My Pledge to America: LGA

Americans sit and read in post postmodernism, play with their phones, hungrily eat heavily sugared treats. Different faces and colors, hairstyles and bodies, they wait for their time to be called by the airlines. A man with a weak jaw and a heavy droopy mustache walks along. Travellers more practiced look tired, less eager than patient. Others are vaguely excited to return home or see loved ones. Business people with tans, older couples walk.

Their shoes say most. Open toed sandals, fine black leather, boat shoes, running shoes, flip flops. People walk around and sometimes you can glimpse indicators of where they're from - a Grant Park bag, an Oakland sweatshirt. It is hard to resist identifying their attire, physiognomies, and style with where they are from. Others resist identification. They are floaters or are uprooted. Ungainly, they look about, wanting to be there already. There are plans to be made with business partners and family and friends. They walk back and forth on the terminal runway.

Everyone here is relatively comfortable. They have done this before. They are familiar with the routine of travel. I am. I know the waiting, the drawn out hours of in between, the pleasure of arrival and the imminence of departure.