Writing Corner |

Thoughts on a Crashing Plane from a Plane That Is Hopefully Not Crashing

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Mathew Polowitz

It seems the more I fly, the more I fear the possibility of a death by plane crash. I see it ever more clearly. The booming groan of an engine failing mid-flight, a sudden jerk turned into weightlessness as our 80-ton death chamber plummets towards it’s fate below.

It is only a toy! A toy charged with holding the lives of too many, one that can at any point be plucked from it’s trajectory and sentenced to a fall through eternal nothingness down yonder.

And it is a game! We play at it ferociously, tinkering to find better ways, faster ways, ways that are sleeker and more clever than all of those dated, inferior ways of the past. Ways that reach the sky in their ingenuity and dance circles around those that never dared to dream big. But who is smarter now? Who more clever than the ones flailing gracelessly towards earth, returning to the place from which they leaped with so much irreverence? Read More

The Hills of Their Past

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Mathew Polowitz

The clouds hang low over the grinning mountain that tells us we are headed west. A hazy cityscape spreads herself before our eyes, drowning in the smog that turns thick into cloud as the gaze shifts up. At first the mountain looks weakened by this haze. But the mountain is fierce. The mountain is prominent. The mountain rises from the clouds and never ceases to smile in its navigational duty to the citizens and travelers below. We are headed down the throat of this mountain.

In Chiang Mai, it is not uncommon for temples or stupas to rise from thin air. They occupy venerated plots of land next to contemporary hotels and even louder tourist traps, their aged brick and intricate gold trim allowing curious juxtaposition to the unacquainted wanderer. With originations dating back centuries, the youngest more than double the United States in age, and infinitely in wisdom. Much of what they have seen has been lost to the depths of history, taken to the ground with conquerors and visitors long come and gone. So it is the hills that hold the truest stories of time. Read More