on the flu and making friends

If there's anyone we should really feel sorry for in this pandemic, it's the school nurses. In Korea, at least in my school district, they're hiring new ones every day.
There's a new "health teacher"/school nurse who I feel that I was making a positive connection with for most of day- smiling and bowing in the hallway and such- but it all went wrong at lunch time. After laughing at me for not sticking my hands in the chemicals at the lunchroom door for as long as she wanted, she sat down next to me, licked her chopsticks, and stuck them in my kimchi to instruct me how to tear it apart.
(which I was doing qutie well on my own, thank you very much.)

American Thanksgiving 2009

With better planning, I probably could have scrounged together the ingredients and friends with which to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. I showed my kids snippets of YouTube videos of wild turkeys and a bit of Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, all the while thinking how much more fun and memorable the "culture lesson" could have been if I had just smashed together some kind of pie- even picked up some version of (how can you describe these chain French Korean bakeries) sweet bread on the way in to school.
The guilt of this is sitting on me as heavily as a full Thanksgiving dinner. I don't feel thankful. I've just had my plateful of potatoes and salt and peas, sitting at my computer in my yoga clothes, and quite by myself. I'm reflecting, instead of upon all the things I have to be thankful for, on the things I actually miss.
Surely I've criticized consumer culture enough to be drawn and quartered for saying this, but how I miss Christmas shopping for absolute crap and wrapping it in every color and carting the nonsense all around to deliver everywhere... I miss decorations in stores and restaurants and streetlights. A spirit of gratitude is not working for me this year. I need kitsch. I need an unnecessary round of pie.
In a rather botched attempt at explaining the legend of Thanksgiving to a class of semi-interested middle school students, I gave the pilgrims the label of "foreigner" that is usually assigned to me and my kind here in Korea. Though they were messy and loud and generally destructive, the native Americans could see they were hungry and cold, so they poured them some twig tea and gave them some kimchi and fish. So we remember, on Thanksgiving and every day, to be grateful.

jet lag

My mental puzzle of the morning is jet lag.
I imagine myself to be a fairly logical person, and not too badly educated- in fact, I took a university physics class on astronomy that challenged my thinking in this very way- but, set in a comfortable airplane seat staring out the window at ceaseless sunlight, and still a week later trying to fathom which way the world is rotating, I am at a complete loss.
It's an appropriate puzzler for the wee hours on a Saturday when I've already seen enough Discovery Channel and scrubbed the bathroom, and since my demographic-mates are asleep or maybe not home yet, I am applying myself to sorting this out.
There are those who say that jet lag does not exist. They may be the same ones who think there's no point in using soap when you wash your hands or owning more than one t-shirt. I heartily agree with them on all fronts, except for the first hand experience of the last month in which I have been more hopelessly tired and hopelessly awake at all the wrong times than I have ever been before.
I have always been a little frustrated by my body's insistence on sleep. For some reason in my younger years, it would take a great deal of very promising entertainment to actually keep me up when I wanted to sleep. I slept through several loud parties going on IN my dorm room in college. I remember once waking up to my best friend asking me if I wanted her to slap me awake, as we were in a crowded and loud bar- I hadn't had a drop to drink. But all this is nothing compared to my feeling at long-awaited Taco Day at my sister Naomi's apartment, which I was very much looking forward to for many reasons. Yet in the middle of it all, which included toddlers and excited young women trying to get the toddlers to say and do funny things, I was so unable to stay awake that I felt more drugged-up than I ever felt when I was actually on drugs.
So, I Google this Spartan Anti-Jet Lag Theory. What I am surprised to learn (the Spartans are wrong, by the way- haha) is that it all has to do with sunlight. Jetlagtips.com explains (without bringing anything crazy like rotation or gravity into it) that travelling East to West is much less difficult on the system than travelling West to East, simply because of the amount of sunlight.
At the moment I am finding this absolutely charming; imagining us silly humans who think we are so intense and complicated, but are actually essentially potted plants who just need the right amount of water and attention and sunlight. We can be quite fussy little things if it gets thrown off, but we're hearty and adaptable.
At least this is what it seems best to tell myself this morning.

Seems that everything has gone wrong ever since Canada came along...

I may be coming to the end of the chapter of my life in which I would say over and over that I adore flying, and can imagine no happier state than walking around in a strange place with everything I need in a backpack and a stylish notebook and inspiring pen to immortalize my profound thoughts on the world. Yesterday, after some number of hours awake that I can't seem to quite count, and said backpack cutting deep grooves into my shoulders, the only profound traveller's thought I had was that tomorrow had better be an F-ing dream or I'm never getting on a plane again.
Anyway, lessons learned. Don't buy the super deals on plane tickets. Don't put up with nasty old ladies at the ticket counter saying that you have to go somewhere else that you've already been to do her job for her. She has a telephone. And she has the whole problem right in front of her on her computer screen, which you paid several hundred dollars to have placed there. Don't get worked up, but also don't stand in line for two hours just not wanting to rock the boat when you know you're going to miss your flight. Don't cough just before going up for your turn in line at customs when the whole world is on high alert about an airborne flu pandemic. And if you buy a piece of fruit to eat on the airplane, eat it on the airplane.
I heard a Korean Buddhist proverb from several of my students last year about a young man who was given a horse and his parents were so happy, but then he fell off the horse and broke his leg, very sad, but then he didn't have to join the army, very happy, but then the invading army took over his village, very sad.... and so on. I think the whole story comes full circle a little bit better than my version, but, then again, maybe not. There is not necessarily a perfect ending to our stories, just little poetic circles here and there.
I'm happy to say that I'm starting to learn from these experiences, and decided not to try to sleep in the airport in Vancouver like I did in Seattle, and instead checked in to a lovely expensive hotel called the Abercorn, and enjoyed the bag of treats the Air Canada baggage claim desk gave me instead of my suitcase....
(I would just like to add a note here that in spite of all of the excessive lines and dehydration and goings without chapstick and extra charges and having to take off your shoes and jacket and everything else, I accidentally brought a bottle of cough syrup with codeine in it and a pair of scissors through at least three scanning machine, plastic gloved, sour faced police check points, and no one noticed. Furthermore, between three different airline counters I learned that it's completely against international law to send luggage along without the passenger, which isn't to say that my bag didn't go to Seoul without me, but that none of the airlines involved would admit to ever seeing it.)
Anyhow, I have no idea what I've done to my bank account, but my card wouldn't work to supply a surprise $100 deposit at the lovely hotel. (this is probably the guy falling off the horse and breaking the other leg...) The lady at the counter clearly didn't like my Tivas and greasy hair and rabbit-chewed guitar case, and looked happy enough to toss me right back out onto the highway, sans free shuttle to the airport, but took pity on me when I shook no less than four different kinds of currency out on to her counter (Korean, Japanese, Canadian, and USian), and we couldn't figure out what it possibly would add up to or how I could buy anything to eat without it. (gets a brand new wheel chair from a government with socialized medecine.)
I did discover that I have a friend in Vancouver, who I met in Korea last summer. (the guy meets a nurse at the hospital when his chair breaks.) He sends me his number to rendezvous, but I fall asleep and have only enough time to enjoy a continental breakfast and a short Canadian walk before putting the backpack back on and returning to the airport. (the nurse is already married. probably to the guy who gave him the horse.)
Don't pass up a chance to visit Vancouver. It is absolutely beautiful.
Signing off. Like I said, today had better be a dream from heaven or I'm de-planing in Tokyo and taking the ferry.

More Authentic American Experiences

I would like to begin with The Landing Zone.
The Landing Zone is an opportune little restaurant next to the much-disputed tiny airport of the quaint little ville of Harwinton, Connecticut. After a sweatily successful bike race of my brother-in-law's last weekend, a group of us misplaced 20-something Connecticut natives/residents pulled in to the harsh gravel parking lot of The Landing Zone, mainly because we couldn't find anywhere else to go in the other three fine towns we had driven through.
An offensive noise greeted us at the screen door, and we stayed because it didn't follow us inside. We waited by the "Don't Seat Yourselves!" signs for quite a while while the owner/chef took a shot of tequila with one of his customers at the bar.
You may know that over the last year I've become a devout fan of Gordon Ramsey, and especially his show "Kitchen Nightmares." I actually wouldn't even want to know what he would have to say about the dirty tables and the excessive, sticky menus of the Landing Zone.
I also had the chance to experience health care at its finest at the Walk-In Clinic of Torrington.
And last night I saw none other than Miss Britney Spears, power-walking right by me before her big show at the Mohegan Sun Casino.

This American Life

On Thursday night I went with my sister and brother-in-law to see the cinematic live-broadcast version of the National Public Radio show "This American Life."
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, as all I really knew of the show was the one or two programs I had listened to in my sister's rural living room, and all I knew of the cinematic event was that it would cost $20, and we would drive all the way to Manchester, which is father than you would normally go for most anything, to see it. I could also sense Jordan and Roger's excitement as they planned and prepared- dressing up just a little, buying special snacks to sneak in to the theater, even, I would say, preparing by not talking about it too much. I contributed, I think, by not asking too much.
We dropped their perfect toddler, Leif, off at Roger's mother's house for an evening of ice cream and Nana entertainment, and completed the tuckings and combings for the final haul over the Connecticut River.
I wouldn't say I was disappointed to pull up to a regular strip-mall Showtime Theater building, but it did peel one layer of glaze off of my unimagined experience. At the same time, as my sister pointed out, the show hadn't even made it to the highway-side movie marquis. This did make it seem a little more underground, a little more "B" movie. You had to have special information for this show. A special invitation.
As we discussed on the way home, that is almost certainly part of the charm that wins the hearts of the NPR crowd. It may be national and public, but, I have to guess that simply by virtue of being radio, it feels like indie rock. It feels like your own discovery that if the regular buttered popcorn public really paid attention to, would certainly be hugely famous. Of course at the same time, the fanship prefers it small, prefers it less popular.
We carefully chose our theater seats, and watched the screen, rather engrossed in the graphically simple but intellectually delightful word puzzles. Six letter word for a racy new spring dress? MAYHEM. My favorite of the puzzles was in the final minutes before showtime, changing one letter of the previous word to fit the next clue. "Now and ___" THEN "US enemy?" THEM. Clever. Sassy. Underground.
The film began: if I had thought about it more carefully, I might have guessed that an NPR live broadcast might be a simple stage set with guests and performers walking on with jeans and blazers, holding up showpieces like napkins and post-it notes. I'm glad I didn't think of it, because I have certainly been as tainted as any of my peers by the need for special effects and sexy gore and so on, and I may have hesitated to spend that $20 (28,000 won) on the production that proved to be one of the most inspirational and genuinely heart-warming cinematic events I've ever attended.
Ira Brooks is the kind of guy you wish you were best friends with in high school. He gives the impression, like maybe many radio guys do, that he was abjectly unpopular. Much like the whole of NPR.
On to the stage walked regular people. It was astonishing how simple and yet profound their stories were. For a moment I wondered if they were listeners who had sent in winning letters. It came across this way, and made it all the more inspiring- their stories of car accidents and police mishandling, emotional rehabilitation and even struggling with the Catholic church.
It happened that the final story took place in one of my home cities, and I recognized the church he talked about slinking in the back of. Was this the reason I felt so particularly attached?
As we filed out, noting the oddity of leaving a theater sans end credits, I noticed that the crowd we had joined was clearly an NPR crowd- fashioned in earth-tone punk-type garb, friendly but subdued. I was enchanted to be part of this crowd, and enchanted that this crowd was the National Public American Life crowd. I instantaneously, after over 25 years of torment over the question, had a new stereo-typical image of the Unitedstatesian American. So much so that I'm not going to tell anyone at all. You have to be on the inside for the special invitation.

In a Missing Thunderstorm

I've been in Connecticut for several days now. I've seen their wildlife and eaten their pancakes. And yet here I am, well after 1 am on a Sunday night, still quite hopelessly jet-lagged.

My other current home is 13 hours in the future, in humid, charmingly hyperactive JeonJu, South Korea. The cherry blossoms have been out there for a few weeks now, and we have been comfortable, even hot, in t-shirts. But here in Southern New England I'm wearing every layer of clothing available to me, and trying in vain to fight a bad cold. I think I've actually blown out my eardrums coughing.

I've been noticing that my family here in CT is much more intuned to weather and animals and so on than we are in JeonJu. My sister pulls the car over at the sight of a porcupine; my dad arrives late for burritos because he and my step-mother needed to stop and watch the bald eagle's nest by the Connecticut River. My brother-in-law sets the computer default to check the weather. And so I know I can count on cold rain for the next five days.

Tonight the chance of thunderstorms is 100%. Yet I don't hear a thing. This could be due to my aforementioned ear drum damage. But I'm in a cabin in the middle of a nature preserve, where I would surely hear anything nature had to offer. In fact I'm quite sure I can hear an owl at the moment, scaring the mice away.

At this moment when the rest of the world is asleep or too far away to point out that I'm taking myself much to seriously, this seems an apt metaphor for my life- awake and listening, but somehow missing the thunder and lightning.