Three Years On

Since the pandemic started, I've lost all concept of time.

Everything that happened before March, 2020, seems to be in my distant past, though March 2020, itself, doesn't seem that long ago. It's as though we've made a quantum leap in time under the pandemic, with everything else pushed far into the past.

Three years ago, today, I found myself in Seoul, South Korea, though because of the time difference, I skipped a day. What should have been late on a Friday night was mid-day, Saturday.

It amazed me how I didn't recognize so much of the city yet knew exactly where to go. Buildings had come down and had been replaced with taller, more modern ones, though pieces of history still abounded. Having taken a train from the modern airport, which didn't exist the last time I was in Korea, to the central station, which had existed for more than 100 years, I was able to find my orientation and walk, without a map, to my hotel.

Over the next couple of days, I would use my old familiarity of the city to explore. I also used modern technology—Google—to locate where I would need to go to catch a bus to get to places I hadn't explored before. A T-card ensured that I wouldn't need cash to ride public transit.

It wasn't until December of last year that we've been able to travel again. Since then, DW and I have been on two trips, with our next big travel plans set for mid-September and another one in January, 2023. But I also think of my trip to Korea, in 2019, and tell myself, when the anniversary of that solo excursion comes around, that I don't think I'm done with that country, where I lived from 1997 to 1999.

I think I'll be back. But because my concept of time has been skewed, I just don't know when.