…only to find that Hongong Elementary had become surrounded by a primeval forest.
I wandered up and down somewhat familiar halls, but each time I looked outside there were only trees and ferns and streams and the peering eyes of barely-seen animals. There were very few students – it was summer vacation. I saw one girl, a 2nd-grader who I recognized, but she was too busy talking on her cellphone to even notice me.
I then saw the principal. I bowed to him appropriately, but he didn't recognize me. I went to the cafeteria, and only teachers were there. It was dark inside, because the windows were all covered by thick, lush, green vegetation. The vegetable garden on the west side of the cafeteria was shadowed by immense, ancient, gnarled trees, but the field to the north had been replaced by a face of rock, strewn with wet moss and miniature waterfalls and tiny purple flowers.
I saw fellow-foreign-teacher Moyer, and another group of foreigners who were ignoring him and who I didn't recognize. I went over to speak to them, and one woman said she thought she knew who I was. I said to her that she looked familiar, too. I sat down to eat the standard Hongnong cafeteria lunch – some kind of soup, rice, not-so-good kimchi, one or two other banchan. But there was canned iced coffee, too.
Suddenly I was uninterested in eating – I felt compelled to leave. I made my way to the main entrance of the school and walked outside. I had to walk across a log across a stream where the soccer field should be. At the log bridge, I ran into Mr Lee and Mr Choi, but I was in too much of a hurry to stop and speak to them. They called after me. I went up a steep mountain path, and suddenly I came to a parking lot paved in discarded plastic containers. And suddenly I was at Mad River beach, which is west of Arcata. It felt unnaturally warm, though, and there were still too many trees around. And then I was running, barefoot, alternating on redwood forest trails and the narrow one-lane, perfectly straight Arcata bottomland roads. The old asphalt of the road felt rough and real under my feet. It was raining. And there were Koreans looking at me curiously – why is that man running barefoot? I felt like a wild monkey in a wildlife park. I felt free and afraid.
I woke up and had rice and kimchi for breakfast – I stir it together with some seasoned salty seaweed and a dollop of bibimbap sauce and a bit of cooked egg that I'm trying to eat before it goes bad, as kind of poor-man's bibimbap. But I had canned iced coffee, too. The summer morning sun is glaring in my window.
