The plane taking me back to Paris, cleaving the clouds with its shark’s-fin aileron, doesn’t fly anymore. Sitting in an armchair at 1,250 miles per hour over this fathomless ocean, I was crossing the clouds to come back and ask you for your hand. I could feel life coursing through my veins like an electric current. I got up to stretch my legs. Leaned forward. And then I had an idea. I lay down on the floor, on the carpet in the aisle, fists clenched stretched toward the cockpit. The stewardess smiled, convinced I was doing some stretching exercise. And do you know what I thought? That if I just closed my eyes and took away the cabin, the engines and all the other passengers, I’d be alone in the ether, 30,000 feet up, speeding through the blue at supersonic speed. Yes, I thought I was a superhero.
Paris-New York City, 2002-2003