I have an astounding fear of flying. I never used to. I’d been on many trips as a child and teenager and not once did any of those flights make me fear for anything beyond a late arrival. It was only after hitting my twenties that I started to develop a nervousness upon boarding. Then, mid-way through them, I discovered that it had become a paralyzing phobia.
I don’t remember the exact moment my indifference became downright fear. I think I was on a flight once where the captain, in a rather worried voice, let us know we’d be hitting some tubluence. It wasn’t that bad, as I can recall, but enough so that it made me grip the armrests and glance around to see if anyone else had suddenly resigned themselves to death as I had. Luckily, no one else seemed to care much. So, eventually, I tried to calm down too. It worked for then but the rest of the flight I had a creeping of this unfamiliar flavor of dread and it followed me off the plane and came with me when I had to return to board another one.
I live near a rather busy airport. So, prior to COVID-19, I would often see planes during my runs. I’d watch them start to curve their turns during departure and straight shoot in with their arrivals. Aside from being noisy, it had never been much of a hinderance. But as the fear started to metastasize, I began to view these benign comings and goings as a constant reminder that I would have to get back on one eventually, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do. No longer was watching a plane take off a whimsical imagining of its destination but, rather, a mental foray as to how it might meet certain, untraceable doom.
I might not have mentioned I live on an island, of which there are very few ways off, so this is surely ironic somewhere. When I visit family on the mainland I have to fly to the exact opposite coast and it’s a long-haul flight that I usually fly in one-shot. This is preferable to stopovers because the soul-crushing fear I encounter as the doors shut only happens once as opposed to twice. I spend most of those hours aloft in a kind of shaky, boozy haze that is easy to maintain considering I hardly eat in the days proceeding departure.
One time, approximately two hours into a flight, when I was just beginning to acquiesce to being in the sky, we were told the plane had to be turned around. What followed was a nauseating and frightening amount of turbulence which I got through only with the help of some very pleasant and understanding seat-mates. That experience definitely did not make getting on the next scheduled plane any easier.
Into my late twenties now I still have that small numbing fear whenever I enter a plane, usually calmed by the presence of families or other happy travelers. And takeoffs no longer cause me the same white-knuckled stress they used to (of course, I am typing this seated comfortably at my desk in my apartment fixed firmly on the ground) but the specter of that fear is still there. Usually in life when I feel that I am surrounded by discord I tend to retreat to a cinematic book or movie or game that can help me escape or otherwise have time to sort through things, but when I’m in the air even those small comforts feel too big. Trying to watch Stars Wars or Lord of the Rings or even something like RWBY or My Hero Academia is a level of chaos my fragile self can simply not endure in that kind of environment. Instead, I find myself turning to media that offers a kinder, gentler approach. One that mimics how I want to feel inside: comforted by the mechanisms of daily life, reassured of my now tenuous connection to land, and heartened by the knowledge that in a half day’s time I will be curled up on someone’s couch, a hot cup of tea beside me and the familiar voices of family and friends wafting around like soft music.
Netflix’s Rilakumma and Kaoru has saved me countless times from my own catastrophic pensiveness. It is the one show I will undoubtedly turn on as soon as we reach a cruising altitude and my takeoff playlist of soft, lullaby-like music has hopefully eased me into a state of more deft quiet. The cast of characters is humble, the action is rare, and the machinations of this quiet corner of the world is one I can press tightly against my chest like a well-worn blanket. Featuring a young woman not dissimilar in age and daily frustrations to myself, Rilakumma and Kaoru focuses on navigating all those sticky, small bits of life, love and loneliness that comes at the apex of settling into adulthood. Accompanied, of course, by the antics of three very adorable companions of the try-their-hardest-and-often-fall-short variety.
Kaoru is the real heart of this story, but Rilakumma and friends are often off on just as entertaining side advetures. There are particular episodes that manage to sneak into the cracks of my more fragile shell while I’m in the air and help to bring some genuine tears and smiles. Ones that feel far removed from the usual dark fears and worries that crease an otherwise lovely ride. In the darkness of those planes, as I often take red-eyes for the time differences, I can keep the screen on like a nightlight. Or like sipping a good cup of tea while hearing a torrential storm lashing the windows. It’s the smallest comforts that tend to be the best.
Drawn as I am to action-adventure on the regular uptick of life, I am just as easily swaddled by the innocent tenure of slice-of-life. Especially slice of life that takes me back to a time of more wondrous discovery, and makes me realize within the cloister of metal machinery that below me is a whole wide world in which I am traversing on search of adventure.
Hilda, also Netflix’s, is always the next on my list. Now my iPad has little room for downloads, being as aged as it is, but I always bring these two along for the ride, even if it’s just a few episodes I can use as a different balm than the wines I so often ask the flight attendants for.
Hilda takes place in a fictional world where magical creatures often roam. It’s a children’s show, aimed obviously at such, but the beauty of these more recent artfully done shows is that they imbue a sense of maturity and poise that makes it very accessible to adults. After all, we are the ones writing it. And I find myself smiling at Hilda and her friends as I watch and wonder if one day I might have a daughter as adventurous and thoughtful and brave as them, while taking queues from her patient mother and being lovingly reminded of such similarities in my own. I love the gentleness and consideration of the show and those similar to it. There is always room for maturity and growth and nothing is ever as damning or awful as to truly set the tone as bleak. Problems, while confounding and occasionally dire, are always solvable with a bit of luck, love, and much compassion. It’s a sweet, kind place to occupy when it feels like the world is tilting ever slowly towards the edge with each small bump or jostling air pocket.
I think one of the most comforting things in the world is watching a cup of coffee being slowly poured, which is what makes up 90% of the screen time in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Often when I’m flying it’s into the City (NYC, to be precise, which has always been referred to by me and mine as “they City”) the mix of smooth jazz, quaint cafes, and casual conversation ground me firmly in a sense of reality. There is just something about watching Jerry Seinfeld and his various guests form a rapport and discuss the trivial parts of life we often don’t see expressed from them. Favorites parts of their cities, what raising a family is like, their experiences alongside other comedians, and overall just simple questions in low-stakes and uncontentious enviornments. I can watch this show for hours even during the worst of my anxieties, because it’s not a linear in the way others are. I can simply weave in and out and use their conversations as a form of anchor. Their laughter, their jokes, the various dazzling cars, the simplicity of the presentations — it all creates a calm morning atmosphere that dilutes greatly any apprehensions I invest in otherwise.
It’s the appeal of watching people I vaguely know of in comfortable, happy placidity that keeps a smile on my face. I even watch this show when I first get to wherever I am staying (often my parents house) just to bask in the delicious coffee filmography and delicate framework of the conversations. If there’s one show I recommend watching for the simple reminder that you too will soon be sitting with friends at breakfast, it’s this one.
I guess you can safely say that all of these are Netflix shows, and they all revolve around a certain flavor of more wholesome genuineness. Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories settles nicely into that niche of being individual stories that reflect more realistic struggles, usually from all walks of life, while also being separate enough that you can hop around episodes without really losing too much in the process of skipping.
Midnight Diner is set in Tokyo, and watching it brings forth a sentimental bloom of memories regarding my own time spent in that city. I can close my eyes and remember exploring the back alleys and wandering the various streets, sitting in small bars with strangers and sharing in drinks. Which is precisely the vein of storytelling this show flows within. Its passive, dedicated restauranteur welcomes guests and easily, if indirectly, assists in solving their various problems. Usually by simply nudging bowls of food their way. The power of which can often not be understated. Just as coffee serves as a comfort in Comedians, fresh bowls of soba and plates of tonkatsu here illustrate a deftly human reminder that everything kind of fades away when you receive a home-cooked meal and have the pleasure of sharing that span of time with others. I watch this show at night sometimes after I’ve cooked dinner and dimmed the lights of the apartment and curled up satisfactorily on the couch. I think of those nights when I watch it on the plane.
And yet even for all the joy and laughter these shows give me, when the seatbelt sign comes on and there is an announcement that there will be some turbulence incoming, I gently close the screen and curl up as much as I can within the small confines of my seat. I switch on quiet music, a playlist of which I’ve cultivated for this very moment, and close my ears through the worst of it. My mind simply won’t focus enough on the small antics on screen during these times, and I can’t stop the shaking in my hands until I settle firmly in a cocoon of dreamy thoughtlessness, where I take a tincture of memories with family and friends in hopes that it will lighten me immeasuabrly. That no matter how I high I am or how far I feel or how lonely and ponderously consigned to death I am, there are always warmths that help buoy me and keep me aloft. And this place, really, is just bearing me into those arms once more.
When the sky stops rattling us around and I hear the blink of the seatbelt sign I slowly open eyes sometimes stuck with tears and uncurl myself to once again wander back into the backwoods of Trollsburg or the backstreets of Tokyo, lured once again towards lights much brighter than my own faded bulb in that moment.
And when we finally land with that last little jolt on the ground, all of the tension I had pulled into myself feels released like a deep exhale. I depart that plane huddled in my sweatshirt and lugging my carry-on into the loud normalcy of travel that slowly coalesces around me like music. Reminding me, once again, that I am here.
