So yeah, sorry about the recent non-posting. My brain’s decided to do a prolonged portrayal of a brain belonging to an 80 year old man with Alzheimer’s and has decided to go the method-acting route and *actually* embody the role. Aside from extreme writer’s block, I’ll have moments of extreme clarity (fleeting, at best), hidden within an expanse of fogginess. I think the 60s girl group, The Shirelles, can best explain the last few weeks:
The Shirelles’ ode to Renee’s brain :
Tonight you're mine completely
You give your love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes
But will you love me tomorrow?
Is this a lasting treasure
Or just a moment's pleasure?
Can I believe the magic of your sighs?
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Tonight with words unspoken
You say that I'm the only one
But will my heart be broken
When the night meets the morning sun?
I'd like to know that your love
Is love I can be sure of
So tell me now, and I won't ask again
Will you still love me tomorrow?
…
It’s when I watch movies that are set in NYC or Chicago (so...nearly every movie ever made) – that I think about all these watery images of my past, beautiful or not, they’re all lovely to me, now that I’m a world away. Or more specifically, in a place that has made nostalgia an everyday activity, a ‘checking-in’ with myself to remind me where I came from and where ultimately I will end up again. I agree that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I think it also makes memories more vivid and dream-like.
Heraclitus: “You can’t step into the same river twice.” Boy was he right. And it goes both ways. Every memory shapes you and you shape every memory so that nothing is ever cemented, is always fluid and ephemeral. This strikes me as both disconcerting and comforting, if something can be both those things at once. Disconcerting in that each memory is only as tangible as water in your hands and comforting, in the way that memories are living travel partners – because of the very fact that they are ever-evolving, their pulse is real and however you see them is a true representation of where you are in your life—they are not some brittle, wilted flowers stuck between the pages of old books. Their scent is strong and sometimes can hit you hard, good or bad.
I suppose all this talk of memory illustrates my consuming interest in the brain and what it tells us about the illusive/magical potential of human life. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that taking a walk down the street and thinking about taking a walk are one in the same in how your brain interprets these actions – which is why reading a book can be so engaging. You’re painting a picture of whatever you’re reading about and it pulls you in because your brain is taking the same steps to create these pictures as it would to actually live them out. Which is why -- when I'm walking down some street in Seoul and pass block after block of monotonous architecture, do I bask in the memories of walking down Michigan Ave. in Chicago or walking down 100 blocks on Broadway and watching the city morph into 20 different cities, every 5 blocks or so. This isn't to say that I don't appreciate Seoul (or ROK in general) -- there are absolutely some beautiful things to see...but. I can't help but feel there's something missing... I can't articulate it fully and won't bore you trying to figure out on here (unless you're already bored, then I'm sorry)... perhaps it'll come to me later.
Some recent things of note:
- Last week I attended a classical guitar concert with some of my co-teachers. My first real live music experience in Korea…in order to get into the concert hall, we had to stand in a line and wait to have our temperature taken. I’d heard many stories from fellow foreign teachers about how they’ve had to have their temps taken everyday before teaching, so I wasn’t too freaked out about it. UNTIL I realized *how* they were administering it. A nice lady all in white stood right in front of me and pointed a laser beam straight into my eye! Then she smiled a nice Korean smile, bowed and gestured toward the entrance.
While the guitarists were technically spot-on and showed great discipline, there was something missing. And it was only until I found myself nodding off did I realize what it was. Soul. Feeling. Things You Can’t Discipline Yourself Into Having. It was a little disappointing…
- Before I forget—some people have been asking about how Busan went. Well, it didn’t. After a calamitous chase to Seoul station, my friend and I ended up missing the train by TWO minutes. : (
- I went to a robot bar last weekend in Seoul. MOST AWESOMEST BAR EVER. The awning is this huge silver robot head with glowing red eyes and you order your drinks through the front window. They serve your drinks in I.V. bags (which sort of just look like clear Capri Sun drinks, but still, it’s pretty amazing). Quaint/60s-ish décor inside and just altogether fabulous. I want to go back there.
- I’m getting my first haircut in Korea this evening. I’m a bit anxious about it for obvious reasons, but especially since every Korean I’ve talked to about it has said that I need a perm with the cut. Why is that an automatic?? And also, I don’t want one! Are they going to force me to get a perm?? We’ll see how it turns out. Wish me lots of luck.
P.S. I’ve embedded a youtube clip at the bottom here that entirely encapsulates what I see and experience in this country almost everyday. It’s strange how quickly you get used to new things— for instance, I don’t even bat an eyelash when I realize that I’ve eaten copious amounts of kimchi and bibimbap 5 out of the last 7 days. Completely normal now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDN7Nx5J6No&feature=player_embedded
10.04.2009
Chuseok and other stories
So…quick update. It’s Chuseok (chew-sock)! Korean Thanksgiving. Was at a teacher’s ‘orientation’ Tues-Thur—and have off Thurs-Monday for Chuseok. Pretty nice.
I don’t even want to elaborate on the ‘orientation’ – and if you’re one of those types that can read between the lines, you know that my putting ‘’ around the word orientation would indicate it wasn’t that great. I will say this though. Some of the native teachers here are pretty weird and a couple of them are downright questionable. I understand that the bare minimum for becoming a native teacher here is having a bachelors and being a native speaker. But I would imagine when they came up with these requirements, they probably figured that along with these 2 qualifications, one should also know how to spell, not use words that don’t exist, maybe even have a genuine interest in the English language and what the hell, a dash of interest in reading a book. Again, this wasn’t everybody, but the fact that this describes more than one person is a little scary to me.
Actually, kind of a lot scary.
Other than that, I went to a casino for the first time in my life a couple days ago. They don’t let Koreans gamble—so it was mostly Japanese, Chinese and Westerners piddling their money away. It wasn’t what I imagined it to be…it felt like the tables were actually tiny funerals scattered along the gambling floor with drooling zombies on either side—one side drinking the other playing the slots. I was on the latter. Didn’t win anything. But I did pay $16 that night for a Bennigan’s sandwich that tasted like it’d just been taken out of a box and defrosted. So it wasn’t a total loss. :-/
Randomness:
- I’ve figured out what my favorite Korean food is so far: kimchi man doo gook: kimchi dumpling soup. My god is it amazing.
- There’s lots of free extras here. You’re guaranteed to get a gift set of items if you buy something at a skincare store. Even if you buy something really cheap. Most of my purchases have been around 5,000 won (~ $5) and even so, they’ll give me a heap of samples that I know cost more than 5,000 won. Pretty cool. Also, I went to a bread store the other week and bought a loaf of bread (how original!) – the nice lady gift-wrapped the loaf and stuck in 3 AMAZING pastries for free. There’s also this one grocery store where it’s impossible to buy a box of soy milk without it having a small soy milk box strapped to it.
- I had my first ever taxi ride with a FEMALE taxi driver! They usually don’t even exist in movies (I can only think of one: the one in Pulp Fiction that drove Bruce Willis after his boxing scene). Anyhow, this one was very nice and was highly amused by my dazzling handle on Korean – I said “hello”, “thankyou” and “goodbye”.
- Korean grapes. Beyond delicious. Also on the fruit front: citrus fruits are extremely rare here. And when you do find them, they’re very expensive (I pay around $2 for 1 orange) They also like to put fruit in gift boxes. Off topic: they’re obsessed with spam. I’ve found bonafide spam gift sets in souvenir stores. I’m not kidding.
- At the movies: every theater has reserved seating. You do not pick your seat, no matter what. I went to a film with a couple of my co-teachers and aside from us, there were 2 other people in the entire theater. I figured we could bend the rules a little, but no. They were really serious about it.
In just a few days, I’ll be going to the Busan International Film Fest! Busan is where I originally wanted to live—2nd largest city, gorgeous and it's where
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