an itinerant observer

Prologue: Grounded in Houston – A City of My Many Lives The delay begins in Houston—a city etched into my identity. It’s where my kids were born, where I spent fifteen formative years, and where every return feels like both homecoming and farewell. Today, it’s a five-hour layover that stretches into an eternity. “Why this flight? Why me?” I mutter. The minutes bleed into hours. Airports have a peculiar way of amplifying existential questions, as if the pause in transit reflects a broader pause in life. When I finally reboard, it feels less like travel and more like drifting—an uneasy sense of being uprooted and untethered. In-Flight Double Feature: Cinema at 30,000 Feet Somewhere above the clouds, I scroll through the in-flight entertainment and land on Mother, Couch —a bizarre, dystopian family drama. A mother anchors herself to a couch in a furniture store, refusing to budge. Her children orbit around her, paralyzed by her immobility, tangled in invisible threads of expecta...