Last one for a while

I'm packed, and it's before midnight! This is a new record for me.

I may have left out stuff, but on the whole, it took less time and was less stressful than I thought. I have fewer clothes than I thought. The anchovy/seaweed package is bigger than I thought (mother- and aunt-requested item). Half of the suitcase is stuff for other people.

Considering that when I get back, a year will have passed since I moved to Korea, I thought of writing some sort of navel-gazing entry today. The actual anniversary of my arrival here will be spent on an airplane this year too -- but from Seattle to Atlanta.

In fact, earlier today, I did start writing something about the impossibility of truly conveying an experience to someone else and how we try anyway because of the importance of finding and maintaining connections with people blah blah blah. I deleted it. Blather and boring to boot.

And just now, I wrote a paragraph about being tired today for various reasons, and deleted that as well. Bo-ring!

I think I'll cut my losses and sign off, with apologies for the unsatisfactory nature of this entry. Some days it flows, and some days it clogs. But I would like to share something I saw today. I was wiped out, you see, both physically and emotionally, and decided to go for a run in the hopes of shifting my mood. I took the route along the Han River, which is swollen and turbulent with the rainfall from the recent typhoon. Under one of the bridges, because of some man-made structure, the water poured over a short curve like a waterfall, creating a roiling, surging back current. I stopped by the water and watched the furiously bubbling brown water. "That looks like something," I thought to myself, and the answer floated up: root beer.

After a minute or two of watching the carbonated swirling and boiling, I noticed something in the water. A ball. An indigo blue plastic ball with white and yellow circles, somewhere between a basketball and a softball in size. A child's plaything. After watching this too for a minute, I noticed that it kept disappearing and then appearing again. It would touch the smooth surface of the stubby waterfall and get sucked under the water, popping up again a few feet away, only to drift closer and closer to the waterfall, pushed by the back current, to get sucked under again.

The ball was helpless, caught in a cycle that would not end until it deflated, or until the current calmed. None of the people standing on the riverbank could reach that ball, nor change its course. It was doomed to repeat the plunge under water over and over, unable to resist the power of the waterfall.

But it did keep reappearing.

Maybe that ball is still disappearing and reappearing, in the dark, under the bridge connecting the northern part of Seoul to the southern part. Maybe it has popped and deflated and is now lying on the bottom of the river. Or maybe it has broken free.
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That's all for now, folks. I'll be in the States for the next month, bouncing around from San Fran to DC to NYC to Seattle to Atlanta to SF again, before heading back to Seoul on Oct. 14. I'll post again in mid-October. Til then, fight the power, use the Force, and be free.