Flying thoughts Vol 1

May 2005

I took the photo of my empty coffee mug while waiting for the flight to Siem Reap amidst the hustle bustle of old Korean excursionists, poker-faced Japanese businessmen and urban techies in Phom Penh. If I die and become a coffee cup at the airport in my next life, I’d roll myself over with that cinematic slow motion. Of course, I’d pick the right sentimental idiot who’d be so dam sad he’d decide to pay for he broken coffee cup and put the pieces together in a collage. Then I’d be what I always wanted myself to be – a wall décor! hahahah
Funny how, in being alone for hours at the airport, I can almost hear the demons in my head pushing the clouds of indecision, and everything becomes sunny clear. I would travel the world over if only for being stuck in at least 2 airports in one flight, the longer waiting hour, the better. And I am not being sarcastic here. I like it especially when I get first to the boarding gate and everything is so quiet – the carpet sucks the footsteps, the whooshing of planes buffered by the walls – nothing but the bored flipping of expensive glossy magazine pages by estranged passengers, each silently swallowing their nervous anticipation. Well, there are those who needlessly fumble with their cellphones, whispering agitated goodbyes.

My imagination is a sucker for story lines, I have loads of stories running through my mind and if you combine all the hours spent waiting at airports, I could come up with 2 volumes of The Flying Thoughts, which, after a while even intensifies my fear that I have forgotten something in my absorption to different plots. Am I getting insane? I guess so…

I remember the 2-year old French “feeding bottles” (times two) competing for my attention in one of those flights. The lovers beside me abandoned their seats to some private world and the two gray-green-eyed kiddos joyfully took their turns amusing me with their mirrored playfulness. The other one (only called Moppet) , obviously being “more matured than her twin, Emma, sat beside me for almost the entire trip to Hongkong.

Have I been mommyfied? (Kundera’s term is daddyfied) The flight was long enough for me to teach them how to juggle with their seatbelts for hours and play with utter abandon, unmindful of the other passengers. There’s that serene expression in kids’ face that I really like. Sometimes, all I have to do is hold hands with kids and things seem to be less complicated. I remember kate telling me she cried one time she went to church and a child of about 4 or 5 offered her hands in singing the Lord’s Prayer. Why is it that when we get old things become more complicated? I never seem to answer this question properly.

I agree with you, traveling in itself is an awareness building and enlightening experience. Aside from meeting old incorrigible Koreans and kids who were taught by their parents that life is a curse-ible experience (I later on learned from kate that the words being shouted alternately was not what the father claimed it to be, it was some sort of a bad word, in French), there is that self affirmation that I can always revert to my former self of being a loner or introvert, whichever is lesser in intensity and more flexible.