On my first day in this foreign land I sought out a Singaporean I had connected with over the internet to buy the Criterion edition of Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. I would traverse the seemingly short distance between a dormitory and a bookstore, both locations falling under the umbrella of having the same university at the front of their addresses, to find him.
I had walked a long, straight road to a more circular one that hugged a mountain. My phone told me I was only a few minutes away but no bookstore was in sight. Instead all I saw was road and mountain and a train station, the last of which was supposed to be right next to my destination. I peered into the station, then to my left and right, more times than I logically should have, and it still was not there. The circle that surrounded the dot that represented my geographical self grew larger in diameter, now 10 metres, now 100 metres, until the uncertainty of where I simply physically was was greater than the supposed distance between me and this forbidden bookstore.
This foreign land has been described as ‘hilly’, a word far too phonically light to describe the weight of its terrain on my body and my mind in this hour. I felt as disoriented by the third dimension as one would the fourth, and it took me a second to realise that my reference, the map on my phone, only depicted two dimensions. I was not next to where I needed to be but above it. So I lowered myself to another road, another zero, walked towards the icon of a star on a digital map, but found myself entering a carpark that had been carved out of a mountain. I walked into the mountain, but dusty walls and sleeping cars frightened me. I walked out of it and over it to the road that hugged the mountain, but the bookstore — as it had been ten minutes ago — was still not there.
Eventually I braced the trepidation of a road that penetrated a mountain and found a set of doors which opened to hallways whose occupants seemed to have vacated, as commuters must always do, and found myself in a library. I could not enter the library as I did not have a student card, I did not have a student card because I was not a student. I told the librarian in a desperate sweat that I had to get to the bookstore and she opened the gate for me.
I found the Singaporean at the entrance of the bookstore, which was on the floor below the library, and he was not in the same sweat I was in. In khaki shorts and a long blue shirt only three-quarters buttoned up, the hills were perhaps familial to him in a way they could not have been to me. He handed me the Schrader DVD, I handed him the money that wasn’t mine but my parents’. He offered me two Kenji Mizoguchi films at a discounted price, and in a confusion regarding currency exchanges and an urge of cinephilia, I spent even more of the money that wasn’t mine on Sansho the Bailiff and The Life of Oharu.
On my last day in this foreign land I had to miss a high table dinner to get to the airport early, for my flight was at 1 AM and there would be demonstrations in the city tonight. So I took a taxi and departed from people I almost got to know and arrived at the airport at 7 PM.
I checked in and wandered. I traced my feet across the edges of the first floor, stepping into the occasional store to buy something I didn’t need. I joined a queue at a fast food restaurant and while queuing resolved to go to the national library with my peers everyday for the rest of the summer so that I could get into a prestigious university whose name I recognised as the publisher of my textbooks. I arrived at the front of the line not knowing what I wanted, stepping aside to allow the person behind me to order. I left the queue and decided to pass through immigration.
I was getting hungry so I sat in a restaurant and ordered a plate of fried rice and called my family. When I heard my mother’s voice I started crying, I don’t know over what. I told them I was sad that I had missed the high table dinner, but the enormity of the grief I felt could not have been for something so small as a meal. I shovelled spoonfuls of rice into my mouth as tears raced down my cheeks, subverting my lips.
I left the restaurant and stood on an endless number of travelators while the Beach House album Depression Cherry seeped into my ears. I found a lair with a great many curved chairs inclined a little above horizontal. I laid down on one of them and closed my eyes, but the fear that my luggage would be stolen kept me conscious.
About ten minutes in I realised I wouldn’t be sleeping. I tried reading Great Expectations but didn’t feel like it. I hated this stagnant grey liquid I was moving within. I suddenly had an urge to work on my university planning document. I got up in a fit and left the lair, spending the last of the money that wasn’t mine on a cold brew. I sat on a high chair near my assigned gate and opened up my laptop. I took notes on a major I had convinced myself I gave a shit about and two universities that I didn’t end up getting into. All other swindlers on earth are nothing to the self-swindlers. Dickens was right.
With 30 minutes before boarding I sent a long text message to someone I had almost gotten close to and would never meet again. I told them it would be weird to suddenly stop knowing them and I wished we had talked a little more.
I got home before dawn. The stagnant grey liquid had come with me, but the sun was starting to shine through it, and onto this subterranean homesick alien.
