Bodies and discombobulations
So my plane here was delayed 6 hours because someone had a cardiac arrest on flight coming in from Singapore. The airline told everyone the truth; consequently, most people were good about the delay. Of course, each of us could hear the penny drop, reminding us of our collective mortality but in a gentle way. Nothing fell out of the sky, nothing exploded mid-air; but for one person, something seized up in the small box-safe that held her heart.
Landed and lost
Every first time anywhere, my cognitive functions are disarmed. I look at new coins as if they were a mystery, unfathomable; I head out the door—any door—in completely the wrong direction. I have no compass; the sun cannot direct me for a few days.
But I am not a complete alien to myself. I can talk to and see my family back home via Skype, my eyes and voice known to them and theirs to me, no matter what else sags and strains with jet-lag. How strange when those glitches happen, when time stands still mid-sentence and my loves are frozen in time, whilst they are still thinking, breathing, gesticulating, in their own corner of the globe. And when the system reconnects, their sentence finishes, they finish the sentence. What has happened to time, in that moment? Where did it go?
c. Z Soboslay 2015.
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