Airports and Other Worlds

Airports and Other Worlds

Connections with Lewis: Narnia

October 17, 2016

The modern airport is much like a woods between other worlds. It is one of those strange liminal spaces where people from all nations converge for means of travel. Each airplane is it’s own pool, leading to another “world” so to speak. The in-betweenness of these places have a bazaar character or perhaps it is a lack of character that makes these places feel bazaar. They seem to be a no man’s land, leading me to wonder whether a place of passing through can be called a place at all? However, the airport also differs greatly from the woods between the world. Lewis describes the woods between the world in The Magician’s Nephew as a calm, serene place, heavy with tranquility. And let’s not lose sight that it is a woods! My experience in airports have not been so comforting and peaceful. To me, airports are placed of angst and expectation, exploitation and commodity. In a word, airports don’t feel like any place at all. They seem to lack all the essential qualities that one feels in a place, devoid of all personality and meaningful characteristics. It is a place where people pass through because they must, but never truly enter in. It lacks presence. It is the construction of the modern, rational, utilitarian mind, engineered for convenience and commerce.