fleeing europe
an excerpt of letter #12 about my indefinite travels, written for my patron program
Dear F,
I fled Europe. exactly twenty four hours before Paris went into a full lockdown, I boarded a plane to Helsinki, then another to Osaka. the night before I left, friends in Paris texted me the country’s forecast, but I was already asleep. in my own anti-virus efforts, I’ve been gifting my immune system with ten hours of sleep a night. this took a bit of internal convincing, but, in a life without tango, it was, at least, possible.
on Thursday, the French president went on television and announced that all schools would close. that Friday night, I went on the airline website, unprompted, and discovered that my original flight to Japan — scheduled for the following Thursday (today) — was cancelled.
so I imagined being stuck in Paris during the rising tide of the coronavirus: Paris, that feminine, romantic city, a city much softer than New York — at least Paris wasn’t Gotham City, floating with trash and infested with rats — where hospitals were possibly more nightmarish than the disease itself, and even the forecast of an insignificant hurricane could empty store shelves, incite people into subterranean, violent panic. the end of the world could find me in a much uglier place. would Paris really be so bad?
but what will you do if you get sick, my mother said. where will you go? you will be all alone in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. no one will help you.
it is hard to argue with your mother, your life-giver, when she is speaking so surely of your doom. she had been calling me everyday with a personalized panic newscast from Shanghai, where my parents have been living for ten years. they have groceries delivered to the front gate of their community, then, my father would spray each vegetable with alcohol disinfectant, leave it on the balcony to dry. since January, my mother hasn’t left the house. it’s safe at home, she said.
but me? stay home? go home? where do I go home to? what place is safe for the rootless? do I return to New York - a city where each person is an island, absorbed in themselves, friendship a constant logistical battle, annual doctor visits a traumatic ordeal - to face this concrete apocalypse, or do I go to Shanghai, to be trapped for hours in a crowded interrogation room, quarantined by the Chinese state in a nameless hotel building? where - and who - do I go home to? what home, what comfort, what love do I need now, and what does my soul truly seek?
I decided to follow my original plan - a good plan - to visit Japan during cherry blossom season. stay a few weeks with the old friend I met in Mongolia seven years ago, in her two story house in a small Japanese town, surrounded by rice paddies. seven years ago, we roomed in empty Mongolian hotels together, hunted for apples in sad convenience stores, cooked breakfast in that Ulaanbaatar apartment, while the other kids in our study abroad program were still asleep.
but. her parents gave her their own version of the parental panic newscast. a Chinese girl coming from France, where there are ten times the number of cases? just a month before, my parents had urged me: don’t go to Japan, and definitely don’t come home. now they say: but will your friend let you into her home? will the Japanese government let you into their country? (they did. they confiscated my clementines, but they let me in).
but how quickly our realities can shift; the north and south poles reverse; the center cannot hold — this much human fear and anxiety — and what are we all really afraid of now, watching borders shut down, dancing this distancing dance, but a gruesome variation on our inevitable oblivion; where everyone we love is sick, where we die with no witnesses, or we fight each other to the end, until there’s no one left on earth to call me by my name — and it is death not by freak accident or natural disaster or old age or cancers, but death by the unknown, abstracted, human “other.” how deeply human this fear of death — and how dark, the irony of a virus in the information age — a virus creating viruses out of our xenophobia, out of our division and fear, out of our primal panic, made more viral by the unfeeling information engine, the internet. there is the virus that will kill us quickly. then there are the viruses we concoct with our minds — those will kill us slowly.
don’t be oblivious, my mother said. you must not play the game of chance with your life. read the news everyday. be informed. get a mask.
but in real life, Paris felt nearly normal — that is, until the Monday I left. that week before, I watched as deliveries came into the building where I lived, and people stocked their grocery carts - not with potatoes and pasta, but with beer and alcohol. on Friday and Saturday before the lockdown, I visited my favorite tiny cafe and looked out the window at Parisians living indulgent weekend lives, cheek kissing on the street, sitting close together on cafe terraces, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, eating cheeses and laughing, their French cool as cool as always. if they were panicking on the inside, I couldn’t see it on their faces, nor hear it in their voices, nor feel it in their gazes. no one had looked at me strangely for being Asian.
on Saturday evening, the French government ordered all non-essential shops to close. my friend in Japan was going back and forth about my visit. that night, I looked in the mirror and asked myself — should I go ahead and buy a plane ticket to Osaka? now? for Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday? the answer that came back from my reflection was calm, and strangely clear: yes, Kening. buy a ticket now. for Monday…
…
the rest of this piece (1721 words total) can be found via my patrons program, where, for any contribution, I’ll send you weekly essays about all the worlds I see.