In Another Life, She’s a 台北閒人

An alternate life, lived in leisure. Unhurried. Observing.

The flight to Taipei always leaves at 1am.
By then, JFK feels like a dream: harsh fluorescent lights, everything too bright and too quiet, people moving like they’re underwater.
The bars are closing, but there are always a few stragglers lingering, not quite ready to leave.

I try to make myself as tired as possible so I’ll sleep through most of the sixteen, almost seventeen hours. I have a routine: magnesium before boarding, a Benadryl right after takeoff, eye mask on before the safety video ends.

If I’m lucky, I get a whole row to myself, or I ask to switch to an exit row and get lucky without paying the extra 160 dollars. I always fly on Wednesdays when I can—less full, cheaper, no holidays, not much reason to be flying there now in mid-March.

It’s a long haul, but when I land, I don’t feel like I’ve arrived.
It feels like I’ve resumed.
Like I’ve unpaused a saved file in a game where it’s “Taipei-me.”

Taipei-me is always in leisure.
Not relaxing, exactly. Just unhurried.
She moves like someone who has time for things that don’t need to be done.

—

In this saved or alternate version of my life, I never left Taipei.
I live here in a modest apartment in Shilin, where I hear the morning bells from the high school nearby, the birds are too loud, and the light filters through mesh screens and it smells damp. I don’t have a job, but I have shit to do. I walk side streets, I loiter in coffee shops, I sketch convenience store chairs, pigeons, geckos.

I browse the market on Zhongzheng Road or Shidong Market and buy ready-made meals and all kinds of 小菜.

Once a year, I slip back and unpause this life.
Seventeen hours across the Pacific, and suddenly I’m waking up inside a saved game I forgot I was playing.

In this version, I turn off email.
I stop managing my calendar.
I stop checking the temperature in New York.

I pick up a Korean short story collection translated into Mandarin: Zombies, Love, and Cocktails. One of the stories is about a mother and daughter unraveling quietly after their dad turns into a zombie while pretending everything is fine. There’s something that deeply resonates with me, even if I have to read it very slowly because my Mandarin is not great.

Some mornings I run by the water behind the new children’s amusement park, along the path at Shuangxi Lake.

I’m not exercising. I’m not working out. It’s just part of the leisure.
I don’t time myself. I don’t use my Apple Watch here.

A group of 阿伯s plays jazz under a bridge.
Scattered along the water’s edge are birds that look like miniature penguins.
I think they’re herons. They stand very still.

I draw a lot.
Not for work. Just to prove I still exist here.

The big tree in Dadaocheng that leans over the stalls.
Benches in Dazhi, where old men rest with their hands folded over plastic shopping bags. The riverwalk in Danshui, where little cat statues sit under another tree.

Seventeen hours back across the Pacific, I have another ritual: I try very hard to stay awake because we land in the evening and I have work the next day.

Seventeen years ago, I used to carry cash and wait in line for a yellow cab outside JFK, heat blasting, radio humming something I didn’t catch.

Now I call an Uber. I don’t need cash. I’m home, it’s a lot colder.