Coming Into Los Angeles

Here in America, the election is over. In general, it seems that the loudest and shrillest voices won. I haven't begun to make sense of it all. So just for today, I'm sharing a piece that's not at all controversial, and is, I hope, just fun to read. Enjoy.

My spouse thinks he’s in an Arlo Guthrie song. He has never been to southern California, and I let him sit by the window so he can see the huge expanse of the city and its unending suburbs as we come down from the sky. I’m not a fan of big cities. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to live here. But still, it’s something to see. I remember the first time I flew into this town, some twenty-five years ago. It was twilight. Strings of light crisscrossed the landscape like gold necklaces. Then we dropped a little lower, and I saw that each of those gold chains was a twelve-lane freeway.

There’s no such view for my husband’s first visit. Los Angeles is socked in, and we see nothing but clouds. Reasonably clean clouds, from the look of them. Maybe this is honest weather, and not just smog.


I was a Star Trek fiend in my teen years, knew the first two season’s shows almost by heart, and I always liked how the crew of the USS Enterprise found use for nautical terms in the void of interstellar space. Indeed, Star Fleet was an interstellar Navy, with fleet admirals and courts-martial.

It occurs to me that airplanes, too, are ships. They have captains and crews, heads and galleys. They navigate by compass; instead of depth-finders, they have altimeters. Red and green lights flash on port and starboard wings so that other ships can tell which way they’re headed when it’s too dark to see the outline of the craft. As our vessel drops through these layers of clouds, it occurs to me that planes also sail through water. I see it condensing on the wing; it gleams for a moment as a ray of sunlight breaks through and lights the wet surface. Then we bank. The sun dips behind the fuselage and the wing turns dull metal again.

A quarter-hour ago, our captain got on the PA system and said that because of the way the wind was blowing, we would take a turn over the Pacific and land to the east. No worries; we were ahead of schedule. He just came on again and said the wind has shifted; so we’re going to circle around and land the other way after all. I have to take him at his word. When we finally get through the clouds, we’re almost on the ground, and all I see is the airport.

Wind and water; water and wind. Ancient seafaring peoples harnessed them and got where they needed to go. The airships of the 21st century are working with the same elements. It’s just that the proportions are different.