PRE FLIGHT NOTES:
I’m getting nervous for the first time about this trip. Night before I leave. It’s warm at 11 p.m. in Berkeley. I’m feeling more attuned to everything I feel, all my senses alert in a slight adrenal tint.
Fractalized tribulations of recently vacated piss swim through the granular mass of wrinkled grey asphalt.
I feel cheated by myself before I have even left. In my head this whole time it’s been: The power, mystery and the community of THE EAST, and my own blundering unaware naiveté about the “adventure” of it all. Like I’m the first one to do this or something.
NEXT DAY: AIRPORT
Korean Air:
The smiling faces shining out on top of cloned uniforms of submissiveness. At 15 separate airline counters, a woman and her young, smiling trainee sat waiting to help. Continually present without regard for masses or lack thereof. 28 smiles waiting patiently to help all 7 people in line – a six person family wheeling three strollers through the snaking lines, and me.
The individual attention of the smiling faces – their job is service and they are here to serve you. Meanwhile the groups at the United counter make the US look like the overweight, gruff beauracracy we love. I’m happy to be leaving after all.
This is my time – the apprehension I felt lying awake last night has transformed into excitement. This is the window to the rest of my life.
AIRPLANE:
Everything plastic is satisfyingly smooth and clean and moves and latches and stops with perfectly exact Korean clicking noises.
STEWARDESSES:
10 beautiful women with names like H.J Lee and P. Mira and Y. R. Kim.
Ten identical uniforms: beige business suits with winged lapels and starched white utilitarian short sleeve button down shirts which hint at delicious woman curves beneath the outlined undershirt. And in my own bull-headedness I can only see identical white smiles and identical thin jawbones.
The hair is a uniform. A strangling tight bun, tugging at the eyebrows.
Only the ribbon in the hair sets them apart.
There is the big loopy white bow woman, who showed me to my seat. The blue, tight bow one who wears too much makeup. Pink bow with accompanying pink breast cancer ribbon pinned to her lapel, whose shirt I want to rip off and plant my face in.
The blue of the uniform is a muted but nonetheless metallic-shiny sub aqua seaforam blue. The blue of pleasant neutrality.
This plane is an airborne avenue of vacation shopping and waiting-on.
The cheap smile of the American service industry – you know, the eviscerating, wishing you had a dagger in your gut smile of the girl bringing you your chicken avocado salad – is here replaced by the head nod. A sort-of-bow for the 21stcentury. A quick bolt downward followed by an instant vertical realignment. Repeated every 4th or 7th or 10th word in absolute admiration of your ‘dominant’ role in the conversation.
HANOI – LANDING
Dirty, loud, lots of trash and plastic. But there seems to be a thriving young hipster class. New York’s generational influence knows no bounds.
For the first time in a long time I’m having trouble sleeping. I have no plan. This was the plan and now I’m here, doing rather than talking
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