Something To Sit On

I've been in Korea for nearly a year now.

I'm trying to think about how much I have been changed by this experience, and to be honest, there's a lot. I still often discover a deep sense of dissapointment with myself and my ability to cope with the life that I have. I'm not too concerned with dissapointment. It's not exactly my first time.

By and large, I've seen me, up close and personal. I find this frightening, baffling, and reassuring at the same time, and I refuse to explain what that means until I figure it out for myself. There's a lot going into me right now, and a lot more that needs to, if I am ever going to become a man.

Good lord, do you hear the way I talk about myself? I need a vacation from me. My changeup needs a changeup.

I want to hear from God. I want the voices in my head again. I can't take a vacation with my friends, and I can't go home this summer (believe me, two circumstances waaay beyond my control)so I guess I am alone.

Alone is a gift, regardless of how I see it. If alone is the gift that I've been given, then I'm going to unwrap it, and play with it for a little while. Maybe even be grateful.

I said maybe.

There's an island a few miles off the coast of South Korea. They call it 제주(Jeju). Women, rocks and horses. They claim to have a lot of those.

I was never much into horses.

Let's just say that I'm going for the rocks. I need something to sit on. I'm going to listen for the mighty wind, and the earth quaking, and the silence after. Especially the silence. I think the silence will take a little bit of time. I have 12 days. They say you can see the whole island in 2 days by car. I wonder how much I can see on foot.

I'm going to walk until I have no more feet. Until they belong to someone else.

I hope that you, oh loyal reader(s?), will stick around. I think that something qhuite interesting will happen this summer.

Little Boxes

No class today.

Today is the national test. Students will be ranked and filed, categorized, and put into seperate boxes called 중학교. This system of boxing will continue for quite some time. The "civilized" world is a collection of small boxes that we run back and forth between, collecting people to keep inside.

Sometimes we need a bigger box.

Sometimes we go outside just to remember.

The weather is not great right now. I guess sometimes it's good to have a box.

I've got 10 more minutes in this box. then I'm off to a box on wheels, a box underground, a box with a body of water, then backwards through all those boxes to the box I call home. Should I be so affectionate with something that closes over me so well?

I thought I wanted freedom?

I Fail At Making Fists

It was early when I woke up this morning. Seems like a thousand mornings I have already experienced. Why this one again? I showered, cleaned off and read some scripture. I'm doing a dramatic interpretation of a scripture from Luke at church this Sunday. I hadn't read it until today, and it turns out it wasn't about what I thought. Oh well, hadn't thought much yet.

I wrestled with the idea of skipping swimming today. I had a colission with another swimmer in the pool last night (I've been drifting a bit to the left these days) and my finger is still sore. I can't make a fist. I think I like to imagine problems like this though... I'm going. If I fail at everything else in life (including making fists) I'll at least get some regular exercize.

The 4th graders were positively demon posessed today. Some days I think I am perfectly skilled to be a teacher. These days I wonder if that's true. I've given up on falling in love with my job. I'm waiting for love to find me. It's noon and I already have a headache. I hope against hope that lunch isn't something absolutely fucking weird. It's hardly a valid thing to expect. Some items on the menu at my school don't have an English translation because the western world doesn't consider them to be food. Today is another day, in my own little corner of the world where I don't belong, but I feel like I would run into a similar problem wherever else I could go.

The other three English teachers left on a trip to study other elementary schools' English rooms, in preparation for the new years' program. The office is now empty. I asked them if I should go with them, and they said that the Principal told them that only 3 people could go.

What?

On a diffferent, but related note, I think that the special ed students should not be allowed to wander. They're in my office right now, hitting each other with sticks and saying "Ow, it hurts," in Korean. I'm fighting every urge I have to use some of the Korean yelling techniques I've learned from my co-workers to expediate their exit. The secret of my language aquisition will remain for now, becouse one of my advanced English 6th graders came in and I got him to shoo them out. I've got an hour to kill now.

That's life these days. You kill time until the day that it finally comes back and kills you. It's supposed to pick up at some point. I hear some older people complain that they don't have the time to get done what they used to do in a day. I'm not like them. I have the time. What is it then, that I am missing?

Motivation?

Courage?

Discipline?

Integrity?

Freedom.

Keep

Pockets are completely useless.

Every time I sit down, my pockets turn sideways and all the coins I had inside spill out. It's like I can only keep my things if I never relax. It really makes one think: how long have pockets been around? Have we really been using them for so long and overlooked this critical flaw in their design?

I think pockets need a beta test group, then we can fix them once and for all.

What shall we call the new thing we make up to replace them? The idea of pockets have already slipped into our subconscious as a society. I think it may be too late to try to give them another name.

I think we're stuck with pockets, actually. Regardless of their flaws, we've come to rely on them. Even if I could come up with something better, I don't think I could really switch over from something I already feel so accustomed to.

Could we just change everything?

I can imagine a world where we worry about what is best before what is comfortable. Where we can change because what we used to do was completely useless. In this world, I don't lose valuable things just because I let my guard down for a minute; because I relaxed...

I want something of value to hold on to. Something that no pocket can keep.

Regardless of my flaws, I've come to rely on myself.

Couldn't we just change everything?

All of my change just keeps spilling out of my stupid pockets.

The Power

Recently, (not that recently, actually...I'm behind on my updates) I got back from a retreat for the church leadership team that I (against all objections and with great reluctance) have been a part of for the past 6 months. I complain because I care. It's really all I have to offer.

We will return to my poor attitude in a minute. In the meantime, let me give you a little excerpt from my personal life. There was an activity (as there often is at this kind of function) where we were supposed to write notes of encouragement to other people in the team and hang them on a clothesline outside the conference center banquet hall. I'm not usually a fan of cliche sentiments, but I do love me some notes of encouragement. I figure that my South African friend Greg won't mind me sharing what he wrote, since he signed his name, and this is written exactly in the way that he talks. He's from Cape Town (South African Santa Cruz):

"Steve-o!

Dude, you are awesome. It has been rad to the power of sick getting to know you. I love how much you know about movies, and your quirky/crazy sense of humour. Yes, HUMOUR, coz that's how my mom taught me to spell it. Keep on loving Jesus with the passion, genuine desire and hinesty that you do. May you only come to see Him more and more. Love you, bro.

-Greg"

I am genuinely starting to believe that people's love for me says more about them than it does about me.

Or, more specifically, that a person loving me well means (more than it means that I am loveable) that they have developed an ability to love another person. Beautiful that imperfect people (like me) can recieve a love that is bigger than we deserve.I think I'm really ready to give up on being a victim of this world, as though its attitude towards me had anything to do with who I am. I have decided to be known by what loves me.

Rad to the power of sick.

Smile And Say Thud

I am starting over again.

I would have said (maybe yesterday) that my life has been a series of false starts over a long period of time. This would explain why I seem to be trapped in this perpetual cycle of infancy. Seems logical, but these days I feel like none of my starts could have been false, since I've needed every one of them.

I once heard an artist talking about center of gravity in relation to people in motion. He said that our center of gravity is in flux when we walk, because the basic idea of walking is falling and catching yourself over and over again.

So, when I fall, I should catch myself quickly? Maybe it's only falling if you stay down. Walking is a form of falling down. It makes me smile to think of the way I move, flopping forward and back on top of myself, like a baby or someone with a severe personal problem.

And God? With all my efforts, I hope I at least make Him laugh.

With the world as it is, I'll bet he could use a smile.