There’s ice crystals on the window and broken clouds below. I’m on a plane separated from the world beneath me, and divided light shreds the distance between us. When I look down I see the ocean as a giornata; flat, on God’s fresco of life.
Britney used to tell me that God painted your life as it went on. The paint would drip, the sun would fade, and finally dry when your skin was old and wrinkly. Then, hung in some endless peace, your time would be secure forever, plastered abstractly into eternity.
I used to think eternity was divided into levels. The first level was earth, and I was there all the time, influenced by the world around me.
The second level was the sky, and angels would cry and rain would fall, blurring the time of my two levels of belief. The watercolor watercolored to one.
Above that, there was the moon and stars. I saw the moon as an old coin that watched and stayed sad for earth.
Above that, well, I knew there had to be something else. Some candy-land secret-level of life where time was technicolor, and the heart of reality thumped hard wherever you went, thump.
Now, I think it’s just more space or heaven or something. I don’t know.
The window’s hot, but I’m going to Greece so it doesn’t matter. Sunburn will turn to tan, and the tan will turn to freckles, creating a pattern of existence that means my painting is just a series of lines, struck every single day, thump.
God’s painted a routine, or my routine has painted a God.
And at the end of the day, the Pantheon is just an empty building that’s been there 2,000 years. At night it closes and just sits there, where, no matter how beautiful and amazing it seems, is still empty, like every other building in the world. I used to think I was a part of its history—an eternal irony that made me smile—but now I think I’m just a part of history, with life being time and time being all there is.
The plane swings back and forth.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching the Santorini airport. Please fasten your seatbelts, and stow your tray tables—prepare for a landing.”
The times passed from ocean to runway and it looks the same as every other landing I’ve seen. The airstrip sets my stage, all exits two lines, painted the same.
