| The international language of exasperation, all pervading, all expanding to include
unexpected epochs spent in transit lounges, relationships ripping asunder,
inescapable downpours, shattered illusions, spilt milk, missed appointments,
repeated bugs in your face and embarrassing knee-scrapes in front of
crowded pedestrian crossings: I'm supposed to have caught a connecting
flight to London from Kuala Lumpur some 150 miles distant an hour ago.
I'm surrounded by a large group of disgruntled Tiawainese tourists and
so I'm trying to be comfortably Zen like. I'm hovering 3ft above my
luggage in the lotus position as all about me orientals tear at their
hair and slash the furniture.
There are approx 300 of us and we are being shuttled in a bus in units of 31 to a distant hotel at one hour intervals. It's one am. as the first bus carrying woman and children is preparing to leave. We've been here 4 hours already and I'm not making this up. But I am calm, I am the lone tethered daffodil in a maelstrom of tossed hydrangeas. I am the sound of one hand making a rude gesture and falling unheard in the forest. I will be calm right up to when I kill someone. © MARTIN EWEN 1998 |