I’m writing this with a good view out of my hotel window – the smog over Incheon has cleared and I can see all the way to the mainland. Good thing the view is so nice, too, since I’m stuck here for two full weeks without setting foot in the hallway. I can see the jets taking off, and about every minute there’s a distant roar – like someone shifting furniture down the hall or a few floors away – as one of the big airliners goes rumbling into the air, bound for San Francisco or Qatar or Singapore or any of a hundred other cities of the world.
I thought of yesterday as “the Long Wednesday,” as I passed nearly 24 hours without night due to flying West (and losing most of Thursday in the process, darned International Date Line being what it is). I did most of it with only about 6 hours’ sleep, all told.
Four of those hours were snatched in the San Francisco Airport. There’s a mostly abandoned food court in the international terminal, all the businesses having fled the coronavirus, with long booths that are sort of soft. I shivered most of the night, since I dressed in light, comfortable clothes for the trip and all my heavier things were checked, and SF prefers that its summertime airport conditions resemble the tundra, apparently. My backpack was a decent enough pillow, mostly due to my stuffed tiger, Sunshine (there’s a story there), who was traveling with me. So I slept well enough from about 11 to 3 am Wednesday.
At 3, I was woken up by a security officer rousting up a homeless man who had been sleeping near me. That had been a bit of a surprise to me. I’d heard that San Francisco has a problem with homelessness, of course, but that problem was starkly visible if you spend even a little time in the airport. While I was waiting for my COVID test, I passed a woman with a shopping cart talking to herself, twice. She was agitated, raging against an invisible interlocutor, who apparently represented the Chinese and vampires (not sure if the vampires were metaphorical or literal), and she wouldn’t have it. Her eyes were alert and active, watching me each time I passed while her mouth continued its uninterrupted stream of verbiage. While I wrote yesterday’s 100 words (it was more than 100 words, as this will be), another man sat in the booth across from mine. He had no bags, but again, a cart full of…well, stuff, and had the same sort of tight, weathered look on his face that the woman did. And when I woke up, the security officer was gently chivvying two other people from their places of rest, offering bus tickets and other inducements to get them to leave the airport.
Now, I confess, one of my most unChristian impulses is a nervousness around homeless people. My hindbrain doesn’t like the unpredictability – much like a wild animal, when I can’t be sure what someone will do next, I get uneasy. Intellectually, I know this is not at all how Christ would want me to feel towards my brethren,* but emotionally, that’s my first reaction. I am not proud of it.
So instead, I found myself thinking of causes. Why is there so much homelessness in San Francisco? It is one of the wealthiest cities in America, and one of the most progressive – a political philosophy which has always claimed to care about the weak and vulnerable most of all. And yet, many people are forced to seek shelter in an airport of all places. And, of course, Bay area rents are famously among the highest in the nation – quite possibly the world, then – which can’t help matters. If I were ever foolish enough to get into politics, I think i would make finding a solution for everyone one of my top priorities as Mayor. I wonder what London Breed fills her time with.
Anyway, the clock ground towards 6 am and the opening of Air Canada’s check in. I bid farewell to my overnight companions – a young man with only a backpack, whose flight had been delayed a day, a young woman and her brother from Nigeria, if I’m any judge of accents, who spent most of the midnight hours watching Little Rascals on her phone, and a Russian man who argued loudly with, well, someone from his home country every two hours or so to liven things up a bit.
Check in went smoothly, I chatted pleasantly with the gate agent who helped me retrieve my bags to re-check (originally from Tokyo, she loved her last ten years in San Francisco, but was excited for me to reach Incheon as she also loves Korea, despite their resentment towards the Japanese), and was first to the gate (no line at security at 6:15 am! Most pleasant security experience ever). I entertained myself by playing Paper Mario, helping an older woman get her phone onto the airport wifi, and watching people with places to be hurry around.
The Long Wednesday hit part 2 when we boarded and flew to Vancouver. The plane was tiny and mostly empty – I had a row to myself. The morning sun was just hitting most of the northern California mountains, and I spent most of the flight looking out the window, even when it was just clouds. A thousand generations of human beings never saw what the top of a cloud looked like, you know? It seems a waste to just ignore the opportunity. Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier were on the other side of the plane, alas, but I did get to see Portland, Seattle, and Mt. Olympia blazing in the sunlight. Puget Sound and Victoria Island were as beautiful as I’d been told, and Vancouver, nestled in its coastal plain amid the encircling mountains, was of course lovely.
Vancouver airport was large, beautiful (filled with trees and natural woods inside, so many windows that even indoors it felt like I was wandering a Pacific Northwest forest), and would have been a much more pleasant place to overnight. Drat. I reached my connecting gate, which had a huge line outside it. The first of many lines on the Long Wednesday. 90% of the people in line were Korean, and before we ever were admitted to the gate, we had to hadn over all our documents, including our COVID tests, for the third time (once in Denver, and once – well, twice, in my case – in San Francisco).
When I reached the front, the gate agent, a Korean man improbably named Sunny, took my test, frowned, and vanished back to his companions. I saw three others come over and they all bent over it. A sheen of sweat broke out and I got a little nervous as they argued. I was assured that this test would – I bit back an indignant reaction before I had cause. Eventually, he shuffled back, smiled, and let me into the gate.
Part 3 was a long, 11-hour flight up the Canadian Pacific coast, over the Seward Peninsula and the Bering Sea, and down the Russian and Japanese coasts (skirting far around Nork airspace) to Incheon. I was as comfortable as could be expected – in the central island, an aisle seat and no one next to me, plenty of room – and passed the time with Toy Story 4 (better than I expected), True Grit (actually really good), a two-hour nap, and Wonder Woman 1984 (I didn’t reach the ending but I like Nathan Fillion and DC, I think, does better movies than Marvel because even though they’re not especially well-executed at least DC is willing to take risks and try something new every now and then, unlike Marvel’s Mad Libs style story generation). (Oh, mad libs as in AD-LIB, I JUST figured that out! Wow), and Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age on my Kindle.
Part IV of the Long Wednesday began when we were wheels-down in Incheon, by my internal clock about midnight, 21 hours after I had woken up in the SFO food court, by the world clock 4 pm Thursday afternoon. It mostly involved lots of forms and lines, which I’ll write about tomorrow since it’s not like I’ll have any new experiences to share.
*31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Matthew 25:31-46
Gwangju Dreaming 