Regardless, I feel compelled to tell somebody about what a great day I had. So here you go:
I woke up with a hangover. That speaks to what a great night I had last night. Adam, Elaine, Jeff, Charles and I went out on the town, so to speak. It started off as a quiet beer at the Local, and after a few plates of food (fries and jokbal, marinated and boiled pork-leg shavings) and about five beers each (I ordered everything; Charles was showcasing his teaching skills), we switched venues. We first made our way to a restaurant/pub near Adam and Elaine's called Opt, but Charles took one look and reckoned it'd be expensive. We adjourned thence to another pub, whose name I don't remember, next to our favorite sogogi restaurant. It used to be a chicken-and-hof place but now it's all beer. We had some more booze and got so noisy the proprietress had to tell us to clam up. Charles was all for taking us to his place next and cooking us up some more Korean food, but we demurred, for reasons which seemed darn good at the time. I suggested my place; I had the Internet, I had a cocktail bar in the cupboard, and best of all, only one neighbor. We went back to my apartment and caroused for a time with some rum gimlets I whipped up, and Asher Roth and the Chemical Brothers on my laptop.
The party broke up about three-ish or so, long after our inner ears had thrown in the towel. It took me about two hours to recover the next morning; a trifle. I had a PBJ, a banana, and half a can of baked beans and called it even. I was slated to meet my brother online for a rousing mano a mano game of Impossible Creatures, a real-time strategy game we both like. Unit creation is a gas; you combine animals together to make hybrids and then battle the other player's mutant monsters with them. Unfortunately, it failed to materialize. My brother and I established contact, but for some reasons our computers wouldn't connect. Maybe the Internet works differently in Korea, or our versions of the game (I added some mods) are too disparate to mesh any longer. We promised to do some troubleshooting and try again next weekend, same time.
I started the troubleshooting right off; heck, I had nothing else going. I also put Conan the Barbarian on YouTube and then spent a leisurely hour or so doing my "morning" exercises. I'd opened the windows when I woke up and the warm, fragrant spring breeze had been working on me ever since. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I shut off Arnold Schwarzenegger's camel-punching biceps and took a long walk. I crossed the river and attempted to scale the hill (about half as tall as a mountain) that looms over Reading Town; I was turned back. The trail eventually became a dry stream bed (both were extremely rocky; the footing was unstable) and then petered out all together. Every other avenue I tried ended in a grave site. Koreans are now barred by law from burying their dead just anywhere you please, but it still happens anyway. There is an ancient cultural belief that if you find a good, sound, aesthetically-pleasing spot to bury your honorable ancestors, you yourself will be blessed with good fortune. Such a belief has often given rise to "grave wars," with unscrupulous types digging up other people's relatives from preferable locations and interring their own dead illegitimately in their place. The graves on the mountain and most of the island (you can see many of them if you venture into the woods here; wooded slopes seem to be very popular) were probably created before the law came into effect, however. The practical upshot is that a day-hiker can spend all day trying to find the correct trail: that is, the one that leads up the mountain and not to a patch of burial mounds.
I had no luck. I must ask Jeff how he climbed it. He's been up and down practically every notable slope in this part of the island. The only reason I'd wanted to climb the mountain, apart from the view and the scenery, was that I figured the summit of a mountain, caressed by the spring breeze and shaded by newly-leafed trees, would be a good spot to sit down and read a book. Thwarted by labyrinths and dry stream beds, I set off down the river to find another spot. I wavered when I reached the picnic table under the portico; the breeze was caressing it quite avidly. I elected to go on. I thought the quay down at the harbor where the Busan ferries berth might be a good spot. I strolled the rest of the way down to the sea and had a look, but it was no good there. Traffic roared past, and the sun beat down with no shade to be had. So I went to my Plan C: return to my apartment complex and go to the small park nearby. I find shade to be an underrated thing, the most lusciously lovely thing ever created by a simple accident (light being unable to pass through objects). Even its color is seductive. Finding a wide swathe of shade under a broad, branching, leafy tree on a bright sunny day is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth, in my book. Sitting there in the dark, feeling the breeze caress you, watching the sun trickle through the leaves and splatter on the ground, is medicinal for the soul. And it's a damn good way to meditate besides. I had my book with me and everything: 50 Great Short Stories, edited by Milton Crane, containing the selected works of some of the weightiest Occidental writers: Ernest Hemingway, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, William Saroyan, Joseph Conrad, John Steinbeck, E.B. White, H.L. Mencken, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, and Robert Louis Stevenson among many others whom I don't recognize. The volume in which these authors were extolled was bouncing away in one of the saddle pockets of my cargo shorts, bookmarked at Thomas Wolfe's Only the Dead Know Brooklyn. I was anxious to get into that one. It was written in New York vernacular, for starters: "Bensonhoist" and "befoeh" and "dis" and "dem" and "dose" and "A map! Red Hook! Jesus!" It promised to be a good read.
So I pressed on, now homeward bound down the main street. I couldn't help getting a bit distracted by things, though. This was spring, after all. I turned right and went down a cavernous tunnel, one of the echelons of the Gohyeon Market. Vendors were selling everything from snacks to cosmetics, and individuals or small groups wandered in and out of stores. I saw one man, perhaps a shopkeeper, perhaps a customer, standing in the foyer of a spice boutique, holding an oddly bent piece of wood. Before him stood a toddler, a tiny girl in a pink shirt, holding a ball in her hand that resembled a buckeye. The man stood like a batter and urged the little girl to throw. She stared uncomprehendingly, while the sound of feminine laughter echoed from the shop behind. Then I emerged into the brighter side lane that marked the start of the food market. Vegetable heaven: cabbages and kimchi and onions and seaweed and ginger roots and a whole bunch of colon-seducing roughage. This place was brighter but still dimmed by a multitude of awnings and umbrellas. I walked south, the direction of home, and came to the meat market. I was greeted by one of the barkers at the corner butcher shop, busy hollering away about the deals on beef and pork and marinating bulgogi. He said hi and asked where I was from. I said the U.S.A. He said, ah, good, and gave me the thumbs-up. I said Korea was great. He thanked me. I walked on. I came to a mandu vendor. I paused. Mandu is a dumpling, or rather, several different varieties of dumplings, all filled with meat. According to unreliable sources, it was brought to Korea by the Mongols in the 14th century. Some kinds are steamed, others are fried. It goes without saying that one type has kimchi in it. I asked how much it was, in Korean (bless you, Charles, my seuseung). The answer was sam-cheon won, or 3,000 won, a little over two bucks. I went for it. I got a Styrofoam container with eight little mandu in it, four different varieties, a cup of dipping sauce, some slices of some unidentifiable member of the squash family, and chopsticks. Now I was on the lookout for some place to eat and read.
I thought I'd found it a little while later. Approaching Gyeryong Elementary School, I was seized by the desire to stop and watch the soccer game in progress. Koreans are fiends for soccer. Entire legions of men pay money to reserve the school's pitch on the weekends for pick-up games. One was in full swing when I arrived. Sweaty young and middle-aged men ran back and forth on the field, swatting the ball about with intense passion. Impressed, I thought about stopping. I heard a soft voice say my name. It was one of my students, who inexplicably goes by the name Eden. He was sitting on one of those squat metal posts that are supposed to prevent cars from driving somewhere they shouldn't, and watching the game. I asked how he was doing and why he wasn't playing.
He smiled and shrugged, thought for a moment, then said: "I am children."
He gestured at the players.
"They are..." He trailed off.
"Adults," I finished. My stomach growled.
"Well," I said. "I believe I'll find a place to sit down."
I found a bench in sight of the field and sat down. I was surprised to find Eden next to me. He plunked himself down on one of the rocks bordering the landscaping and continued watching the game as I ate. It was delicious, better than any frozen potsticker I'd ever had. Eden and I made a little small talk; he asked where Adam and Elaine were. The students seem to think it odd whenever they find one of us foreign teachers without the others. The squash thingies were disgusting. I regretted not having obtained a libation to wash the taste out of my throat. I dithered for a moment, feeling guilty about leaving a dutiful Eden sitting alone again, but finally gave up the ghost.
"Well," I said, "I'm going to find water. You have a good weekend."
I got up and left. As I passed the gate, I saw Eden leaving behind me. Perhaps he was dutiful enough to wait until I left to leave himself. Good kid. I snagged some grape juice at a market that was most decidedly not a chain, thank goodness, and against my better judgment some ice cream as well. Hell, it was spring, and Adam and Elaine (by their own prediction) were probably out wandering around sucking on something cold and sweet. So I went in for it. What I got was on a stick, a slab of what was probably intended to be chocolate chip ice cream. It was cold and sweet, however; it fit the bill and hit the spot.
After this, I finally reached my intended park, and sat down to read...but I hadn't reached the third page when I was hit with a wicked call of nature and had to adjourn to my apartment to mollify it. That done, I returned to the park, and read Only the Dead Know Brooklyn and A.V. Laider (the latter by Max Beerbohm). I dozed off in the middle, though. It was just too good. I'd walked a ways, I'd eaten, I was laying down on a park bench (in deference to the discomfort of sitting on it) and the spring breeze was finally having its chance to caress me, assisted by the warm soft sun. It couldn't have been avoided. I awoke, finished Laider, then arose creakily from the bench and stumped back here in the fading evening light and started writing this.
When I started, the person in the apartment across the way from mine (second floor, right-hand window) was practicing The Entertainer on a concert grand; the sound drifts in my window on weekend evenings, ephemeral, bewitching, symbolic of everything I'd hoped for in an expatriate experience, the thrill of being in a foreign land with music in the air and adventure on your mind. That fragrant breeze is settling down for the evening but I can still catch a whiff. The sun has sunk behind the mountains but there's still an orange glow in the rapidly purpling sky. I can hear the roar of scooters on the main drag and the happy yells of schoolchildren streets away. Down at Top Mart I know Brian will be chopping up another batch of gimbap or pork backbone, shoppers will be buying dinner ingredients, and Western pop music will be emerging, loud and tinny, from the speakers. I sit here in shorts, T-shirt and bare feet on my comfy comforter, my hair still crusty with sweat, a tiny remnant of hangover lingering in my skull, my belly beginning to growl again, mulling over if I should have anything for dinner after all I ate last night and today, and I contemplate what a marvelous day it has been and still is.
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