Fractured Compass

I dislike flying. Perhaps if I were zooming around in a Piper Cub for fun, it would be different, but flying to a destination robs me of all sense of place. I arrive, and am startled to see the license plates. The air is heavy with humidity, hurricane-ruined abandoned buildings line the freeway, and great tangled up expanses of kudzu vine overtake the forest undergrowth. Where am I? Florida? Mississippi? Texas? I have missed out on the gradual change of seasons, the moisture that rises, the subtle turn of brown to yellow to green. I am in Texas, but it is nameless, undifferentiated from the rest of the south, brutally robbed of identity by a cold flight through grey skies filled with white noise.