Notes from the final leg of the journey:

Business class again. This time the plane is new and each seat has a personal video monitor. Orange juice already by my side, some kind of classical tune overhead. Mayhem below as the cattle bump and squeeze through the door. Only 3 of us up here. These seats so high tech. Didn’t know if I was going to get on this flight at all. The terminal was crazy with people, most waiting for a flight to board for destination Bangkok. I thought it was just them but still so many people and I knew the flight I wanted was terribly overbooked. Then, at the same gate, the flight to Seoul began boarding -- suddenly, without warning, without my knowing if I would be on it. My gate crammed with people trying to get on the Bangkok flight. I got in line at the desk, but there were five young Americans trying to arrange their seat assignments so they could sit together. Their petty concerns a colossal waste of my time. Woman ahead of me with a ticket that says standby turned away: flight too full. Didn’t see her destination. Now me: Seoul is the next line over. Sorry. Of course, there is no sign to inform me. Move over to the other line behind two military guys trading in their Northworst tickets for this airline. Take forever. And then me, finally me, and it was easy as pie. She handed me the golden ticket. Down the stairs I fly, and wait. Take the bus out to the tarmac. Taking the bus around all those little trains for storing luggage, under the wings of 747s. Other buses whizzing past, packed with faces staring out at me, others, buses passing by. We are driving left on pavement unmarked. Lines, but not grooves, not real roads, just objects to be avoided. Black now, the haze of settling night illuminated by spotlights hanging over parked aircraft. This scene, I only see this in Asia.

Reclined that seat all the way. All the way back. I slept soundly for nearly two hours until awakened by the change in air pressure. I want to see. Look out the window to the countryside south of Seoul. Osan maybe. Lights of villages clustered between darkness. Then more and more glittering lights until the city herself lay below in a dress of shimmering sequins. The dark belt of the Han looped through closely laid bridges. I know this place, this land. Those landmarks over there, that hill, the one behind my house, the one I have hiked in the oppressive wet of summer. It’s coming to me, closer and closer the detail of buildings. Much more futuristic looking than anything American, even though this country is solidly second-world. All that neon. All those red neon talismans of a crucifixion taken for granted, raised toward us. Surreal, the massive numbers of this Western symbol daring to poke up into the belly of this plane, destroy us all. Warding us away or welcoming us in? Like all other such signs, they are competitive in nature: Choose mine and not my neighbor's. I erect this cross in the color of your blood, asking you to forsake your mind and bind yourself to me in an unchallenged and endless exchange of tit for tat. It’s all just business and nothing more; do not be fooled by the pretty light. Myself, I will only follow the lights that guide me back to earth, to life.