Pockets of Mexico, Diapers of Poop

Friday, February 03, 2012

After subjecting myself to a very long horror film* and munching on Bibimbap (are you sure we’re not landing at Incheon?) I looked out the window and realized I could see illuminated pockets of life over who knows where in Mexico. I was struck with the poetic thought that at all hours of every day in every corner of Earth, there are people whose lives I will never know of or even begin to understand, and flying over them only made them seem that much smaller and elusive, but still I wonder what they do and how they live…And then I began to wonder how all of you were living, but with no way to check up on that, I pulled out the numerous photos of all of us “living” and sobbed softly in my corner seat as my Brazilian seatmate slumbered softly to the sounds of John Mayer. It’s starting to feel a little less like some vacation I’m going on for a week, but it still hasn’t hit yet. But the wave of poop certainly had. Brazilian babies are cooking up something fierce in there, and for the next 2 hours the smell wafted in my direction. And suddenly my moment of reflection turned into an episode of Barney gone horribly wrong. Head aching, eyes straining, nose closing and heart breaking, I sleep.

I must be getting old if an 11 hour flight goes by quickly. I feel as though I did nothing but sit there, terrified, excited, sad, ecstatic, confused, confident, gutless, strong, weak—everything. It wasn’t until I saw the rolling hills into Sao Paulo that I realized holy fucking shit I am in South America. This is real. It hit me as though I’d been free falling from 30,000 feet and finally hit the ground in one gigantic smack.

I’ve never had an international connection before so I was a little terrified that I’d have to go through customs then do the whole thing over again and absolutely did not want to deal with the issue of my not having a visa (yet) in Portuguese or Spanish. But I had to do no such thing, as there was an international connection gate right as I walked out of my flight. From there I searched frantically for LAN flight 6464 departing at 2:20. It wasn’t there. There was a TAM flight departing at 2:20…but they were different numbers…could that be it?? I panicked, but saw a help desk and tried to keep calm despite the humidity and the fact that I have never felt this alone. Apparently LAN is TAM and the flight number is different. Oh, yeah, well, OK, that makes sense (Orbitz, you saved me a lot of money, but what the hell is that?!). And now I wait at a bus terminal that will take me to my flight, but I have this unshakable fear that maybe I’m not in the right place. I know I probably am, but what if I’m not? I look frazzled as I try to pretend I’m not sweating, that I hadn’t sobbed lightly through the entire flight and that I’m not asking myself just what in the hell am I doing here?

*Technically ‘Like Crazy’ would be categorized as a romantic drama, but given that the story somewhat parallels my life, it was a little terrifying.