Thursday

Whenever I fly to the US I live through a thirty-six hour day. I arrive twenty-seven averaged hours after takeoff, but also later the same date. This extra time is lost in reverse, of course. Worse, since return fly-days, often operating at a headwind disadvantage heading west (wavy equals great arc), take longer than flights the other way. Seoul-to-Atlanta last December was three hours shorter than Atlanta-to-Seoul in January. The name of this entry, had I posted it back when, would have been Thurdnesday. By the way: except for some obvious recent edits, I wrote this update on that flight, deep in the wtf hours of cabin night when nobody had any idea what time it was outside the plane. I keep myself alert by trying to figure it out. It's time where instead of time when: according to my watch, its ten pm today; that's twelve hours behind my final destination, where it's ten am tomorrow; and further from my layover, where it's already noon. I'm pretty close to the Date Line, according to the TV map, but what time is it in the Aleutian archipelago? In Vladivostok? Is it daylight out there? By my arrival in Vietnam it was already almost midnight, Friday. Real time, a thirty-odd-hour day. Thursday had been basically deleted for me, eaten by one long Wednesday morning ordeal. But even real time subordinates to curve time in the sky. I stayed up all night before boarding, so by my morning layover it felt late to me. But to those people who boarded the plane in Atlanta it was a little before lunch. No matter. Two hours after takeoff dinner was served, the shutters gone down, the lights off. It was nighttime all the way through Russia whether they liked it or not. [Cavin]