“I would begin to feel a rush of what I considered love, first for the things at hand: the swifts, if that’s what they were, hopping in the dust, the avenues of old-world trees, the stone statues of kings and queens with whom the tourists pose, love for the glare off El Estanque, the park’s artificial lake. Love for Topeka: the chicken hawk atop the telephone poll, the man-child with the flare gun tucked into his sweatpants, the finger lost to snapping turtle or firework; love for the bully and his neck beard, a love only a mother could face. Love for all my sitters, except James; love for the wrestler falling from the water tower where he’d tried to represent. Then for Providence: the first breakdown in the stacks, running lines of prescription something with the dim kids of the stars, emerging from a tunnel or sleep into New York, redefining ‘rich,’ love for the unread book of poems, Cyrus and our walks. But most intensely love for that other thing, the sound-absorbent screen, life’s white machine, shadows massing in the middle distance, although that’s not even close, the texture of et cetera itself.”
-Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
Describing the detachment and appreciation of life that comes from being in a new place (in this case Madrid). I get this feeling being on an airplane.