well, not exactly. for starters, i'm sitting at a computer at work, totally sheltered from the outside world. but i do think an umbrella has magically fused itself to my left arm. seems like it's been raining in korea for longer than i've been alive. i don't remember when i saw sunshine for more than 20 minutes.
so yes, the rain continues, but i must say, i don't mind it one bit. i like the way it looks when the drops hit an already formed puddle. i like the way it smells, or what the smell reminds me of--eminence, missouri, family reunions and the backwoods demeanor of random derelict cousins on my mom's side. or swimming at stephen's lake in the wee-est of morning hours, cans of piss-warm stag orbiting me like satellites. i like the way it sounds. shit, ran out of metaphors. i guess rain sounds like rain, and that's purty/nostalgic enough. i particularly like all of these things when i'm walking home from work at 7:45 pm protected in the bubble-like cocoon that is my mp3 player, navigating the dark sidewalks and streets. this just might be my favorite part of the day. but sitting on my "veranda" looking at the plant that i have somehow managed not to kill is pretty swell too. small victories.
ilsan has this air of newness about it (and i am, in part, referring to the actual air in this city. seems cleaner than regular air). everything is lush and green, almost preternaturally so. so it's nice to smell the wet dirt and the plants and see the earthworms plugging away at some vague journey. a reminder that the rain is real. this damp-smelling earth is real. the cacophony of the cicadas is real. seriously, has anybody else noticed how fucking loud they are? there have to be a million of them hovering in the trees and bushes at any given moment...plotting. and, finally, the happiness yielded by such minutiae is perhaps the most real of all.
shitballs, it feels like it's been a while since i blogged.
this is my last week of summer intensive courses here at my jobby job. next week back to teaching 6 hours/day m-s. that's a routine i feel like my body's actually accustomed to. when i worked at shakes--the longest running job i've ever had--it was always that late afternoon into the nighttime shift. my body is calibrated to such a schedule. nothing but utmost productivity for me during these hours. but i guess that was back in the day when productivity was measured by a ratio of shots of jameson/hour. hopefully it's still my peak performance time. all i know is that i can't think of anything worse in the world than waking up before 7 am. i absolutely hate it. every morning as soon as "old ringtone" goes off on my cell phone at 6:30, my first instinct is to shed a little tear for the atrocity that is having to wake up that early. moving on...
weekend shenanigans. let me first say, i am not dead from bungee jumping. that's because it was postponed until this weekend. so that gives everyone a week to tell me how much of an impact i've had on their lives and how they always were secretly in love with me. hell yeah i'm fishing for compliments! sunday's cancelled bungee jumping and rafting excursion was intended to mark two significant events--my first return to chuncheon since the fallout of over a year ago, and my last chance to see miss erica stief (my suncheon chingu) before she left for america.
but instead i found myself en route to the seoul gimpo airport at 8 pm on a saturday night. from there i headed to gwangju (i actually thought the plane was just going to drive me to gwangju, as it seemed to taxi on the runway for a lifetime). took the bus from gwangju to suncheon, rolling in to the favorite drinkery at 11:30 pm. it felt really amazing to be back in suncheon, honestly. that makes me sound like i'm a soldier, returning from the war or something like that, tearing up at the local fish paste stand. i've only been gone for a little over a month, but it was a bizarre feeling sitting on the bus as it navigated these same streets that i used to navigate with such regularity. perspective is a great thing. i guess the very nature of the word is a revelation to me. stepping back and seeing things as they truly are, not getting caught up in the details. i dunno. going back made me realize that maybe i wasn't as miserable there as i tried to tell myself. i think i get in these moods where i can't function unless i go through some period of imposed melancholy. the only way i can appreciate any happiness is to make sure i'm clearly not happy first. then snapping out of it seems so clarifying and life-affirming. sort of a shitty deal though...
anyway, met up with erica and fike and the gang. drank a lot. it was nice to be a social being again. seems like i haven't been that way in recent memory (aside from japan. but it was nice to sit and talk with people i know. and to feel funny and vulgur and like myself. not that i haven't felt like myself lately. but yeah, i enjoy being anti-social sometimes. but being social ain't a bad deal either.
drank until 4:30 ish in the am, woke up to realize i was covered in donut bits on account of some minor war the night before, with dunkin donuts the weapon of choice. it would require some real brutality to murder someone with a donut, i guess. but there are worse ways to go.
i guess this is all for now.
oh, i miss having persons of the male persuasion to harbor feelings for. there's no one here i get to lust after. don't get me wrong, i still have plenty of lust in my, uh, heart. but it sort of sucks when it has no focus. yup, random. whatev.
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