thoughtjunkie

Shock isn't sudden. Not this kind, anyway. This kind slithers in, slips from periphery to focus, into the flesh of the place. It's an orchestra tilting into alignment around a single pure Clarinet's A, the moment when the blur of motes form the words on the highway sign: Chicago O'Hare Next Exit.

You get on the bus and swelter. The ceiling boasts Air Conditioning next to every pair of airplane-nozzeled fans, but you don't believe it. The bus isn't on yet, because the driver is busy feeding it luggage. So you drop your head back on the teal, swirl-patterned vinyl headrest and you dream of bathing in more than your own sweat. Then, eventually, the bus starts. The AC kicks on (not a lie!) and the air smells bookstore-stale. You fake conversations with the other travelers inbetween three minute naps.

It's little things at first-- how long the dotted white streetlines are, how the snap-together plastic barricades are blocky and crenelated, how the police officers flap white gloves at traffic and walk in unison. Then the larger things enter your field of vision: 25 exact replica apartment buildings (black steel balconies and sprayed on stucco exteriors). Brand names you don't recognize. How aggressively the bus ignores the lanes.

There are the obvious things of course-- the periodic refrain, "I can't believe we're in Korea!" from various voices all around; the sameness in hair color and height; and of course, the sudden onset of illiteracy.

When you arrive, you want nothing more than to fall asleep, but you can't. You can't because it's 8:50 am, and you have to get On Schedule. You're off, you lost a day, and your legs ache and your back spasms, but you're not On Schedule and you need to be On Schedule. So you stay up and take walks, slow and aimless. You work on getting money changed but for some inexplicable reason need your passport to do so. It's day 1, but you worry about being too insular.

But then again, you've written something for the fist time in months. So, you know, there is that.