Forward: Special

"You know that feeling you get when you get on the plane, and it starts flying up -- that time after you take off but before you reach a constant height, altitude? I love that feeling, I think it's so cool. But I never get to feel it, never get to experience it, because I always fall asleep before the plane levels out."

That's how I knew she was special.

As for me, no amount of Nyquil can put me to sleep, let alone within the first five minutes of take-off.

1` Steps >>

1` Steps and Everything But Me

Everywhere I step, my surroundings change just one degree. A shifting ray of light, a swelling shadow, a new angle, new perspective; all when I step to the left or to the right or straight or reverse, or maybe even diagonally if I feel so inclined.

So it's no small wonder that when I take many steps -- so many steps, in fact, that I have to board planes and trains and cars and buses to make those steps -- the one degree of change transforms into enumerable degrees, circling every 360 but still arriving at some wholly novel point. When I found myself restlessly shifting in an uncomfortable economy-class seat, headed to Narita Airport, Tokyo from the familiar terminals of JFK Airport, New York, I felt the degrees growing and shifting, traveling not merely along the dotted lines of a planned circle, but expanding and contracting with the breath of each step, the penetration of each cloud, and the idle reflections of each ripple on the Pacific.

The degrees became wholly different. Not simply from 20 to 200, but from number to symbol, from letter to arithmetic. The degrees could no longer be called degrees, their very definition trodden by each step, contorted like pavement that has suffered under the unbearable weight of heavyset tourists for years. Imagine each step it takes to get from New York to Tokyo stomping on a single piece of pavement. Eventually only traces of pavement remain, and the steps have no choice but to stomp on the resilient earth. Multiply that thought by that same amount of steps, and that's how much the degrees mutated.

When I took the last step and landed on the carpeted turf of a foreign airport, when the degrees finally finished their slow and painful coagulation, I felt entire concepts around me shatter. Now that degrees were no longer degrees, words stopped being words, numbers changed into organisms, animals were drained of blood and became inanimate. It was as though someone took the floor of my home and turned the entire thing into a playpen, complete with colorful plastic balls that were impossible to tread. I moved slowly through a familiar but unexpected jungle.

Of course, I'm not a liar, but I exaggerate. I still stood fairly balanced on strong turf, I still thought in words and still computed in numbers, still assumed animals to have hearts and minds and cute little wagging tails.

2` Still 6'1" >>

2` Still 6'1"

Even after the once familiar concept of degrees lay trampled beneath my feet, I was still unchanged. All around me highrises erupted, eyes narrowed, complexions darkened, hairs straightened. The place was different. But I was still the same pasty white, the same blonde, standing at a consistent and resilient 6'1", not bent like the pavement that suffered through my countless steps. No matter how much the natives butchered my name, it was still Anton, or at least some variant. The similarity between Anton and Ahn-tohn brought a sobering consistency to the whole situation.

Whatever I was supposed to find in Tokyo, I had to do it of my own accord. The mutated degrees were not willing to do it for me. Change would be wholly internal, if it were to be at all. I took a look at the Japanese signs surrounding me, with English subtitles under almost half. The combination of not being able to understand the incomprehensible scribble-like images, and actually understanding the routine English alphabet only served to reinforce the immutability of my being. My body was stuck with my mind, inseparable regardless of the location. A body stuck in (or on?) a mind, so to speak.

I was there to visit the girl I love. Meet the family for the first time, make a summary judgment of Tokyo in particular and Japan in general, and take a return flight a week later. I extended my ticket for several days after my scheduled return. It didn't cost much, as though something wanted me to stay. As though anyone cared, I thought. Only I could be so selfish to assume that anyone, anything, was at all interested in where I was or what I was doing. As though the world wasn't spinning without me. I was just lucky Gravity still remembered me. Then again, "remembered" isn't exactly the word I was considering at the time. I was lucky that Gravity hadn't singled me out in any way, that I was still a faceless nobody to the world of nature.

Relieved that I was still in good standing with Gravity, I walked with a renewed confidence to baggage claim. If omniscient Gravity didn't care, what right did anyone else have to give a damn? So I was different from everyone else; I still did not matter. So my steps felt sure and steadfast, my direction certain despite the fact that I could not understand half the signs that pointed to where I was going. As I strolled along, I felt my eyes narrow, my hair darken, my frame shrink. I felt my complexion change a hardly noticeable hue, I felt myself meshing into the crowds and the streets. I saw myself on the streets of Shibuya, undistinguishable from the rest of the suit-wearing mobs. I was on the streets of Akasaka, the alleys of Shibuya, the plaza at Roppongi Hills. And I was just like everyone else.

I took a detour and stopped at the bathroom. I didn't stop at a urinal or stall, but went straight to a mirror and stared at the reflection, or what should have been the reflection. But what I saw was not who I imagined. That man was 6'1", blonde, blue-eyed. I even noticed the minute change in skin color that I knew had become mine. The man facing me could not have been a reflection. I could not have been this abnormal thing, this out-of-place barbarian. This was not me, I was sure. So I shrugged, as did the man before me, and walked out of the bathroom. What was that, I thought? I forgot what I looked like, what the man in the mirror looked like. In my mind, my face disappeared. I was a blank, a freshly scrubbed canvas. It was up to me to fill the white with something of value, something worth selling. I wasn't on sale, but I would paint as though I was preparing the art gallery that would represent my life's accomplishments. And it had to be done in ten days.

"What was that?," I thought.

3` What Was That? >>

3` "What was that?"

As I meandered toward the buses stationed at the outer Narita gate, thoughts twirled and jived in the folds of my brain to an audience that was reluctant to watch. Like printing personal currency, the dance number taking place in my head was a completely useless process with an even more useless result. After several hundred meters of distracted walking, I realized that my frolicking thoughts were crowding out the Tokyo that I'd come to see. After all, even if it was an airport, I figured I'd better take in as much of the place as I could.

I told the hyper dancers up top to quit their mind-numbing rehearsals and focused all my attention on the ground, the ceiling, the windows and, of course, the people.

You could tell this was an international airport. Its many veins and arteries were pumping with incongruous crowds of nationalities and ethnicities, bespeckled with faces that seemed to exist as living confirmations of the much touted proverb "everybody's different." My pace grinded nearly to a halt as I felt my visage morph to fit the many faces that floated in and out of my field of vision. I had never realized that I was so competent a metamorpher. Calvin & Hobbes' Transmogrifier through and through.

I felt the contours of my face. Unchanged. They must morph only when I don't pay attention, I mused. But I must be changing. How could I not be?

After another few hundred meters, which seemed like far less because of those affable escalator-type walkways that line the massive hallways of most airports, I reached the gate marked “Exit.” Well, not that I could understand what was written, but I could tell by the picture – and as such, a very symbolic exit. Try as I may, I could not convince myself that this was merely one more step in the pavement-shattering trek on which I'd embarked, that I was merely planting another degree-bending foot forward. This was surely a leap; or maybe a step over the realistically nonexistent border between two countries that are on opposite ends of the earth -- an environmental shift that even the least observant of walkers would be blind, deaf and dumb not to notice.

The airport, and all that it stood for, dissolved behind me. With a mere few inches of movement, my entire several-hundred meter walk was erased from existence. The ancient proverb I had recollected earlier was suddenly engulfed by a massive wave and dragged out to sea to idle about until I would return ten days later. My face stopped transforming, but not because it was incapable but because it could find nothing new to mimic. The dancers up top finally stopped dancing somewhere in a distant stage. The world suddenly shrunk, the heterogeneous shake that it once was suddenly congealed into pure and solid milk, and I was peering directly into it, thirsty but restricted. No matter how much my visage tried to perfect its imitation of the milk, I was still an orange peel floating on its surface. Not appetizing, to say the least. Without warning, my face went blank again. Suddenly, I felt alone again. An orange peel in milk. But still, I felt the liquid seeping into me as I began to sink; maybe I wasn’t so alone, after all.

4` A Cold Door >>

4` A Cold Door

The automatic doors slid open -- coldly, almost beguilingly. "What am I doing here?" she thought.

Elena's pale head, and the thin, well-sculpted rest of her, elegantly fidgeted to and fro in the stylishly minimalist lobby of the Park Hyatt of bustling Shinjuku. It was a beautiful place to match a purportedly beautiful occassion. But now that the splendid hour, or belated third hour, had arrived, the beauty was chafed and mildly beaten.

She'd just finished work and he was three hours late. It had been over three months since they'd seen each other, and she was hardly in the mood for any kind of awkward embrace. Should she be loud like he's used to, or quiet like he knows she can be? Should she run up to him and hug him until he chokes enough to find the nerves to request she back off? Should she give him a peck on the cheek? How long should she hold the peck? What's he going to do if she holds it for ten seconds? The questions kept spontaneously usurping one another, and she was in no mood at all to watch their militant games -- let alone answer them. She had digested these same questions over and over again for the past week, and now that they needed answers, she found them floating somewhere in oblivion, clear and crisp and decidedly untouchable. Like the sun or the moon, the questions were there, but there was nothing she could do about them. There were not even potential answers fighting amidst the questions. It was simply sky up in her head, cloudy and stormy and completely and wholly invariable.

So instead of fishing for answers somewhere beneath that dark sky, she decided to float in her nondescript boat. Back pushed firmly against a beautiful but uncomfortable minimalist chair, she narrowed her eyes until, eventually, whatever dim light existed in the lobby disappeared. It was a comfortable boat she was in, and a gentle lake breeze brushed soothingly past her face. No, no thoughts were necessary now. This was natural-bred thoughtlessness. That is, until she looked at the pool of water on which the boat kept afloat, her reflection glaring fixedly at her sky-blue eyes.

She looked within her fair eyes, over her wavering emotions toward him, and hated herself for them. "His trip is expensive, his heart steady. I have no right to be so whimsical, to act the part of this stupid capricious girl. I'm tired, but at least I didn't spend twenty-four hours to see him." And yet, all the while, she was thinking how utterly inconvenient the entire situation was -- tonight, anyway. Why couldn't he pick a day when she was less tired, why couldn't the flight be delayed 'till a weekend? Now she'll have to entertain him, too. "Damn him!" And, having opened her eyes and jumped to her feet in indignation, the climax of her internal war passed. She slumped back into the uncomfortable seat, only to find herself once again in a comfortable boat. She was floating in a lake of Elena, under a weather-torn sky. She was floating. The dim light disappeared altogether. Floating. Floa...

5` A Warm Door >>

5` A Warm Door

The automatic doors slid open -- warmly, almost congenially. I imagined an endearing, smiling porter devoting his undivided attention to the single task of opening a manual hotel door. A personal welcome exclusively for me. But there was no denying it, the glass was untouched (it did not even possess a handle) and the porter was nothing more than a well-hidden sensor.

I fumbled into the lobby and noticed her jet-black hair resting on a bare and frail shoulder, elegant as always. She was motionless, sitting on an obviously uncomfortable seat that could hardly have been created for that purpose. A gentle snore teased me, approaching and receding effortlessly. The playful sound resounded in my ear, then faded into silence, and then suddenly appeared again. A funny, capricious game.

I smiled at the thought of seeing her like this for the first time in what seemed like ages. An anxious meeting quelled by her fatigue. But what should I do? Surely I couldn't wake her in any mediocre way.

So I took a seat opposite her and let my mind wander, joining the gentle snoring's mid-afternoon stroll and, hand in hand, we searched for a solution to my predicament. As we walked, leaves spiraled delicately before us, eventually landing like tired laborers on moist pavement. A meager sun, made even less potent by the branches that hovered overhead, massaged us. We walked in silence as I wondered whether or not I knew what she was thinking. I was once confident; but it had been a long time.

Memory shot like adrenaline through my veins. The street was narrow, the air cool, the leaves a fading yellow. The day was almost a year gone now, and yet the chill crawling on my blushing cheeks and nose was as comfortably real as ever. We were walking hand in hand. We knew what each was thinking then. And no gentle snores echoed through the air.

"Where do you think we'll be a year from now? Four years from now?"

"I don't know," I whispered.

"Together?"

"I don't know." It was an honest answer. Before then the thought had been untouched territory, unkempt and neglected. A purgatory we had never entered. We thought about it, I was sure, but our thoughts never materialized into words. The entire concept of the future, together or not, was taken as some pre-determined fate. Our common affection could become uncommon with the snap of destiny's fingers.

We walked on in silence, hands gripping tighter than before.

Our thoughts mingled between us, clutching each other and whispering in unison. "I hope destiny will be good to us," they murmured. "I hope I am always happy with you."

When we had reached her home, we kissed and parted. I remember that kiss. It was shockingly determined, deliberately long and enduring. I felt as though we were single-handedly fighting the forces of destiny. Whatever plans it had in store for us were to be scrapped and replaced by ours, our affection constant regardless of nature's mind-bending fickleness. I felt a paradox rush through us, the desire for a forced future love based upon a current natural one.

Now it was almost a year later, only a year later. And already I didn't know what she was thinking. Already I wasn't sure how she felt, waiting for me in Tokyo. Was she even waiting for me?