Arrival
I had spent a few days in Taiwan before leaving for Viet Nam. In Taiwan, I barely knew hello and goodbye. The rest was gibberish. Totally unfamiliar. Chinese characters splattered all over the place conveyed only abstract pictoral meaning in maybe one out of fifty cases. Nothing to do with the sound of the language. I could only stare blankly when people talked to me. Nothing. Zip.
I had spent weeks of solid crash studying in Vietnamese before going. But it was useless in Taiwan. Chinese was a blank rinse between home and what I had prepared for ahead. I was between the two worlds, one trailing away behind and the other drawing closer. Days of rinsing.
When I had studied, I would study alone by reading. Slowly learning words, spellings. I would read, translate, write. Read. Write. I would try to imagine Viet Nam, what it would be like. I would try to imagine how the people would sound if they spoke to me. But I had never heard the Northern Language and almost all of what I knew was theoretical. Certainly not well-practiced.
If it went as I had planned, the language would work, and I would be able to go anywhere and talk with anyone. Remote deltas of sand and green and rice. Colors in forests, in villages, vast open land. Corners seldom visited by outsiders. But I would be there.
After months of anticipation, I at last found myself on a jet making a slow descent into Viet Nam. The light of the day was fading. The sun was falling to the left of the aircraft. Both the sun and the aircraft tracked each other in tandem, slowly downward. I had waited so intently for this and it was finally coming, only as slowly as the sun was setting.
I peered as directly downward as I could through the aircraft window. The setting sun was casting a deep openness under me. Far, far below, I could see dark green. The aircraft had descended into a thin flat sheet cloud of Asian humidity. The sun to the left and the aircraft shadow to the right, directly sideways, casting straight across into the dim cloud sheet. Below the sidways shadow, I could see green. Dark, dark green.
I tried to see as much as I could of below. After ocean, land had come. My heart skipped - I could barely see a river twisting through the dark plane of green. It was deep, deep, dark below the sunset sheet. The sheet lay as far to my right as I could see - forever. The shadow of the aircraft pierced sideways into the dusk air, a floating star of wings, head, and tail. The sheet in front and behind was an infinite blanket of dim orange. Above, slate blue, and below, deep, dark green.
The three elements were all in perfect alignment. The sun, the sheet, and the aircraft. It was silent, or I was enchanted. The sun followed the aircraft, and both descended gently into the great dark land. The aircraft shadow stayed perfectly to the side. Slate blue above, dim orange to the side. Somewhere below me there were more rivers, more fields, a great sea of dark, lush green. It stretched out forever. The path was perfect, as perfect as the alignment. We would touch, without even having to sink. Just glide. I was ready, I was weightless.
I would be able to speak, to go anywhere.
A perfect voice began announcing in what had always been a foreign language. Faster than I could think to translate, though as smoothly as the tandem glide. Please sit, we are about to arrive.
I watched the tandem shadow track into Asian humid dim orange slate blue and the great dark green. The engines slowed - no more work was needed. Everything gently descended, preparing to touch. The perfect voice spoke simply. We are about to arrive. I understood. I squeezed my eyes shut. My heart skipped again. This time I was shaking. The slate blue and the shadow were still in my mind.
The dark green was about to
Touch.