I don’t know how many hours of air travel I’ve endured now but at moments I really feel at the end of my rope.

When I went to the bathroom on the last flight segment, we encountered some turbulence. That situation brings up some fears about getting shake, rattle, and rolled in an aerated cloud of everyone on the plane’s excrement along with the blue juice used to wash it all down into the gullet of the plane. My heart rate rose rapidly and I panicked, so I tried to finish my business quickly while clinging onto the handle on the bathroom wall. I take some slow deep breaths to calm down. I wash my hands and use the paper towel from drying my hands to dampen my brow as a little refresher. I try not to touch the walls or door handles to avoid catching whatever nasty diseases the other passengers have carried on board.

Back in my seat, I notice bizarre things like the amount of frost that builds up on the outside and inside of the outer window pane and on the outside of the middle pane and how fragile and flexible the inner pane seems. A strange little cylinder, perhaps made of metal, seems to prevent the outer window from collapsing against the middle one, or perhaps it’s a little airhole to relieve excess pressure between the outer and middle windows? Extra frost forms on the inside of the outer window just opposite the cylinder.

I notice the beauty of the clouds, so many different textures from wispy to fluffy, but when they billow tall and dark, I feel their menace in the bumpiness of the ride. We encountered the most