My Longest Day
Wednesday last week was the longest day I’ve ever lived. From midnight to midnight, my day lasted forty hours. Literally.
Tuesday night I hit the bed early, exhausted from a fortnight of wild adventures. Wednesday, I woke with the dawn, to a susurration of raindrops on all the surrounding rooftops. Breakfast was orange juice, water, a 600ml bottle of café au lait, and a crème brûlée sandwich. Japanese groceries are treasure troves of foods you have never imagined.
I showered, packed my purple suitcase, and gathered all the pieces of me into an approximate whole. Went around the corner to my brother and his wife’s AirBnB. Then we trundled through the rain to our bus stop, and caught the 10:26 to Kyoto Station. Which is a huge buzzing hive, like a high end mall, but also with trains. We found a quite Western restaurant, for ease and familiarity, and tucked into our final feast of the trip.
After lunch we hopped on the Haruka Express (the Hello Kitty train) to Kansai, Osaka’s airport. I flew Asiana Airlines, which I highly recommend, to Incheon, outside of Seoul. There I boarded OZ204, a big jet to bring me back home. We lifted off the Korean runway just after 9pm. It took 10 hours and 23 minutes to cross the widest ocean. Two meals bookended the flight, shades down all the way, so I caught six hours sleep.
We landed in LAX at 4pm, and a marvelous surprise fell out of the blue, into my lap. I had Phileas Fogged myself! In all my scheduling, I forgot the date line—so it was still April 3rd. My forty hour day. Nobody in LA expected me back for another 24 hours. I had lucked into a day with no responsibilities, just recuperation. Which I sorely needed, and snuggled into like a comforter.
My Hardest Year
This trip was the end, or in fact the midpoint, of a much longer journey. Fifteen years ago I broke into a thousand pieces. A single year brought most of the damage, my annus horribilis. In that year, I was fired from the best job I ever had, and dumped by a woman I should have married. Excruciating stories, which I’ll spare us both. While I was crawling through my misery, Papa died. Five moths later, Mom followed him. By then, Brecht was mere particles, pulverized across a wide blast radius.
My parents were both bound to die, eventually. I did find their timing gauche. The rest of that desolation, though, was just my own desserts. Karma, red in tooth and claw. I had a hard arrogance, a self-love strong enough to shut out reality, and that shell of fantasy needed to break before I could grow, to approach anything near adulthood. Break it surely did, and I with it. It would be a long time before I started to grow. At first I simply curled up in a fetal bubble, stoned out of my gourd.
For fifteen years, I have been mostly broken. Falling into a slow ferment, coming to see myself and others more clearly, and gradually knitting those thousand pieces together into a fresher self. Not a process I recommend to anyone. I should have simply grown up a couple of decades earlier, when it was due. But I was spoiled as a baby, and I learned to like it.
In my youth, I traveled far and wide. You can read about all that in my article before last. When I broke, I let that go. I had not left North America since Mom died, hadn’t even renewed my passport. I had learned helplessness, how to live in tunnels. These last couple of years have gone better; I am growing steadier, more like myself. Still, it was a long, arduous lift to get to the point where I flew to Korea—even for my own godson’s wedding. A month before that flight, I wasn’t sure I would make it there. Now, of course, I am so glad, so deeply thrilled, that I got it together. For I have come back larger than I was before, albeit battered.
My Best Vacation
I have so much to tell you about my marvelous trip. And I will, in due time. I’ll post a couple of travelogs in months to come. For now, I’ll consider quickly a couple of deeper themes, about what this trip meant to me.
Japanese people, in my recent experience, are so kind. Koreans are exceptionally kind and also efficient, which seem to me almost contradictory impulses. Together they make us Americans look like barbarians, so loud selfish and grasping. I enjoy our fiery individualism, and this culture suits me better. But it was heartening to go somewhere where everyone recognized that we’re all on the same team, working first for our common good.
Kyoto was exploding last week with cherry blossoms, and consequently tourists, everywhere. Kyoto has two cities inside it. Downtown, and in many other parts, there are a dizzying diversity of modern buildings, architectural wonders; chic department stores, cars, and Kyotans, all shiny and new. But then you step off the boulevards and back a few centuries, into wooden buildings for miles on end, with a shrine on every third block. The cherry trees blossomed brighter and pinker with each passing day. Our days were spent swimming in beauty.
If you must spend a fortnight in the Far East (which you must, and I pray that you do), do it with people you love. For Alexander and Dabin’s wedding in Incheon, we were a dozen family members, from all over the States. The next week in Kyoto, there were still six of us. Several of my closest friends on this earth. Between all our feasting, adventures, long walks (50+ miles in a fortnight), surprises, and deep warm loving, I came back to California feeling like spring is coursing in my veins, and the sun in heaven is shining on all these fresh green possibilities before me. If I captured a few drops of that wonder in this Bookchat, and shared it with you all, then that’s my job well done.
Books At Last
Welcome to Bookchat! Where you can talk about anything; books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
I have certainly talked about anything so far—anything but books. Since I am here hosting a Bookchat, it does seem right and proper that I should mention some books in it too. So here they are, the books I have read so far in 2024.
I Am Charlotte Simmons — Tom Wolfe. A book full of undergrads, basketball players, sororities, cliques, gossip, drinking, drugs and sex. Cartoonish, kind of fun for a beach read, with some depth and insight in places.
I Feel Bad About My Neck — Nora Ephron. Witty essays by the writer of When Harry Met Sally, and the director of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. Charming and droll. Sometimes wise.
My Sister, The Serial Killer — Oyinkan Braithwaite. A lean and sparkling thriller, in which our narrator keeps cleaning up the messes in her gorgeous sister’s wake, whom she nevertheless loves. My favorite, of all these.
Squeeze Me — Carl Hiaasen. Tara kept saying Hiaasen’s the bomb, and she was right. This one has Trump and Mar-a-Lago in it. If you’re tired of crying about him, and would rather laugh at him, try this.
High Fidelity — Nick Hornby. I knew I’d like this: I enjoyed the movie, and all of its themes and characters are right up my alley. Made me want to see the movie again.
The Upanishads; well, a selection of them. Just started, but I’m loving them so far.
Write Your Own Bookchat, Please. Any Wednesday in April, May or June (or . . .).
This is our first Bookchat in a while because, as you can see, I’ve been busy. If you have some Bookish theme, or a book you’d like to write about, please comment below or kosmail me to work out a good Wednesday for you to host your Bookchat. Thank you also to all the wonderful Readers and Book Lovers who have been writing Bookchats for years now; and especially to cfk, who invented these things years ago (though she also called hers Bookflurries).
Love to you all, happy spring, read more books, and fly to Asia when you have the chance.
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