Elephant Talk

I’m very sleep deprived. So this post might not make any sense. The flight was uneventful, except for some significant turbulence. I like turbulence. There’s that briefest instant of freefall and then the “thud.” I was half asleep when one hit — I never did become fully asleep — and I imagined what might happen if the wings ripped apart. Would the plane start spiraling, or would it nosedive? I envisioned a kind of nosedive and then I thought that if I survived the impact, the cabin would probably be shred to shit and I’d have to think fast to grab my life vest. I like to think that I’d look around to see if there were any children who had forgotten to put a vest on and maybe I’d try to save one. Then we’d float in the icy water and he/she would scream and I’d have to say kin-chan-ay-yo, kin-chan-ay-yo, or however you say that. Then the sun would rise a little and I’d die from the cold but the child would survive and get rescued. Anyway, that was my story. In truth I’d probably panic and swallow a bunch of water before I could take off my seatbelt.

I watched an episode of Friends. It’s been a year since I’ve seen American situation comedies. I’d forgotten about the laugh-track. What a silly, stupid thing. Every two seconds the crowd did this loud, canned laughter. I kept wishing they would shut the hell up.

I read the International Herald Tribune and there was something about US customs officials seizing people’s laptops and copying their hard drives. I thought that if they did that to me when I landed I’d tell them to fuck off. Then I’d wind up in jail and that would be fine with me.

I’m reading an amazingly brilliant, brilliantly amazing book called Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which is probably why I’m writing like this. Or maybe it’s the no sleep thing.

America is weird. Everyone is so polite to complete strangers. Things are so clean and average. Everyone looks different from everyone else. And I can hear conversations again. Most of the time I wish I didn’t. But it’s nice to be back.

It’s been a strange past 20 or 30 days and now I feel a strong urge to get the hell out of here for a while. So finally, I’m actually looking forward to my trip. Not just wanting to go but needing to go. I’ve probably said this before, but this place shifts and turns in such strange ways for me. One week I feel like I have a sense of my reality and another I’m not sure. It’s not so much a matter of objective reality, but my perception of myself within it. Who the hell am I here? It’s different than who I am there, that’s for sure. So it’s time to go back, get some perspective, remember things I’ve forgotten, and try to forget some other things for a while.

I’ve got a rough plan, and I’m excited about all of it:

July 11: Arrive
July 12: Welcome home party/BBQ
July 13: San Francisco with mom & dad
July 15-19: Yosemite cabin
July 20: Busan reunion. Me and three friends who used to live in Busan are serendipitously meeting up in San Francisco. This should be a hoot.
July 21-31: Rent a car. Float. Enjoy. Eat burritos. Hang with friends in San Ho and SF. A Stern Grove festival? A trip to Santa Cruz, a trip to Sacramento… not quite sure.
Aug 1-4: Nevada desert. Road trip with college friends. I think the plan is to shoot guns and blow things up.
Aug 5-7: Come down. Gear up.
Aug 8: Back across the ocean to welcome the rest of my life.

Don’t trust western foreigners teaching in Japan.

I have to be careful with this post because I don’t want certain readers to get the wrong idea.

Much of the appeal of moving to Korea was getting a good 4 or 5 months a year off. I thought I’d use all that time to go back to America in the Summer and Winter. I thought at the time that I’d need to. More recently I thought I’d simply want to.

I’ve got my ticket. I’m going back to the States July 11 for just under a month. But I find that as the date gets closer, I’m less excited about going. In fact, I find a nagging, inexorable pull that I’m fighting. I can’t figure out why, but I just don’t really want to go.

I will say this: I want to see my family, and I want to see certain friends. These are things I am looking forward to. But American culture is not one of them. There’s nothing about it that I miss, nothing at all. ……… I’m kind of stuck staring at the computer monitor after that last sentence. I’m not sure how to tactfully put this. I guess that, in seeing things from a distance, there are certain aspects of America I find disgusting, and there are other aspects that I find boring. As a culture, it’s hardly living up to its original ideals. And I get the sense that no one there really cares. People will continue to ride out their personal ambitions and forms of entertainment and continue to live in a self-imposed ignorance about the rest of the world.

As for the boredom, it’s a simple thing. People will have their own lives, they will go to their jobs. I’ll have to find ways of amusing myself in a very predictable society where everything functions by stringent laws and overly polite gestures. All these discrete individuals will go around this way and that and I’ll have no one to really talk to, no one to share anything with. And then I’ll be stuck, tied down and waiting until I can come back.

To put a finer point on it, we should travel to discover something new. There’s nothing new for me about America. In fact it seems very, very old, and increasingly irrelevant. And yet it’s packaged in this arrogant attitude that it’s the best society in the world. Sorry, but I’m just not looking forward to that vibe at all.

I know… this sounds whiny and self-important. But the feeling is there. Maybe it’s that I’ve been away too long. I haven’t been back for a full year.

I’ll adjust. I’ll see the people I miss. I’ll explore the landscape, go to the desert, see the Sierras, have a steak, BBQ with friends. Maybe these are things to get excited about as the time approaches. Regardless, it’ll probably be good for me.

I went on a day trip to Jochiwon yesterday to give a guest lecture at a university. I should get a map and start putting thumb tacks in places I’ve been over the past 15 months. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the country now, enough to forget all the places I’ve been.

It was a three-hour drive there and another three back. A colleague from my university drove. South Korea is full of toll booths on the highways. As we returned to Busan we went though one. I looked at the charge and it was just under 18,000 won. (about $18 ) I was shocked. Eighteen dollars just to drive. So I asked if Koreans pay taxes for highways. He said no. It seems that the highway system, as far as I can tell, is a pay as you go kind of thing. The price depends on the distance you travel.

I thought about this and about whether it would work in America. It sounds to me like it would be a good idea. Rather than everyone paying a small share in taxes to the government to build and maintain roads, only those who use it pay for it. This makes sense to me from two angles: First, you’re directly paying for a service that you are actually using when you use it.

Second, and more interesting to me, is the incentives aspect. If you have to pay for the trip, you’re more likely to take one together and thereby reduce traffic and pollution. You’re also more likely to find some alternate forms of transportation, such as a bus or train.

I would guess that most Americans would hate the idea. I wonder how many other countries do this, and whether it works.

By the way, for Americans freaking out about the price of gas: It costs about $8 a gallon in Korea. You’re still way under what the rest of the world has to pay.

Yesterday was Buddha’s Birthday. There are certain events that I mark as personal anniversaries as I go through my second year here. This is one. A year ago today I was fairly well assimilated and beginning to feel quite at home in my new world. Last year, I went with a few friends to Beomosa, the great temple in the hills north of Busan. It rained late in the day, chasing us down the hill toward PNU, where we finally found refuge in Kebapistan, a nice Turkish restaurant.

One year later, I’ve become a little more adventurous. I went with five other friends on a four-hour bus ride to the southwestern tip of Korea, where we stayed two nights. We saw two areas of interest – Boseong, famous for its green tea plantations, and Yeosu, a great city on the coast.

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Plans are shaping up for a trip to Thailand in early May. It’s children’s day May 5, there’s no class that day, so it’s a good time to go.

The band is suddenly developing a sense of urgency. We only have about three months left in the current configuration, so we want to play as often as possible in as many places as possible.

I’m trying to book a flight to the U.S. for July 16th-ish. I don’t know if it’s fuel costs or broken airplanes, but prices are running about $500 more than they were last year.

I was frantically trying to finish my taxes before realizing that overseas citizens get an automatic 2-month extension. I have nothing to worry about until June 14.

I wish I would have decided to go see Kings of Convenience in Seoul last weekend. It looks/sounds like it was a great show.

I just bought Charlie Sexton’s Cruel and Gentle Things on iTunes. I’m about 26 seconds into it. So far so good.

The weather is beautiful today. Spring is, by far, my favorite season. It brings an underlying feeling of continual newness.

I really, really love my job and my life. Nothings perfect, and it shouldn’t ever be. But being alive is a wonderful thing.

I survived Membership Training. If anything I got off too easy. A ride became available around 12:30 am and I took it… just about the time I was starting to enjoy myself.

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Fifteen miles out of Seomyeon, someone said it: “Hey, this is my first Korean road trip.” Oh right, we’re on a road trip! Cool.

We were too late in getting our shit together to take a bus, so we piled into a friend’s car with a road atlas and headed out into the mountains. It took us just over two hours to get to a tiny town outside of Gayasan National Park. Mountain towns in Korea are not unlike those in America, except for the signage and the people. There was one nuribang (a requirement for any town), some convenience stores, and a few small, uninhabited restaurants, all lining a single street. It took us some time to find a place to sleep, but we eventually got a nice deal on a “yeogwon” I think it’s called – 40,000 won for four people.
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For some reason, the concrete, glass, and urban throng of 4 million people have felt a little more oppressive than usual. It may have something to do with the glorious weather we’ve had lately. Mix the two together and it’s time for an escape to fresh air and trees.

So I put out the emails and the text messages and got a small contingent together to join me. It’s always funny throwing out ideas like that. A dozen people may say hell yeah, but when it gets down to it about half chicken out. I don’t know if it’s laziness or the inertial glue of daily life that keeps people from following through.

Anyway, we leave this evening for 해 인 사 (hae-in-sa), described thusly:

Haeinsa Temple was originally built in AD 802 by two monks, Sunung and Ijong, during King Aejang of the Silla Kingdom’s reign. Despite many fires and subsequent reconstructions, the temple remains one of the most beautiful in Korea set in an idyllic location deep in Gayasan National Park. It eventually reached its present-day size during the mid-10th century. The temple is famous for housing the Tripitaka Koreana - 80,000 wooden printing blocks carved during the Goryo Dynasty (AD 918-1392), which, together, make up the oldest and best-preserved collection of Buddhist scriptures in the world. The temple also houses a great number of artifacts that have been designated national treasures including the Seated Stone Buddha, found at Cheongyangsa Temple, and the Stone Pagoda at Wolgwang Temple.

I’ll be sure to post an update upon my return.