midwest

In a lot of ways, being the Midwestern golden child who left the humble fields of Daleville, Indiana to pursue the endless possibilities of the Big City feels like playing a part in a Broadway production: the cut-and-paste ingenue that’s thrust into the whirlwind of urban life and somehow manages to keep her footing. There are bragging rights in excess; it’s a quintessential Columbia student luxury to be trekking to the Met on Saturday, catching a matinee on Sunday, and topping it all off with a Brian Greene lecture bright and early Monday morning.

There are few spaces more transient, in between, and decidedly nowhere than airport terminals. I am sitting at my gate at Chicago O’Hare at the end of Thanksgiving break, waiting to board my flight back to New York, shifting back into a New York frame of mind. There are significant differences between the version of me that woke up in Illinois at 4:40 a.m. today and the version of me that will land at LaGuardia. Already, I am quieter, more cautious. My ears, which just a few days ago could pick out the dull Christmas music in every department store, begin to tune out the cacophony. My body makes its way to New York City. My mind curls inward.