We’re 42,000 feet up in the sky, and I have to say, despite having OD’ed on heroin once, this is the highest I’ve ever been.
My only memory of this flight, back when I was eight–during the 90’s–was a layover in Alaska. Firstly, because I’d never been to Alaska. I’d never been to Korea either–not at that point, en route, to the mother of kimchi–nor in my imagination. I didn’t wonder at Korea so much as that stuffed grizzly bear in front of me, standing on its hind legs, in some abandoned hall in that Alaskan airport, where outside something was probably getting harpooned to death, and I just stood there in awe, staring at the towering beast. Why is this my clearest memory of that journey? Probably because they didn’t have in-flight movies back then. Who knows what the fuck we did for fourteen hours?
Now in the belly of this soaring 747, sky blue, like the uniforms of these tall, beautiful goddesses in sensible pumps. Hair tied up in tight buns, some of them wearing those triangular little hats. I want to say that I’m in love, but it’s hard to tell with which one. First I see lips, smiling and the white teeth mesmerizing me into the acceptance of orange juice. Do I even want this? Sip.
A slight bow. Gam-sahm-ni-da.
Few words I know. Now scribbling, furiously imagining the one line I slip, the eye I give, a wink and a business card. Call me when you get off the plane.
“Which one? Me? Or her?” she’ll ask.
Befuddled, I won’t know who. Whichever one of you likes me.
More orange juice.
Powder blue.
Pointed light above me, we glide through dark clouds, somewhere in the ionosphere maybe. Where radio signals send us back to earth, someday, somewhere, a slow descent over bodies, the shattering of a frozen face, ripples and then liquid, plunge.
Scribbling in this diary.
What day is it?
I have no idea. Soon we’ll be a day ahead. I’ll know everything, all the time, before the rest of them do.
Will I ever go back to you, reporting what I saw just twelve hours at the front when the sun dawned, and my eyes blazed with prophesy?
Somewhere, indecently, someone has farted. There’s no mistaking it, even with the ubiquitous odor of feet.
It was a good time to leave, I finally write, as if admitting the truth to myself, these pages, whoever this is for to one day read, the details of my harrowing escape.
They forced me to watch movies–in subtitles.
The picture that’s on now–thank you darling, yes another orange juice, yes–is some nostalgia flick. A handsome guy (whose name I later learn is Lee Byung Hun) is stuck in some country fart town, or at least that’s what I gather. I can’t understand the dialogue, and the screen is too far away for me to read the subtitles, and I’m not really paying attention, sort of drifting in and out. But there’s this one scene where he’s riding a bicycle, and this girl’s holding him around his middle from the back, and they’re just having this great old time. It’s a little corny, but it’s sweet, and this is what Koreans do best. There’s this sense that we’re still stuck there, some time ago, when the world froze, because for them–or it seems this way to me at least–there was some bomb that exploded, back then when the country split in two, like some traumatic moment that they can’t really get out of, cycling in and out of, era by era, changing hair and fashions, but their memories are still stuck there, wondering where their brothers went, and how it all happened.
In the movie, Lee Byung Hun’s character–never really figured out anyone’s name, let alone the plot–was in that little village, and they were all gathered around the one TV set within miles, watching a rocket launching off into space, because it took place in the 60’s or something, and they were all so excited, and there was something that I felt, that I couldn’t understand, like someone had taken my life from me.
I started crying a little, like tearing up, and one of the stewardesses just comes out of nowhere and slips me a tissue, as if anticipating my every need. In the middle of service and all, because at this point they’re getting ready to snap the lights back on and give everyone their breakfast, because there’s about six hours left or something. I don’t know. We’re in the middle of the air, and everything is frozen and I don’t know where I am, and I don’t even care.
I wipe the tears from my eyes, and I think about that time, some time before this one, maybe my parents’ time, though they never talk about it–that or themselves, or anything–and I think about the past that I never knew, and the one that I’m leaving behind, and wonder if I’ll ever tell anyone, my future children or anything, about all I did, and I look at the journal, paper curling a little because of the tear drop that fell there, on the recycled paper.
The stewardesses are beautiful. You never learn their names. You never learn the names of the characters in the movies. You just watch them remember things you don’t know about, in scenes that feel like deja vu, and maybe there’s something to that, you know? Maybe you never really were born, or maybe you died in the midst of some explosion, and everything else was a dream.
You were born someplace you don’t even remember, and you go back to some place that somehow you all came from.
But you don’t know anything about it, and all you know is that there’s too much time, and it doesn’t even move, but some beautiful angel in powder blue keeps handing you orange juice.