The Market Next to Hotel 73

Our budget hotel sits on a boulevard of street repair and vacant stores, security doors shuttered tight. Then this morning, turning left instead of right, we notice a large, corrugated metal door on one space had lifted, revealing a narrow passageway that reaches from the street, back into the far distance -- a stretch of stalls and activity six or seven blocks wide. As we step into the corridor we can see chickens a sqwaking, cow tongues hanging on hooks, and other offerings not immediately decipherable as to whether they are animal, vegetable or mineral.

Food here is ofen unidentifiable by color, smell, sight, or texture. I defy almost anyone to identify what I have touched to my tongue in the last few days -- such as fruit that may be pig parts, nuts that are probably insects, as well as eggs hatched back when Taiwan was still Formosa -- black and shrunken 100 year old eggs. These I recognize. My friend Tzu Hui had bought me a skewer of three a couple of days before. There are still two hidden in my trench coat pocket that I'd forgotten to toss, probably mating.

Still we love our market. Friendly proprietors ply us with greetings and gifts, pushing greasy scallion and oyster pancakes, fish cookies -- which I hate -- into our hands, and bits and slices of what are most certainly fermented middle earth creatures stewed in ox blood.

"Nee How," "Hello," we chirp. She Sheah," thank you," we chant.

I think about the food I grew up with. Chopped herring, chopped liver, stuffed derma -- cow intestines filled with flour and seasonings, chicken soup and unborn eggs -- p'cha -- calves foot jelly. Mostly innards and extremities -- poor people food from another part of the world. I'd loved it all, except for the p'cha -- p.u. -- my siblings and I had called it. Still do palates develop as selectively for flavor as they do for the ability to say the l in flavor instead of r as my Chinese friend does? Fravor.

In that case, can I in good conscious make fun of Taiwanese food?

At home in Larchmont, I rarely frequent the Starbucks. I think their coffee is bitter and overpriced. Yet, in Taiwan, I surprise myself. I stop in almost every Starbucks I see. And the best breakfast I have the entire trip is the last morning -- at McDonald's.

I'm tangled in my headset and I'm in the wrong seat.

Jed has generously given me his aisle seat next to where he now sits tucked in the middle of the 3-across. He did this, perhaps, to quiet my whimpering. More likely it was love.

A few minutes before, I had seated myself confidently across the aisle from him, and made a bed of the airline blanket, pillow, the new fuzzy neck pillow I'd bought at Whole Foods, my copy of "Real Simple Magazine," my bottle of water in which I'd dissolved an ampule of Airbourne, etc. I'd even stowed my bag and stashed my purse under the seat. I'd just pulled out the cozy socks Cathay Pacific had provided and slipped them over the compression socks I wore for fear of blood clots.

I'd done all this without checking my ticket stub. When the sturdy young couple interrupted my nesting, I was terribly confused. I could not remember where I'd stuffed my boarding pass. Jed had not kept track of my seat number for me. After a long time, I found the stub and realized I'd have to vacate the only home I'd ever known on this jetliner. Oh, bother! I was already wearing the socks that should go to the real occupant of D 35. I'd ripped open the sealed plastic bag with his earphones. Fondled his tiny toothpaste. Lost his toothbrush in the underbrush of my unpacking. Worse, my real seat was an innie. That meant I'd have to climb over Jed every time I visited the restroom.

I began to haul myself across the aisle. The woman on Jed's otherside was looking at me with alarm -- my arms filled with the detritus of only seven or eight minutes on the plane. That's when Jed suggested I take the aisle seat instead of him. I didn't even have to ask. Plus, I knew how difficult it would be for him to bind his knees to his body for the 15 hour and 30 minute flight, to wedge into our economy class seating. Yet, he said, "Here, you take the aisle."

Who wouldn't love this man? I do.

Romance! Danger! Energy! Thank You HSBC.

Stomachs churning, our expectations at a low boil, Jed and I held fast to the back seat of the taxi in the early morning of November 20, as it nosed its way to the airport. Had we forgotten anything? Were we wise to lurch our lives forward toward shark fin fried rice and other untried edibles, when everything was going so smoothly at home? At least, I felt that way. Dominated by end-of-life fears, I'd spent a chunk of the previous evening putting my jewelry (such as it is) in separate plastic bags, designating baubles to particular friends and family, in case of an over-the-ocean demise. This fear is unlike me. I'd never really felt it before about traveling. I can get deathly afraid of leaving toothpaste in the sink -- Jed is neater than I am -- but traveling zillions of miles from home usually did not phase.

This time was different. It was as if I'd completed all the fantasies I'd ever held for myself. Now, traveling to a friend's wedding in Taiwan put me over a precipice. When I tried to picture myself there, all was dark. Had I asked the Holy One for too much? More sober than I can remember, I'd even typed a "good bye" note and left it on the coffee table for my son.

I'd almost shaken this mood when we got to the airport. But, then at the top of the escalator, and later as we left the gate and boarded the plane, inexplicably HSBC bank had plastered a huge 3-panel ad that read, "Romance, Danger, Energy." This is supposed to be a clever way of saying that each of us can view the same situation in very different and personal ways AND that HSBC understands! What! Are they crazy? What idiiot media person places an ad that says "Danger" in gigando letters between the boarding gate and the aircraft? Still, raging about the absurd placement did help replace raging fear with righteous professional judgement. I boarded the plane.