C H R O N I C L E S . O F . T H I S . F L O A T I N G . L I F E
After a long day’s aimless wandering the city, getting slightly lost, mistakenly hopping on a ferry… I revisited the Bund to once again admire its famed skyline. Much has changed in eight years time, but definitely the buildings are much taller.
Say not that this life has been uneventful, nor that I dared not risk uncertainties on a lark and a whim. Who can predict the coursing currents along the river of life? Without previous intention, some how I find my way back to Shanghai. It has been eight years exact since I last passed these parts. With the rapid pace of frenzied development, I’m certain much has changed. Having stepped off the MagLev, the air smelled…industrial, despite the gentle down pour of spring rain. The sparser commercial lighting all lit aglow in the outer suburbs, reflecting off the wet streets into a tapestry of neon and advertisements. It was all an expected welcome from this famed mega-city.
Having arrived on a lengthy trans-Pacific flight into the night rain, there was not much to be done except find food and make headway to the hostel. Additionally, as I hadn’t slept due to the last minute rush of preparations for the trip, I immediately fell sound asleep upon arrival.
Where this winding road leads, I will never know. After a truly blessed year the last, I’d thought to remain sedentary in the interim. A 6 week respite in New York and the eastern seaboard only rekindled the wanderlust and temptation to reacquaint with the road. So when a friend beckoned my company to the Far East, it was a temptation not easily dismissed. And although certain plan has been made to move northwest, that day must bide another five weeks.
As of two days ago, I landed in Incheon without announcing to anyone. After a days tired wandering a modern metropolis that is at once old and new, visiting palaces grounds and a traditional costumed show, I settle today to rest whilst awaiting said friend’s arriving.
Without a missed step, I awoke early and randomly wandered the city with two Finns. One of whom had been studying here and provided good ground reconnaissance for the next few days. After meandering through tranquil palace grounds, we ended up at a traditional theater show — all the more unexpected finale to an unexpected adventure.
Often times, to conceptualize and rationalize an experience is to miss the point — after all, the essence of any experience can not be distilled in thought. There is that intangible, ineffable, that sublime “something” in the purity of the experience. And yet, all experience must necessarily occur within the construct of time and consciousness; within that singularity meeting of the two as one. In this irony of time/consciousness, all is found and all will be lost; after all, the procession of time engenders the fading of all conscious memories. Thus, lest the experience be lost forever, I shall endeavor to concretize a passing few words to record this annus mirabilis before time relegates them to oblivion.
