Descending into Dallas, I expected to pierce the clouds to find myself in the gloom that typically follows. Instead, after a second or two of wispy gray, I was bathed in soft light – blues, golds and pinks – and far, far below, stretching as far as I could see, was another layer of flat cotton.
Pleasantly surprise, I thought back on the couple at the LaGuardia terminal I had left hours earlier who were somewhere on this plane.
The gentleman, sitting in a tan trench coat over his suit, wearing soft suede shoes and an eye-catching tie, a field of yellow upon which arabesque patterns contorted in reds and blues, sported a mustache that said it all. It put Geraldo Rivera to shame. I imaged the colonel giving away his fried chicken recipe for those curled edges anchored by a soul patch from heaven.
The woman next to him, I presumed his wife, had her half-calf boots (also appearing to be suede) and orange pants swung confidently over the back of her carry-on while she ticked away at her phone. Her leather jacket exuded rambling-roads cool. Her suitcase tag was a striking rectangular yellow-tanned hide, below which another layer of brightly-colored leather was firmly affixed so that a magenta “D” was created by the cutting away of the top layer of leather.
Between them, alone on a chair, reclined a bottle of rum.
Just as I sat in front of them near the gate, a woman approached asking if I would fill an airport survey. I respectfully declined. Moments later, I overheard the following:
Mustache: “Did you put down Texas as your nation of origin?”
D: “Not until we secede.”
After which they moved on to small talk – family, the holidays; you know how it is.
Recently, for a variety of reasons, I have been thinking a lot about separation, stratification. About lines and layers that divide. It invariably reminds me of one of my favorite Quranic verses: “We … have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another” (49:13).
Continuing our controlled fall back to terra firma, the layer of clouds overhead dissipated into a blue sky. Along the horizon, the sun set a burnishing gold into the lower layer of clouds upon which it seemed we were now gliding.
That is until we fell, finally, through that bottom layer, into the gloomy brown-gray I had expected the first time around. Which altogether reminds me of another great bit of poetry: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”
