Ovals burn behind my eyelids.

They remind me of open eyes, wide-open cartoon eyes, and I can’t sleep. Open eyes behind my closed ones. They make me think that I can still see, even with my eyes closed. This is unsettling.

So I open my own eyes and stare at other things. The square release tab of my tray table. My igloo-shaped purple fingernails. My seatmate’s blunt haircut. Anything stark. Anything with a definite shape. Anything that might be stronger than the ovals of the windows, and might edge them out, over-burn them.

Until then, fourteen hours of the ovals in the windows.

Open eyes.

My seatmate is tiny and Chinese. When I sat down and saw her, all four foot eight of her, sitting minutely with miles of chair yawning out from all sides, arms yards from the rests, feet yards from hitting the ground, I clenched my fist in my pocket and muttered victory. A muted victory; a quiet plane-appropriate victory. No more three-hundred pound American businessmen spilling their fat into my lap! No mothers with squirmy babies spewing their milk down my shirt! Just this. You are perfect, I said silently to her.

But fast-forward. She is horizontal. Her feet are in my lap, her hands clutching at my sleeve. I don’t know whether to feel uncomfortable about this. She’s asleep. Right? She’s breathing like she is, but her eyes are just the tiniest bit open. I don’t know. I’ve been away too long. I don’t have a culture anymore, any norms to be offended. I don’t attach any significance to feet in laps, or to kisses on both cheeks or dipping one’s left hand in the cookpot. I wouldn’t know how to react if someone stroked my arm and cried.

Someone did stroke my arm and cry recently. I don’t know if anyone has a set reaction for that one.

Groaning and rocking in the street. Spinning until you fall down. Bare feet, pointing straight out. Crosses. The fingers-intertwined clasping of hands. These are all things I would just walk by and ignore, because I have lost my gut reaction.

I sit here and think about how my tiny seatmate could do anything to me and I would just sit here, thinking about how my tiny seatmate could do anything to me, and I would just sit here and freeze, thinking.

And burning plane window ovals into my eyes from lack of sleep. Her hands could knead me anywhere, and as long as she kept her breathing steady and her eyes some semblance of closed, I wouldn’t do anything.

She didn’t wake up when I threw up lamb chops into my tiny airsick bag. I guess that’s a good sign that she’s really asleep.
Then again, maybe in China throwing up in public is routine. Either that or so socially awkward that mentioning it would be extremely crass. I don’t know, because I haven’t been there. I read, though, that everyone spits in the street, and they’re trying to stop it before the Olympics come to Beijing.

Or maybe she just doesn’t care.

I threw up lamb chops because my body had forgotten what they were. I’ve been away too long.

----

Airplanes.

Every time there’s turbulence my heart jumps. Every time my heart jumps it’s like a paragraph break in my thoughts.
I have an airplane mantra. I thought my mantra would have become useless and redundant after spending 40 hours in flight. I figured I’d be like everyone else by then. Asleep and with a pendulum of drool brushing my collar, head bobbing. Earphones drooping, limbs slack and in embarrassing locations. My blanket in a sad puddle around my feet.

No.

Paragraph break.

I recite my mantra: ‘Relinquish control. Pilots know how to fly airplanes, and they would know if something was wrong. Relinquish control. Pilots know how to fly airplanes, and they would know...’

It’s an obtuse mantra, but it’s my mantra.

My lips move. Socially awkward. Well, socially awkward anywhere but here.

Things are somehow okay on planes that aren’t okay anywhere else. Like telling your seatmate about your messy divorce, and crying into your airline napkin while simultaneously calling your ex-wife a bitch and moaning that you still love her. This has happened. Not by me, but to me.

Like slamming back 5 dollar glass after 5 dollar glass of wine and passing out over a tiny bag of pretzels, the salt crumbling off in your fingers. Come to think of it, that one is acceptable outside of planes, too.

Like explaining in detail why you have to clamber over people to use the bathroom every five minutes, going into digestive detail. Like clipping your toenails with your foot over your lap. Like smearing on a watermelon cucumber face mask and discussing the astringent properties of watermelon and the pore-clearing properties of cucumber. Again, not by me, but to me.

Next to these, reciting an airplane mantra is almost exceedingly normal. The airplane equivalent of a businessman hoisting his briefcase into the trunk. The flawless smile of a saleswoman.

On this scale, I can’t figure out where sleep-foot-groping comes in.

Paragraph break. Pilots know how to fly airplanes, and...

This counts as a foreign country all on its own. One where every bump is a badly aimed bullet. Hours of heightened heartbeat. I get panicked ideas every time the plane falls in the air, like my descending stomach shoots them up, haphazard, into my brain.

Write your will. That’s the most common one.

Find out all you can find out about the Branch Davidians.

Track down all your friends from preschool.

Talk to strangers. I mean really. Not just attractive strangers. Crazy strangers, unkempt screaming strangers, threatening strangers. Strangers.

Write down how you feel right now.

Done.

And all through this, at any point, this could happen.

You’re going to die. No. No. Relinquish control. Pilots know...