Mark Vanhoenacker - Imagine a City : A Pilots Journey Across the Urban World

Im thirteen. Its after school. Im in my room, at my desk. I look out the window over the driveway and toward the garage. Its late autumn and its almost dark out. Theres frost in the corners of the window and snow is falling.

I look across the room, at the light-up globe on my dresser. I go to it, flip the switch on its cord, and watch as the darkened sphere turns blue in the failing light and starts to shine as if it were in space.

I return to my desk. I sit down, pick up my pencil with my left hand, and rest its tip on the sheet of graph paper. I love airplanes and cities and so, not for the first time, Ive drawn a simple map of the world. Ill draw a line that begins in one city and ends in another. But which city to start from?

I set down the pencil and look around my room againat my model airplanes perched on my dresser, on my desk, and next to my old Snoopy on my bookcase. Theres a green-and-white Lockheed TriStar and a mostly white McDonnell Douglas DC -9. On the plane I assembled most recently, a gray DC -10, I notice that the decals arent attached very well. Maybe, I think, I could have done a better job, but these decals are a pain. You have to soak them in a bowl of water until they loosen from their backing, then align them on the aircrafts fuselage or tail without tearing them, even as theyre drying out and curling up. Sometimes I ask myself if I really like assembling model airplanes; maybe I only like having the airplanes afterward.

The flagship of these models is a Boeing 747 in the blue-and-white colors of Pan Am. On a December night two decades or so from now, an hour before I pilot an actual 747 for the first time, from London to Hong Kong, Ill walk around the plane to conduct the preflight inspection and when I look up at its sail-like, six-story tail fin Ill recall this model, and this window by my desk, and the view it offers from a house that by then will be the home of someone else.

I look back down at the page. Now, where?

I could start from Cape Town. A cape with a town on it. From this farfrom Pittsfield, the small, upland Massachusetts city where I was bornCape Town is only that, a name.

Or I could begin in an Indian city. New Delhithe capital, Im reminded by the star that marks its location on the globe thats shining on my dresser.

Or Rio de Janeiro, whose name comes from a bay that an explorer mistook for a river on the first day of a now-long-gone new year. I pause to consider if that can be right. Is that how Dad explained the citys name to me after I told him how much I liked it? Dad lived in Brazil for years before he moved to New England. Hell be home from work soon. Ill wait until I see the red brake lights of his gray Chevy station wagon as he drives carefully through the snow that will muffle the cars noise on the driveway below my window, and then Ill go downstairs and ask him to tell me again about the City of the River of January.

I could start in Rio. It wouldnt be the first time. But the best thing about today is the snow. So the air route I draw this afternoon should depart from a cold place. Boston or New York, perhaps.

Boston, our nearest big city and the state capital, is where my parents met. Its around two and a half hours east of Pittsfield. I visit Boston once or twice a year, on day trips with school or my familyto the science museum, the aquarium, or my favorite skyscraper (which is blue, as is nearly everything I like best). From its observation deck you can look east toward Bostons airport and listen to a radio tuned to the voices of the pilots flying to and from it.

Boston, then. Ill start in Boston.

Todays destination, meanwhile, is not a real city; rather, its the city Ive liked to imagine since I was maybe seven years old. Its location changes occasionally, as does its name. But no matter where I draw it or what I call it, its the same city to me.

My city is where I travel to when Im sad or worried, or when I dont wish to think about what I dont like about myself, such as the fact that Im unable to pronounce the letter r, and therefore many words, including my own name. Its also where I go when I want to escape my dawning awareness that Im gay. A few months ago, for example, the youth group my brother and I attend, the one that gathers on the second floor of a church here in Pittsfield, held a session about human development. We were invited to write on cards any questions we didnt want to ask out loud. One of the leaders collected the cards and a few minutes later read my question to the group: Is there a way to not be gay? He paused, and finally answered: I dont know of a way. Instead, he said, its something people come to accept about themselves. And when I realized that he was looking at me, and how much I feared what he might say next, I turned my eyes away from his, and toward the lights of my imaginary city.

I also like to go to my imaginary city at more ordinary times: when Im doing things I dont enjoy, such as washing dishes or raking leaves; when, in school, I get bored or lose track of what the teacher is saying; or when its late and the house is quiet and dark but I cant sleep and so I look out my bedroom window and I see how blue the night is and that it has started to snow, and when I lie back down and close my eyes I see the same snow falling past the towers of my city.