Shangri-La

Moved

Tue, 3 Jan 06 21:02:00 UT

Blog is here, now. My New Years' resolution is to keep all my toys in one place.

Chorography at Nonphotoblue

-Alex

In the Seoul Subway

Mon, 12 Dec 05 03:23:00 UT

The weather has been so biting, so insidious that even a short walk leaves your coffee cup hand shaking with some hot coffee spilled on your wrist. The wind kicks up, sending a stray fall leaf or two, along with some loose ice from the snow on the side of the road straight down your coat. It's cold, these days.

After a going away party for a friend of a friend, I got seperated from the group of people heading out to a dance club. So, I was alone when I crossed under the street through the subway station. I noticed that a door was ajar and stuck my head into the station proper. A few lights were on, flickering. It was long after the subway stopped for the night and I was wondering why the door was unlocked.

I slipped through, walked down the hallway, hopped over the till and went down to the platform. A train was at the other end of the platform and there were some flashlights glinting through the windows. A toolbox was on a bench and a shirt lying next to it. I slipped down onto the tracks and walked in the opposite direction. I didn't really want to get caught.

Being a foreigner, in a subway tunnel, where you're never supposed to be, especially late at night-- there's a war on terror going on and I didn't want to get deported to Sudan or anything. So I walked quickly and quietly up the rails.

I walked the kilometer length of track between the Hongdae subway station and the Sincheon subway station. About twenty feet after the platform ends and the tunnel begins, there was a pile of bricks between the center-line cement columns. Then an emergency phone. And an old generator. Rocks along the sides of the rails clattered and banged as I walked along. The entire length of the tunnel was pretty well lit, and the air was warmer. I took my coat off and carried it.

The Sincheon subway platform grew larger and brighter. There was a train being worked on there, too. Someone far away waved a flashlight my direction. I was having a hard time being quiet because of the loose rocks. I slowed down, hopped up onto the far side of the station platform from where the light had been and looked at the closed stairway grille. I slid back down onto the rails and walked back to Hongdae.

About five minutes after turning around I felt a cold wind pick up behind me and I stepped into the center-line to wait. About a minute later a single lead-car shot past me and everything was quiet and still again.

In Hongdae, the train was still there, but the workmen had gone. I walked up the steps and surprised ... *really* surprised a woman who was mopping next to the turnstiles. I smiled, hopped the stile and walked back out the same way I went in.

Twenty minutes later I was dancing with a couple of gray "souvineer" rocks in my pocket.

White Winter!

Mon, 5 Dec 05 22:35:00 UT

Saturday morning was sunny and peaceful. I was over at Tom's house. Although his house is stupidly inconvenient, particularly for Korea (the nearest PC-cafe is a 15-minute walk, the nearest strip of restaurants 20, the subway nearly 35) it is on the 5th floor of an upscale building and has more windows than normal. Windows in Korean apartments usually strike you as an afterthought. Like, after designing a tall box, they just cut some holes in places that were convenient to whoever was on the scaffolding at the time. Along the Han River there are comical apartment highrises which are angled in such a way so that, despite being within 50 meters of the river, there's no view of it. Instead, you can look across a 20 meter gap and see your neighbor's apartment, and probably their laundry hanging in the window. My friend Justin's apartment window looks directly at a brick facade, so close you can reach out the window and touch it, which makes his apartment gloomy and dark for 23 hours and 49 minutes out of every day (a brief respite around noon being the exception). So in Tom's apartment the windows make everything pretty cheery. Lots of natural light spilling over the sofas and coffee table. Confused by a location grammar-marker in Korean, I got a crash-course in how to use it with different verb-conjugations over coffee.

Later in the day, I walked down to the subway, went over to my old neighborhood and chatted with my hair dresser while I got my hair cut. Afterwards, I sat in a Starbucks, reading a book and watching the queue of people waiting for the bus to take them up to the neighborhoods around Seoul National University. The fall leaves are all gone, now. They've been swept up by the street cleaners and rained into the gutters. The air was really clear and cold. I moved to a restaurant for a late-afternoon lunch (fried rice and cold noodles to be dipped in a vegetable-wasabi sauce), then went over to my old apartment where a lot of my old co-workers live. It was Justin's (see window with no view, above) birthday. Justin, Jane, Chris and Steven all live on the same floor of the apartment and they all cleaned up their rooms, put TVs and coffee tables and beds into Justin's bathroom. They decorated and set up a game room in Steven's room, a wet bar in Chris's room and Jane went with a rose and mulled-wine theme. About 50 people showed up between 7pm and 11pm. I went downstairs and talked to the apartment owner for a half-hour. He's a really nice guy who, between my broken Korean and his broken English, I had a nice conversation with.

About the time I was leaving the restaurant earlier, it started snowing. Just a light snow that melted as soon as it flew into your hair or landed on the pavement. It was still snowing three hours later, which is rare for Seoul, especially so early into winter. Five hours later it had begun to stick and people were arriving with chunks of ice tucked into the folds of their coats and frosty hair. People migrated around, chatting, from room to room in the party. There were a lot of people I hadn't seen for a while, and it was nice to catch up.

My favorite catch-up story came from a few co-workers. A Canadian teacher, Steven, had been dating a Korean law student for a few months, but the thing fizzled and they called it quits. Or, I guess, he called it quits and she was upset. So Jane was walking to her first-grade classroom and passed this Korean girl in the hallway who was carrying a bucket of water. The Korean girl, the Canadian's ex-, asked where Steven was and Jane directed her towards the faculty room; not really thinking much about it. Apparently the girl walked into the factulty room and dumped the bucket of water over his head and said, "You know what that's for!" Then walked out. I was almost crying I was laughing so hard.

At 2am it was still snowing, a marathon of snow in the city, because it usually snows an inch or two and then stops. The roads were icy and I skittered over to a friend's apartment to crash on a futon for a few hours before the subway opened.

Last week's first snow was a disappointment, but Saturday was completely plesant. The apartment owner commented, "It's like God knows it's Justin's birthday."

Dour morning

Wed, 30 Nov 05 02:36:00 UT

Last night I just couldn't get to sleep. I'd turned the heater up a little too high and it made my bed uncomfortably hot. The traffic outside was, at 2am, remarkably lively; an ambulance, a few cops yelling through car-mounted megaphones at drunk businessmen stumbling to their third or fourth bar, late (early?) delivery trucks honking at lurking taxis and I was sweating.

I woke up tired. I've got iTunes to play a random song as an alarm clock and this morning, because I really wanted to lie in bed for a while and slowly come to grips with being conscious again, it started off with Van Halen. The first few opening bars of 'Jump' had me flying across the apartment to shut the thing off. It was too much, too soon, and way too loud. The sky, and my window, like yesterday were dark; the city has been under oppressive winter clouds. Jangled nerves, in a dark apartment and tired as well.

Yesterday it was practically dark at 3 in the afternoon. I sat at my desk checking email and preparing for a brand new class of beginning students when after a few cracks of thunder, it started to hail. The storm didn't last long, but the students all came in with wet umbrellas and pant legs. What leaves weren't knocked out by the late autumn winds were finally felled by this. The classroom floor was slick with wet shoes, followed by steamy from the heating. And there's no good solution for that. I tried to open a window, but cold air flew in, sending a stack of homework papers across the classroom and elicited cries of,"Nooooo! Teacher! Weather very cold!" We settled on their side of things; a sauna conducted in an English classroom.

I showered, put on a sweater and went out to get a coffee. Three feet out the front door of my apartment I turned around and bolted for the elevator. For godssake! It was snowing.

The first snowfall of the season ought to go like this: Rested, I take a book and sit in the window of a cafe. Outside, the last of autumn rustles across the sidewalk, people drawing their coats around them as the breeze breathes past them. Snow sifting down like sugar into a hot tea. Today was not that. I threw on a coat, reemerged and it had more or less stopped. Invisible flakes condensed on my face as I walked, tiny pinpricks of cold. I hurried to work, wishing I could start the week, already well into Tuesday, all over again.

Autumn settling all around

Sun, 30 Oct 05 12:26:00 UT

On Saturday afternoon, I showered and shaved. Put on a sweater and pants. Grabbed the phone, the wallet, the keys, the iPod and walked down to the subway. It's a short walk, but just outside of my new apartment building is an intersection and looking down the side street you can see Dobong mountain. The fall colors have really started going in earnest these last few weeks and the side of the mountain is yellow, red, brown... though it was a bit hazy it was still really beautiful. The sun shone weakly, on the sidewalk a ginko glowed golden and kaleidoscoped shade down on the umbrella set over a music vendor's cart.

The subway rocked and jolted a few old guys around, while they dangled from the handles. A girl crossed and recrossed her legs, absently chewing on a bit of hair while reading a thick book. Next to her some middle school boys ogled a PSP, which was making video game noises. Some girls got on and did a short scuttle, grabbing each other's elbows as the train shuddered to a halt, yelping as they tried to remain balanced in their heels. "I-go! I-go!" I transfered with a crush of people through Dongdaemun Stadium, which has been decorated with a potato chip advertisment which impressively covers every square inch of wall space, all the pillars and stairwells, wraps around food stalls and shoe vendors; it's even color-coded. The background for line four is blue, line five is purple and line two green, with models seductively eating potoato chips and guys savoring the crunchyness.

Line two wrapped around City Hall and disgorged early-evening partiers in Sinchon and Hongdae. I transfered again, jostled by ancy ajummas and meandering around slow-moving toddlers. By the time I popped out at World Cup Stadium, my cell phone already had a message from the girl I'm trying to woo (I'm kind of worthless when it comes to wooing, so I'm making a special effort here.) wondering where I was, as she'd been waiting at exit 2 for nearly 10 minutes.

Out in the sunshine, up the escalator, there were high school kids sitting in groups on the stairs laughing. In the plaza next to Carrefour, couples walked aimlessly around. In front of the FamilyMart a couple of business-suited ajussis sat at a plastic table drinking cold Hite Prime, arguing and spitting. My date and I walked around the stadium and into the park. There were lots of kids zooming around on scooters and rollerblades. Some old women sat at a park bench, their curly hair ruffling in the breeze.

All around us, the trees were dusting the ground with colorful leaves. "They're 'dan pung'," my date informed me as I tried to make some sort of "autumn is pretty" sentence in Korean. We walked over a bridge and into a small cluster of trees. Some girls were making cute faces and taking pictures of each other. An older couple sat on some newspapers, sharing a kimbab and smiling at a small child rooting around in the fallen leaves. "It reminds me of when I was little," I said. "My dad would rake up all the leaves in our back yard, then pick me up and throw me into them." I was smiling as I remembered the itchy bits of leaves that would get stuck underneath my sweaters, in my hair. We walked along a meandering dirt path, stopping now and then to take pictures of the trees or of people. Holding the camera, my date took a picture of sawgrass-turned-copper in the colder air. I wrapped my arms around her and adjusted the zoom, pressing down on her finger with mine to take the shot again. Sly devil...

Then back, through the park, into Carrefour for some dinner things. A bunch of onions, a cucumber, bell pepper, chicken breasts, packaged marinade, rice... then out, down into the subway again. "Will we maybe go to Samgakji and then transfer?" "No, we should go back to Hapjeong, then up, then transfer at Dongdaemun." "What if we go to Yeongdungpo, then to Eujiro 5-ga?" Staring at the map as the subway trundled along, filled with kimchi-soju addled people and smartly dressed kids ready for an evening out. Sleepy looking office workers who'd just finished their day and middle school kids squatting next to the handicapped seats pouring over a fashion magazine. A couple of tall guys laughing quietly at some shared joke. A woman struggling with a small child in a poofy yellow coat, sound asleep; a dead weight in her arms.

"Can you cut the onion while I deal with the chicken?" Back in my apartment, side-by-side in the kitchen getting dinner together, I opened a bottle of wine and set the rice to boil. Looking over, my date, struggling with the subtlties of dicing veggies again I stood behind her, my hands on hers, moving the knife in more efficient motions. Hair tickling my nose. The dinner came together, in the end. The wine finished, hand-holding accomplished, we called it a night. She darted out into the street to flag down a cab. I turned on the water in the kitchen to do the dishes. On the floor, a few yellow ginko leaves lay from where they fell out of my pocket. I pressed them into a book, watched the traffic glide in the street down below, smiling at how well everything seems to be going.

Back here.

Thu, 29 Sep 05 11:48:00 UT

After a two month hiatus in Phoenix, I made it safely back to Seoul Monday night. Sunday morning, I arrived in Los Angles and ran through the airport to catch my international flight. For whatever reason, I was back in First Class. I didn't question why, because I was too busy eating foie gras and having warm washcloths pressed against my eyes every so often. They gave me a complementary eye-mask, which is good because I left my blanket on the sofa back in Tempe. The in-flight movie was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Horrible. I don't recommend it.

I touched down and made it throught Incheon immigration, sat in the airport terminal for 30 minutes while my cell phone charged in the convenience store. My luggage stayed behind in Los Angeles (bad), which meant that I didn't have to wait for an hour in the customs line (good). It should be arriving this evening. I munched on a rice ball and read my book while I waited.

Then I caught the bus to Sincheon, walked up the road, met Tom who was in the middle of a date and walked back to his new place. This morning, I went to my new school's human resources office. It's in the new downtown area south of the Han river, so I stopped by my favorite coffee shop and watched busy people walk quickly. The weather is in the high 70s, with lots of sun.

I met the HR people, got things sorted out, and will probably go check out my new school tomorrow. I don't start training until the middle of October, so there's actually no rush. Without a rush, I went over to my old school. It was class picture day, so all the kindergarden kids were dressed up. Immediately I had my 9 Plum class kids in a big, squirmy hug with everyone vying for the coveted, 'closest' position. I chatted with the teachers over lunch, went back and talked with my old boss for about an hour, then said hello to my first graders.They were making magnifying glasses by putting drops of water on transparancy paper. More hugs.

Now, I'm back at Tom's place, drinking a coke and typing while he snoozes before going to his evening tutoring job. The sunlight coming through the window is hitting the laptop screen and making it hard to see. Traffic is zipping by, outside. Everything seems to be good.

Sultry Summer Days

Thu, 28 Jul 05 19:33:00 UT

It's been muggy here. A special kind of wet blanket replete with low clouds and all-day haze that makes things more than a half-mile away vanish. My clothing takes forever to dry on the line, but is soaked again halfway to work.

Everyone is sticky. When my kindergarden kids want to play, their skin sticks together as they play pattycake games or zoom around in kiddo-sized plastic cars in the playroom. The sound of thighs sucking up and off of plastic chairs is unmistakable.

My contract with my school is up at the end of this month. I've decided that I'm not going to renew in hopes of finding a job that requires fewer teaching hours for the same (or more!) pay. So, this last week and a half has been chaos; packing and moving boxes around chaos, finding gifts chaos, visa chaos, going-away party chaos and all the rest. There must be some sort of folk wisdom about not knowing how much you're loved until you leave. In this case, it's certainly true.

I've been spending time with my younger kids talking about how I'm leaving soon. We talk about how it'll be ok because their new teacher will be lots of fun. I show them pictures of where I'm going, trying to give them some idea that I'm not just walking off the face of the Earth. And there's the fact that I'll be coming back. That I'll be back to visit. While I'm still here, the idea of me being gone, for most of the kids is just conjecture. I won't be around if there are any tears, though I'll miss a lot of them dreadfully.

So this last week we've had small going-away parties. I've been showered with cards and farewells. Honestly, this has been pretty much the best job I've ever had. While I won't mind working somewhere else, the friends and students I've had have been a really wonderful experience.

My replacement teacher arrived today and hung out in my (now 'our') kindergarden class. He's a young guy, just finished with his BA. Twenty three, I think. It's pretty clear that he's going to spend some time finding his 'teaching feet' or whatever the hell you call a classroom confidence. In kindergarden, the kids shyly looked his way when I introduced him and huddled a little closer at my feet as I read them Henny-Penny. Their straight black hair pasted to their sweaty little foreheads, still damp from playtime.

And through it all the weather has just gotten heavier and heavier.

Simmering

Sat, 28 May 05 16:06:00 UT

May is almost over. It started off wearing a light sweater, then long-sleeved cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and is now debating the merits of t-shirts after 10pm. This is a wonderful, logical progression. Unlike, say, last month where one day would be quite warm and the next bolt cold. The flowers have flowered, the allergies have allergied, and now the sky is blue and swaths of ginko shade moire across the streets.

People are predicting an unusually hot summer. I have no idea where they get this information, but supposedly this past winter was unusually cold, too. Which it wasn't really. Just the regular don't-lick-the-lamppost cold. So maybe this summer won't be frightfully hot, either.

Plastic deck tables and chairs have sprung up outside the convenience stores. Around twilight, all sorts of people sit around drinking and chatting, watching the traffic go by. Down the street, the LG25 store got rebranded due to a corporate move to spin off the home-related stuff they do and is now a GS25. The navy blue, red and orange striped sign has been changed to a sea green and turquoise sign; A combination I don't really appreciate. Just like Sedona's teal arches, the new GS25 signs are garish and simply don't belong in the landscape. Sedona's red rocks are a far cry from Seoul's cacaphony of neon, but the overall affect that the combination makes is the same: bad.

Unless I go out of my way to go to Phoenix in August. Which I will. I've been thinking that this decision, to go home during the hottest month is really, really stupid. Why not wait until October? The extra money I'd make here wouldn't be so bad. I miss old friends. I miss driving along the highway, playing in the desert, drinking tasty beveradges by the pool... It's time for a good dose of everything that makes home "home"; from the searing seatbelt clasps to the blinding white stucco apartment complexes. Also, I'd like to eat a meal not involving kimchi in some manner.

So in two months I'll go home for a bit. And then return. I'm looking forward to not teaching for a while, the potential that a new job will hold. And, maybe, the good distractions that another year here will hold.

Awake!

Sat, 9 Apr 05 00:23:00 UT

I got up this morning, after actively snooze-ignoring the alarm clock for an hour. Since Natalie fried my alarm clock I brought here from the States, I've been using my cell phone. Not unusual for this part of the world, it's got about 20 pre-programmed "morning tunes" that are so astonishingly horrible they levitate me out of bed and set me into a nearly frantic, reeling consciousness. Every five minutes. Plus iTunes turns on KJZZ a bit after the first cell phone ditty. Between the two, I'm usually in the shower shortly before 10.

This morning I sat in the shower on a small Vietnamese stool I purchased for just that and felt cemented into a hot-water relaxation that nearly sent me back to sleep. Instead, I shaved. At that hour, it's difficult for me to focus properly. Not in the eyeballs-dialating-from-the-morning-sunshine-searing-rods-and-cones sort of way, but in a do-shoes-come-before-or-after-pants kind of way. My brain is stuttering between first and second gear and I make a lot of needless trips back and forth across the apartment.

Anyway, I was out the door and walking down the street shortly after 11. Around the corner from the apartment building is a barber shop, more properly a "beauty salon" although all they really do is cut hair. It was remodeled about three months ago; maybe slightly longer than that. It changed from the "Hair Shop" to "Black and White", trading up a forthright directness for the more commonplace and dubious knack of bizarre-but-kind-of-nice combination of an off-kilter reality vs. concept that makes up an everyday English speakers' Asian background noise. I've been waiting for the owner to make an appearance in the shop for about a week now. I've got a small note that I keep in my pocket on a folded sheet of 4.5x5.5 Xerox paper requesting another fine, fine haircut. The problem is that the owner is the only one who can do that, as it was she who cut my hair last time. She's generally only there when I'm passing by in the morning, which doesn't help me at all. I've got to get to work.

There are two more restaurants I've never tried and then a small intersection of narrow one-way streets; some pay-phones, a convenience store, the Gwan-Ak KT MegaPass branch office and a spicy tofu place. I turn right, walk up a small hill, past the park where the trees, I think, are starting to bud. I was looking at the branches this morning, but I couldn't really tell if the things I was looking at were leaf buds or just the remainders of the stubs the old leaves left behind when they fell off last October.

Past the park is a dry cleaners that has a PC room above it. Another convenience store after that. Then more restaurants, a church and then there's the main north-south road. There's always a lot of construction and traffic at that intersection and I generally have to dodge people in the bus line, old guys out for an early lunch, students hurrying somewhere, and guys walking around with two-ton marble curbs.

Starbucks is usually half-full of studious university students and perhaps a few professors. There are usually some mid-40s couples and maybe a kid or two tottering around the tea stand. One misstep could take the entire thing down, raining an entire Boston Branch Starbucks Tea Party around an unsuspecting two year-old. The baristas (is that word actually applicable to Starbucks employees?) know what I want, which is good for my misfiring brain that has accidentally asked for a "Vegetable of the day" instead of a "Coffee of the day" before, as my Korean is not nearly as wired into my brain as my pants-shoes syntactic circuits.

Out, under the street through the busy subway terminal, up the other side, past the bank and I'm upstairs in the faculty room shortly after 11:25. The day has begun.

March: Winter

Mon, 14 Mar 05 01:24:00 UT

Wednesday, last week, it snowed. It wasn't one of those stupid late winter snows that, within geologic nanoseconds heralds the chirruping of birds but a far more dire... insulting snow. Before that snow it had been warm. The entire city, for a period of two days had shucked winter coats and was walking breezily around in heavy sweaters. I looked out my window Tuesday night, around 2am to see snow falling. I thought, in a sort of uninhibited zeal, "What the fuck?"

Outside of Seoul, of course, it snowed something absurd; like 25 meters (not really). Here, we got maybe 8 inches which busily melted the following morning. Drain pipes flowed with nearly summer monsoon torrents, cars parked along the street got a washing that even a man with two cans of wax and a power wash couldn't accomplish. And then the sun set on the snow that had been shoveled out of the way. Thursday morning? I rocketed across a patch of black ice nearly an inch thick on my way to work. And Friday, too. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and back again, a week later there was still ice and piles of really grimy snow in the small alleyways here, that never see the sun at all.

Last Friday another cold front blew in from China, which provides Korea with a long linguistic heritage and more bad weather than you can imagine. This weekend was stupifyingly cold for mid-March. But the last snowfall did it's trick and plants are beginning to do... something. I've gone through two rolls of toilet paper blowing my nose incessently. On the subway this evening instead of browsing the lively lingere ads, my attention was drawn to the Allegre allergy ad. Some guy holding what I think I'm about to purchase: 239 rolls of toilet paper was sighing in relief as the pharmacist handed him a little box of tablets. Allergies and spring, cold weather and coats; sure. Fine. Whatever. Combining all four has to be some kind of 9th pit of hell.

Spring Abscence

Thu, 24 Feb 05 02:39:00 UT

It's just on the cusp of being spring. Last Sunday, despite the wintry twilight and the ice on the ground there were birds singing in the winter-shorn ginkos. Tuesday was even slightly warm; above freezing at any rate, but that was after it snowed all morning.

I woke up about ten after nine because my phone was vibrating. "goodmorning all ˜ it's snowing!wish u a romantic day ^.˜" What the hell. It's a peculiar message regardless of the weather, but whatever. I crawled back under the covers after looking out the window.

I'm back in my big coat, like everyone else. We're all commuting and taking up far more space than we really ought to. It's harder to pack in a heap of people already lumbering around with extra pounds of clothing wrapped around them. Getting into the subway and having your nose pressed deep into someone's down coat for thirty minutes isn't very nice.

Parts of the Han River froze over the winter. Walking along it in late January with my sister and a friend, dinner plate-sized chunks of ice floated along at a stately pace. Further east, the river was frozen nearly to the center; out way past the Hangang bridge... into the nethers of urban sprawl where I never frequent and never really see.

Which I suppose I could. I know the subway exits, I know how to wander through the tiny side streets and around busy interchanges, over the Olympic or Gangbyeon Expressways to get out to the edge of the river. But I've never headed out that way; there's never been a need. Everything that I need is either in other directions or much closer to home than a forty minute subway ride and an hour walk. But maybe when it gets reliably warm, when the ginkos and the Chinese elms are radiating a nuclear green again I'll take a stab at it.

Winter Flight

Mon, 31 Jan 05 01:04:00 UT

I was working quite early January mornings, up in time to have a clear view of GwanAk San in the sparkling, frosty air. I don't remember the air being so clear last year, but maybe I just didn't know what I was looking for then.

It snowed nicely the last week in January around dusk. Used-car flags stream down across the parking lot advertising the Samsung electronics store that's on the first floor of the building where my school is. They were whipping in the wind while snow swirled in rapid strokes through the orange sodium streetlamps. Inside, we were warm and busy learning English words for the dinosaur-themed unit.

It rained yesterday, a cold slushy rain that got my feet stony-cold before I made it back to my apartment for a hot shower and some decompression after speaking short sentences slowly without a break for 7 hours. This morning it wasn't so cold, and it's just going to keep doing that until the ginko trees start budding and a mild breeze wafts cherry blossom pollen up my nose. And then I won't stop sneezing until late April.

Winter waxing

Sun, 12 Dec 04 00:23:00 UT

The first snowfall came down on November 30th and it hasn't snowed since. I woke up late and showered myself into coherence. Drank some juice and opened the window to see snow blowing straight up. The close-set apartments create some strange, but usually invisible drafts that whistle down the street. I squinted a bit and it was like the entire building was silently sinking.

It snowed a bit more in the afternoon, while I was teaching. Occasionally the kids would get out of their seats and look out the window. I taught with one eye out the window, too.

Since then, the weather has gotten steadily colder. The city is sinking into the depths of winter. Brown leaves swirl up from the gutters and settle back again. The crowds on the subway are puffed up from so many layers of clothing. Tiny children are bundled up and totter around like little marshmallows.

Inside the front door of my apartment, the building manager decorated a plastic tree with white lights and red ornaments. Starfucks has switched to their seasonal cups and turned on the heating so that walking in from the cold makes my glasses fog up. Most restaurants have brought out the portable heaters and set them up. Apples are cheap, again, and watermelons are more expensive than a handsome night of binge-drinking and carousing.

'Tis the season, indeed.

Siberia's breathing again

Sat, 13 Nov 04 18:15:00 UT

Yesterday, Friday, was the first cold day of early winter. The first big coats of the season are being dusted off and worn since the last throes of winter tapered off in late March. It's pre-festivity winter, which isn't much fun. Nobody's got Christmas or New Year decorations up, the gutters are choked with brown leaves from the ginkos and Chinese elms. It gets dark around 5:30, the dry winter wind gusts up your sweater when you step out of the subway, street vendors are putting on gloves and heaters are revving up.

Tomorrow, I'll have been here for a year. When I arrived it was already much colder than it is now; winter's come a bit later. Jet-zoned and time-lagged, I was actually waking up at proper hours of the morning and exploring the city. The fruit vendors, ice-boxes packed with tentacled critters and signs I couldn't read were exciting and new. The season reminds me of that, but I'm adjusted and leading a life here that I couldn't have predicted in those first chilly weeks here.

It rained Wednesday night and some Thursday morning. I walk past a small park every day which has been golden for some time now: Ginko trees are simply gorgeous in the spring and fall. They turn aspen-tree yellow and shuck their leaves on lazy spiraling paths. Wednesday afternoon some old people were sweeping up the two streets that border the park with straw brooms. After the rain the streets were yellow again and the trees just that much barer.

On the hills, where dirt paths wind around through trees for nice views of the city, are small gazebos where in the summer months old people and students gather to drink soju and chat. The cold has emptied the hills of leaves and people. I walked up to the top of the one closest to my apartment watching my breath gather in lung-sized clouds.

chorography

Mon, 25 Oct 04 02:41:00 UT

1 : the art of describing or mapping a region or district
2 : a description or map of a region; also : the physical conformation and features of such a region

This isn't so easy to do here. The art of seeing underpins the art of describing, and the art of seeing is caught up in the art of understanding what goes on around you. It's why travel writing is based on the actor as opposed to the surroundings, which it is simply assumed that the article is about. It's not, it's about the narrative process that makes the traveller seem like you and by extension you can imagine yourself in a place that's barely described, because the placement of yourself in someplace that isn't your livingroom or bathroom or magazine stand or whatever is good enough; it's good enough that you can project yourself across the page, with a nice, glossy photo of some bikini-chick paddling a goat-skin canoe down some Amazonic tributary.

The ghostly effrevescence of the reality described in a travelogue is almost obscene, denuding the actual people who feel a connection to that place; drawing the place up like a three-year-old might do. It's pathetic. A billion words spring up from the tiny nuances of a single gesture in a single transaction with the onion vendor. They, in a 500 word essay on the "Delights of Saint Croix," go, understandably, underreported.

Enjoy this. I'll try to throw a billion words at the onion lady, in my spare time and maybe one or two people will pick up on it.