Hustling, Grinning

The weather is supposed to be warm in Tokyo.  Heading over for a few days this week and then a few days next week.  The weather here on the way to the airport is cold and dim.  The backseat window of the cab is all fogged over.  Outside it smells like Czechoslovakia from the days when Czechoslovakia was still called Czechoslovakia.  The air was cold and smelled of coal.  The memories come unsolicited.   That was a cold, dark winter too. 

I don’t have much time left to get to the airport.  I’ll need to slap my passport down in ten minutes or so, or the gate will be closed.  I have a good, no nonsense, run-you-off-the-road cab driver, and this alleviates some of the concern.  Surprisingly, for 7:38 AM these airport back roads are packed. I think it looks earlier than it really is, because of all the haze.  I really like how this guy is speeding forward when the lane opens up.  But its no good.  We’ve come upon a light that has a seconds-countdown clock.  It’s currently on second 73. 

December is here.  I just noticed this, titling this doc. 

About an hour later I’ve a grin.  A grin for the accommodating way, my host country, sometimes operates.  I’d convinced myself that I had forty-five minutes before departure to check in, back there in the cab, writing away.  This is certainly the case on domestic flights.  But the friendly Air China lady explained that I was ten minutes late (not five minutes early) for an international departure.  “Oh.  I have no luggage.   Please check.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.”  She made a call.  “He said ‘no.’ It’s too late.”  Redoubling, abandoning nearly all reserve:  “Please call back, I’ll speak to the manager, this is really, really important, I’m your platinum card holder, please try one more time, I’m begging you here. Please.  Just try again.  Tell em’ it’s important.”  Absurd smile hanging in the air.

She calls back.  “. . . Yes, no luggage”  “That’s right!  No luggage!”  “OK.  Go to gate thirty-three.  I cannot issue the ticket it here.”  “Are you sure they will?”  “Yes.  But I can’t guarantee you’ll make the plane.”  “You’re great.  Thank you.”

Moments later, walking through the initial gateway to the international terminal, ticket in hand, I notice a melody from a hollow bodied guitar.  Grant Green is playing overhead.  Where for two unerring decades we had Kenny G’s tinny soprano sax in this most nationalistic of airports, one can now find Grant Green.  I applaud you, whoever you are, that pushed for that change.  I am sure you met resistance.  My eyes rise instinctively, looking for Grant Green.  Finding only the ceiling I smile and think how much I like this place, in spite of the polluted mornings.  You can make things happen if you smile and you’re pushy, and you don’t give up and you connect with someone’s humanity . . . and luck is still coursing along in the same direction you are. 

I made sure to return to the first young lady; the girl who could have waved me off to begin with her palm upturned in my face.  Interrupting her engagement with a customer I told her that she was great.   

Now I’m up over the clouds.  The air is clear and transparent.  I can see through this air.  I must adjust now to Japanese norms, where all my pleading and hustling and grinning, would certainly have been for naught.