The fields and cities cruise from one side of the window to the other quickly.

Men and women care for the fields and drive through the cities. They think much of themselves and their families. The things they do are urgent and necessary. They are important to those around them. From up here, they are indiscernible, too small to see, insignificant.

Ahead, night is falling. The plane hurtles toward the Earth’s shadow, the sun falls behind me. Directly below, tiny lights turn on and the clouds turn from white to gray to navy. The lights within the plane’s cabin grow brighter as the scene beyond the window blackens.

Up here, there is no dusk. There’s no pink at the edge of the clouds, no slow transition into night’s darkness. Instead, there is just blue to black. Day and night collide at a diagonal, only a thin line of dull gray between them.

Night wins out. The window is washed in black. Only small dots of yellow or white or red break the onyx sea. There are few dots, close together like a swarm of fireflies frozen in puddles of oil.

Those that sit behind the headlights or under the lamps are invisible, too small to see. They are just wrapping up a day filled with urgent and necessary things. Their lives are their first concern, as well as the lives of their children and loved ones.

Major highways and the parking lots of mega-shopping centers are saturated with white or yellow light. Ebony serpents flow across the land, soaking in the pale light of the moon. They are scars, darker than the dark land on their banks.

We near the metro and the giant black lake flairs like a firestorm. Everywhere is covered in yellow or white. The downtown comes into view. The skyscrapers stand like tiny torches against the night, lit at the tops and sides, clustered tightly together.

We descend and the light comes closer, brighter. The buildings grow and their illumination intensifies. Tires hit asphalt, passengers grab backpacks and bags spew out of carousals. Each person walks quickly to the doors to resume their lives; back to the lives where everything seems so significant, so urgent.

Why is it we see ourselves as so important? Is it selfishness? Ignorance? How can we be as essential as we think? Would things be different if we accepted our negligibility?

Would we go back to being more in tune with nature and stop trying to defeat it? Would we medicate less, release some self-induced pressure? Would we grow together?

Would we feel compassion for those without access to conveniences we take for granted? Would we reestablish our social conscience? Would we redefine globalization as creating a global community, not a way to bolster economic rivalries or increase the gap between ultra-rich and ultra-poor?

We toss our bags in the trunk and drive along the freeway and cross streets. Only a handful of cars have more than a driver within. Each person sits within their shell, closed off from most things around them.

As the global population increases exponentially and premium resources reach peak levels or continue to decline, why is it still so easy to insulate oneself? So easy to see oneself as isolated or unaffected or individually significant?