ABSTRACT
“What am I missing?” This is perhaps the most uncomfortably nagging ques- tion to colonize my head whenever I find myself sealed into an aluminum can and hurled across the troposphere. Wedged into four square feet of space, at most, for untold hours as I excrete my own personal quarter ton of carbon onto the world below, I find myself obsessively wondering if I remembered to lock the stove, pack the front door, and turn off my passport on the way out. I know there is something I must have forgotten, as does every other traveler shoehorned into steerage class here with me. No procession of slightly outdated movies, truncated and miniaturized to accommodate our friable sensibilities and seatback screens, can assuage the anxiety.
