On The Plane to Düsseldorf
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” —- Oscar Wilde
There seemed to be some kind of unwritten rule in American airport terminals that you have to read American thrillers about cults and murders and political assignations as a symbol of patriotism if you are not reading newspaper, magazine or dozing off to sleep. So I have to admit fairy tales of Oscar Wilde was a fairly “wild choice”, especially the fairy tales were children stories (though not written “for” children). Not exactly the type that you want to be seen reading by other intelligent fellows. But for some reasons I have been having trouble getting hold of it in Cincinnati’s various bookstores and was delighted to find it in the bookstore in the Dayton airport, right above a couple condensed classics — I love paperback books with super small fonts. So with Oscar Wilde’s complete collection of fairy tales and Jule Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon in hand, I boarded Delta flight 24 from Atlanta International Airport to Düsseldorf, Germany on Saturday afternoon.
Earlier in the day all the way from Dayton to Atlanta, I have been receiving live update from my friends about various big football games going on that day. The same night Cincinnati Bearcats was gonna play UPitt’s Panthers. I was being grouchy at the prospect of missing the deciding game for the champion of the Big East Conference and couldn’t focus on the book. When the captain made a take off announcement I reluctantly turned off my cell phone which inbox was jammed with sms sent to me about the OSU-Michigan game more diligently than Sprint’s NFL play-by-play mobile update (not that I have ever subscribed it — I’m not THAT fanatic) and try to “look forward” to my 8 hours flight. It’s way better than the 14 hrs flight going back to Hong Kong anyway. I should be glad.
Moreover, this really good looking dude was sitting next to me. (Oh get over it. I cannot help it if I like to look at things that are pretty.)
You have heard that it happens. You have seen it in movies, and you might have read about it. But the likelihood of being randomly assigned to a seat next to a person whose personality, age, sexual orientation and language ability is in the ballpark of your ideal flying neighbor and is in a good enough mood to chat with you on this particular day in this particular hour on this particular confined “cage-like” environment with a bunch of other imprisoned humans (not especially conducive to free-flowing of ideas) is, I’d say, smaller than the likelihood of me marrying Hugh Jackman.
We chatted all through the flight, except for the few hours I blacked out after the meal. And as soon as I woke up he said “Good morning” to me. If I could only extend my two numb legs stuck between the tiny spaces under the inclined seat of the guy in front of me, I would have thought I was in heaven in bed with him. (Fantasizing is not a crime.)
Then he told me the purpose of his trip. What a hectic life. I shared my life story with him too when he asked me why I’m flying to Germany, told him about seeing Denis after a year and a half and looking for a job and all. And he immediately recognized how important this trip would be for me.
“Don’t you miss home?” He asked.
“Of course I do. But then I am not the only one who’s living far away from home. If other people can handle it, I can handle it.” I replied.
“So this is going to be life changing for you.” He said.
“Yes. But the real life changing event happened the moment I met him two and a half years ago.” I could not conceal the smile on my face when I said so.
And as we sat there, though looking at each other, what we saw was decidingly not the person in front of our eyes, but the loved ones in our minds whose memories were conjured by similarities of certain elements ,from personalities or looks, between what’s visible and what’s not.
In travel you meet a lot of people. Some you meet too early and some you meet too late. Those we met at the wrong times became friends; those we met at the right time became our destiny. Although we do not control the comings and goings of people around us, we do have the ability to control ours. Sometimes it means flying 3 times in a week just to catch a quick breakfast with your spouse; sometimes it means traveling 4000 miles to see that person again. For trust and loyalty, for relationships and marriages, for lovers and families, people will do many crazy things.
The overhead TV changed movie towards the end of our flight and he mentioned how sucky the new “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was —- an ill adapted version of Jule Verne’s famous novel. I was coincidentally reading another Jule Verne’s book as I have mentioned earlier, “From the Earth to the Moon”.
He was reading a book too before we struck up the conversation and it turned out to be Pascal Mercier “Night Train to Lisabon”. I have not read it but have heard of its amazing reviews here and there. The story began with a dull 57 year old Swiss professor who quit his job after meeting a Portuguese woman in the rain to seek the truth about a man’s murder under the Fascist period.
I’m a sucker for books like that too, stories that contained protagonists whose lives, although begun in a dull and dreary fashion turned out in to something much grander than one could possibly imagine, and possess the same fundamental human yearning to get out of the good old status-quo, break rules and run away from all the promises and responsibilities that bounded us for so long in our lives. I remember I read “Oracle Night” when I went to Singapore alone couple years ago; “Norwegian Wood” on another flight; and I read “The Razor Edge” and The Moon and Six Pence” by WSM when I went to New York. So when a fellow traveler read a book like that, I know exactly what he was thinking.
This guy and I, we turned out to have more than we thought in common. —- We are both sentimentalists; Or at least that’s what I want to believe.
I know I romanticize things way too much. Way too much. Kinda like Oscar Wilde.
But all sentimentalist should know what happened to people who lavishes and indulges in love and proses and impractical thoughts like Oscar Wilde in the end.
It’s interesting how much you can learn about yourself through analysing other people.