Waiting @ Vancouver Int'l Airport

I like how this place is full of so many kinds of people. A French woman helped me at the Duty Free store, a couple sat in front of me at Burger King taking intimately in Spanish, two men behind me are speaking Mandarin melodiously and rapidly, a Cantonese woman instructs her two daughters to eat their candy slowly in distracted bursts, and an old adorable Indian man in a maroon cap is eating his fries and burger silently, methodically yet without heaviness. I like these languages and people existing, and strangely not intersecting. There is something strange, interesting and slightly unsettling about it.

It is reminding me of something an elder, Elizabeth Asahi Sato, said to me recently. While speaking of her formerly Buddhist mother's first time saying the Lord's Prayer she said that there was something so beautiful, as if this prayer was meant to be repeated in broken English. Full of simplicity, innocent like a child, but wise and deep like the vast ocean. Her mother then proceeded to burn her family eairlooms which were prayer books and shrines of Buddha even those encrusted in gold. When Elizabeth tried to stop her, she said, "Your God told me to burn them, so I obey." This feels simple and wise, like these two Chinese girls before me, obeying without question the warnings of their mother. I can see them looking at me with wonder and unabashed curiosity and saying nothing because they've been taught propriety. The little one has a blue tongue from her lollipop. "You m you sic go dee French fries, sic ah!" The younger sister asks her mom with a skip, bobbing on the toes of her orange alligators. Do you want to eat some French fries, she says in Chinglish. We quickly learn to meld worlds in our mouth and create new ones. I ate my whopper with cheese, devouring each bite like a starved carnivore, smiling with my teeth barred. It was exquisite, and I think I've decided Canadians make better cheeseburgers than Americans; it was steaming hot in my hand and melted into my willing stomach, although I was at first glance skeptical of this little round bun.