The rainbow

After this gate this place, where you had experienced a different life, everything would be below and small enough for you to gauge it through an oval window, then everything would be blocked out by thick monstrous clouds, indicating it was all over. 

The lady at the check-in counter looked at your face and asked if you had only a rucksack. She had been quite annoyed with other passengers who had been asking if they could check in their huge flat-screen TV boxes. She had managed almost twenty of them, and then noticing you with just a sack and a young  face below long ruffled hair and a long beard , all that she could do was to pity. 

When you were on board you were directed to a business class seat. Why not a lager , and some strong coffee afterwards. Through the oval window you could see the place, partly veiled by thin sheets of clouds; the snaking river and its tributaries; the skyscrapers; the crisscrossing elevated toll ways.

Now you thought about the apartment where you had lived for some years. The place was decorated; those thick blue curtains; the ebony desk which you had bought from a Scotch friend at throw-away price; wide furry carpet. It was your home for years. Thinking back to the time and knowing that that home is behind and you wouldn't be going back to it, but elsewhere, where the curious man in you would lead you through the presumed chaos and cacophony.

What was home to someone like you, after all? An imprint of indelible memories which you would carry to the end of your life; as a kid going home after a long day at school, you were hungry and tired and it was going to rain. You felt vulnerable as a child walking all by yourself beneath a dark sky which cracked every now and then only to release frightening thunders. Below the old trees you couldn't shelter, so you ran home with the bag over your head and your mind looking at the picture of your mother below the corrugated iron roof, and smoke rising over the roof only to be beaten down heavy drops of rain. 

You ran towards that place while the heavy drops had just started smacking the world. Though you were slightly wet you had a towel to wrap your body and some fresh clothes, hot food and a big sofa where you could snuggle watching Tom and Jerry.

This lingered in your mind since it had happened when you could focus only one thing at a time, unlike the life of an adult who has to mind so many things at one time. How disloyal one's memory could be; when craved to get back to that childhood home you rushed with excitement and only when you got there, then you soon began to miss the cosy and secluded place somewhere, where you always courted absolute solitude.

Now on board sipping a lager, the plane zooming its way between clouds, and sometimes dodging them resulting you adjust your position. The clouds appeared so solid, what a deceptive look. You couldn't step upon them, and yet looking at them you felt you could put your hands on them without cutting through. By looking at them you wondered about the dreams and ambitions which had been carrying in your mind for years; were they as deceptive as the clouds? This reflection suddenly made you feel so fragile; without them what you would have to live for?  Just like chasing the feet of a rainbow because your grandmother said at its feet you could find treasures.

Do we always get the treasures in life? Isn't more about what we stop for while travelling and our minds being fed with what we envision?

The reason for this journey was different from the previous one; you just wanted to cast yourself in some place to understand things, but it turned out to be much more than that. You did say to yourself that you would linger in that region for a year , then you would find yourself scaling the Great Wall. Things changed; you thought you would live a cocooned amorous life. There was something wrong in it; it was just a strong premonition. And besides you couldn't be that cocooned and settled at the same time feeling stranded.

Life, indeed, is full of unfolding events. In the past the events manoeuvered you when they were over, that was that. Now you had an urge to work on the consequences of the events. Why? It always made you feel so unsettled when you hadn't reconciled with them. 

This plane would drop you at your destination. So far it just looked like a big house with a huge door about which you had started imagining the rooms, the people living, the smell, the furniture, and everything. 

The beer was over, you wanted to have another one, but you thought you shouldn't; it couldn't be like those nights at Irish pubs with pints after pints. No. The Japanese lady turned around, your eyes met hers. You exchanged a smile and greeted her in Japanese. You could do few words and phrases. She replied in English.