4:40pm, mid-November
I'm sitting atop Seorak Mountain, enjoying the long sun and the view it illuminates: wrinkled and rippled, the valleys below bespeak the history of the world, tectonic shifts, glaciers, a different passage of time. I see the ocean, too, and it fades into the haze but a sharp horizon is not needed to feel humbled by its seeming endlessness. As I wait for the sun to descend below the hill behind me, this valley brings Western Brook Fjord to my mind. My body feels good, useful, appreciated, from quick-paced hops and lifts over these grippy rocks. This air does not hang heavy with industry, and my lungs cannot expand enough to intake the fresh calm oxygen. People around me take pictures, and I do, too, but the essence of this time and place are not so easily captured. The defiance of beauty is part of its charm, its profundity.
I feel a sunburn coming on... freckles well spent.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
6 months
It's been six months, this life in Korea. I can observe evidence of it sinking into my subconsciousness, I see it in my actions.
Entirely by accident I've stopped eating bread.
My bathroom door is always closed.
I nod. Alot.
I nod to friendly faces, to new aqcuaintances, to my elders.
I nod to bus drivers who pull into pick me up at my stop,
to people in cars who allow me to cross the road.
I'm clumsy with forks,
I can barely even hold a knife,
and wooden chopsticks feel big and imprecise.
Other people's glasses are never empty if I can help it.
Sometimes I crave kimchi,
more often I crave roasted garlic dipped in spciy bean paste.
Foreigners catch my eye,
they just look different.
Some of these affinities came naturally and suddenly, some of them developed over time.
Over Christmas I am going to embark on a personal journey of epic proportions. I've never meditated before. I don't know anything about Buddhism. I'm going to stay in a temple for five days and I do know that I'll take myself head-on and reemerge a different person. It'll be difficult. Insanely difficult. But I need the closure. My two feet walk on: forward, strong, assertive, confident, brisk, ready to roll into a run. And yet my shadow straggles behind, not quite finished with old complexes, my worn-out patterns of behavior. Sometimes I can still feel it pulling, but in standing sill and sitting quiet I'm going to quicken pace and reposition my place under the sun.
Entirely by accident I've stopped eating bread.
My bathroom door is always closed.
I nod. Alot.
I nod to friendly faces, to new aqcuaintances, to my elders.
I nod to bus drivers who pull into pick me up at my stop,
to people in cars who allow me to cross the road.
I'm clumsy with forks,
I can barely even hold a knife,
and wooden chopsticks feel big and imprecise.
Other people's glasses are never empty if I can help it.
Sometimes I crave kimchi,
more often I crave roasted garlic dipped in spciy bean paste.
Foreigners catch my eye,
they just look different.
Some of these affinities came naturally and suddenly, some of them developed over time.
Over Christmas I am going to embark on a personal journey of epic proportions. I've never meditated before. I don't know anything about Buddhism. I'm going to stay in a temple for five days and I do know that I'll take myself head-on and reemerge a different person. It'll be difficult. Insanely difficult. But I need the closure. My two feet walk on: forward, strong, assertive, confident, brisk, ready to roll into a run. And yet my shadow straggles behind, not quite finished with old complexes, my worn-out patterns of behavior. Sometimes I can still feel it pulling, but in standing sill and sitting quiet I'm going to quicken pace and reposition my place under the sun.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
