On embodiment, part six. And the passing of time

Humidity is loathed by many, appreciated by a few. The immediacy of heat and sweat sticking on your skin, radiating outward and oppressing inward, does not necessarily incite pleasant associations or fond memories from one’s youth. This morning though, as that particular sensation forms a cascade of beads condensing on my back, squatting on the toilet for the morning business, I am grateful. The stickiness, the compression, all that heat assaulting my senses only remind me of the physical space my body takes up as well as the being that occupies it, my life. It is also the first memory, my young consciousness of time passing. Born in the summer of the Tiger, I must have known, even in my infancy, the inevitable seasons changing, things born and things dying. I must have known–in the humid and electric air of Seoul where summer means flooding, hot nights full of stars and mosquitos and watermelon, cicadas carolling and rainwater washing away everything–the beginning and the end look the same somehow. We all arrive on the same shore. Aged, yet in our youths. I must have known that it would be this heat that would carry me to the other side (many sides) of the Pacific and back, always demanding more heat even in the hottest desert California has to offer, my body always cold and suddenly able to find home in the tropical air of Havana and Miami. I have crossed the state lines. I have come East. (East is relative.) I sit sweaty and sweating, home.

Waiting for my friend’s blood test result to come back

Sitting on a bench lining the semi circular plaza in the open air, I watch the comings and goings of the faithful who kneel before and pray to Mary. Her white statue shows her hands raised up in prayer toward the sky. This is the quiet backside of the distinctly commanding Myeongdong Cathedral, I haven’t been here in a while. The women old and young light candles by the vigil, kneel in front of the statue and pray. The last time I lit a candle was in north Miami, in a cloistered room where St. Bernard was honored, to ask for healing for my friend’s dad who had cancer. He hadn’t passed yet. That was three years ago.

I dunno why I keep coming back to this every now and then:

He laid in bed still. I haphazardly put on my clothes from the night before. It wasn’t super early, but not so late in the day either, still quiet enough that no one could be seen out on the street that I would’ve been OK walking home barefoot. That’s how close we had lived from each other. This would be the first of many “walks,” sneaking back to my apartment before my roommates could figure out what was going on. I didn’t know it then.

As I cracked the door open to leave his place, light flooded in. And he called my name, I turned back. The light was behind me, and he told me, walk in the light. I had no clue really what inspired him to say so, but he would say poetic shit like that out of nowhere. Maybe because his vision of me at the moment was taken in with that unexpected flood of sunlight, still in warm satisfaction of the morning, I must have looked lovely.

The last line of Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible is that exactly: Walk forward into the light.

That’s what I am telling myself today: Hatty, walk into the light.

Looked more beautiful IRL… I swear…

Not quite Hohenfels, Germany, but this today was exactly what my Eurotrip was like: walking around in a slightly overcast, drizzling weather, alone during the day while S worked at the base, finding greeneries wet under the grey sky in random pockets of the urban setting, feeling like a tourist (I was/am), ordering espressos and small pieces of sweets I honestly did not need, writing and reading, thinking and talking to myself. Today is the 74th anniversary of the Korean Independence Day from the Japanese occupation at the end of World War II. Technically, I’m “off,” it’s a red day, though the work at the academy never stops. I was supposed to be on a church retreat, I’d decided against it this morning after an immense struggle. Already up and had coffee and put on makeup and everything, and I didn’t go. Because partially I had wanted to stay in the neighborhood watching the rain, doing exactly this, sitting by the window of a local cafe typing away.

Like I am alive

It’s pouring cats and dogs, and I thought I might feel shitty with no sun for the past 24 hours. But I’m strangely thinking of Havana and the copper ring and bracelet I got from the flea market there. The makeup goes on my face smoother than some other days, and as Will Reagan sings, I hum too, in a low soft voice singing along without thinking.

I feel beautiful and there’s hope again. Like that time I looked out the window (also putting on makeup) and remembered Chan’s prayer that anything is possible three (four?) Aprils ago. Like I will meet someone/-thing interesting today. Like I’ll enjoy a glass of warm sake or a highball of gin.

Like I am alive.

I mean I’m here on this stage, this earth, this particular embodied life, for your delight anyway

You knew every decision I would make. You knew what I was saying yes to. You knew the names of the kiddos I will get when I first met him. You knew the kinds of emotions Korea would try me when I first confessed I was unhappy in Berkeley. You knew the idea of a doctorate for a decade-plus when I first laid down the DC route to settle for ministry. What else do you know now that you are not telling?

I only hope to have a great attitude most of the times.

Try putting this in Google Translate and see how cheesy the words come out

After two slices of free pizza (Hey! Korean Papa John’s ain’t bad!) and two fruit mochis I brought to the extra work meeting, I’m listening to whatever is on Apple Music on my way home to study more; the rest of the instructors finish their part of the meeting. Dozing in and out of a stupor for the hour plus commute, suddenly I’m hit: I realize I am alive. I’m irrevocably, incontrovertibly, [insert another absolute that starts with an “i”], alive. Everything that has happened till now, meeting J, fighting for all my friends, studying liberation theology at Cal, forgetting Korea, knowing peoples as cool as Lana and Jason and Chrisgopher and Niquo and Aileen, they weren’t just a dream. They actually happened. They seem like a past life now, sure. And the future holds who knows what. But I am, at this moment, on this train surrounded by strangers, just having met Derrick and Erika and Lucy and already liking them, I am thankful. Whatever tomorrow brings, no one can deny my life. Thank you. I have lived.

A Head Full of Dreams, and a suitcase​ full of dresses

Tentative, but Seoul has hit 70s on good days. I am wearing my above-the-knee dresses, no pantyhose. I don’t care how dark I get, no thank you sunbrella. Now, time to find a pedicure shop.

Packing again

I had not thought about (never forgotten!) the suitcase Serena gave me when I was leaving Berkeley. I had intended to only borrow it for the trip down to SoCal, return the empty suitcase to her via some other friends driving up and down the 5 (or the 101… UGH) throughout summer. But she told me I should just keep it since I’d need it for Korea. And boy was she right.

It’d take me more than the allotted two free checked bags to make this one-way flight. I checked in two more with my mom’s free allowance, stuffing more on our carry-ons, somehow managed to fit under the weight restriction. This olive green and black suitcase held almost exclusively my “fancy” clothes while in the other shapeless black one was dumped the everyday jeans.

Time to repack and move, again, this time hopefully to a relatively permanent home where I’ll hang pictures on the wall, I unzip the suitcase. It’s not the first time I’ve opened it since I’ve been to Korea. Looking for some random items I couldn’t remember where I placed, I had gone through all of my luggage multiple times, for my lighter, a hat, shot glasses. But today, as I check the content once more, this time, more tenderly caressing the silk and the ruffles, I am struck by how colorful my wardrobe is, used to be. These are the colors of summer, of SoCal, of sunsets and beaches and picnics. Teals and oranges and lime greens, dusty rose, gold, straw hats from Cuba and wild elephant print jumpers, pieces my mom warned me I wouldn’t be able to wear here no matter the season. I kind of understood then, that the culture is more conservative here sure. But it’s not about how much skin shows or “in fashion” a certain style is. I think I understand now.

I’m ashamed of the blue and black dominating my winter. I occasionally dare red crops and leopard cardigans. Sticking out like a sore thumb in the sea of long black padding jackets and oversized beige cashmere coats. But I miss the tropical hues. I want more fun in my life.

Listening to Suncity, my “summer” jam, I “miss” the sun on my skin. Probably because I talked about him with someone today, because I talked about Spanish writers (without naming names, but I was thinking of Gabriel García Márquez),

I lay awake thinking about summer and what that means. I consider listening to Cuban music right now to remember that sense of joy again. And then it hits me that perhaps part of the answer to “recovering” a way of being, with proximity to land, may lie in the four seasons, the fact that winter comes and as surely as the sun rises the warmth also comes back, the rhythm of nature and life that can only be experienced physically, as an embodied being, on a peninsula that allows for distinct seasons, not a pleasant climate year-round. By enduring the freezing winter and being ushered into spring and summer, fall and winter again, year after year, without fail (though climate change threatens this, immoral on so many accounts), we learn that goodness is steadfast, that now is not forever, that once terrible will pass and joy becomes possible again, engendering hope. All because I live on this soil. What a thought.