Taking Off

The sky above Paris

It is shockingly easy to take yourself thousands of miles away from home.

Truly, to accomplish the thing you need only visit a website, pick your dates, provide credit card information, print a boarding pass, pack a suitcase, and show up on the appointed date at the airport.

As I turned to look for the last time at my boyfriend, waiting behind the security checkpoint, and walked towards my gate, I thought about my feet carrying me forward. I became aware the weight of my backpack and the laptop case in my left hand. I pictured my luggage, probably tucked in the plane’s belly by now. It was all so simple, so minimal really: the act of extracting myself from my life in New York and relocating to Paris came down to a few suitcases and little old me, walking towards the open door of an airplane.

De Botton, in Chapter II of The Art of Travel, reflects on the awe and power that a plane’s departure can inspire. For one, he describes the almost magical ability of the plane to bypass all “impediments” of life on the ground, from steep hills to restrictions of view. Looking even further inward, he also writes, “The swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation.” It “can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives[.]”

In the case of my departure for Paris, the flight itself actually was part of a “decisive shift:” the shift of my existence (temporarily) from New York to Paris. Given the magnitude of that decision, I expected the actual leaving to be long, arduous, and nearly impossible to carry out. Instead, the combination of my unnervingly simple exit and the plane’s facility of motion left me in shock for most of the flight.

In the months and weeks before September 5, there had been countless conversations: is now the right time to go abroad? Is this really what will make me happy, or is it a purely cerebral decision? On the micro level, there were considerations of housing (how to find an apartment?), set-up (should I open a French bank account?), and of course, packing. Down to the very last hours, in which we weighed and re-weighed my suitcases on the bathroom scale to meet airline restrictions, the to-do list seemed truly endless. At any given point, so many details and tasks stood in the way of my getting to Paris that part of me, I think, didn’t really believe I’d get here. And maybe I wanted it that way—maybe the to-do lists also helped make leaving seem farther away.

The fact, then, that all (or most) of the necessary tasks had been completed, that my suitcases had finally been zipped and locked, and that my feet were moving towards the plane, was almost unbelievable. And as the plane set off, so smooth and nonchalant, it was almost maddening to remember the exhausting journey that had led me to this one.

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