intro of a book

1. Venus was visible from my window from Denver to LAX and
I was overwhelmed with a sense of good fortune. A blanket of
clouds spread out below the plane, an endless glowing orange
gauze bespeaking the sprawl of Los Angeles below. We
dipped below the clouds and L.A lay in front of us. I saw
downtown and felt nostalgic. I lived here for eight years and
though I’d never move back, I still get excited whenever I see
it‘s skyline. “Los Angeles, give me some of you!”
I heard a girl behind me talking to the older couple
next to her. She was graduating from college soon and it
sounded like she was considering this the last of her youthful,
carefree trips; her parents told her to go for it while she can. I
thought about what I’d say if I were next to her, that she can
keep doing it. I was 34 and had a malfunctioning gut and I was
still doing it. You can travel around most of the world without
much money, you can meet amazing people everywhere, you
can have a great time exploring a city from a hand drawn map.
You can travel just because you can, there are planes and if
nothing else the sky reaches somewhere new. Don’t surrender
these things to growing up. But she sounded kind of
obnoxious, like a know it all. She was a business major. Yeah,
your youth is almost over.
But what about mine? Isn’t mine, too? Is it already?
Am I winding up a sad cartoon of who I was? I’ve tried to
examine the things that are assumed to be requisite for
becoming an adult -- the things you’re supposed to do and the
things you’re supposed to give up -- and disregard the parts I
disagree with or which don’t make sense to me, hoping that in
some oblique way I fumble towards my own definition of
adulthood. But am I kidding myself? Am I confusing staying
true to my youthful ideals with desperately clinging to my
youth? Sure there’s a qualitative difference between buying a
convertible and dating someone half your age and sleeping on
the couches of strangers in foreign countries and sneaking to
the top of railroad bridges to make out, but is the incentive the
same?
Was this my “Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” moment?