BEESANDTOES

“All passengers travelling on flight LA 705 to Santiago de Chile are requested at gate number S40 for immediate boarding”.

 

And so we stepped onto the all-new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Neat and sophisticated it is a truly impressive expression of modern-day engineering. The short walk through the spacious and luxurious business class filled our minds with awe, a mirage that quickly evaporated once we entered our own realm of the economy section. Instantly a 12-hour flight felt like a much longer journey...

 

Luckily the spectacle the night sky offered was not exclusive to business class. Immersed in an ocean of sparkling freckles, I gazed out into the vast emptiness of our universe reminded of our eternal insignificance. And yet, from the sky, the only visible sign of life was the vast man-built web of cities and roads that spread across the face of the Earth, reproducing at a global scale the complex network of neurones and axones within all living beings. It captivates me how no matter the scale, there always seems to be a core from which branches reach out aiming to connect with other entities. Like a primitive need for interconnection the bright electric network of human activity echoes in the night like a susceptible shout out at the universe to prove that we exist.

 

I stayed glued to my economy class seat window between a sea of stars and a constellation of human cities in total reverie. Once beyond the borders of the Iberian peninsula, we were smothered by darkness. Neither moon nor stars in sight we began our long dark flight across the Atlantic ocean.