The Flying Monk

In my last years of high school and my first year of college, I actually toyed with the idea of becoming a monk. I'm not religious or anything: I just liked the idea of sitting alone and thinking all day long. I even did some real vocational research, spending a morning interviewing a real-life Catholic monk at a Pennsylvania monastery. In the end, of course, I decided that I could never be a monk because I like women too much.

Flying on a plane gives me of some of that monastic solitude. I know that on a plane, you're technically surrounded by people and even screaming babies, but I always feel isolated, tens of thousands of feet about the earth. My cross-country flight today gave me opportunity for some monkly soul-searching, and also the discoveries (from the New Yorker) that I should read Thomas Pynchon and see the art of Olafur Eliasson. Of course, it also gave me a sore back, stiff legs, and grogginess.