I AM MEDITATING in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I arrived a few minutes late. The traffic was terrible and the tuk-tuk driver let me off at the wrong corner of temple Wat Suan Dok. I quickly take a seat in a plastic chair in the meditation room. I am the subject of disapproving glances from everybody there. I smile weakly.
I AM LOOKING at the skeleton of a 3’6” tall woman on display in a glass case in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Mary Ashberry is her name, dead in childbirth, the year 1856, long before the antibiotics that could have saved her were discovered. Her baby’s cracked, broken skull lies at her feet, a tiny piece of a tiny being.
I AM LISTENING to a story a pilot is telling me. I had heard it before from flight attendants, but I didn’t quite believe it. I assumed the tale had been embellished with typical flight attendant flair for drama, part exaggeration, part urban legend. The captain assures me it is true as he was there, a hapless eyewitness to the escapade.
I AM SITTING in the gatehouse area, waiting for my airplane to arrive. It will be here ‘any minute’, it is ‘on the ground’. These are the stock answers I always get when I ask gate agents about the arrival of the inbound aircraft. I think these are vague, rote answers, taught to them in gate agent training.
I AM LISTENING to Taka explain all sorts of interesting things on this tour he is leading deep into the backstreets of Osaka. His tour will show the hidden, the shady, the shoddy, the seamy side of Osaka that tourists never see, the covert side of this big, bustling city founded 2500 years ago.
I AM DRIVING through the beautiful Bavarian countryside of Germany, passing charming villages that look like illustrations from a children's storybook. I stop for coffee and pastries in a little bakery, walk around the village square, peek inside the whitewashed church of St. Michael, decorated with pastel pink burning hearts. I take photos of an impossibly high village maypole. I am headed to what was once Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, the Eagle’s Nest.
I AM TAXIING out of Jacksonville, Florida this morning. All crew members and passengers are seated, seat belts fastened, the morning sun streaming through the windows, the start of just another day on just another airplane. Today I am the flight attendant in charge and I am sitting on my jumpseat at the most forward door, the door we call “One Left.”
I AM SITTING in the front seat of my guide Sayeed’s big white SUV in Doha, Qatar, waiting for the camel races at the Al Shahaniyah racetrack to begin. Qataris treat their camels like racehorses, competing against other camels shipped in from all over the world. A racing camel can easily cost $25,000—or more.
I AM HANGING a coach passenger’s garment bag in the first class coat closet. It is summer and we do not have any coats to hang in the closet, just a couple of suit jackets belonging to a few first class passengers, businessmen flying between meetings, appointments, conferences. I AM HANGING a coach passenger’s garment bag in the first class coat closet. It is summer and we do not have any coats to hang in the closet, just a couple of suit jackets belonging to a few first class passengers, businessmen flying between meetings, appointments, conferences.
I AM STARING at elephants foraging near my Land Rover in Damaraland, Namibia. Such huge, amazing creatures, walking precisely, deliberately, in search of the next bush, or bough, or tree, with a trunk as dexterous as my hand.