I step out of my building at 1:05, running late for a second day in a row. I try to operate in a happy medium between insolence (always late) and subservience (never late), thus reflecting my dissatisfaction with my management on the one hand and my guilt-driven work-ethic on the other. Two days in a row is perhaps pushing the insolence direction.
The day is overcast, and that lifts me. Heaven is closer when the sun is hidden. I’m weird, that way. I remember a day, during one of my aimless wanderings in Mexico. I was about 20, and I was walking along the side of a highway, I think on the outskirts of La Paz, BCS. That’s one of the hottest parts of Mexico – tropical desert. The sun was beating down on me like an angry Pharaoh, and I vividly recall thinking to myself that there was something malevolent in it. I wanted to stand there at the side of the road and shake my fist, like a madman in a movie. Perhaps this is merely the result of having grown up in a place where there was so little sunshine. The sun comes to represent something alien, unknowable, not always an entirely welcome visitation. I don’t know.
When it’s extremely cold and also sunny, it’s an odd thing. The earth is ignoring the sun. “I’ll be cold, anyway,” she argues, and shrugs a pale, frozen shoulder. I feel close to the land when the weather is like that. And when there are clouds, I am close to heaven.
Anyway. It’s a mild day (as overcast tends to be).
Linkin Park kicks in on my MP3 player. I turn up the volume and start the walk to work. I refuse to take a taxi, even when I’m running late – on average, it only takes me 7 more minutes to walk the 2.x km than to go flag down a taxi and drive there through several inevitably long waits at red traffic lights. And it gives time to reflect. And I need the exercise.
Why am I late today? It’s kind of embarrassing – I was reading some of my own old blog posts. There was a moment of self-revelation, reading a post from April, 2006 (Caveat: angst). Not particularly deep, but it put me into one of those introspective fugues for half an hour. I won’t quote my own writing… that seems indulgent – go read it if you’re really curious. I think you’ll see what I found striking about it: I listed a series of alternate futures for myself, and one of them is exactly true. That’s… disorienting. I’m not normally very good at predicting my own future.
A track from The Who’s Quadrophenia shuffles onto my player. Last night I received a puzzling yet wonderful email from a former student, Jeong-eun. She was in one of my most advanced elementary classes at LinguaForum, and was one of the most interesting, intelligent, introspective 5th graders I have ever met. Without being at all “nerdy” – that’s a difficult combination to pull off. Anyway, she was saying she had fond memories of the class and adds, “Teacher, with us you always laughed and never showed even when you had hard time.” Which is pretty good English, too.
But she also says an odd thing, about that “now you are going away so I am very sad.” Does she know something that I don’t? I wonder to myself. And this brings me back to my current never-quite-resolved dilemma: am I going to stick it out with hellbridge (my current employer) to the end of my contract? Or am I going run away? (metaphorically speaking… I would try to negotiate a fair-to-all-parties letter-of-release if I decided to quit). Which brings me back to that blog post from almost 3 years ago, and my friend’s comment about me being a “serial quitter.” Hmm.
I see a tiny girl, maybe 7 years old, in pink jacket, confidently riding her bike on one of the pedestrian paths that grid Ilsan between the blocks of apartment towers. Standing up on the pedals, and holding a cell phone in one hand, and coming to an adroit stop at a red light at a crosswalk. I feel an odd mixture of admiration and envy. Envy? Sometimes I yearn to just do all of life OVER again. But just at that moment, the Mexican rock-en-espanol group Control Machete is playing their song Amores Perros (title song to an amazing movie, by the way), and they declaim into my ears with an angry growl, “… la codicia… borrarlo de tu vida!” (… envy… erase it from your life!). Interesting synchronicity, there.
As I approach the last turn in my right-angled zig-zag trip to work, a track by Absurd Minds shuffles into my headphones. Something more recent, a teutonic-toned goth/industrial electronic bit. And the decisions and exhortations are deferred. To work. To grading, and into that insufferably hot, stuffy, staff room. The annoying pesterings and chaotic emendations of the middle-managers, and the dipped heads of deference: 네, 부원장님 (Yes, Mr. Assistant Director), in non-confrontational tones.
And then, a few hours with the kids, absorbing their reflexive optimism, to see me through another day.
What I’m listening to right now.
[UPDATE 2011: youtube embeds added as part of background noise; UPDATE 20180603: youtube embed repaired due to link-rot]
Day: January 20, 2009
Caveat: 아어에즈! and other random observations
My student Gina was a veritable goldmine of one-liners today.
She said “아어에즈!” (which is apparently utter nonsense aeoejeu – kind of a howl of frustration – but they made sure I spelled it correctly, so I have my doubts, although Koreans take their vowels very seriously).
She said “Tiny green-skinned girl disappears!” somberly.
She observed that “A romance like wine is very expensive!” in response to a newspaper article we were reading.
And she announced, self-pityingly, “I memorized but I can’t remember” during the vocabulary quiz.
I decided to try some 잣죽 (rice and pine-nut porridge) for dinner (made from a little packet by adding water in a saucepan, boil, stir… just like any porridge I guess). It was pretty good.