Experimenting – Actually, Mostly Playing – From an Airplane Window — Part IV, Approaching New York City

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial of Williamsburg Bridge and East Harbor

“Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion…no, make that: he – he romanticized it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’

Uh, no let me start this over.

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial of Brooklyn and Harbor © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles…’.

Ah, corny, too corny for my taste. Can we … can we try and make it more profound?

 

Flying from Madison to NYC

Aerial View of Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He adored New York City. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in…’

No, that’s a little bit too preachy. I mean, you know, let’s face it, I want to sell some books here.

 

Flying from Madison to NYC

Descending into LaGuardia © 2014 Bo Mackison

Chapter 1.
He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage…’

Too angry, I don’t want to be angry.

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The City” © 2014 Bo Mackison

‘Chapter 1.
He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.’

I love this.

Flying from Madison to NYC

X Marks the Spot – NYC © 21014 Bo Mackison

‘New York was his town, and it always would be.”

~ Woody Allen from Manhattan

Experimenting – Or Mostly Playing – from an Airplane Window — Part III, Clouds, Clouds, Then Land Sighting

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.
You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
~ Cesare Pavese

The flight from Madison to New York City was a window view of ceaseless change.

It made me realize how little I know about the clouds I look at nearly every day, and discover that I wanted to learn about clouds. I couldn’t even recall the name for the study of clouds.

Nephology is the study of clouds, a subset of meteorology.

Nephology? No wonder I couldn’t recall it, I don’t think I have ever known that -ology. And cloud naming appears to be a mix and match affair, one that requires more than looking at a few photos to get an identification.

So for now, I’ll just go with:

Enjoy all the pretty clouds from the airplane window!

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”  ~ Pat Conroy

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”  ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown…”
~ Paul Theroux from The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Flying from Madison to NYC

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”   ~ Khalil Gibran from The Prophet

Flying from Madison to NYC

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”  ~ C. JoyBell C.

Flying from Madison to NYC

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
~ Christopher McCandless

Flying from Madison to NYC

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”  ~ Wendell Berry from A Place on Earth