flying

my mind is blown by air travel. and beyond just looking out the window, which by itself is just amazing (amazing!). flying is in some ways so easy, too easy. the fact that you can just buy a ticket and end up nearly anywhere with an airport in under about 30 hours, is so unbelievable. but the relative ease of flying is in no way a good reflection of the much more difficult social, political, cultural, climatic, geographical changes associated with traveling or covering such huge distances, much too little time to accommodate the cavernous culture shock or deal with the political differences between different places (having to get visas, etc.). i still find it hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago i started out in india, transferred planes in qatar, flew up the coast of saudi arabia, over kuwait and baghdad, crossed kurdistan (nostalgia for eastern turkey aww), the black sea, ukraine, russia before heading for the more familiar white north atlantic.

lifting off from chennai at night, it looks just about like any other city but how untrue that is!

landing in doha, qatar, watching a guy in all white cotton and shades glide along the tarmac. i was having a good time with the security checkpoint, cultural juxtapositions of women in saris being patted down by female airport security staff in islam-appropriate uniforms, until they started manhandling my bassoon, all taking the pieces out, putting them back wrong, and yelling at me when i would try to approach to tell them how to not damage it. after rummaging through your carryons, they just dump them onto the floor outside security, awesome, thanks.

arriving back in the us (and in a tiny town in rural ohio no less), the quiet bore into my brain... being able to hear the sounds of my footsteps, the crushing of the snow, hearing myself breathing again. i found people to be both more and less friendly than in india... people here are much less reserved, more gruffly, loudly, physically friendly, but then on the other hand, courtesy on the street actually exists here, whereas there's nothing remotely like it in india. having the tap water be either cold (cold!) or hot (hot!); trying to not cringe when i hand someone something with my left hand.

but i feel like i've readjusted easier than i thought. but i still struggle to find any kind of logical relationship between india and here. i think it just doesn't exist. i feel like if someone told me i'd been in a coma the last 5 months and had dreamed the whole thing, i might believe them.