A year ago today in the late afternoon, after 21 hours in transit from my front door, I landed at Narita a day ahead of myself. Brisk wind. The scarlet sun fallen into night by the time I got through customs and to my hotel.
I may be one of few of people who don’t grouse about a 10-hour flight, though that’s about the limit. Once checked in and boarded I finally have time to do nothing with an added bonus: free drinks.
Whenever I fly, I recall the words of Oscar Wilde. To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the word, the most difficult and the most intellectual. I believe him. I find this cocooned transition a profound mythical metaphor. Confined stasis followed by re-emergence in an unfamiliar state: political, cultural and spiritual. In Japan, add aesthetic.
Now, after landing, my heart is exactly where I have so often longed to be. Back.