Mirabel Raphael

I leaned my head on the window, fighting to stay awake. I was on a 12-hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei, and, having visited Hong Kong once before, was perfectly convinced that I knew the right way to beat transpacific jet lag: just stay awake from the time that you get up in your time zone of origin until you land and reach a reasonable time and place to sleep in your destination, at which point you will definitely, definitely be ready to sleep. 

Besides my questionable traveling technique, I had another motivation to stay awake: the fat copy of “The Iliad” resting in my lap, begging for my attention. Before the end of the summer, I had to finish “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey” and who knows what else in order to enroll in Directed Studies in the fall. Did I really want to do Directed Studies? I didn’t think the answer to that question particularly mattered. I just had to finish the books, and I could figure everything else out later.

When I landed, I would be at National Taiwan University, facing down six weeks where ostensibly my only goal was to study Chinese. That was the purpose of the scholarship program I was on, and so I was supposed to dedicate myself completely — but I was torn by other objectives. I had to prepare for DS, and, already suspecting that I might change my mind about DS before the end of the summer, I had to take placement tests for biology and chemistry and math. Anything could happen, and I wanted to be ready for all of it.

But with a KN95 mask limiting my airflow, warming my face, and quickly putting me to sleep, staying focused seemed impossible. When I stumbled on a passage about love, my mind wandered to paths that felt deep and impenetrable, and after sufficient distraction I would return to the story. I made it through maybe 600 pages over the course of the flight, but my thoughts kept drifting elsewhere.

My 22 new classmates and I had all traveled together, and had spoken a bit online, but didn’t really know each other. I didn’t know if I would have any friends, or what living in Taiwan would be like, but I didn’t worry especially about that. My bigger concern was getting dropped from the intermediate class to the beginner section, because, secretly, I was completely illiterate and my vocabulary was circumscribed to set phrases like “in the winter, I like going to the ice skating rink to ice skate.” 

Everything turned out to be fine, of course. I was allowed to stay in the intermediate class, and I settled into a kind of rhythm. At the beginning, I had to spend twice as long on my homework as any of my classmates did, but soon that got better. In the morning, I ate passionfruit and salad and fish, then did laundry or studied or walked loops outside my hotel. I went to class, I read or studied at lunch, I went back to class, and I went back to my room to do homework. Everything was good, and everything was perfectly on track. 

What kind of track, you might ask? Why had I enrolled in this program in the first place? Just because I had expected to like it, I think. And I was right, mostly, though sometimes I felt out of place or out of my depth or simply desperate to bask in the coolness of a Southern California dawn, before the heat burns off the marine layer.      

Throughout the summer, I called my friends back home, and they told me about all the things capturing their attention. Exhibits they had seen in museums, people they had met, delinquently long walks they had taken in moments of worse judgment. The world, filtered through their eyes, seemed so incredibly vivid. Oddly, though I knew I was immersed in some of the richest experiences life had in store for me, my attempts to explain myself to them came up short. My friends told me stories, and then asked me — what had I been thinking about? I came up empty. I didn’t seem to have anything to offer that paralleled what they shared with me — but how could it be that I wasn’t stuck on anything — that nothing in the world fascinated me the way everything seemed to fascinate my friends?

Then I realized that, unfortunately, what kept me up at night and what eventually lulled me to sleep was turning over the Chinese phrases I had learned in class in my head, over and over until I was satisfied or until I gave up. This wasn’t a conclusion that would lead me anywhere practical, or even give me workable conversation material for future calls with my friends. Most of my nighttime musings were probably also, to say the least, highly inaccurate. But this was something I loved, something that I could happily throw myself into and not think too much about it.

Throw myself into it I could, and I did. Several times that summer, I stood on the MRT reading “The Odyssey” with my backpack clutched in front of me, trying desperately to be a good passenger, a good citizen, a well prepared student. I was so determined. I would finish everything in front of me, even if I didn’t know why. 

Ultimately, I didn’t finish everything in the way I had expected. But it was okay — better, even. I learned enough about Homer to make the summer reading worth it, and I’m probably much happier for not having taken DS. I learned enough about love and life that everything else was worthwhile, too. I drank dozens of cups of oolong tea to push myself through my homework, and somehow managed to dodge a caffeine addiction. I was learning and I was more or less happy and I was propelled by adrenaline and electricity. It wasn’t perfect, certainly, but it was good.

*Cold War media aficionados: this is the reference you think it is.