Why Korea? The Truth.

"So...why Korea? What made you decide to go there?"

I hate when I'm asked this question. I mean, it's a perfectly understandable thing to ask. I did pick up and move to the other side of the world and stay there for 3.5 years. There must be an origin story, right?

I'd like to tell you I was an avid K-Pop fan. That I had studied Korean once in school and always had a dream of going there one day. I'd like to say that I devoured Korean novels and just had to make the settings come alive by being there in person. That I ate kimchi on a regular basis. That I could confidently point to Korea on a map.

I'd like to say these things, but none of them are true.

In April of 2012 I had never eaten kimchi, had no idea what Gangnam Style was, and had only previously thought of Korea as an "over there" place which quite honestly was never on my radar, save the few days we studied the Korean War in middle school and high school social studies.

In August of 2012, just four short months later, I was sitting atop my only belongings- two suitcases- in an 8th floor apartment in Hayang, Gyeongsangnam-do Province in South Korea.

I had been driven there by a painfully shy Korean woman in her early 30s; my new co-teacher, I was told. It had rained heavily the entire length of our 1.5 hour drive from the Office of Education, and I watched the rain make tiny dancing rivers on the passenger window while trying to think of clever conversation starters to replace the failed one just before it. 

Loading my things into my co-teachers car at the Office of Education.

In the car, on the way to my new town/apartment.

Painfully shy co-teacher's car hugged the 2-lane road snaking along the river I would know later as the Samjingang and blurred past rice field after rice field until it came to the tiny town of Hayang. I was taken to what appeared to be the tallest building in the city, Daegyung Apartments, and pretended to enjoy the very long elevator ride up to the 8th floor with my two bags and my new co-teacher who stared at her feet the entire time. The walls of the elevator were painted mint-green, and I remember thinking that every pediatric clinic of my childhood had been painted the same color. Perhaps the painter retired to Korea. 

Apartment building elevator. I seriously documented everything. Everything.

Co-teacher had trouble getting the key code to work on the grey metal door of apartment 801. Phone calls were made. Korean was spoken. I wheeled my all-belongings back and forth in their giant cases, an inch here and an inch there as though I were doing something of importance. I tried to meet eyes with my co-teacher and smile. To say, "Hey...don't worry about me. I'm patient. No biggie!" without words, but she didn't seem keen to look at me. I plotted how to win her over while she tried a different set of numbers to get in. 1-0-0-8-2-*. Ah, the star. Can't forget the star. (The star? You mean the asterisk.  He never called it "star." Funny what I can hear him saying, even now. But we'll get to that later.)

Trouble getting into the apartment. Co-teacher calling for help.

A series of three beeps gave us the go-ahead to enter the apartment. Bags were lifted up over the small step separating the area where shoes are taken off as you enter and the rest of the apartment. I'd have invited my co-teacher in, but I had nothing, absolutely nothing with which to entertain, unless she wanted to help me unpack. It was getting dark outside. It was raining something fierce. It was a Thursday night. My first day of teaching at a middle school in the center of Nowhere, Korea was to begin in less than 14 hours. My co-teacher finally spoke to me.

"No school tomorrow. There is ty-poon."

She made her way to the door as if to exit, but I used every bit of American Western drama in me to toss a lasso of questions her way and keep her just where I needed her until all threats were gone.

"Did you say ty-PHOON? A ty-PHOON is coming?"

"Yes. Ty-poon is coming."

I'm from the Midwest, and we are no strangers to wicked storms that make every leaf on every tree stand completely still as the air hangs heavy and the skies turn green. We know about the wild winds that come after and rip the roofs from our houses while we gather in the basement and listen to the radio. We know of furious flooding that spills Mississippi mud through the streets and pushes through the orifices of post-war homes. We know these things.

But we don't know of ty-poons.

"So..should I like...I mean...am I supposed to...am I safe here?" I heard the first sound of what would be a banshee chorus followed by an all-night banshee rock concert outside of my sliding glass windows. The speaker on my wall suddenly crackled and a very severe Korean voice gave very severe instructions, none of which I understood. I interpreted it as, "Someone tell the American she is going to die here. She has no idea."

"You...ok," my co-teacher said.

"I am?"

"Yes." She sat down on a (my?) ratty, blue futon sofa and began texting. Someone. Put this in the category of things about which I had no clue.

My new apartment. Co-teacher texting. Bridget not having a clue.

"And...what about school on Monday? How..." I had no car. No cell phone. No apartment phone. No idea where the school was located. I knew no one. And my co-teacher was about to drive to her home, several towns away.

"Taxi."

"Taxi? Like...I should call a taxi? Or..." I had no idea how to call a taxi. I had no idea how to say "taxi" in Korean. (It's "택시," by the way. Pronounced "taxi.")

"I will call taxi. Please go outside. 8:20. Class starts 8:30. Goodbye."

"Um...ok...but..." And she up she got and out she was gone.

You know those movies where someone goes to prison and there's always the shot of the prison doors closing and making a dramatic CLANG noise so we know that the character knows that man, they are really stuck in there?

That's the sound that door made when my co-teacher walked out. At least, that's how I remember it.

I made a preliminary sweep of my apartment: small, teal kitchen table and 4 chairs; kitchen cabinet full packet full with every imaginable and very outdated kitchen need; refrigerator works, smells like ass; bathroom sink works, that toilet seat is going to have to go; bedroom has a queen-sized bed, yea me for bringing twin-sized sheets; nice closet space, my clothes will take up a fraction of it; a second bathroom! Man...other teachers would be jealous!; a cheap, blue, futon sofa; a giant appliance- no idea what that is or how to work it (air-con); a few particle board-ish pieces of furniture pushed along the length of the wall, holding a giant boxy tv and filled with what couldn't even be passed off at a garage sale; a porch for hanging laundry and surveying the hills across and river below; a spare bedroom with what looked like a bare army cot. I was dizzy with taking in the new-ness of it all. 

The kitchen. The teal table and chairs.

The bedroom. Everything I own in 2 bags.

The guest room/typhoon bunker.

Not entirely sure the ratty sofa would hold me, I rolled my two suitcases together and gently sat on their tops, avoiding best I could the handles. The wind and rain were picking up at a panicky pace, pelting my windows with unknown objects, since it was now completely dark outside. I looked towards the door where another human being had stood moments before, even if that human being said barely a word to me. Now there was no one.

I knew no one. No one in this building. No one in this town. Only one person in the world knew where I was precisely, and she just left after warning me of a ty-poon. I felt the pre-cry lump gaining considerable mass in the back of my throat and wanted to whisper-mumble, "What have I done?" And then I reminded myself what I l would later, during my orientation lectures, tell hundreds and hundreds of new English teachers coming to Korea: "You can do anything for a year. Anything." I got off the suitcases and started unpacking.



"So...why Korea? What made you decide to go there?"

August 2012, during 3-day orientation in Jeonju, South Korea.

And here's the part where I lie. Where I usually say, "Oh, you know...I've always wanted to travel and teaching abroad was a good way to do that." Or "I had a group of sweet Korean students at the middle school where I was teaching here in St. Louis, and they convinced me Korea would be a good place to go." But that's not what happened.

The truth is in April of 2012 I was living on my own in an adorable little rented bungalow with my equally adorable dog, Gizmo. I drove a sporty black and white Mini Cooper on some days, but opted for my green Vespa on most. I had a job I loved in a school district I respected, and I worked with people I genuinely liked. I had been single for about 1.5 years and was enjoying the beauty of solitude and solo-living. I felt the most centered and connected to self I had ever felt in my life. I was on solid ground. My life looked great and felt even better. 

Little house.

Little dog.

I had a daily practice of making a gratitude list and a nightly practice of prayer and meditation. I had long understood the importance of understanding what it means to turn over my fierce will-driven ideas to any power greater than myself. I was not opposed to using the term "God" and I had (have) an often hilarious relationship with something I can't quite explain. We all have our ways.

One April night in 2012, I knelt next to my bed (ah...that teal, satin, quilted bed cover with coordinating toss pillows- the things I sold/gave away when I left- so many things) and I put my elbows on the mattress. Under my knees was a little prayer rug that a woman at a local mosque gave me during a visit with students after I had admired it. Under my pillow was a cloisonné rosary I had purchased in the gift shop of a Catholic church in I-Can't-Remember-Where China nearly ten years before. I used it to say what I was grateful for as well as to pray for people in need or whom I was nursing a nice resentment. It is probably clear by now that my spiritual practices are borrowed from many different places and this particular blend had been serving me well for years. 

The coveted quilt.

Kneeling next to my bed and praying was nothing new. It's a habit I developed later in life more to calm my freight train of a mind when praying and less about putting myself in a subservient position before the Lord. In fact, if you heard a running tape of how I "pray," you may question what God allows for such colorful language (my favorite definition being from answers.com: "curses, scatological references, sexual references and general and imaginative insults.") What God puts up with that, along with a string of non sequiturs and frequent raps/songs about the day or what's on the mind? Mine does. And delights in it. Go ahead. Borrow my God if you need one.

This is where I was, next to my bed, elbows on that teal, satin bed cover and knees on that Muslim prayer rug. This is how I was praying when it occurred to me to say the following prayer, the words of which I don't trust myself to offer here verbatim, but it will be pretty close:

Hey, God.
Whuddup God?
Ooooh. Look at this bedspread. I sure do love it.
Somebody made this bedspread. Thank you, somebody!
Oh. I'm praying. Oops.
Hey, God! What it is? What it is?
Dear God, thanks for [lists and lists and lists things]
and remove my defects of character which 
stand in the way of my usefulness to others.
Your will, not mine, be done.

Because my will...well...
we can pretty much look at the track record
and see how that's worked. 
Because I DO have some kind of will, 
don't I God? Aw, yeah. I do. You KNOW it!
So...
Ok. Whatever. I thought I'd be married with
kids and all that at this point in my life.
And...that's not really what's unfolding here. 
Which is cool! I mean...don't send me a 
husband and some kids because, you know,
I'm really groovin' on this alone thing right now.
Totally good. 

It's just...if what I thought my life was going to be
is not what my life is turning out to be...

I just want to say...
you know...
Whatever I'm supposed to do, 
I'm on board.
Wherever I'm supposed to be,
I'm game.
I'll do it. Whatever I'm supposed to do
to be of service to others- go ahead
and plop it in front of me. I'm up for it.
Whatever.
Really.
I mean it.
My life?
You've got it.
It's yours.
I'm down for whatever.

I had this complete feeling of surrender like I have never had before and haven't had since. I was perfectly content to keep living my life as I was living it, but I also knew that if there was something else to be done and my narrow vision was keeping me from seeing it, I wanted to widen the scope.

I said that prayer and I felt something. I kid you not. And I'm not a froufrou religion kind of lady. If it were a movie scene, this particular moment of prayer, this is where we'd cue the window suddenly blowing open, the curtains blowing wildly, and my hair tossed about in Godly-gusts. I was kinda a'scairt of what I had just prayed for. I mean, what if God snatched me up and dropped me in the middle of a barren African veldt and wanted me to eat tree bark to survive while doing some kind of service work involving septic systems? This is what first came to mind. Such is the difference between what I think may happen in the future and what actually does. The bottom line, though, was that I felt something.

Something happened.

Maybe it was the next day, maybe it was a few days later- but swoosh in my head was the idea that teaching abroad for a year would be a fun thing to do. I figured I better check out Africa because of my tree bark-eating premonition, and I did, but a facebook post from someone about a friend of a friend's kid teaching in Korea and using this particular recruiting company led me to a link. The link led to a phone number, then a phone conversation with a recruiter, then paperwork gathered and fingerprints taken and leave of absence requested and letters of recommendation gathered and here and there and zip and unfold and whoosh and chickity-bam things just were happening effortlessly, one after the other. I felt like I had a spider-web string tied to the center of my sternum and it was pulling me, gently and swiftly in a certain direction.

And four months later I was sitting atop those two suitcases with that lump in my throat and a typhoon roaring through my little town.

"I can do anything for a year," I told myself.

"Or two...or three...or three and a half," God must have whispered back in those howling winds. "Because there's someone I want you to meet."

And somehow, I must have heard Him.

Ain't it Grand to Be Alive?

Ain't it Grand to Be Alive?

I am alive.

Not because I

breathe.
Not because I

steep my tea

while washing

up last night’s

dishes. I am

alive not

because I eat

a bowl of bran

flakes even

when I realize

I’m out of

bananas to

slice on top.

I am alive

because I hurt.

I ache from

the places I

cannot steep.

The places I

cannot feed.

There, under

the protective

skin of me, I hurt.

And with each

electric shock or

dull pulse of

discomfort, I

am reminded. I

am alive. I am.

Leaving Korea

Dear Gareth,

I started writing a poem about the after-effects; the good things and the not so good. I erased it. I started to write about birthdays and how they feel different now. I erased that, too. I feel the certain itch that only writing relieves, but I can't figure out where exactly I'm itching. I just know writing directly to you at least got my scratching fingernails on the right limb.

Here's what I want to write to you about.

I remember that terrible implosion across the internet- me in Thailand on the eve of my return to Korea from what had been a great vacation and you in your apartment in Gyeongju in a state of alcohol-fueled distress. I had wanted to talk about my concerns, but I had not wanted to do so until we could be face-to-face. "Are you leaving me?" you wrote. "Are you leaving me?"

Dear Gareth- Do you know I am leaving Korea in 18 days? Of course, you must. I am returning to St. Louis for a few weeks and then heading on to Portland, where I hope to make a new home. I am opening my heart for all types of new things and I have been making space for this in the past few months.

 I am leaving Korea after 3.5 years. I am returning home.

"Are you leaving me?" I couldn't hear your voice, but I could sense your panic. It was growing. It was bleeding through the screen.

"I am not leaving you," I wrote back. "I have to step aside from the relationship for a bit while you get help or not, and while I figure out what I'm willing to do."

I am not leaving Korea. I am stepping outside of its physical boundaries. I am taking it with me.

"I am not leaving you."

Korea will always be woven into the makeup of my being. How can I separate myself from where I met myself?

"Tell me you're leaving! Tell me! Is that what you're doing?! Are you leaving me?!" 

You were in full panic. You were not making sense. You were unintelligible. I was terrified. I was crushed. I was wanting you well. 

"No. I am not leaving you. I have to step away from this. This is not good for me. I am really wanting you to be well, and I don't know how to make that happen. I can't make that happen." 

Did I leave you?

I am leaving Korea in 18 days.

I don't know how I could have done it better. I'm not sure how I could have done it differently. I thought I was "detaching with love." You felt I had tossed you overboard and cut all ropes back to the boat.

I am detaching from Korea with love. This glass globe I lived in and shook and shook and watched things float and glitter and fall and never quite settle.

"Are you leaving me?"  

In the hospital I told you I would not leave you. That I was here now, and I would remain so. I brushed your brows with my thumb and I told you your family was coming. I kissed the tip of your nose and told you that you were not alone. I placed my hand on the side of your cheek and I promised you that I would not leave. Did you hear me make that promise?

I am leaving Korea in 18 days.

Did you leave me?

What is this- this slipping off of the map, this shifting from one country to another, or from a hospital bed in Gyeongu to a place I can no longer describe? What is left when neither of our footsteps are felt on Korean soil?

Did you know you were leaving?

You left when you knew it was time. Your family had arrived, save your loves back home looking after things while mum, dad, and one brother came to be with you. We had been back in the provided apartment but for a few hours when we got the call to return. You were leaving.

I'm leaving Korea in 18 days. I am selling my things. Throwing many things out. A kind man is moving into my apartment and buying much of what I have here. I am preparing to leave.

How did you prepare to leave?

We emptied your apartment of its contents. I was struck by your toothbrush and tube of toothpaste balancing behind the bathroom sink on a small ledge. I was struck by the dirty clothes in your laundry room. By the dirty dishes in the sink. By the things recently used, recently worn, and never returned to. You had no idea when you left just a few evenings before that you would not be coming back.

Did you have any idea? Maybe in some way you did.

I want you here with me as I touch everything I own in my apartment. I want you to help me say goodbye to books and little talismans, and people, and hills.

Can I be leaving you if you are not here?

"Are you leaving me? Tell me. I need to know."

I am leaving Korea.

I did not leave you. I type it again. I did not leave you.

I type it as many times as I need to see it.

I did not leave you. I am not leaving you. 

Until I believe it.

I am leaving Korea in 18 days. I am not leaving you. 

And forgive me if I am. Forgive me if I did.

Help me forgive myself.

Crossing the Finish Line

Crossing the Finish Line

I ran to cross the
finish line of 16
sprinted as fast 
as I could to 18
I scarcely looked 
behind when my
eyes were on 
the finish line of 21

I spent time
around the finish
line of 30 of 35
I wondered how 
I got to 40- that
finish line mixing 
metaphorical ones
with literal ones
a brutal run on a hilly
South Korean island

I think about the
races cut short-
about how I continue
to lace up every
morning while some
of the most brilliant
running companions
have left the course

I can hear the sound
of their rhythmic
steps. Of their breathing
still. I wonder who
will greet me when 
I cross the finish line.

 

This is the way to thread me

This is the way you
thread me while I'm in motion:
eye the eye of my needle and
will it to stop spinning
swirling passing by in a blur

Sing to it, if you will:
Slow down, my love! Slow
down! Watch me carefully
consider with perceivable pause
I slow I stir I where have you gone?

This is how I sleep: when
thread is slack and held by
nothing but gravity's pull
against the gleaming wooden
floor. Thread me! I whisper

to fingertips long resting. At
once I tire. I stop to admire
the all of me slender long
a curved space through which
I can view the rest of you.

Where is your thread now?
Look, I am still. I contemplate
the thrill of colors brightly chosen
looped through my lair and
pulling me guiding me trusting

my sharp point to meet the
rough pad of a waiting fingertip
when I emerge from the other
side. One cannot begin to imagine
the beauty of tapestries I've made.