De-Lay

Maybe its just me. I don't know.

But I feel like the gods of all flying things may have a problem with me. On Thursday afternoon I was made yet again to wait for 3 hours before my goddam flight was finally good to fly. For the fifth time, on the same airline and at the same airport in three months.

So I took some time out - read several chapters of Kundera, nestled into a hard plastic chair in the cafe. The couple’s conversation at the next table was distracting. The girl’s voice anxious and shrill. It cuts into my scalp, my ears prick up involuntarily.

Their dialogue is broken, bad grammar. Her voice is halting as she reaches mentally for words. I try not to listen but my own childhood English draws me in, away from Kundera’s blissful, agonized voice.

Just at the point of despair, she starts up again in Cantonese. Her sentences become longer, more confident, emotional. It is as if a dam is burst, her emotions tumble out one after another in short, sensuous syllables. Their heads lean in towards each other. Drawn by an invisible string I can neither see nor understand.

I breathe a sigh of relief. I am not distracted by that which I do not know - I settle back into my ignorance comfortably.

But to stay at the table had begun to evolve into something bordering madness, a foible.

I drank my last drop of beer and headed to the toilet.

I took the longest crap ever. In an airport.