Travelling Without Moving?

     It seems appropriate that I'm reading The Time Traveller's Wife at the same time that I am locked in this seemingly endless time-locked state of being in transit. It's disorienting, and although in the book each chapter begins with the respective ages of the main characters,' it still causes a sense of confusion.

     Being in a plane(s) for many, many hours has a somewhat similar effect. It's considerably more acute than the result of not being sure of the age/familiarity with each other of some fictional literary characters, but it's essentially the same. I feel like I've been existing "out of time" for the past 12?15?26? hours. Our travel plans have not worked out exactly as planned - after being unaware of a schedule change in the first flight of our trek, we were given a couple options of how to make it to Thailand, and the one we chose has resulted in a nifty little detour to South Korea. Unfortunately, we're just seeing the tarmac at the airport, but I did see a couple people walking around out there with glow sticks, and they were most definitely shorter than me, so I'm somewhat satisfied that I've had an authentic South Korean experience. North Korea seems considerably more interesting, what with its being the birthplace of the greatest amateur golfer of all time, its cults-of-personality supreme leaders, the sexist man of the year and its penis fish. Although I think South Korea might have those too. But to be able to say that I hung out (sort of, not really) with Kim Jon-Un and (by proxy of his being buddies with the supreme leader) Dennis "The Worm" Rodman would pretty much knock the socks off of anyone I met for the next 17 months. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise, otherwise I might be on the hock for a lot of socks. And with fall/winter falling into that 17 month slot twice, that's a hell of a lot of smart wool.

     Living in a time warp for what has become an entire day is rather unsettling. I'm about 85% certain that due to travelling over the international date line, we skipped the 30th of July. Not that I'm particularly attached to the penultimate day of the 7th month, but the whole idea of missing an entire day seems entirely gluttonous. I suppose there are worse ways to spend a day, but sitting in a flying chair over the ocean isn't my first choice of day long activity. It's not quite a day wasted, but it's definitely not a day seized. I didn't carpe my diem, although I did watch Scarface, which could be interpreted as a bit of a cautionary tale in going a tad overboard in seizing one's day by the genitals and squeezing for you've got - I don't want some eerily calm dude with a sawed-off, climbing the downspout, jumping over the rail and walking up slowly (and epic movie villain dramatic fashion) behind me and capping my ass, resulting in a somewhat Christ-like dive off the balcony and into the in-house fountain. Maybe it's more of a "don't-buy-an-indoor-fountain" type cautionary tale - that sort of blatant bandying around of one's wealth is sure to piss off the commoners. Especially the coke-slinging commoners.

       But even though I'm no Tony Montoya and I'm not throwing cash out the emergency exit and making it rain (there was a severe storm, of the non-monetary sort, in Beijing, which is why we were forced to detour) on the fine people of Seoul, I do feel somewhat at least, like a white, entitled, fat, overfed, under-informed, ignorant Westerner. Travel IS expensive. It IS (by plane at least) ecologically irresponsible. And it can be done for some very wrong and self-serving reasons. I don't think that one needs necessarily to be going to another country with the explicit purpose of improving others' lives, in fact I'm pretty sure that's what the crusaders had in mind, but I strongly believe that self-improvement should be a primary focus. So I'm working on it. So far, I've learned patience. And to appreciate the charm of being served Mr. Noodles at 2 in the morning on a flight to Beijing, on which Andrea and I were 2 of I'm pretty sure 5 Caucasians. It's a good start.