Yesterday was my last day at work, and I came home feeling sad and tired. Of course, I made no progress in packing, last night. I basically just read for a while, finally finishing the first of the 6 or so "books-in-progress" that I was hoping to finish before moving out. I doubt I'll actually finish the others. The book I finished was a desolate piece of Korean-Lit-in-translation called Three Days in That Autumn, by Pak Wanseo. Hemingwayesque, spare prose, that may be partly an artifact of translation, but well-written for all that. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an annoying subtext, a kind of anti-abortion screed, with a dash of evangelical Christian redemption thrown in for the last few pages. Then again, the take on it all was sufficiently ambiguous that there could have been some intended irony, too. It would be hard to decide, if I had to work it through "semiotically."
I woke up this morning and gazed around my cluttered, packing-up-in-progress apartment. It's frustrating, if not downright embarrassing, to find myself harboring vague home-decorating fantasies so close to my day of departure. I satisfied them by cooking the last of my brown rice, and then ate it with the last of my excellent cucumber kimchi. Except for the fact of it being brown rice, that's a totally traditional Korean breakfast, and I've grown to find it very appealing. A simple, completely sugar-free and fat-free breakfast.