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End of Semester Summer Teacher Field Trip

My classroom phone rang and I was given the option of rafting or hiking for the annual teacher field trip by a Korean co-teacher harried by end-of-semester organizing.

"Can I have some time to think about this?"

"Now!" she screamed into the phone like a little Hitler overwhelmed with plans for impending blitzkriegs. I was just another loose end that needed to be tied up.

"Uh...ok...rafting?"

She slammed the phone down in disgust.

My on the spot reasoning was that it's hotter than hell out and that it would be better to float lazily down a river than trekking up a humid trail. But it turned out to be more work than I imagined with synchronized rowing, shallow spots where we had to get out of the raft and shove it over rocks, and constant raft ramming and splash attacks from the athletic department goons who seemed to see the excursion as an opportunity to play Viking water warfare.

I wish I had pictures of the river rafting but my camera wasn't water proof. Some beautiful scenery slid by our course of white limestone canyon walls patched with green moss and pine covered hillsides shrouded with Summer mists.

I just took a lot of shots from the bus window of the countryside on the way there and a couple of the banquet of roast pork at the rural villa we ended up at. The night consisted of drinking and karaoke. I embarrassed myself on too many occasions to get into here to the extent I'm hoping it won't be an awkward next semester.

The next morning I forced my hung over self through some uncomfortable social re-integration at breakfast with co-workers who all must have felt a little weird about getting drunk and funky with each other the preceding night. But on the ride home we all hiked up to a Buddhist temple together on a forested mountaintop and I had a spiritual experience.

It started with these soothing waves passing through me as we neared the apex of the trail, before I could see any of the temple grounds. It was like the surrounding forest was a set of lungs breathing with me and each breath brought this wave of sympathetic, benevolent concern. I got a lump in my throat and had to fight back tears it was so powerful. I was shocked. It was very strange and of an order outside of any experience I've felt before. I've been hung over and active the next day too many times in my life but I never felt symptoms like this. There was an unmistakeable presence there on that mountaintop of something invisibly present that cared. I didn't even care that we were taking the hike. It was just a total annoyance. I wanted to sleep on the bus and go home. I'm hyper vigilant of all of my internal states to an obsessive compulsive degree and I can sincerely say I've never felt anything like this before and that it wasn't coming from inside myself, but from the environment around me.

We crested to trail and entered the "temple" area that was more like a Buddhist Disneyland. Look at the pix. But this feeling hovered over me the whole time. I took a drink from the artesian spring blasting out of a dragon's mouth. My best guess is that some psychic reservoir of benevolent energy has accumulated up there from all the sincere Buddhists who trek up to the shrine, light a candle, and make a wish for real solutions to life's problems and in my raw state I was especially sensitive to it. Or something.

The whole event has got me considering doing a Buddhist Temple stay, a program Korea developed to accommodate the influx of tourists when it hosted the 2006 World Cup and which it has kept going. The websites have some hilarious English translation issues I'll probably make fun of in a future post if I ever figure out how to make a reservation.

Space Men 3 (or a version of them with Kevin Shields) Re-Unite in Benefit of Old Member Natty Brooker Who Has Cancer

I've Been Working on an Imaginary Standup Comedy Routine

It would be in the tradition of Steven Wright or Mitch Hedburg and go something like this:

"I was in a petrified forest and someone said something gloomy so I went to knock on wood but realized I was knocking on stone and just wounding my hand."

(wait for scattered uncertain chuckling to die down)

"Men with lisps are full of selth loafing."

(a rise of stronger more concentrated chuckles)

"I got my entire body tattooed with an exact replica of myself in flesh tones. Yr looking at it right now."

(genuine laughter arises, perhaps a woman uncontrollably shrieks)

"Do you hear about the Polack that tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the wrists? The second shot was really difficult."

(laughter starts strong but trails off into confused muttering as they wonder wether the image is too racist or gruesome to be funny)

"Popcorn's good. So's puffed rice. That's why I want to heat up a coconut until it explodes into one edible mass.

(audience roars and guffaws, some people stand up and applaud, a lady throws her little cocktail umbrella onto the stage where it falls delicately at my feet)

"Thank you Afghanistan! I love you! Good night!"

(exit stage)

Korean Totem Poles

When I flew from Los Angeles to Incheon I wondered why, rather than a straight shot across the Pacific, the flight map showed us creeping up the Western U.S. Coast towards Alaska, and over the Behring Strait, then along the Coast of Russia, China, over Japan and then into Korea. Maybe the unpredictability of weather conditions over open sea was a concern? It got me thinking about the route early humans supposedly took over land bridges from Russia to Alaska and into North America. They basically walked the path I flew in reverse from Asia to North America. This is all an overly conflated way to be saying that when I saw these Korean Totem Poles their link to Native Americans was made in my mind for the first time. It's obvious they share a cultural heritage when you compare the woodwork. These cartoonishly whacky sculptures were meant to scare to the shit out of trespassers on a tribe's territory and protect the camp, but to the eyes of someone who's grown up in a post Ren and Stimpy world they're just sort of interesting and funny.

Chicken Feet

This is a plate of chicken feet dredged in spicy hot chili sauce. You pick 'em up and massage the bones and talons out of the foot skin and then drop the rubbery sock of rooster flesh into a communal bowl of rice and seaweed and roll up a ball of flavor to pop into your mouth.

I couldn't do it. Seeing those intricate patterns of chicken foot flesh through the veneer of hot sauce set my instinct off. It seemed to be saying to me in lucid, crystalline tones "Whatever you do, do not eat this shit."

Luckily there were plenty of side dishes like potato pancake, some fiery hot onion soup in clear broth, a bowl full of scrambled eggs in some sort of sauce, and pickled cabbage. I'm sure I offended everyone with my hoity toity cracker ass refusal to eat the main dish but instinct is instinct. Some long lost ancestor of mine must have killed a chicken and decided its lowest part, the part that roots through the ground for worms, claws through shit all day, and tears at the flesh of enemies is unclean to ingest. I can't argue with that.

I Passed a Severed Pig Head on My Way to the Nakwon Arcade

At least he looks like he died happily. Not pictured is a butcher standing off to the side hacking chunks of pig face off a stack of heads piled on cheap card table set up on the sidewalk.

The Nakwon Arcade is a building that straddles a major thoroughfare in Insadong, the craft district of Seoul. It's like a massive guitar center made up of a hundred or so smaller shops. I walked around acres and acres of musical equipment trying out hollow bodied electric guitars. I realized today that I hate haggling. I know it's customary and people enjoy the exhilaration of it or something but it just feels like arguing to me. Tell me how much it is and I'll tell you if I want to buy it. End of transaction. Anyway I would just ask for a price then walk onto the next shop, waiting to get quoted the cheapest price I'd found online. It turns out Epiphone used to be headquartered in Korea before moving to China so almost everywhere sold Casinos, the model I was interested in. I bought this from a straightforward Korean rocker dude who immediately quoted what I wanted to hear.