My desk is a mess of all the things I thought I was going to need someday. I do need them.
Do I need them?
I need them.
The books and teacher's guides for the 4 grades of English I teach. Two sets of Jenga blocks with English words (one is 5th and one is 3rd grade appropriate) for when they get too tired to learn. My coffee thermos. Don't even get me started about that one. Need. Notebooks.
I have so many notebooks, one for each of the things I am trying to be.
A poet.
A musician.
A teacher.
A Writer.
A prophet or a saint (I'm not really sure which anymore).
An artist.
Can I be all those things, or is there just too much clutter on my desk? I'll never know until I start to clean it off, and someday I might look back at my sparkling clean workspace, no pressure but to sit on it and think...
Wasn't there once...
... something?
Of course, that's a silly thing to think, for there to be something. Not when desks can be clean, and people can go home not wondering with all their whats and wasn't theres.
Maybe I should leave it for another day.
29.3.11
28.3.11
Thursday
I have some questions.
Most of the time, they go unanswered. It's usually pretty simple stuff.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where..."
"What time do we start..."
"What is this? Do I eat it?"
I don't mind when the simple questions go unanswered. I'll find out soon enough anyway, but I have some other questions, and when I'm through asking the first lot, I expect to hear some answers. Clear answers.
I'm not quite sure who from though.
I'm waiting for the subway again, rolling through the dark underground, trying to write by artificial light. When does the next car come? 지하철? 언제?
Soon. It's coming soon.
3 more days. I am counting down on my planner every day. Perhaps in 3 days, something really will happen. Maybe not. Maybe it will just be thursday. Maybe the world will end. Maybe it will begin.
The man sitting next to me notices that I am trying to write something while standing in he crowded subway. He makes space and motions for me to sit. He is staring over my shoulder the whole time, as if he can read what I'm writing. I would think that he can, except that he seems so interested.
What do you want?
3 days.
Soon. It is coming soon.
Most of the time, they go unanswered. It's usually pretty simple stuff.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where..."
"What time do we start..."
"What is this? Do I eat it?"
I don't mind when the simple questions go unanswered. I'll find out soon enough anyway, but I have some other questions, and when I'm through asking the first lot, I expect to hear some answers. Clear answers.
I'm not quite sure who from though.
I'm waiting for the subway again, rolling through the dark underground, trying to write by artificial light. When does the next car come? 지하철? 언제?
Soon. It's coming soon.
3 more days. I am counting down on my planner every day. Perhaps in 3 days, something really will happen. Maybe not. Maybe it will just be thursday. Maybe the world will end. Maybe it will begin.
The man sitting next to me notices that I am trying to write something while standing in he crowded subway. He makes space and motions for me to sit. He is staring over my shoulder the whole time, as if he can read what I'm writing. I would think that he can, except that he seems so interested.
What do you want?
3 days.
Soon. It is coming soon.
27.3.11
I Have Always Lived Here
I feel like Diggory from The Magician's Nephew. Trapped in the world between worlds. If you asked me, I would tell you that I've always been here. Perhaps that's not even a lie.
Of course, I'm in a real place. I'm in South Korea. I live here. I'm a public school English teacher and a taxpayer on two continents (I still have to figure some of that out, I fear I must do paperwork). There's a glass, a sheen to this world though. I only see it as a casual observer, like through one of those mirrored glass cases where they keep all the deserts. I'm not sure which side of the case I'm on though, or for whom the obvious myrth of this interaction is intended.
The texture and sparkle of this place (or perhaps the sparkle of my eyes as I look at it) excuses me from so many things. I have never had to discuss religion, sign a petition, give blood or even perform complicated banking procedures. It is not expected that I should interact with this world in such a way as to change it, nor that it should change me. I get paid. They built a Mc'Donalds. That is all we will hear on the subject.
My eyes get a little warm and misty at night on the bus. It's not sadness or depression rearing its ugly head again. This is what happens when you're tired and you ride the bus a lot at night, routes you could never navigate during the day. Some places only exist at night with blurry eyes.
This fog spills out of me and into my world, slowly filling it to the very top, where the people would go to breathe if they saw the way I look at them sometimes. And all the words painted on the windows bleeding behind neon light join in the mist so happily, their meaning obscured to everything but the simplest of phrases.
That is a motel.
A Chinsese restaurant.
A PC room.
A bar.
I'm drowsy from the rumble of the bus; the slow, steady, bobbing up and down with the indestinguishable divets in the long winding road that somehow never quite seems to stop anywhere I would call home. Maybe that's my fault, though I know I'm not the one driving this thing.
If I squint my eyes just right, everything numbs and sparks, blurs to a soft red. When I open them again, will the world have dissappeared? Or, will I suddenly find myself transported? Perhaps to that elusive place that I keep chasing, though I am constantly leaving things that I had sworn embodied it? Does it even exist anymore?
Of course, I'm in a real place. I'm in South Korea. I live here. I'm a public school English teacher and a taxpayer on two continents (I still have to figure some of that out, I fear I must do paperwork). There's a glass, a sheen to this world though. I only see it as a casual observer, like through one of those mirrored glass cases where they keep all the deserts. I'm not sure which side of the case I'm on though, or for whom the obvious myrth of this interaction is intended.
The texture and sparkle of this place (or perhaps the sparkle of my eyes as I look at it) excuses me from so many things. I have never had to discuss religion, sign a petition, give blood or even perform complicated banking procedures. It is not expected that I should interact with this world in such a way as to change it, nor that it should change me. I get paid. They built a Mc'Donalds. That is all we will hear on the subject.
My eyes get a little warm and misty at night on the bus. It's not sadness or depression rearing its ugly head again. This is what happens when you're tired and you ride the bus a lot at night, routes you could never navigate during the day. Some places only exist at night with blurry eyes.
This fog spills out of me and into my world, slowly filling it to the very top, where the people would go to breathe if they saw the way I look at them sometimes. And all the words painted on the windows bleeding behind neon light join in the mist so happily, their meaning obscured to everything but the simplest of phrases.
That is a motel.
A Chinsese restaurant.
A PC room.
A bar.
I'm drowsy from the rumble of the bus; the slow, steady, bobbing up and down with the indestinguishable divets in the long winding road that somehow never quite seems to stop anywhere I would call home. Maybe that's my fault, though I know I'm not the one driving this thing.
If I squint my eyes just right, everything numbs and sparks, blurs to a soft red. When I open them again, will the world have dissappeared? Or, will I suddenly find myself transported? Perhaps to that elusive place that I keep chasing, though I am constantly leaving things that I had sworn embodied it? Does it even exist anymore?
25.3.11
To Mom, From Korea, On Her 60th Birthday
She:
a collection of stories.
The fox who stole the cookied man
and mouse who played the violin.
The tortise/hare she said "My son,
have a thick shell, and steady pace.
Life is not a thing you win
by racing through."
Time:
would find us both
on the opposite banks
of an ocean, waving, but still she would
reach the other side, after all
the peices, floating, smallest, insignificant.
The pretty ones who never noticed.
"A bleeding heart and waterproof skin," she said.
"Time and her aged toothless grin
will make lovers of us all before we end."
She:
A collection of the peices smallest,
greying hair and wrinkled eyes,
the very corner of what love had done.
Undone- the dishes, taxes, laundry.
Every compounding expense of time
for which there was no interest.
And the test came back, it was
positive, but so was she,
that life is not a thing you win
unless you're willing to give it up.
a collection of stories.
The fox who stole the cookied man
and mouse who played the violin.
The tortise/hare she said "My son,
have a thick shell, and steady pace.
Life is not a thing you win
by racing through."
Time:
would find us both
on the opposite banks
of an ocean, waving, but still she would
reach the other side, after all
the peices, floating, smallest, insignificant.
The pretty ones who never noticed.
"A bleeding heart and waterproof skin," she said.
"Time and her aged toothless grin
will make lovers of us all before we end."
She:
A collection of the peices smallest,
greying hair and wrinkled eyes,
the very corner of what love had done.
Undone- the dishes, taxes, laundry.
Every compounding expense of time
for which there was no interest.
And the test came back, it was
positive, but so was she,
that life is not a thing you win
unless you're willing to give it up.
23.3.11
The More You Tighten Your Grip...
Classes cancelled today. The parents are coming to see thier children at school, and I am supposed to dress up really nice in case one of them sees me. I always dress up nice though. It's a pretty rare occasion these days that I'm not wearing a tie. Sometimes even on the weekend.
My office is empty, though anything but silent. I don't think I believe in silence anymore. The outside world is gushing with the babble of laughing children, pouring in and out of the doors. If there is a method to their movements, I do not know it. Tall and straight, like trees beside the highway, I can see the other teachers rushing past my window, the click-clack of their heels on the concrete floor a constant reminder that they are, in fact, human, and not as tall as they seem. You would never mistake their height if you saw them in real life, but that was not what they wanted, straining to see even the slightest bit of the road ahead of them.
I can almost feel the trepidation of the mid-morning sky, intermittently split by the penetration of a passing jet. The opening closes as the sky rejoins itself with thunderous applause. They will tear apart again. They will join together again. The earth will rejoice.
The air pressure squeezes a wave of mollecules that gently tap at my door in aftershock. Say hello. I stand and I knock. If I hear voices, should I answer? I shift in my seat, and the floorboards rally together in a groaning complaint against me, joined soon by the backrest in my comfortably aged desk chair. I don't think it was ever meant to recline as much as it does, but I'll have no complaint. The cream brown liquid in my coffe thermos splashes against the walls as I drink it. The sound, shifting, distorted notes spilling over the top of each other. Music to greet the gaining sun. I hear familiar voices, chattering in a language that I don't understand, though I recognize it.
No. I don't believe in silence, and I am no Athiest. It takes more faith than I have to believe in nothing.
My life is filled with moments like these. You have to lie in wait, bait in hand, in order to catch them. Most days, there is not enough time.
My office is empty, though anything but silent. I don't think I believe in silence anymore. The outside world is gushing with the babble of laughing children, pouring in and out of the doors. If there is a method to their movements, I do not know it. Tall and straight, like trees beside the highway, I can see the other teachers rushing past my window, the click-clack of their heels on the concrete floor a constant reminder that they are, in fact, human, and not as tall as they seem. You would never mistake their height if you saw them in real life, but that was not what they wanted, straining to see even the slightest bit of the road ahead of them.
I can almost feel the trepidation of the mid-morning sky, intermittently split by the penetration of a passing jet. The opening closes as the sky rejoins itself with thunderous applause. They will tear apart again. They will join together again. The earth will rejoice.
The air pressure squeezes a wave of mollecules that gently tap at my door in aftershock. Say hello. I stand and I knock. If I hear voices, should I answer? I shift in my seat, and the floorboards rally together in a groaning complaint against me, joined soon by the backrest in my comfortably aged desk chair. I don't think it was ever meant to recline as much as it does, but I'll have no complaint. The cream brown liquid in my coffe thermos splashes against the walls as I drink it. The sound, shifting, distorted notes spilling over the top of each other. Music to greet the gaining sun. I hear familiar voices, chattering in a language that I don't understand, though I recognize it.
No. I don't believe in silence, and I am no Athiest. It takes more faith than I have to believe in nothing.
My life is filled with moments like these. You have to lie in wait, bait in hand, in order to catch them. Most days, there is not enough time.
22.3.11
The Future, Requesting Permission...
Hello, what's your name?
Stephen.
Ah! Welcome to Korea. Where are you from?
America.
USA! Do you swim here every day?
Not every day. Three times per week.
Three times, one week. Yes. Are you a good swimmer?
I'm okay.
Have you mastered the four swimming styles?
I never learned the butterfly stroke.
Butterfly stroke?
Like this (make motion).
Ah! Butterfly stroke. Why?
Because it's stupid.
I feel myself becoming more and more detached from the present, as though it is merely a passageway between my beginning and whatever I'm heading towards. My life is so much more habitual than it ever has been. I just lift my head from time to time to make sure I'm doing whatever it was I decided months ago was important for me to do.
I am teaching.
I am showering.
I am at the pool.
I am drinking coffee.
I am going to sleep.
I am waking up.
Everything else is all blurs. Colored ribbons of light an motion that guide my way. I dare not even name them. I am waiting for the future to land on top of this present and squash it dead. In the meantime...
I am going to sleep.
Stephen.
Ah! Welcome to Korea. Where are you from?
America.
USA! Do you swim here every day?
Not every day. Three times per week.
Three times, one week. Yes. Are you a good swimmer?
I'm okay.
Have you mastered the four swimming styles?
I never learned the butterfly stroke.
Butterfly stroke?
Like this (make motion).
Ah! Butterfly stroke. Why?
Because it's stupid.
I feel myself becoming more and more detached from the present, as though it is merely a passageway between my beginning and whatever I'm heading towards. My life is so much more habitual than it ever has been. I just lift my head from time to time to make sure I'm doing whatever it was I decided months ago was important for me to do.
I am teaching.
I am showering.
I am at the pool.
I am drinking coffee.
I am going to sleep.
I am waking up.
Everything else is all blurs. Colored ribbons of light an motion that guide my way. I dare not even name them. I am waiting for the future to land on top of this present and squash it dead. In the meantime...
I am going to sleep.
21.3.11
A Gentle Cup of Mutual Surrender (It's from a song)
The rain seems to drive certain things out of people. I myself have an affinity for coffee shops and sitting indoors, watching the people outside, shielded from the whining midmorning sky by their individual canopies; inclined to share the translucent gleam of their world with anyone for whom there is the slightest recollection, so close. Would their bodies touch up against each other, and does that make them smile?
Everyone?
Even the elderly, who have experienced touch in every form? Does the body ever tire of warm living thing pressed up against warm living thing, with no answer to the question of repetition? Is the world a romantic?
The sky.
It seems like she is crying for the love inexperienced, for the one umbrella per person, negating the outward necessity for warm against warm. But, we are all filled with the same as rain on the inside, and our bodies will be cold at the end.
It's raining here, in this place that will always be the other side of the world, though that is impossible. I do not grow tired of seeing small umbrellas, two underneath, without enough room to stand apart.
Everyone?
Even the elderly, who have experienced touch in every form? Does the body ever tire of warm living thing pressed up against warm living thing, with no answer to the question of repetition? Is the world a romantic?
The sky.
It seems like she is crying for the love inexperienced, for the one umbrella per person, negating the outward necessity for warm against warm. But, we are all filled with the same as rain on the inside, and our bodies will be cold at the end.
It's raining here, in this place that will always be the other side of the world, though that is impossible. I do not grow tired of seeing small umbrellas, two underneath, without enough room to stand apart.
20.3.11
The Checking Habit
I didn't weigh myself at the pool today. They have a fancy scale in the locker room right after the showers, and you can stand naked on it, because everyone in the locker room is naked. That way you don't have to feel guilty about the wieght from wearing clothes.
Clothes don't count anyway. Everyone knows we have skin underneath.
I wanted to weigh myself, but I didn't. Sometimes I think progress comes faster when you keep checking back. Sometimes I check my Facebook more than 10 times a day, just to see if anyone has told me that I'm brilliant yet.
But I've only checked it 4 times today. Maybe I should check again.
Today, I didn't weigh myself. Tomorrow I won't find out if I'm brilliant. I've just got to trust when I say that it doesn't make anything go faster, besides my patience. I've got to trust before they put me on pills or lock me up somewhere there isn't anything to check up on.
I feel like my good friend Vincent O'Brien. I like to pretend that I'm good friends with fictional characters. It makes me feel like I'm friends with more important people. I think the imaginary people are some of the most important ones. I worry sometimes that I know too many of them.
I wonder also, if I'll ever be able to write without being depressed first. When was the last thing I wrote?
3 months ago.
Sounds about right.
Progress. Checking won't make it faster.
I hope I get myself together soon.
Clothes don't count anyway. Everyone knows we have skin underneath.
I wanted to weigh myself, but I didn't. Sometimes I think progress comes faster when you keep checking back. Sometimes I check my Facebook more than 10 times a day, just to see if anyone has told me that I'm brilliant yet.
But I've only checked it 4 times today. Maybe I should check again.
Today, I didn't weigh myself. Tomorrow I won't find out if I'm brilliant. I've just got to trust when I say that it doesn't make anything go faster, besides my patience. I've got to trust before they put me on pills or lock me up somewhere there isn't anything to check up on.
I feel like my good friend Vincent O'Brien. I like to pretend that I'm good friends with fictional characters. It makes me feel like I'm friends with more important people. I think the imaginary people are some of the most important ones. I worry sometimes that I know too many of them.
I wonder also, if I'll ever be able to write without being depressed first. When was the last thing I wrote?
3 months ago.
Sounds about right.
Progress. Checking won't make it faster.
I hope I get myself together soon.
Spring Cleaning
Hello, my lovely reader(s?). I have been away for a while. I promise, for those of you who really enjoy me unloading all my personal junk in public, I am not done. I've been journalling (they have this new thing called paper, it's weird) and I'm going to upload some stuff more often. Then you will be able to look at my life, and my attitude about said life, and you will be filled with an infinite sense of gratitude that you are not me :)
Coming soon...
Coming soon...
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