For ever and for ever when I move

Things happen quickly. The combinations spin in accordance with our own personal desires. Send out an impulse, an option will rise. Echolocation of the brain to the physical manifestation of opportunity, to set in motion the happening. The specificity of the happening correlates to the clarity of the desire, of the impulse set in motion.

The strangest part of riding a train is the idea that your body is attached to that distant whistle, as it echoes ahead of the train and signals passage through the sparsely scattered towns that lay along the tracks. The whistle screeches and the carriages follow after it, rattling along, attached but separate, a fixed and continuous distance from the sound. Instead of sitting safely in one of those houses, sipping a cup of tea, observing for a moment as the train flashes past; you are flying past the houses, attached to the whistle, making your way. There are other faces on the train with you. They mind their own business, they talk amongst themselves. The pace of the train is slow, it takes time to get there. They fall asleep, hugging their  briefcases, sprawled out in their seats. You sit at the window and your body is lulled by the motion of the train, the minuscule sideways rocking smoothly contained within the controlled forward velocity. Your mind wanders at the scenery flashing by, it eases its cognitive grip, it looses into something like a dream.

The whistle screams somewhere ahead, your body follows smoothly behind.

Opportunities arise in accordance with the depth and clarity of our desires.

The rhythm of the train is hypnotic, the blur of surroundings mesmeric. The desire is to stay on to the end of the line, the desire is to get off and spend some time. Back and forth, the train is always moving, the town is always staying. The whistle echoes through both. On and off, back and forth, time and time again.

For the past few weeks in Korea, I have been insatiably hungry. I wake up hungry, I go to sleep hungry, throughout the day I feel a hunger digging inside of me.

That’s not to say I haven’t been eating. I eat regularly. Every day at school I stuff myself with rice, kimchi, spicy vegetables, soup, and some odd meat dish at lunch. Fairly often, I go out with friends for dinner, and we eat galbi (barbequed ribs), or samgaetang (chicken ginseng soup) or nangmyeon (iced noodles) or bibimbap (rice and fresh vegetables and spicy sauce, mixed) or samgyeupsal (pork, think really thick slabs of bacon) or occasionally we’ll get pizza (always with corn on it… why, Korea? Why the corn on pizza?)…. and I fill myself. In Korea, the method is generally eat until stuffed, and yet… I still feel hungry.

Granted, my meals at home are fairly piecemeal and undesirable, odd snacks, rice and dried seaweed, bowls of ramen, hard boiled eggs, cookies, bananas, milk…. but still, this hunger is there.

I don’t know how to describe it. It’s quieter than hunger. It’s as though my torso has been filled with a soft resonant ache that reminds me of hunger. It’s almost as though my hunger receptors had been replaced by desire receptors, and my system is confused.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been having some cravings lately. Take, for instance, a grilled turkey sandwich, like the ones from Panera. The mere thought of it has me drooling.

Grilled. Turkey. Sandwich. Commence drool.

I have vivid daydreams about food. Sometimes, during lunch, as I’m arranging a pile of spicy sweet bean sprouts on top of my rice, I daydream about taking a bite of a turkey sandwich, the alfalfa sprouts squishing into the guacamole, the thick center of grilled turkey and hot melted cheese squishing between my teeth… and as my chopsticks reach for a bite of kimchi, I imagine red slices of tomato sliding out from the sandwich as I taste that sweet, seedy inside mixing with that earthy bread flavor… and as I hold one chopstick steady and pull the other along the spine to separate the meaty portion of my breaded fish from the stomach cross section portion, I imagine lasagna, hot from the oven, layers and layers of melted cheese, fresh parmesan, goopy unsweetened tomato sauce….

and as I wrap up my meal, scoop the uneaten spine and somach of the fish in with the last few pieces of turnip kimchi I didn’t finish, I feel insatiably hungry.

I can’t describe it. I’m hungry, in so many ways I can’t describe, in a manner I’ve vaguely felt before, but never for so long, and never so strong as this.

I daydream of basil omelets, french toast, blueberry flaxseed oatmeal pancakes, oatmeal with sliced apples, bananas and cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top, Malt-O-Meal with a dash of brown sugar and sweet cream, thick slabs of homemade wheat bread, hot from the oven with a dab of butter melting on top, cheesy scrambled eggs on the side, fresh blackberry jelly from the Famer’s Market, a pot of fresh coffee on the countertop, summer breezes through the window, the Current drifting lazily on the radio…

Every day I eat, but…. oh brother, how I hunger.

The last month, in pictures.

Bridge across the River Han, Center of Seoul, South Korea.

Crowded Hongik University subway stop, completely normal to be this packed. Seoul, South Korea.

Reflective Globe at Samseong Station outside COEX Mall, Seoul, South Korea.

Kimchi Museum, Seoul, South Korea.

A couple plays with legos during a coffee break overlooking Myeongdong shopping area, Seoul, South Korea.

Class Journal Entry: How do you feel about English? Yeoju, South Korea.

Current constant meditation: elephants and watercolors. Unfinished watercolor from trip to Thailand.

Quick sketch on a warm afternoon a little distance from school, Yeoju, South Korea.

Due to the fact that postage takes two weeks or more to deliver birthday letters, combined with my own limited ability to plan at least a week in advance, I have instead adapted to attacking my wonderful mother with birthday messages via every manner on the internetz and webz and phonez lines.

Consequently, I must take this opportunity to say, Happy Birthday Mama. You are one of the kindest people I know and I love you dearly.

I hope your day was filled with love and flowers and chocolates and music and smiling people and big hugs and lots and lots of love. I love you.

i

love

you!