Wait for no man

Yesterday marked the one-month annviersary of my return to the United States!

Oh, you thought I'd stop talking about time, did you, now that I'm out of Korea? You thought perhaps I would stop counting weeks and months and years, stop noting fractions and segments completed, stop observing the passage that is undaunted by anything we do? We can kick and scream and tug and beg and pummel time with our fists of outraged procrastination but it just keeps moving, shrugging off everyone equally. So indifferent. Mary-Chapin called time the great equalizer. Or, wait? Was that sex? Love? It was her album Time*Sex*Love...oh, hold on, now I've got to go check.

I had it wrong! What a bad Mary-Chapin Carpenter fan! "Time is the great gift, sex is the great equalizer, love is the great mystery." Her bandmate/guitarist/co-songwriter/ producer/musical partner/lifelong friend John Jennings originally said it; that is the full title of the album Time*Sex*Love. Hmm. Well, now, time is the great gift. That part I agree with. I think it supports my point about time: that after Korea I'll never take it for granted again. Therefore, I continue to notice it.

Now let's talk about titles with asterisks in them. There's Time*Sex*Love and there's -- the big one! come on! you know it! -- M*A*S*H. Ahhhhhhhhhh, sighed the girl newly returned from Korea, as she promptly logged on to her roommate's computer and rejoined Netflix.

Here's a great thing that happened: Netflix kept me in its system, waiting patiently, just knowing I was bound to return from Korea and reactivate my membership. And it was right! I think that was one of my first acts as I settled back into this Medford house. The 200+ movies in my queue were right there waiting to be sent to me in succession, just as I'd left them, but I added all of the M*A*S*H discs in order and moved them to the upper echelons of the queue. That was a lot of DVDs. Each season is three discs or so, so now my queue is basically M*A*S*H after M*A*S*H after M*A*S*H. I've been out of town a lot this past month, but last week I watched Season 1 Disc 1 and it was -- well, it was what I thought it would be: strange.

That disc had the first eight episodes of the first season, and as any M*A*S*H fan knows, the first season is nothing to write home about. It was largely movie-derivative and as far as my Korea-ruminating purposes go, these particular episodes were too Vietnam-esque, to the point they were making any statement at all, but there were some Korean moments. There was Young-Hee ("I am also beautiful!") and that resonated much differently with me than when I viewed the show in my youth. I now see the whole honor/dishonoring the family thing matter-of-factly, instead of exotically.

That, I believe, is the first of many lessons I'll learn by watching the entirety of M*A*S*H in order as a post-Korea project. By living in another country, no matter how beautiful/wacky/grueling/ unsettling/enlightening, you enable yourself to look at it matter-of-factly instead of as some exotic Other. Agreeing or disagreeing is not the point of living abroad. Understanding is.

Speaking of living abroad, on Sunday I happened to go on an artist's date (The Artist's Way -- that's another post for another day) in the late afternoon to the beach in between the Wood Island and Orient Heights stops on the blue line. I wandered a bit and then sat for quite a while on a bench, watching the planes take off from Logan Airport. This, of course, made me think of "Winthrop," the Indigo Girls song that begins like this: When we get back to Winthrop, a few miles from the airport, on a plastic chair on a deck where my friends live, I watch the taking off airplanes, I watch the ocean waves crashing, and with all of this movement something's got to give. Down at the high tide, passed down through the family, the fisherman gather to complain about the catch. They talk about time and they talk about tides...I listen to them, and I listen to you, and for someone there is something never coming back.

So I sang it, and then I sang another Emily Saliers song, and another, and another. Just me and my inner artist, on a bench, singin' in the glorious light as the afternoon waned. I mixed in about one and a half Amy Ray songs but I kept going back to Emily: "Closer to Fine," "Love Will Come to You," "The Wood Song," "Watershed," "Mystery." It was rather nice, and passers-by didn't even seem to much care that I was just sitting on a bench singing by myself (but I wasn't by myself, you see, I was on a date with my inner artist).

Just then, Italy won the World Cup. There is no shortage of Italians anywhere in Boston, but I was in a particularly good place there. Cries of joy, honking horns, people spilling onto the streets waving Italian flags and biking along the sidewalk adjacent to the beach crying "Italy!!!" An Italian couple, maybe in their early 60s, joined me on my bench. They spoke mostly Italian with some English mixed in, but even with my extremely limited Italian skills (read: I speak French and Spanish) I could decipher that they were talking about the game and discussing the 1-1 score ("una a una" - that was easy) and the penalty kicks and so forth. When the jubilant cries started, I'd used my cell phone to get the World Cup update from Google text messaging, so I knew what was going on, even.

Other Italian friends of the couple happened by and they greeted each other "Viva l'Italia!" and talked about the game for a while. One couple joined them, so they four moved to the next bench over to all sit together, but I could still listen to the lovely mixed language conversation. They basked in the rapture of their country's glory, and I basked in their rapture, and the beach, and the moment. And I sang Emily songs, like "Galileo" (he was Italiano!): How long 'til my soul gets it right? Did any human being ever reach that kind of light? And "Virginia Woolf": Did you hear me say? Each life has its place. And "Winthrop": I hear the dim roar of the last flight out, and for someone there is someone never coming back.

Lag

I kind of miss being jet lagged. The first week or two I was back here I was pretty jet lagged. It felt wacky. I could not sleep for more than a few hours at a time. I woke up at first light. I was just - wide awake! suddenly! at 5:30, 6, 6:30...it was strange.

It also made me very productive in the mornings.

Then while I was hanging out with my family chez Grandma in western Massachusetts I started to be able to go back to sleep after that initial 6 a.m. wake-up. That was the beginning of the end. I let myself go back to sleep again and again until it was 8:00 or so! At this time I was of course getting sicker and sicker, my Korea cough worsening and my body ravaged by feverish muscle aches, and I slept and rested during a couple afternoons at Grandma's house. Of course that turned out to be pneumonia, I learned during my second week back in the U.S., my little lungs having brought home a souvenir from Korea that wasn't going to get any better 'til I hit the antibiotics.

By the end of week two, staying with friends in Washington D.C., I was letting myself fall back asleep again until 8 or even 9 and my body was taking the hint, and now it seems to be back to its habit of sleeping past 8 a.m. , especially when I'm up 'til 1 or 2 or 3 a.m.

Now this week I'm just bus lagged.

Bus lag is nowhere near as nice as jet lag. Bus lag hurts my neck and is just plain exhaustion. There's no wide-eyed wackiness to it whatsoever. There is only me wondering which northeastern U.S. city I'm passing through at the moment...and am I getting on a bus at midnight tonight?...what does this week hold in store?...can I just sleep comfortably in a bed again?...and so on.

This was a good week, though. I celebrated the 4th of July in Virginia Beach. The next day visited the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and on my way back through New York I took the side trip out to Hempstead on Long Island to visit Hofstra. That was very bizarre and I do believe the enormity of it all hit me upon actually setting foot on that campus. Of course, I was so very tired (bus lagged!) while there so it was not a very good state of mind to be contemplating one's future or even one's present. I came back to Boston last night on an arduous bus journey that completes (I hope, for a while, anyway) the string of arduous bus journeys I've been taking of late.

Yeah, bus lag.

Today I went with my aunt (and friend) Barbara to Cape Ann. We had a quite nice day trip excursion and enjoyed walking around Rockport and driving around the area and lunching, strolling, shopping and talking about life. It was absolutely fantastic. One interesting highlight was the shop Floating Lotus, which has all manner of Asian goods: clothing, rugs, scarves, drums, small carved things, lanterns, tapestries, etc., mostly from India and Thailand and Laos. I noticed a little sign explaining that the owners were a man and woman who had lived in Asia for a few years and developed relationships with the artisans and creators of these products, and they are now selling their items here and maintaining relationships with the makers and supporting fair trade and products they know to be made in good conditions.

I was definitely intrigued and I guessed correctly that they went to Asia to teach English. I talked to them for some time. They taught in Taiwan. We discussed our experiences and the similarities and some of the things we'd discovered about Asia, life, teaching, travel, and ourselves. We talked about the "lifers" we'd met who have embarked on the English teaching path and aren't looking back, and we talked about knowing when it was time to come home. They were very awesome and if you ever go to Rockport/Bear Skin Neck then go to the Floating Lotus because it and its owners are great!

I'm still rather enjoying this summer of contemplation and determining things. But I haven't forgotten my man Candide - yes, still my favorite book of all time - and I would do especially well to not forget his words now, as I'm looking at everything through one giant prism of synchronicity, from Borders to War and Peace, from Westwood to Korea and everywhere in between.

All right then, Voltaire, bring it home:

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds; for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunegonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pistachios."

"That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden."

This world falls on me

Yeah, it's true. It's another Indigo Girls song.

"I'm coming home with a stone strapped onto my back
I'm coming home with a burning hope
turning all my blues to black
I'm looking for a sacred hand to carve into my stone
A ghost of comfort, angel's breath,
to keep this life inside my chest
This world falls on me, hopes of immortality
Everywhere I turn all the beauty just keeps shaking me..."
-- from 'world falls'

Today was sunny and lovely. I wandered and I was productive. I was productive both with writing at home, and with errands out in the world. I have also noticed more and more people attentively watching World Cup games in public places, I might add. Furthermore, I found out that you can text message Google info on your cell phone and they'll send you World Cup scores. I love that!

But I digress.

World Falls, World Cup, world world world. What a wonderful world! I was in Harvard Square today. I have been in Harvard Square most of the days that I have been back in Cambridge/Boston. It is just the central point I pass through so often. And since coming back from Korea, I like it even more than I used to. Today I was just running errands there: bank, post office, coffee, CVS...but other days I have gone there to meet a friend for a drink or eat Mexican food. Yes, I have been eating Mexican food at every possible opportunity. It's true.

Today I also wandered into the Globe Corner bookstore, in its new location. It's a travel books and maps store. I like it. I hadn't been to it since it moved. It used to be right across from the Mexican restaurant. Anyway, I found myself looking at the Korean books. I just had to look at them to sort of see what looking at them was like now that I've been there done that. It was strange. I flipped through Culture Shock! Korea and nodded a lot.

They had Simon Winchester's book about Korea, which I had actually meant to buy and bring with me, and which I will still probably read, soon. But I didn't buy it today. I just looked. I liked the quote at the start of Chapter 1, from Hendrick Hamel's 1668 book The Description of the Kingdom of Corea, the first Western account of the 'Hermit Kingdom': "This Kingdom is very dangerous, and difficult for Strangers."

I used to complain about Boston a lot. I didn't mean to complain exactly; more like I just felt its flaws needed to be acknowledged as openly as its attributes. There are so many people here who've never left Massachusetts and whose families have been here for like fourteen generations and they just don't KNOW anything about the West Coast, say, for all their judgment of it...but after Korea, I find I like Boston more and more.

It must seem like I'm a total Korea hater. I'm really not at all. I've just experienced so much in the last nine months, and I can barely wrap my mind around it all. But lovely wandering days like today make it all very nice.

"This world falls on me with dreams of immortality.
Everywhere I turn all the beauty just keeps shaking me
I'm running, to the ends of the earth
I'm swimming, to the edge of the sea
And I'm laughing, I'm under starry skies
This world was meant for me
Don't bury me, carry me!"

Up on the watershed

"Thought I knew my mind like the back of my hand,
the gold and the rainbow, but nothing panned out as I planned.
They say only milk and honey's gonna make your soul satisfied.
Well, I'd better learn how to swim, 'cause the crossing is chilly and wide."
-- indigo girls, 'watershed'


You know, I've been thinking about the things Korea did for me. Korea, as I once put it in a conversation with a Canadian co-worker, is a beast that will climb up on your chest, sink in its claws, and rip off any escapist shield you had in place there. That was early in our tour of duty. It proved true for much of the time.

Here's one thing I've realized: Korea has given me a gift that is like none other. It has made me see/hear/appreciate not a few Indigo Girls songs in a new light. Now, we're talking Indigo Girls here. My Girls! I know every song by heart, I've seen them in concert 25 times, I own all the albums many times over, I recite the history and the trivia like an obsessed dork, and so on. You might think -- what could Linda possibly find new in an Indigo Girls song that she's been listening to for more than fifteen years? Well, Korea sure stepped right up to the plate for that challenge!

I mean - there was "It's Alright[sic]" back in January. I could handle that. And I can appreciate that I'm listening to the Rarities album in quite heavy rotation this week with a new perspective on my life, that one related to interpersonal issues as well. But "Watershed" - and "Closer to Fine" even?? Come on!

Yet it's true. At our cast party at the end of May, after the grueling, fulfilling production of Speak Truth to Power: Voices From Beyond the Dark had come to an end, we sat around playing the guitar and singing, in a beautiful, communal, free spirit life moment. I sang "Closer to Fine," with the help of wonderful Simon. who managed to play it after I just showed him the chords and away we went. And as I sang the chorus, I realized that I had, in fact, gone to the doctor (many times) and gone to the mountain (that very day!) and looked to the children (when had I done that in my life before?) And there really was "more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line."

Well that was "Closer to Fine," there. And it just continues, back here in the U.S. Because today I listened to "Watershed," as referenced above, and I heard something new. More from "Watershed" now:

"They say that it's never too late,
but you don't get any younger.
Well, I'd better learn how to starve the emptiness
and feed the hunger."

By the end of my time in Korea, I was involved in one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, directing that production of Speak Truth to Power: Voices From Beyond the Dark, which we performed both in our Daegu Renaissance arts space as well as at the Korea Democracy Foundation's symposium in Seoul. There's a line in that play, spoken by Marian Wright Edelman, where she talks about looking around and realizing what life is about. "Everyone needs to open up the envelope of their soul," she says, "and get their orders from inside."

It's quite a thought. The play is full of inspiring words. I'm still pretty stunned that we pulled it off - and I'm really just astonished at the past year of my life, in general.

"Stepping on a crack,
breaking up and looking back,
every tree limb overhead seems to sit and wait,
'til every step you take becomes a twist of fate."

It's not that I haven't been moved by these "Watershed" lyrics before. I've loved the song for a good long while, and rejoiced when the Girls dust it off and play it in concert. But when you really are moving down the path, and finally checking off items on your life's Things to Do list, it changes somehow.

"Up on the watershed,
standing at the fork in the road,
you can stand there and agonize
'til your agony's your heaviest load.
You'll never fly as the crow flies;
get used to a country mile.
When you're learning to face
the path at your pace
every choice is worth your while."

Again 2002! Go go Korea!

So here's something weird. I'm actually a little sad for Korea that they did not advance in the World Cup. ! I know, I guess I got brainwashed or something over there. I mean, it's different with "my" team -- who ever really expected the U.S. to advance, right? And as far as I can tell in my galavanting about the Northeast these last two weeks, no one but NO one here seems to much care, of course. When I checked the standings in the morning paper at Grandma's house I was met with blank stares by four generations of Napikoskis; when my eyes strayed from the Texas Hold'em screen to the World Cup game screen in the bar in Virginia Beach, mine seemed to be the only eyes straying.

But I really got into the World Cupness of it all those last few weeks in Korea. Besides the sea of red shirts("Be the red!") and Korean spirit ("Korea fighting!") and various bad English (they call it "Konglish") slogans encouraging a repeat of their triumphant 2002 World Cup showing, when Korea hosted the event, a historical moment for the country you are incessantly reminded of when you're there...besides all that I've also been hanging out with English speaking friends who care about soccer (football!), don't forget. From England, Ireland, and the like. Canada too.

Like, I think I'm probably now rooting for England just 'cause my co-worker/neighbor Englishman buddy over there got me kind of jazzed about his team. And I can't believe Korea's out. Normally I might be for France, but they were in Korea's group, see. I feel a bit of loyalty to Korea. I even taught my nephew how to cheer "Tae-ha-min-guk!" (it means "Republic of South Korea!") until my sister was like, great, he'll be saying "guk" around other people who have no idea why. But it just means "land" or "people"...sigh.

I mean, here's a typical conversation: "Oh, teacher, you're leaving? So sad. We'll miss you" etc. Then, "When are you going back to your country?" I reply, "June 10." They say, "Oh, you go home just in time to watch the World Cup!" Like, they so don't get that no one in the U.S. cares! Too funny.

I do like Brazil. Maybe I'll root for Brazil. I guess my other quarterfinal picks will be Germany and Ukraine.

And yes, I will continue talking about this, aware that my U.S. audience does not much care. I have been heartened to at least find the World Cup ON in every bar, whether in Virginia, D.C., or here in Massachusetts, as well as on the TVs in BWI airport and so forth. I'm just looking at things so differently than I did in 2002.

I guess that last statement is true on many levels!

"But it's some free times!"

It's true. I am home.

"Home." A word that says so much with so little. I have thought before about how traveling makes home seem all the more like home, and this has definitely happened with returning to the U.S. from Korea.

I have spent the last two weeks in a whirlwind of traveling back and forth between Massachusetts and Virginia, traveling to family, friends, relationship, back and forth, drive in to Boston, suitcases not unpacked yet, then off to the doctor to diagnose pneumonia, throw in a trip to D.C., old friends, new faces, lingering issues, good times, hard times, emotional contemplation, sometimes driving, sometimes flying Southwest, sometimes on a Greyhound bus, rediscovering the U.S.A., and always always always rediscovering myself.

The time has been passing very strangely. I feel very very far away from my friends in Korea and my little world there. I have heard from a couple of them but have really been so busy and so sporadic in my e-mail access. I've mostly been communicating face to face with people on the ground wherever I happen to be. It feels very connected to do that, in this hyper-modernized world. Just to sit and talk with someone I haven't seen in two years over a cool refreshing beverage is very good.

Don't you write it down,
remember this in your head.
Don't take a picture,
remember this in your heart.
Don't leave a message,
when everything comes apart.
Talk to me face to face...
- indigo girls, 'dead man's hill'

I totally understand the loss, bewilderment, sadness, and rage she feels in that song. And funny, I barely took any pictures the entire time I was in Korea... On the other hand it hasn't all been emotionally grueling these past two weeks. There have been so many beautiful moments, from sitting on a Virginia Beach oceanfront balcony watching the sun glisten on the water to sitting cross-legged on the bed upstairs in grandma's house playing a "duet" on the guitar with my two-year-old nephew. I frankly think driving across Massachusetts, spending time in D.C., and visiting colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown settlement were great ways to reacquaint myself with being back in the U.S. Not to mention connecting with people. Oh, people. Thank you thank thank you to all you people who've been subjected to me over the last two weeks. This has been quite a time of transition. It's been really hard. But sometimes hard is good for us.

It was one of my eleven-year-old advanced students who wrote the line in a composition about travel...wow, those classes feel so far away right now! As if it were in another lifetime that I was teaching in Korea! Well, anyway, this was early in May. The subject was travel and "how do you like to travel? By car, bus, train, or plane? Stay in hotels or with friends and relatives?" etc. One student wrote about his family taking car trips and staying with cousins. It's busy and they do a lot of things and so on, he wrote, "but it's some free times." I absolutely loved it. I showed it to my co-worker Paul who sat next to me and he appreciated it too. I wrote "But it's some free times!" across the top of my calendar, and it became our kind of mantra, our theme, my beacon for that awaited departure date. It hardly seemed real then, and now it hardly seems it could have been any other way, that on June 10 I would leave Korea and indeed find some free times.

Communism and whatnot

I do believe I might never catch up because I have only SEVEN DAYS left in country...Yes, the morning of my last full Saturday in Korea has come...and still so much to write about...and there's no time now!

Today we are going to "North Korea." Oh, ha ha ha, we're going to the DMZ--the Demilitarized Zone, a 4-km wide, 240-km long swatch of land between the two Koreas where soldiers face off centimeters apart. Therein are Panmunjeom, tunnels allegedly dug by the North Koreans through which they planned to invade Seoul, an observatory, and so on. It's actually a noted tourist thing to do, to take one of these tours, and that's what we're doing. Both Americans (the armed forces' USO) and Koreans (tour companies) offer the trips. Anyway, I've been amusing myself pretending we are "going to North Korea" because you can get a commemorative stamp in your passport as part of the tour that you were in the village that touches both South and North Korean land.

Gotta run!

Maids are milkin'; swans are swimmin'

HOLY crap.

I have so much to post about -- a week of epiphanies and partying and people and thoughts and ideas and missing Korea already and sadness and resolve and figuring things out and and and and and and --

and yet all I can post right now is how outraged I am to come home today to find my apartment ransacked by the dude who came to install air conditioning today. Mind you, I did not want the dude to install air conditioning. Mind you, I did not ask for the dude to install air conditioning. My Candian co-workers, the marrieds, have been very adamant complaining about the lack of air conditioner in their apartment (promised in our contracts) but I happen to have said nothing. I'm never home and I don't care. So to my great surprise today the secretary came into my class during preschool with a Korean teacher to translate saying, "We need your house key so the man can go to your apartment and install air conditioning." I said, "The hell you do!" But of course they got the key from my Chinese roommate. In whose room, I might add, they did not even put an air conditioner. No, just in mine.

AND THEY WREAKED HAVOC! I came home to find books, papers, etc. everywhere. Now, I asked and begged and pleaded for them to NOT have the guy come today -- on no notice whatsoever to me -- but that's because I was worried about my laundry spread out everywhere being in the way and the Speak Truth to Power books stacked on the floor and whatnot...

But turns OUT what happened is dude apparently saw fit to take everything off the middle of my three-shelved wall unit so he could stand on it to install the wall air-conditioner, and then "put it back" -- sideways, haphazard, and with stuff strewn all around like a tornado hit.

No kidding. I can't even describe it. (But I did take pictures, with my cool English co-worker from downstairs.) Who even does this? How is it OK? Everything -- books, important papers, all my Hofstra and law school stuff, letters from people, you name it. Moved, touched, strewn, some of it piled sideways (whereas I had it shelved like books) and my computer turned off and rebooted because I can see they moved the power strip and probably unplugged it to test the air conditioner because THE PLUG ON THE WALL UNIT DOES NOT REACH AN OUTLET!!! Furthermore, the phone was left lying on the floor, toppled from my impromptu (cardboard box -- we have no furnishings, remember) nightstand, off the hook. AND, the actual air con has a hose that goes out the window and they did not seal the hole so I have to deal with that tonight because it's getting to be mosquito time...

I'm so freakin' irritated! Seven more bloody days and I have to deal with this nonsense.

I hate them.

END RANT