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My G-ma casually mentioned to me in one of her recent email messages that she’s read a few of my journal entries. Hmm. I was a little shocked and I must admit that I sighed, "Oh no." Advice: If you plan on starting an online journal, don’t promote your web site to your family if you don’t want them as part of the audience. Too late for me; the journal came after my pages. I guess I could move the journal, but I’m already established and anyway I’ve got some mixed feelings about it. It’s better not to make hasty decisions until things are all mentally worked out.
Somebody in my family is probably reading this and feeling offended. That’s OK, feel offended. Just know that I don’t want to hear any criticism for my opinions, experiences, or language. I am me and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
That said, I’ve decided to push on as is and if my family is reading this, that’s cool. For my part, I’m trying to remain true to myself but I can already see that it’s going to be harder for me to speak my true language, to swear, to be myself. Fuck. There. Get used to it. Hahaha!
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I went for a walk yesterday in the cool, crisp Autumn. I had some really great thoughts, while music was reverberating through my head, about what I want to write on the Bad Girl page. (Don’t go there yet, there’s nothing to see.) Of course, the moment I stepped in the door it vanished. I really wish I could have some sort of recording device for my thoughts. There’d be a helluva lot of editing but the meat of those random action potentials would be so much more clear and profound than what actually tends to trickle out when I sit down and make a concerted effort at expression.
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Today was a shining lesson in why it is best to stay indoors on Mondays. At 11am I left for the neighborhood post office, which is ridiculously small and never crowded. I had a package and a couple of letters to unload. I get there and the place is totally packed! Of course I got really angry at the total inefficiency of this country, at the stupidity of making everyone go to the post office for stamps instead of setting up vending machines in various locations or even dispensing them at cash machines. I swear, every car’s got a cell phone but they can’t simplify the postal system! So I waited in line for a half an hour.
Afterward, I walked over to the bus stop and waited another 40 minutes for my bus to arrive. Geez. It took over an hour for me to get out of my neighborhood! Of course, traffic was horrible and it was another 45 min. before the bus pulled up to the stop in Itaewon. My legs actually felt stiff walking off the bus, after standing for over an hour straight and then sitting in the same position for 45 minutes.
I’m really pleased with my new cashmere coat. Mr. Kim and his underpaid people do a really great job. I was frustrated from my morning nightmare when I entered his office, but he offered me a coke and asked me to sit, which gave me some time to unwind. He talked to me for quite awhile about how busy he is and about his Christian beliefs. He told me that he witnessed a miracle yesterday - a woman who was paralyzed was miraculously healed by a visiting missionary from Africa - and that the knowledge of that act had convinced him that he has been selfish all these years because he has only prayed for his own success and not for others. He said that he admired the missionary because of his altruism. I felt really skeptical of the miracle; it sounded way too fishy, like some TV evangelical hoax. I worry that Mr. Kim might get taken financially. Nevertheless, there is no denying that this event inspired a change in perspective and practice for him that is good. He is a nice man.
Koreans really understand the concept of union in the sense that they know that establishing a friendly relationship with someone increases the chances of future business with that party. They have made it a cultural norm. Americans do it too, but it is not systematically practiced. I wondered if that was why he spent so much of my time chatting. Maybe he just wanted to practice English, or take a break?
Getting home was much more speedy, but it was still 2:30 and I felt totally exhausted and disappointed. I had a lot of reading I wanted to do today, but being gone so long and being so tired made it highly unlikely I’d even open a book. So, I cruised the web for awhile, read all the crap from my newsgroups - stuff like that. I see all the hubbub around Cognito’s misogynistic journal entry prompted him to remove his site in a huff, crying fowl on freedom of speech all the way out the door. Well, I’m not shedding any tears; don’t write it if you can’t take the heat right? Personally, if I was getting a lot of mail saying that my stuff was disturbing, I’d start thinking I was some sort of social anomaly and I’d being doing a lot self-evaluation and considering therapy.
After awhile I felt like I was going to fall asleep looking at the screen so I called Dave and chatted at him for a few minutes. After I hung up I actually entertained the idea of crawling into bed (at 5:00pm) for a nap. With all my might, I resisted the tractor beam emanating from the bed and hooked a left into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I put on some Native American sounding cd and read for tomorrow’s class. The tea woke me up and I managed to read a bit of the stuff I’m gonna write about later. Whew! Close one.
There’s nothing on TV tonight, so I’m feeling optimistic that I might get some other reading done too. Go me!
Dave came home depressed about his job, as he has every right to be. He talked to me about it while the pasta was boiling. I like hearing about his experiences, but I dislike how angry and helpless I feel. I am so protective of him and want to take action to make things better, but it’s impossible. All I can do for him is listen… and do the dishes Monday - Thursday. *wink*
He also mentioned a couple of funky signs that indicated today was going to be a bad day. He said:
I knew today was going to suck from the minute I got in line for the bus. I usually get there a little before 7:30am and the odds are that the guy in front of me is smoking a cig, but I am pretty good a dodging the second hand smoke. But this morning a guy right ahead of me let loose a cloud when I wasn't looking and I breathed it all in like I was doing a hit on a bong. Cigarette smoke usually makes me cringe and choke up, but this guy's smoke contained some other lethal elements from deep within his bowels or some other internal organs. It smelled like death warmed to 108 degrees. I had this sudden gag reflex, and I had this tremendous urge to hurl up whatever I could, even though I had nothing to eat that day yet. I looked down on the sidewalk to the side of me to make sure that if I threw up I wouldn't hit anyone's shoes, but I saw someone had already beaten me to it. There was a big pile of pinkish-brown puke from the night before, and there was a scrawny pigeon eating it, gobbling the little chunks in a single swallow and trying to break up the bigger, crustier pieces with pecks from his beak.
I decided that all the hassles I waded through this morning, and then Dave’s little story, was enough evidence to suggest that this was some cosmically warped day.
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