We wait for trains and planes and opportunities to merge; for gates to be revealed and for ignominious Boarding Group 2 to be summoned. We stand by for an audience with a customer service rep, to plead a futile case, satisfying a human need for misfortune to be at least acknowledged, if not refunded. We bide time as ice is defrosted from windshields, wings and turkeys; and as cashiers ring up a 9 a.m. hot dog or an 11 p.m. doughnut (noshes to send sugary life force coursing through the weary, not actually counted toward daily food intake). We yearn for the line to move, for some in the line to give up and for the purpose of the line to reveal itself. And most urgently, we wait for the familiar stretch of sidewalk to slip into view as the final corner is rounded — for the holidays, nearly over, to begin.At all places where strangers are confined temporarily in too-close proximity, we stand, or sit, or rock in place. Our frantic clockward glances gradually harden into dead-eyed stares at nothing, until we resemble the subjects of Michelangelo’s vision of “The Last Judgment.” The fateful figures are depicted in the eternal instant before their destiny is revealed, but after the window for them to shape it has closed — the frustrations of waiting, continuing even after death, even in the nude. (“Absolutely Ridiculous wait times,” is one TripAdvisor user’s review of the Sistine Chapel.) In the lower-right corner of the fresco, damned souls are dragged bodily into hell, which is not ideal, and yet we cannot help think — four hours delayed at Kansas City International Airport, braving two separate security lines in an attempt to kill time at a Pizza Hut Express (that is closed) — isn’t there something to be said for having at least arrived at their destination? This is the wondrous magic of the holidays.