ports passed

given that i would rather have to reroute my trip on the last minute, so as to "stop by" Washington DC en route to Praha, so as to avoid letting my passport out of my hand for 3/5 of a second—even for a necessary visa receipt—and also because i've been proclaiming to high noon my superior responsibility skillZ, the news that my passport had been lost came as quite the shock. apparently, i was the last to hear it and, more importantly, did so as the presumed final act of the day, after i had wanly rummaged around my space, trying to dig up things to bring in a backpack saggy with emaciation. this last bit of news before trying to sleep somewhat startled me—so much so that i was caught in a drenching sweat and gnashing of teeth, both of filmic, if not Biblical proportions. within a few short minutes, i had undone many hours of careful organisation, drawers and books lying splayed and pillaged. the hyperventilation obviously sucked away all powers of spatial reasoning as i forgot that it was my camera which would fit in an Altoids™ tin—and not a certain little ragged blue book. i overturned everything, i opened the jambed seals and then, just to reiterate the fact that we're not in Kansas (or 1986) anymore: Google, for what It could tell me, in my hour of need, about lost/stolen documents in a hurry and in a hurry. it's disheartening, really, the quickness with which ill intentions are assigned to others. though most of the weeping and wiping of brow was spent berating my own idiocy, it wasn't too much longer before the thoughts of conniving Indiana residents, about whom i'd been duly warned (when i'd been made to promise that i wouldn't "wander" therein), crept in to stay. besides being governed by such fine upstanding addresses as www.EZPassportReplacement123(ThatsYourFirstSecondandThird
FrontTeethAndBornChildren).com, things in the replacement department weren't looking especially hopeful [Ed: note correct usage], mostly due to their being combined with Travelocity™-imposed stringencies. if we allow for Biblical sweats, then we must also remain open to flashes of insight in the form of a little pouch serving as the Keeper of the Sacred until my space was in order. sure enough, along with some smooth stones from Bar, pictures of my brother, and bicycle chain tool, i found the record of me since 17 pert-and-fuzzily-post-bald that, despite any wishes, i cannot be rid of for another year and a stiff hole punch through its heart.

you lose yourself, and then everything else is like whistling alone. when i budgeted ages and a good shanking on the 5am 55th street, only to arrive at the airport in 1'15'' and get shuffled onto an earlier Toronto-bound plane, i was hardly surprised. which is more than i could say when the border guard wannabe (who made it only as far as the TSA) wouldn't let me eat my contrabanded (but sealed) jogurt on the spot, although i pounded my chest and swaggered. my timeless aversion to substances that are neither liquid nor solid (in the foody category) is coming to haunt me. let's base our questions of national security on contaminability rather than degree of slime or viscosity, shall we now?

biggest epiphany for the day (prepare yourself) in Toronto airport: the That Language trotoar seems to have come through French trottoir. Charles Townsend, i hear a sequel in the not-so-distance. the thought of, better still, writing it, weakened my knees just in time for the moving walkway to end.

somehow the slightest increase in latitude (between it and Chicago, Detroit, or Newark) meant that setting out from Toronto incurred a great launch over the top of Alaska, a sharp curve (or one that seemed so, its Great Circle represented 2-dimensionally, which is, after all, exactly why all the surprise is futile) down over Kamchatka. i've never seen Russia before and, obligingly, the clouds parted to reveal, through ice-filigreed window, white mountains and dark rivers—rivers that seemed candidates for (conceptual) reversal, except that their distance from the Petersburg/Moscow magnet, the isolation and inhabitability for all but smoke and ice, kept them coursing to the other ocean. flying back over water meant traversing North Korean airspace. even in sleep, we all held our breath. so, too, did the intermittently-displayed map, with its multitude of cities in all countries except for within the boundaries of what slid into synecdochal focus as an insanity beyond representational norms.

the subtle shifting of linguistic dominance demonstrated another sort of magnetism. we began inducedly Francophile, with nominal 日本語 abridges. when darkness fell as suddenly as a curtain through which winking lights along the shore still gleamed, as we skimmed the water of the bay and glid along the rice paddies surrounding Narita, we exchanged pretentious-snotty for excessively-hierarchically-polite. i wonder, though, how the kids across the aisle—with names like "Flavio Shimamura" and green Brazilian passports—managed to get by.

the doors of the plane opened, and i was off and running through the corridors. never have liked being first, except when it comes to showing-off-passport lines and, indeed, i overtook those in row Special Needs from the impossible position of 45A to land in the prized position of firstly batting my eyelashes at the official in an appropriately winning fashion. didn't even have time to rue my lack of Alien Registration card (and, thus, prerogative to the Japanese-and-company line). more rapid eye persuasion had me through the customs line and out into the waiting arms of my father—without my even having to open the highly suspicious looking bags, their hitherto empty crevices packed with swiped alcoholic beverages in negligent-stewardess-sized bottles.