Words I Write During Delays
Venice, Italy (2019), 5-hour delay, and why you should experience life if you want to be a good writer
I was at the Frankfurt International Airport 2 hours before boarding time, you know, like how one should be (there is a caveat that for inner European flights, 1 hour is enough but when it comes to flights in general, I am as paranoid as an Asian dad — I will show up 5 hours early if I have to). After texting my friend in Milan when I would be arriving and receiving her instructions on how to get to her apartment, I browsed around the custom-free shops, scrunched up my nose when I entered the fragrance and perfume area, and took my time walking towards my gate. 30 minutes before boarding, an announcement shattered my calm exterior.
Due to the bad weather, we will be experiencing a 30-minute delay, please stay seated. Okay, that wasn’t too bad, right? But 30 minutes extended to an hour, by the time we inched toward the 50-minute mark, the next disaster struck — we would not be departing from this airport, the airline would send a bus to take us to another one called Frankfurt Hahn. Now for those who thought ‘Well, it should be a quick ride, right?’
I was as shocked as you were. It wasn’t even in Frankfurt. It wasn’t even in the same state! (I was tempted to ask if they just baited me by putting the name ‘Frankfurt’ in front. Oh, Frankfurt, the land of bookfair and a national meme called Bahnhofviertel. Who wouldn’t want its reputation? Then I remembered Frankfurt an der Oder on the other side of the country, but that’s the story for another day).
While waiting among other restless customers with only a bag for my weekend trip, all I thought of was ‘I should’ve had dinner.’ In the end, it took us 3 hours because of traffic. Upon arriving at Frankfurt Hahn, my respect for the airline disintegrated completely as I looked up at a one-story high building with a total of two doors from the outermost to the runway, and only a barrier of security scanners in between. I could have just opened the door and walked out to the plane! (I couldn’t, but you get the idea)
To my horror, my friend’s text offered a silver lining: “If your flight is delayed more than 2 hours, you are qualified for compensation.”
“That’s what other passengers have been fighting the airline about for three hours,” I replied, “I don’t think they would vomit a cent.”
Somehow my 2-hour flight to Milan turned into a 5-hour delay and 2-hour flight, with zero euro coming back to my pocket. Worse, by the time I arrived, it was 2 a.m. so there was no public transportation that would take you from Milan Bergamo to the city centre, so technically I paid more for the taxi just because of one delay. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Once I got through the security door and rotted on the stiff plastic chair of the airport, I had a morbid thought that Italy did not want me there.
The trip was the first reunion between me and a Portuguese girl I befriended when we were on our exchange semester. She was supposed to take me out to an Italian dinner, but because of my delay, she cancelled the reservation. The reunion became me ringing her doorbell at 3 a.m., Southern European summer pooling into a sweaty spot on my back, my stomach gurgling and me munching on her bread in the small kitchen like a rat. By the time I washed the airport fume off me and laid in her bed, feeling sorry for myself, the sky was already lifting to a few shades brighter.
In the dark, she asked, “Should we go to Venice?”
We and thousands of tourists caught a train to Venice at 7 a.m. Despite getting a whopping 4 hours of slipping in and out of sleep, we raced on the platform, chasing the glee of doing something spontaneous. Once we settled down in the cabin packed like sardine, I browsed for a last-minute hotel. In hindsight, it was a dangerous and adrenaline-rush activity. It was July in the peak tourist season and on a weekend, I did not expect to find anything.
One hour into the ride, the train slowed to a stop. She listened to the announcement with her broken Italian and hoped her mother-tongue of Portuguese would fill in the rest. We were experiencing a few minutes of delay. I reclined on my seat and brought the phone to my eyes, an activity I have been doing too often these past two days. As I scrolled, the sun blasted through the glass window and warmed the side of my friend’s face, her brown eyes melted into liquid gold. I watched her frizzy box-dyed hair twirled absentmindedly in the wind of the air con and quietly exited whatever app I was on at that time. I pulled up the note app and typed the image before me into words.
Six years later, the image hadn’t made its way into any of my work in progress, but I kept that snippet ingrained in my memories.
A lot of things happened in Venice. We walked through the canals, took pictures of red-bricked buildings, and felt heat ooze off our shoulders. We learned that Google Maps was not our friend because it told us to walk on water to get to a place. We spent hours inside an overpriced restaurant because they served such amazing Aperol spritz. Around 3 p.m., I received a message that the room I requested became available at the last minute and we both screamed ‘YES’ at our phone.
The hotel was actually a boat docked outside of the city on a peninsula. The moment we stepped onto the ferry, the sky rumbled. We found two empty seats outside. Of course, since the sky started pouring, no one wanted to be wet so they hurried to occupy every seat inside the ferry, except for two girls in their early twenties that hadn’t developed the concept of being tired. We drew our backpacks to our chests and talked as rainwater sprayed on our bare legs and soaked our sneakers, through the bopping ride against the waves.
Memories work in a funny way. I don’t remember a lot of things, I can’t even recall what we ate that day. Still I remembered the smell of the rain, the texture of my shirt clinging onto my body, and the faint body odor after a whole day of walking around. I remembered us huddling under an umbrella, hurrying on a stony path toward the dock. Lightning struck the moment we stepped out, and without another word, we closed the umbrella and decided to brave the rain instead. It was a comical moment. We were mute in surprise. When we turned to look at each other, we burst out laughing at how miserable this situation felt and yet how entirely funny it was.
The owner of the boat was a charming woman who quickly ushered us in. She taught us how to use a shower on a boat and gave us directions to a small ma-and-pa’s restaurant for dinner. I almost flooded my cabin trying to wash my hair whereas my friend gathered all her courage to climb onto the bunk bed. Shortly before dinner, I went to the front deck to talk to the boat owner. At 6:34 p.m., I received an ominous text: “help” and I almost lost one of my shoes running back to the room. My friend was half-way down the ladder of the bed when her head got stuck on the ceiling and her body angled in a way that she couldn’t feel the step under her.
The year was 2019, less than a year before COVID hit, 3 years before I picked up the pen again. I often wondered what I was searching for in Venice, and the cliché answer would be myself. But in truth, I was not searching for myself there, I was running away from it. By then it had been some time since I wrote a novel or even read one without DNF-ing after two chapters. Universities and the job market forced me to turn my creative brain off, and while I could complain for hours on ends how class problems could kill a brilliant artist in the bud, still it wouldn’t give me my completed manuscript.
And there was another problem other than how sOcIeTy WaS bEiNg UnFaIr To Me.
A non-practicing artist who wanted to return to art often found themselves staring at the magnitude of our imagination, while being equipped with nothing but the incapability to turn it into reality. ‘I cannot draw a figure from memories’, ‘I cannot fully capture the essence of this passage’, or ‘There’s a scene I want to write but it will take 90 thousand words of other scenes until I can get there!’ were common obstacles we told ourselves. Earlier this year, I came across this Tiktok comment
and it changed my brain chemistry for the better. (Another great reading I can recommend is this blog post on why being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage.)
The truth is that every masterpiece exists within an invisible ecology of lesser works. The great painting emerges from hundreds of studies, sketches, and failed attempts. The brilliant book grows from years of mediocre writing. The breakthrough innovation builds on countless small improvements and partial failures. We see the oak tree, never the acorns. The symphony, never the scales. The masterpiece, never the apprenticeship.
The rain stopped by the time we returned from dinner. As I stood on the empty dock of Venice, I didn’t know it yet but I was gathering my twigs and mud to build my nest. A mindset I urge writers to change is to think writing time is only when you spend it in front of your computer or your page. To write you need to go out and experience things, to learn that there are as many emotions as there are people (to know how numb your butt could feel after sitting on a plastic chair at the airport for 5 hours).
My phone pinged on July 13, 2020. “Happy anniversary to this iconic text.” I called her afterwards and we filled each other in what had happened to us during that one year. When we said goodbye and the line went silent again, I tasted the earthy smell of the earth before the rain and the gentle sway of the ferry.
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Gorgeous. No notes. Having lots of feelings that I can't explain well.
this is so beautifully written!