Flights

The narrator uses the motif of airport travel psychologists to explore the novel’s intersecting themes of movement, writing, and space and time. Since she was herself on the verge of pursuing a career in psychology, the narrator is drawn towards the lectures these psychologists offer to travelers waiting for their next flight. This branch of psychology focuses on desire, collapsing the distinction between space and time in favor of the concept of “towards.” Movement is at the center of their practice. The narrator uses these lectures to enhance her discussion of space and time as constructs that fade away when one pursues a life of travel. She lives her life according to a philosophy of movement and curiosity, as the travel psychologists’ lectures discuss.

The narrator observes the people attending these lectures as much as she listens to the lectures themselves (if not more), inspired by the possible stories these strangers contain. These lectures put her in contact with travelers interested in movement in the same way she is—not the kind of travelers she disparages for using the train or limiting their travel to yearly vacations. A small community forms around the travel psychologists’ lectures, allowing the narrator to feel as if she belongs and can write about the strangers she encounters, all of which coincides with the lectures’ themes of movement, desire, and discovery.