Terminal 4 at JFK is shaped like the capital letter “J”. The security checkpoint lets passengers in at the bottom of the “J” just before the curve upward. If you are bound for the West coast, your flight departs from the very end at the top of the letter. For three months, I commuted to San Francisco for work, and each Monday to get to my gate I walked through a reflective tunnel of fluorescent light and waxed floors. The stroll was just over fifteen minutes, and on these early mornings it gave my mind the chance to wake up.
After years of flying weekly for work, I still squeezed pleasure out of this weekly ritual. Dressed to the nines, moving purposefully through glass and steel, I felt that I was living the life my younger self daydreamed about. Between planes, trains, and automobiles, I averaged over four-hundred miles per hour in the seven-hour journey, and speed felt like purpose.
Growing up, my family rarely traveled by plane. Vacations were car trips, and we zipped up and down great American highways – from Dallas to Austin, San Antonio, Denver, Wyoming…. Our long drives punctuated by gas stations snacks and pictures in front of national parks entrance signs. Air travel was reserved for necessary journeys – pilgrimages every three years to visit grandparents on the other side of the world. Scarcity created desire, and the airport became for me a temple symbolizing worldliness and possibilities just out of reach. Even after airports became a part of my weekly routine, the romance never faded. I continued to feel a childlike wonder each time I walked into a shiny terminal.
Even though I enjoyed business travel, I didn’t think I would let it go to my head. After all, it wasn’t long ago that I was a thrifty PhD student in Berkeley, where I biked around town to save bus fare and made endless pots of soup. After returning to the workforce, I held myself apart from the businessmen who berated receptionists about waiting too long in line. Looking back honesty though, I was not so different from these men. I may not have yelled at receptionists, but I let the trappings of travel make me feel more important than others.
As a student, I had to rely on internal sources of gratification – joys of discovery, rewards of the mind. In business world, I could look to tangible cues for affirmation. Hotel rooms with sweeping views reassured me of my importance. Bloody Mary’s in first class told me I was successful. Sushi dinners charged to the corporate card made me feel rich. At reception desks, agents in their tidy uniforms thanked me for my “status” and my “loyalty”. I would feel a twinge at the gaudiness of the theatre, but as intended, my ego puffed at each honorific.
I never stopped enjoying the niceties of travel, but something started to change in the last few years. Since returning to New York in 2014, I’ve lived in the same studio in Park Slope for four years. Slowly, my new home chipped away at my nomadic sensibility.
Here on the west side of Prospect Park, my friends are within walking distance, and each week we either met at the local watering hole or at each others’ apartments for an NFL game. I joined a running club in Prospect Park, and soon after I never ran again without seeing a familiar face. After this, I began attending service at Old First, a congregation meeting under a pointy white sandstone steeple on seventh avenue. My Sunday morning ritual subsequently consisted of a latte at Cafe Regular du Nord before morning service. Lastly, I finally joined the Park Slope Food Coop, where a modest red and green neon sign on Union Street advertised to those in the know bargain cheeses, local produce, and the best bulk goods on this side of the east river.
Each of these things made Park Slope feel like my neighborhood, and made New York feel like my home. As I became more and more attached to my life in the neighborhood, I also weaned myself off the pleasures of club lounges and Starwood points. I turn thirty this year. As I ready myself for this decidedly “adult” decade of life, maybe I no longer need to travel at five-hundred miles an hour to feel that I’m moving forward.
Jack Wang 