Situational Seasons

Beneath the layers of my fallen spirit, I vanish into the night escaping from the omnipresent illusion of happiness.  

Repair work begins with words that fall through my fingertips; with each passage promoting compassion.

I’m falling.  Foliage saturated with hues from heaven scamper about artfully, but can we see the color?

Fall.  No resolution or peace, only progress.

Yesterday’s ghosts taunt my soul as I crawl into a space where my breath is visible and my tears are warm.  

Helpless fears lure me into consciousness and vivid dreams of my mother once again bring melancholy and satisfaction.  

I’m cold.  Death is a joyful experience for the passing, but are we merely caught between Earth’s chaos and passion?

Winter.  No answers or green, only hope.

Radical testimonies from those indulging sift through my internal struggle toward composure.  

The rush of powerful tides fill the sides of the crestfallen banks and the seagulls soar once again.

I’m noticing.  Admiration caresses my cynical view of the sunbursts resting on his face as I question: can this be real?

Spring. No doubt or reasoning, only feelings.

The beaches collect footprints and ocean residue with hopes washed up into a frothy dream.

Skin tingles with evaporation rising after swimming steadily with dolphins in the glowing sunshine.

I’m in awe.  Maybe the seasons of change led me to eternal sunshine where profound truth exists?

Summer.  No lies, only sincerity.

Lightning speed intuition

I’ve had an unexpected kick off to 2009, much better than I had ever hoped for. I arrived back to Seoul with some mixed feelings after my totally short and limited trip to the Twin Cities, but in general came back in good spirits, eager to continue living my life here south of the Han river. It felt good to come back to friendships that are stable, to a job that I’m used to and to a studio that feels comfortable.

The general school of thought I subscribe to is that when you’re on track in life, things just feel right. Positive emotions are plentiful while the occasional upsets and down moods swings are rare. As I have grown more in sync with living in this city and country, I have noticed some positively eerie happenings…

The positively eerie happenings can be concluded as having the ability to think about something that I really want to happen, and instead of it happening months and months later (which used to be the case), it seems to happen days later. It’s almost like everything here happens at lightning speed. I picture something happening in my mind, whether it’s with a specific friend or just something I want to do on my own, and sure enough, less than a week later it is happening.

At first, I paid no attention to it. But now after living here for over 5 months I’m beginning to realize how amazing this is. My mind feels more powerful than ever before. I have no logical explanation. But I do believe it has something to do with having made the right choice in moving here at this time in my life. My fragmented dreams leading toward my decision to come here have been picked up, glued together, and set on a shelf in which I can still notice the beauty, but recognize the broken flaws and reality of what was.

Now, I am truly here for my own well-being. The doors of opportunity to making this experience worthwhile have been widely opened and it couldn’t feel better. This doesn’t mean I walk around completely fearless or confident every single minute, but it means I walk around with a newfound sense of trust in the world and in my intuition.

I enter a new phase now. Fall is so long gone, but spring is around the corner. A new relationship with someone incredible has me as jittery as I once was when crushing on my 10th grade “love”, but today I am fully equipped with a strong sense of self, and the capability to use the power of my voice and sensibility. I was not looking for this to happen at this point in my life right now, but I had opened up to the universe, and with it, to the possibility of falling in love again, and to trusting that someone could move me this way and help me to believe and see that deceit need not cloud all images. My eternally optimistic self slowly emerged and won in this battle. The future is always untold; the necessary worries are always there, but the radiance of believing again has overruled.

Lists may be intemixed from here on forward, but for now, I intend to do more writing again. Naked neighbor is gone. It’s the end of an era and the beginning of a new and incredible time here in Seoul and I want to write all about it.

January thoughts

1. My new schedule for just the month of January requires getting up earlier (7:30 am or so) which feels like the middle of the night after getting up around 10am all of fall semester…
2. I saw actual snow fall and stick to the ground and even biffed it and fell last weekend.  Very minor, nothing wrong, but still kind of funny.  With all the sidewalks that go up and down all over Seoul it was inevitable.
3. I have a student that perpetually farts in class.  She blames it on the boy sitting next to her.  He gets very angry.
4. I am happy to have found a wonderful person here to “stand still” with and live in the moment.
5. I often play classical music for my students when they do in-class assignments.  So far, no complaints, and it turns out many of them play either the violin or piano.  
6. I had a fun Sunday recently making a traditional name stamp, going to the palace where the last King of Korea lived, eating at a tofu restaurant in Insadong and watching the Marionette B-Boy performance.
7. I’m very happy for a dear friend here who recently met her Korean mother.
8. I have not been splurging on specialty coffee all month and am proud of myself!
9. I was saddened by the sudden death of one of my mother’s best friends, a family friend for years.
10. I’m quickly going through my vegan food products since coming back here.  The hemp milk is almost all gone.  :(

Reasons why I’m glad to be back here

1. Not sitting in traffic much at all, except for those rare taxi rides but that’s like once a month, maybe.
2. When people stare at me, I know it’s not due to my race.
3. Back to my own space and place again.
4. To be with my Seoul friends.  
5. It can be an adventure outside my door anytime I seek one.
6. Korean everything right here, right now, and generally quite cheap.
7. To get back into a good routine with work and health.
8. To keep stretching my concept of self in an environment with less distractions.
9. It has started to feel like home, a little.
10. I don’t have to overhear people’s annoying conversations anymore.

Reasons why I’m sad to be back here

1. I made my parents cry when I left MN again.
2. I miss my MN friends.
3. My eyes are right back to being irritated from the pollution in the air.
4. Back to work.
5. Back to limited communication.
6. Bye-bye plethora of vegan restos and products.
7. It’s so cold in my studio here…
8. No SATC.
9. Expensive to get around after midnight.
10. Back to cultural learning moments (a.k.a. frustration with the seeming lack of thinking outside the box sometimes).