From 37,000 feet above land:

"I've been sitting here for three hours, static, thankfully alone, and eagerly chasing the sun that flies west perpetually to its horizon. This hopeless chase is proving futile but is making the longest, most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. The sky is the deepest blue, almost frighteningly so; as dark as the Pacific.

From here I can see the outer window where ice crystals are simultaneously forming and melting like tiny prismatic needles dividing the light into every color across my face. It is amazing how they look so firelike, almost as embers, but the light I see through these embers is only a magnification of the red sun as it slowly and subtly fades.

----

'Use el cojin de su asiento para flotacion. Use the seat cushion for flotation.'

Has anyone actually been able to do this? Ok, even if I were to live through a crash into the Gulf of Mexico, would this little seat keep me afloat for that long? And wouldn't it be difficult for the rescuers to find one person clinging to a small, square butt-pad in the middle of the gulf? Hopefully others would live. Then we could unite. Team up. Form a coalition. Or maybe that's just enticing the sharks.

That's probably what the sharks want us to do, group together. Yeah, I bet this little 'use el cojin de su asiento,' nonsense is being funded by the 'Feed the Sharks Organization.' And I bet it's based in Canada.

It's always the Canadians.

----

The sun is long gone, the first star is out, and the synthetic light above me is now my only way of reading. The shadow it casts is invasive; I much prefer the sunlight. The sky is still blue, but darker, almost as if we have been poignantly piercing it more and more deeply since the sun's exit from this scene. I am beset by the fright of this overwhelming sky that continues to fall on the fading horizon, and I would wish this for no one.

I am not jealous of this lonely sky, not of its beauty and especially not of its clarity; I have come to appreciate the clouds."

-Matt Priestley