jet lag

My mental puzzle of the morning is jet lag.
I imagine myself to be a fairly logical person, and not too badly educated- in fact, I took a university physics class on astronomy that challenged my thinking in this very way- but, set in a comfortable airplane seat staring out the window at ceaseless sunlight, and still a week later trying to fathom which way the world is rotating, I am at a complete loss.
It's an appropriate puzzler for the wee hours on a Saturday when I've already seen enough Discovery Channel and scrubbed the bathroom, and since my demographic-mates are asleep or maybe not home yet, I am applying myself to sorting this out.
There are those who say that jet lag does not exist. They may be the same ones who think there's no point in using soap when you wash your hands or owning more than one t-shirt. I heartily agree with them on all fronts, except for the first hand experience of the last month in which I have been more hopelessly tired and hopelessly awake at all the wrong times than I have ever been before.
I have always been a little frustrated by my body's insistence on sleep. For some reason in my younger years, it would take a great deal of very promising entertainment to actually keep me up when I wanted to sleep. I slept through several loud parties going on IN my dorm room in college. I remember once waking up to my best friend asking me if I wanted her to slap me awake, as we were in a crowded and loud bar- I hadn't had a drop to drink. But all this is nothing compared to my feeling at long-awaited Taco Day at my sister Naomi's apartment, which I was very much looking forward to for many reasons. Yet in the middle of it all, which included toddlers and excited young women trying to get the toddlers to say and do funny things, I was so unable to stay awake that I felt more drugged-up than I ever felt when I was actually on drugs.
So, I Google this Spartan Anti-Jet Lag Theory. What I am surprised to learn (the Spartans are wrong, by the way- haha) is that it all has to do with sunlight. Jetlagtips.com explains (without bringing anything crazy like rotation or gravity into it) that travelling East to West is much less difficult on the system than travelling West to East, simply because of the amount of sunlight.
At the moment I am finding this absolutely charming; imagining us silly humans who think we are so intense and complicated, but are actually essentially potted plants who just need the right amount of water and attention and sunlight. We can be quite fussy little things if it gets thrown off, but we're hearty and adaptable.
At least this is what it seems best to tell myself this morning.

Seems that everything has gone wrong ever since Canada came along...

I may be coming to the end of the chapter of my life in which I would say over and over that I adore flying, and can imagine no happier state than walking around in a strange place with everything I need in a backpack and a stylish notebook and inspiring pen to immortalize my profound thoughts on the world. Yesterday, after some number of hours awake that I can't seem to quite count, and said backpack cutting deep grooves into my shoulders, the only profound traveller's thought I had was that tomorrow had better be an F-ing dream or I'm never getting on a plane again.
Anyway, lessons learned. Don't buy the super deals on plane tickets. Don't put up with nasty old ladies at the ticket counter saying that you have to go somewhere else that you've already been to do her job for her. She has a telephone. And she has the whole problem right in front of her on her computer screen, which you paid several hundred dollars to have placed there. Don't get worked up, but also don't stand in line for two hours just not wanting to rock the boat when you know you're going to miss your flight. Don't cough just before going up for your turn in line at customs when the whole world is on high alert about an airborne flu pandemic. And if you buy a piece of fruit to eat on the airplane, eat it on the airplane.
I heard a Korean Buddhist proverb from several of my students last year about a young man who was given a horse and his parents were so happy, but then he fell off the horse and broke his leg, very sad, but then he didn't have to join the army, very happy, but then the invading army took over his village, very sad.... and so on. I think the whole story comes full circle a little bit better than my version, but, then again, maybe not. There is not necessarily a perfect ending to our stories, just little poetic circles here and there.
I'm happy to say that I'm starting to learn from these experiences, and decided not to try to sleep in the airport in Vancouver like I did in Seattle, and instead checked in to a lovely expensive hotel called the Abercorn, and enjoyed the bag of treats the Air Canada baggage claim desk gave me instead of my suitcase....
(I would just like to add a note here that in spite of all of the excessive lines and dehydration and goings without chapstick and extra charges and having to take off your shoes and jacket and everything else, I accidentally brought a bottle of cough syrup with codeine in it and a pair of scissors through at least three scanning machine, plastic gloved, sour faced police check points, and no one noticed. Furthermore, between three different airline counters I learned that it's completely against international law to send luggage along without the passenger, which isn't to say that my bag didn't go to Seoul without me, but that none of the airlines involved would admit to ever seeing it.)
Anyhow, I have no idea what I've done to my bank account, but my card wouldn't work to supply a surprise $100 deposit at the lovely hotel. (this is probably the guy falling off the horse and breaking the other leg...) The lady at the counter clearly didn't like my Tivas and greasy hair and rabbit-chewed guitar case, and looked happy enough to toss me right back out onto the highway, sans free shuttle to the airport, but took pity on me when I shook no less than four different kinds of currency out on to her counter (Korean, Japanese, Canadian, and USian), and we couldn't figure out what it possibly would add up to or how I could buy anything to eat without it. (gets a brand new wheel chair from a government with socialized medecine.)
I did discover that I have a friend in Vancouver, who I met in Korea last summer. (the guy meets a nurse at the hospital when his chair breaks.) He sends me his number to rendezvous, but I fall asleep and have only enough time to enjoy a continental breakfast and a short Canadian walk before putting the backpack back on and returning to the airport. (the nurse is already married. probably to the guy who gave him the horse.)
Don't pass up a chance to visit Vancouver. It is absolutely beautiful.
Signing off. Like I said, today had better be a dream from heaven or I'm de-planing in Tokyo and taking the ferry.

More Authentic American Experiences

I would like to begin with The Landing Zone.
The Landing Zone is an opportune little restaurant next to the much-disputed tiny airport of the quaint little ville of Harwinton, Connecticut. After a sweatily successful bike race of my brother-in-law's last weekend, a group of us misplaced 20-something Connecticut natives/residents pulled in to the harsh gravel parking lot of The Landing Zone, mainly because we couldn't find anywhere else to go in the other three fine towns we had driven through.
An offensive noise greeted us at the screen door, and we stayed because it didn't follow us inside. We waited by the "Don't Seat Yourselves!" signs for quite a while while the owner/chef took a shot of tequila with one of his customers at the bar.
You may know that over the last year I've become a devout fan of Gordon Ramsey, and especially his show "Kitchen Nightmares." I actually wouldn't even want to know what he would have to say about the dirty tables and the excessive, sticky menus of the Landing Zone.
I also had the chance to experience health care at its finest at the Walk-In Clinic of Torrington.
And last night I saw none other than Miss Britney Spears, power-walking right by me before her big show at the Mohegan Sun Casino.