As Seen at the Airport

Have you ever noticed that so many people at the airport look really familiar -- like you don't know them, you don't know THEM, but you know someone else who has that exact face. And it's uncanny how you can see a face from afar, observe the lope of the individual coming toward you, the way they carry themselves, their chosen plumage, and find yourself totally satisfied at the rightness of their voice as they pass you, because -- again -- you know someone else exactly like them. (Topic for another day: How is it that I have never met my own doppleganger?)

Our little gang of Merry Men made our way from the United gate in the domestic terminal to the Lufthansa gate in the international terminal. ORD is a truly beautiful airport. The floors are fabulous -- ubiquitous public-space terrazzo, shiny new, laid out in a variety of grey and while checkerboard patterns -- a long stretch of which has the joints between the grey and the white not made from the standard stuff of dull grey metal framing borders -- originally holding the newly poured terrazzo in like the aluminum grid in a 1960's ice tray formed individual cubes -- but a non-metallic red of exacting dimensions. And then, after jogging left, the route to our gate goes through a tunnel, fuscelage-esque ceiling above of metal joists and plates and rivets. And art-project park benches dotting the route, where most of the retail was now closed for the night, but the bad turn of weather had left many travelers standing in line at the gates for boarding passes.