Albany Park lies beneath a number of flight-paths: trans-Atlantic traffic hisses, whispers, and sighs into O’Hare International Airport like thunder, like rolling boulders on a hill that isn’t there, and like the promise of the apocalypse. It’s possible to plot a map of airport schedules by the number of planes heading west, heading east, or holding in circular flight-paths, awaiting their allotted approach to one particular runway or another. The air traffic over Albany Park is familiar to me, not because I know Albany Park, but because I grew up beneath the flight-paths serving Midway Airport. I learned how to read the sounds of airplanes and spin narratives from them. I knew weather conditions based on the sounds of air sucked through turbines. I knew when turbine speeds were changing, when a plane banked, ascended, or descended. Once—long, long ago—I saw the very plane on which Prince Charles and Lady Diana flew to Chicago. They landed at Midway Airport and not O’Hare…their plane was a custom job that just so happened to fly overhead (not over my house, mind you) but over a shopping mall. I was in the parking lot. I saw an ugly jet: a slap-dash piece of aeronautic technology as graceful as a dim-witted bumblebee. That’s another story, however, and it isn’t exciting. I only realized that it was a royal plane when I saw it on the news…and I still wonder why personages such as royalty wouldn’t live up to their own standards and fly…well…their own private Concord or something equally impressive. Anyway, Albany Park lies beneath a number of flight-paths: trans-Atlantic traffic hisses and whispers, and sighs into O’Hare International Airport. It’s easy to tell the difference between the species of planes in flight. 777s have an impressive, almost melodic sound (odd, given that their engines are as wide as the fuselages of 727s…yep, you can put passenger seats [with isles in between] in those whoppers. 747s sound a bit tired…they wheeze, they sigh…they groan. Little bitty things with engines on their wings, or tucked beneath their tails like odd, aerodynamic testicles, tend to whistle and screech. As I listen to planes approaching, I wonder at the lives of any passengers and crew on board. Are any of them looking down to the ground as I am looking up? Do our eyes meet, though we’ll never know if they did or not? Do lovers fly on those planes, anxious to meet their beloved…waiting…as any beloved might, at Terminal Number 5—reserved, as it is, for international flights? What stories whisper, sigh, whistle and wheeze over Chicago, bound for O’Hare or for Midway? At some point, I may find out. I may tell a tale or two, but for now, I just wonder, and occasionally point my camera at a particularly impressive (or at least low-flying) hunk of aerodynamic metal. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all off to a great week.