Frack you, Battlestar. Frack you hard.

I'm catching up on BSG's first season, since I'm a new initiate this year. Can I just say that one might do better than to watch the first half of the miniseries before bed? Not that it isn't a brilliant show (and I *love* learning all the little things I hadn't known), but it's not a great bedtime story. I'm right in the middle of the nuclear holocaust now, at the point where the survivors have to leave people behind in order to save themselves.

Now I find myself sitting at a dimly lit desk while the city sleeps, thinking about planes. About how a plane isn't just a silver streak in the sky anymore. Does anyone still watch planes in the city for the sake of watching them? Are we all tracking them warily out the corner of the eye, telling ourselves we just like watching planes when we're really wondering Where's it going? What's it doing? Did it dip a little? Should I hold my breath again?

Remember when a plane was just a cumbersome bird lumbering across the lazy sky?

Now, I hate flying. HATE it, despite knowing how irrational it is to cringe every time the plane shifts. I look around, and I know who else feels that way. You can mark us by the stiffness in our shoulders, the way we fix our stares on magazines without reading the lines. I hate what happened for making me feel this way. I hate myself for not being able to stop it.

I wonder what it's like for people born after 9-11. How do they watch planes? What do they see when they look up as an engine drones overhead? Does what happened even seem real to them? It barely seems plausible to me, and I saw everything they won't air on anniversary repeats these days. I struggle to incorporate it into what I know, and yet it's touching every part of our lives, from the war we're in to the way we think about little things. Planes and border crossings. Subways and double-decker buses.

Don't ask why a sci-fi show brought this all home again. That's why it's so good. It makes you think about the things you take for granted, and about how "normal" life feels now when it's really askew forever. It isn't normal for me to think about how I'd reach CB if it all went down while we were still a continent away from each other. Nor is it normal for me and everyone I know to view a plane as a possibility. None of this is alright. We still aren't okay -- as evidenced, I'd hazard, by the fact that two hours of a well written sci-fi debut leave me here, in my room, thinking about all the facts you push aside in order to continue with everyday life.