The Hub of My Travels

At some point during my fourteen-hour flight earlier today, I started thinking about the number of times I have flown to Taiwan. It's hard to count, but my guess is about twenty times in all. Movie selections were poor (House Bunny being the only title I can remember), so I had my TV screen set to the interactive map option that gives you all the flight info you could ever want.

I started imagining superimposing my life's travels onto the map. I've lived in a bunch of different places--Englewood, CO; Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan; Swarthmore, PA; Quito, Ecuador; San Francisco, CA--and I've obviously visited even more places. If I drew a line to represent every single flight I've ever taken in my life, I think an interesting pattern would emerge. And the most interesting part of the pattern that I never truy realized: the Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan would certainly look like the central hub in my network of flights. I've only ever lived in Taiwan for six years, and I don't even have citizenship in the country. But I suppose it is, as the hub of my travels, more than any other place my home.

It's a strange thing for me to say. Because after flying in and out of the island for over twenty years, I cannot say that I have grown up with the place. Every time I return is a Proustian encounter: accumulated years of aging and change, as in the wrinkles of Marcel's grandmother, reveal themselves abruptly suddenly and render the familiar thing momentarily unrecognizable.