“And he was wearing reading glasses, to show that time had passed.” — John Mulaney
Every new time zone brings its own culture shock. “Oh right, that’s what people care about here.” Takes notes.
Last summer after two years away from home I stepped onto the subway platform in Manhattan. An ominous voice came from overhead: “Hate has no place in our subway system. If you or someone you see is being harassed, speak up. Report it.” I looked around. What? A second voice barked: “New York: Mask up. Stay safe.” I…OK. The train went from three minutes away to six, then didn’t tick down again for another five minutes. A bead of sweat trickled down my back. It was the first 10 seconds of the movie, and they needed to get a lot of world building done very quickly. Hi, welcome home, here’s what you missed while you were asleep, for the last two years.
The pace of my life has changed so dramatically since working a full-time news job in New York, that reentering the home time zone often feels like I’m actually entering a different timeline. In the original time zone-timeline, the people around me kept grinding faster and faster, making money, making children, buying stuff. In mine, I learned how to understand a new language and how to live a new life. Sometimes I exercised, looked at art, read books. I thought about sleep, happiness, obsession, the weather, the self.
But this summer I make a stop on the way home, and it feels, for many reasons, like a land frozen in time. Here there are no seasons (“There are seasons, Thu, they’re just different,” I’m corrected, by multiple people.) Looking ‘90s homeless is a sign of wealth. Middle-aged men date children (is it a coincidence that both Hank and Don sleep with basically teenagers after stepping one toe in this city?) It’s a purgatory of the time zone shift, a few disorienting hours off from both the Tokyo and New York schedules; everyone looks young, blitzed out by yoga and perfect weather, but also old, sucked dry by the air and the sun.
Last Friday was exceedingly long. I started the day at 6am in Tokyo and ended it 34 hours later, at midnight in LA. Dino Investigator (DI) picked me up at LAX in a car she’s had since high school. It was smoggy and dry, I had slept two hours, I thought I recognized an influencer waiting for an Uber (it wasn’t him, he was at Fashion Week in Paris), I couldn’t find my sunglasses, I forgot a hat, I was wearing all black and baking. I felt like a young female Tokyo-infused version of Hank in the first episode of Californication, who’d come clutching a limp conbini onigiri and bearing Bad Badtz Maru socks and Hojicha flavored Kit Kats as gifts.
Later in the week, after I’d regulated sleep, adapted to the customs of the locals, slathered myself in sunscreen, and been enveloped in the softness of multiple corn tortillas, I was on my way home in a cab, leaning against the window watching the night lights blur by. A gruff, fast-talking anchor on the radio started reporting on the results of a new initiative led by the US marshal to round up 1,500 “violent criminals, sex offenders, and self-identified gang members” in ten major cities. Ah, here’s the world building I missed at the beginning of the movie. DI had told me earlier in the day that she doesn’t go hiking alone because of the abductions. The what? She sent me an article. Guns, random attacks, intensified policing, forced births, the wrong lives lost and the wrong ones forced into being—I finally woke up to where I was. The time zone called America. When I heard the reporter say the words “Operation North Star,” my eyebrows furrowed at the bombast. Who’s in charge here, Michael Bay?
The pace is different in this timeline, but there’s still a tremendous amount of growth.
I spent the week with my brother’s family, whom I haven’t seen in three years. Most of my formative memories of my brother involve some kind of sports ball, or being driven around by him in the suburbs, or watching him beat final level bosses in Zelda. Now he has a yard in which three children climb and clamor with their dog. Children I’ve seen almost entirely on Zoom wrap around my body, pure raw energy and love, a beautiful curious hot giggling unstoppable force much bigger than me, so much bigger than the screen.
It’s also been at least three years since I last saw R. My memories are filled with scenes of him jumping off boats, stripping naked at weddings, somersaulting through traffic, hunting and gathering women, but on this visit, I played blocks with his son.
I look at their sweet, soft cheeks. So you’re what happened while I was asleep.
PS. I wrote this letter while in the air, passing from one timeline to another. By the time I landed at JFK, there were two pieces of news: Cy had given birth in her timeline in Paris, and Abe had been shot in Nara and was in critical condition. While I slept in New York City, he was pronounced dead. Writing from here, full of shock but devoid of context, I now feel incredibly far away from the right time zone.
It makes so much more sense now- it’s not just a different time zone but a different timeline!! I haven’t been able to describe the feeling until reading this- thank you!