Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?
How funny it'll be to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!
Los Angeles’ airport is crowded as usual. People are rushing into each other’s arm like in movies; everything is in slow motion, the walking, the kissing, the separation of two hands. Somewhere in the distance the babies are crying, the children are running, the mothers are yelling. Mark closes his eyes and breaths in the polluted air, filling in his lungs. He missed it. Everything about it. He climbs into a cab waiting outside, his bags in the trunk and his smile on his face; gives the directions to the cabbie and leans back further into the head rest.
Building after building, avenue after avenue, the familiar scenery is developing in front of him and he feels as if all his dreams are alive and well. From the corner of his eye his catches a glimpse of something under the passenger seat. It was a copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, someone’s little treasure forgotten in the back of a cab. He opens it; a couple of pages are missing. Blue eyes flow across the written word; tired fingers caress the old paper.
And the line; the monologue when Alice is falling through the rabbit hole and wonders whether she’ll fall through on the other side of the world:
“Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?”
He ponders it for a while, and then mentally scolds himself for taking that much time to even think about it; shakes his head and orders a cabbie to turn the car around and back to the airport.
Still tired from the flight, Mark boards another plane, for another session of countless number of hours in the air. He thinks it’ll all be worth in the end.
It is different in Australia. He knows nothing of the place nor where he is going but he is determined to reach his destination. His mind is blank, his heart is full; he smiles. Always. Remembering the fractions of conversations from the past he gathers the courage and dials the number.
Why is it so complicated? He’s not a teenager, and even when he was one, he didn’t act like he does now. He is even thinking of not going there, to turn back and take the third flight in a row, but he is so close he can almost remember what her hair felt like between his fingers.
She is confused. And scared, and happy, and her stomach is doing back flips; not back flips, feels more like salto mortale; nevertheless she is standing there looking at cab after a cab waiting to see his face from behind the glass.
As the moment approaches, and they catch the glimpse of each other in the distance, the sounds got muted and heart beats accelerated.
They don’t say a word, just stand in each other’s arms for eternity, like you see they do in the movies.
Building after building, avenue after avenue, the familiar scenery is developing in front of him and he feels as if all his dreams are alive and well. From the corner of his eye his catches a glimpse of something under the passenger seat. It was a copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, someone’s little treasure forgotten in the back of a cab. He opens it; a couple of pages are missing. Blue eyes flow across the written word; tired fingers caress the old paper.
And the line; the monologue when Alice is falling through the rabbit hole and wonders whether she’ll fall through on the other side of the world:
“Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?”
He ponders it for a while, and then mentally scolds himself for taking that much time to even think about it; shakes his head and orders a cabbie to turn the car around and back to the airport.
Still tired from the flight, Mark boards another plane, for another session of countless number of hours in the air. He thinks it’ll all be worth in the end.
It is different in Australia. He knows nothing of the place nor where he is going but he is determined to reach his destination. His mind is blank, his heart is full; he smiles. Always. Remembering the fractions of conversations from the past he gathers the courage and dials the number.
Why is it so complicated? He’s not a teenager, and even when he was one, he didn’t act like he does now. He is even thinking of not going there, to turn back and take the third flight in a row, but he is so close he can almost remember what her hair felt like between his fingers.
She is confused. And scared, and happy, and her stomach is doing back flips; not back flips, feels more like salto mortale; nevertheless she is standing there looking at cab after a cab waiting to see his face from behind the glass.
As the moment approaches, and they catch the glimpse of each other in the distance, the sounds got muted and heart beats accelerated.
They don’t say a word, just stand in each other’s arms for eternity, like you see they do in the movies.