Sixty is the new fifty-eight

Hwangap, the sixtieth birthday, is a big deal in Korea. Here, as in other East Asian countries, there's a tradition that a new life cycle starts every 60 years, so hwangap marks the start of one's second life, with the opportunity to start over and do better. (Also, it used to be quite an accomplishment to reach 60.)

My hwangap came on Saturday. If we count from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, I had a great day. (Saturday evening involved sitting in front of my laptop, eating cheesesticks and drinking hard cider, alone. Don't you judge me.)

We had a day off from classes at school on Friday so the teachers could greet the parents and justify why their little angels weren't all getting straight A's. (The questions are always about the grades, never about the learning.) That wasn't so very much fun, but at the end, I got a "Happy Birthday" song, a delicious cake, a handmade card, and a pointy yellow hat. So that was way cool.

Friday evening, a bunch of us from work hit the noraebang, the private karaoke room. The two requirements for noraebang are to sing loudly and to smuggle in beer. We fulfilled both admirably. Noraebang is the most fun I can have with my clothes on, and I loved it, as always, especially seeing some of my work friends really cut loose. The highlight was my friend Dave and I singing the K-pop hit Ugly: "I think I'm ugly, and nobody wants to love me/Just like her, I wanna be pretty, I wanna be pretty..." It has a ring to it, especially in our deep, manly-man voices.

Saturday morning, my actual hwangap, brought my birthday hash. I'd been announcing it at the end of every hash for months, and I was happy to get a big turnout. (It was also the World Peace Through Beer Hash, which didn't hurt.) It was a beautiful, sunny fall morning, and a couple of guys and I laid a really interesting trail near home... (have you ever slid on your butt down a 30-foot slope covered in AstroTurf?) 

Afterward, there were many kind words and two red-velvet cakes; nobody brought candles, so I blew out the toothpicks. Three of my friends from work, all women, attended their first (and maybe last) hash; they all said they had a good time and it was nice to have them there. I handed out the patches my buddy Oranguspray executed from my design:

(You read the "Don't you judge me" up above, right?)

Then some of us went to the foreigner ghetto, Haebangchon, for pizza, beer, and merriment.

To top it off, I walked over to Itaewon and stopped in to see Minha, the woman who makes the patches for the hash. (Her mother, in between selling souvenirs such as kimonos and keychains, sews them onto our happi coats.) They told me they had a present for me and presented me with a gorgeous, and gorgeously tacky, baseball-style jacket:

It's very comfy, but I won't be wearing it in public; ornate as the design is, it looks like the kind of thing a 19-year-old GI would take home to his girlfriend. Next to the kimonos, it's probably the most expensive item Minha's mother has in her shop. Minha made sure that her mom brought out a midnight-blue jacket, knowing that it's my favorite color. I was very touched by their generosity; I'm just a customer, after all, and they weren't doing it to drum up business, just being extraordinarily nice; there's no place else I could go to get the patches made. I'll remember their kindness for a long time.

Then... home. Nap. Cheesesticks and cider.

So, anyway, guys, I've been thinking about this whole "aging" thing...

First, of course, 60 isn't what it used to be; people live so much longer, and I expect to be respiring for a long time yet. My family is long-lived, and I've never smoked, I don't eat meat, I drink just the right amount for longevity, and I run. 

Also, emotionally and mentally I've just turned 25 for the thirty-sixth time; it used to be that people got all proper and respectable when they became adults, but we Boomers--call it refusing to get old or failing to grow up--decided not to change; we still do all the things we loved when we were younger, just less often and more slowly. (I hope that my knee doesn't stiffen up halfway through my marathon this Sunday... yes, I'm a marvel of athleticism and courage. Sometimes I amaze myself. [/sarcasm] )

I really do feel 25, except for when I get out of bed in the morning. Maybe I should stop doing that...

Once more into the breach

It was too much.

In my planning period, at the start of the school day on Tuesday, I put my head on my desk and tears came to my eyes. I felt myself on the verge of weeping; I'd be no good for the next class. So I went to talk to Kate, our school therapist, and got myself back together. But the sadness lingers.

First, on Thursday evening, our student Jaesung (Louis) was hit by a car and killed. He was such a sweet kid, friendly and cheerful and quiet. He was a wonderful guitarist. On Friday morning, the school canceled our amusement-park field trip and went to a meeting room at the hospital, where waiting in the long, long line in the hallway was so hard, listening to the sounds of grief from the next room. On Saturday morning, according to custom, on the way to the funeral, they stopped at the places important in his life for one last goodbye. Many of us gathered in the school library to lay flowers in front of his portrait and listen to remembrances. On Monday, the school put up a bulletin board for his friends and teachers to post their memories and messages to Louis.

And then, on awakening on Tuesday, I turned on my computer to the headline MARATHON HORROR.

You can't quantify shock and sorrow; was September 11 a thousand times worse because a thousand times as many innocent people died? What about Sandy Hook, where all those pure, little kids died? I only know that this one, the Boston Marathon bombing, was personal to me.

Running is such a positive, life-affirming activity; it's all about self-discovery and breaking barriers and believing we can do better and be better. I've been running on-and-off (mostly off) since 1970, regularly since 1999, and it's changed who I think I am. It's changed who I am. I think of all the miles I've put in, the hundreds of thousands of miles those marathoners in Boston put in, the wonderful kids I coached in cross country, the lovely people who came out in Boston to cheer on strangers and show love and pride in their family members...

It was too much.

Boston's the Holy Grail for runners, the World Series, the Oscars. It's far beyond the abilities of a poor schlumpf like me to ever run fast enough to qualify for it. To the Church of Running, it's the Vatican and Mecca rolled into one.

As I wrote on this blog in November, I'd decided my days of running the full marathon were probably through. Training that much, through the Seoul summer, is not fun and the race itself is an ordeal.

Nobody who was in Boston even knows I exist, except for my hashing friend Sarah, who ran the race and, afterward, was standing in front of this Starbucks, but left a few minutes before the explosion. (She is fine, thank goodness.)

(Sarah's amazing blog about Boston is at 

http://travelfitnessandlove.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/boston-a-lonely-runners-experience/).

None of the victims will know or care if I run another marathon. It won't help them in any way. In the end, nobody will care but me.

What I'm about to say makes no logical sense at all. But I can't help it:

I need to run a marathon this fall. For Boston.

Chuncheon, 2010; I was a little younger and the world was a little purer.

Tell them

The lovely cherry trees are blossoming along the Yangjae Cheon, and it's spring. And a bitter, wintry wind blows every day.

Today was supposed to be our school's field trip; we were going to Lotte World, the amusement park. But when we got to school, we found that one of our students had been hit and killed by a car last evening.

He was a very nice kid, a sophomore, whom I had in my English class last year.

Instead of Lotte World, the rented buses took the teachers and almost all the students to a meeting room at the hospital in Bundang to pay our respects to the family. Based on the original purpose of my blog, I should tell you all of the fascinating cultural details of how such things are done here; but the grief was so raw and so deep that it would feel almost obscene to cheapen it with some kind of touristy retelling.

Instead, please remember the last time someone you know died unexpectedly, and it seemed so unreal, and how everyone said to tell the people you love how you feel, because you never know... and how maybe you forgot the principle a couple of days later.

Tell them now.

A peace of my mind

A hard, hard lesson I'm trying to learn from Buddhism is taming the ego. Mine is the Incredible Hulk of egotism. You wouldn't like it when it's angry.

Speaking of Corndogs...

I know, and have said many times to anyone who doesn't walk away too fast, that no matter what organization you're in, there's always office politics: jealousies, rumors, gossip, and junk. 

That was proven in my Yongsan Kimchi hashing group two years ago, right after I joined, when a guy who felt he'd been promised the Grand Master spot (the leadership) saw it given to someone else. He had come to YK over 150 times; he went cold turkey. He still hasn't gotten over it... he still hashes every week, but not with us.

The annual changeover from one GM to the next is coming up, and I was sure that I was the logical choice. Nobody comes to YK nearly as frequently as I do; I've missed five weeks in 27 months: three when I was out of the country, one for a mandatory faculty function, one when I was sick. I've done more than 120 YK runs and have been the pack's food supplier (for over a year), its treasurer, and its record keeper. (for over a year). I sent a message to Sir Lost-a-Lot, our current Joint Master (planner) that I'd like to be considered for the GM job.

So, when he took me aside before a hash a few weeks ago, I puffed up with pride...

...and defkated instantly when he told me that they were asking my friend Steak (30 years younger, with less than half as many hashes) to be the GM, and would like me to take over as JM, 

The GM gets a ceremony, and a patch in his/her honor, and a lot of freebies from hashers returning from overseas trips, and generally runs the opening and closing events each week. The JM is the power behind the throne as it were, doing the heavy lifting of planning and coordinating big events, making phone calls, lining up people to lay trails... just not getting much attention.

So, being the mature and sensible gentleman of a certain age that I am, I did the logical thing: I sulked.

I'm good at that. Decades of experience.

I know, I know. It's petty and pathetic. I'm ashamed of it. But it's there.

I did agree on the spot to take the JM job, but I didn't like it, and it was obvious. (Everything I feel is always obvious, to friends, coworkers, students, and Google Earth.)

I think this is what I need to finally learn to do right now, in my heart and not just my head, where I accepted it a long time ago:

 This.

 In Buddhism as well as other progressive creeds, ego is the sense that we are separate from the universe and each other. But we are all really parts of the same glorious thing. as a freelance Transcendentalist Taoist New-Thought Agnostic Buddhist Pantheist, I know this in my marrow to be true. 

I have my moments, on a run or sitting in the park on a spring day, when the walls disappear, the truth flows through me, and I'm at peace.  When I'm happy.

I've never been much good at meditation, but I found a new method recently online: coffee meditation. Early in the morning, I sit with my cup and smell the coffee, sip it, feel the warmth of the mug on my hand, breathe, and just be with the coffee and the new day.

As far as the JM job goes, I'm good now. Truly. I don't need the attention of being GM. I'm looking forward to contributing to the pack that means so much to me.

As far as oneness goes, I fell in love with this song and this video. They fill me with serenity and solace and sometimes (I'll say it) quiet joy.

"Just know, that wherever you go, no you’re never alone, you will always get back home."

And that's good enough for me.

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable. - See more at: http://www.buddhasangha.com/quotes/quotes/spiritual_quotes_ego.htm#sthash.vdu3vCsv.dpuf

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable. - See more at: http://www.buddhasangha.com/quotes/quotes/spiritual_quotes_ego.htm#sthash.vdu3vCsv.dpuf

The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. - See more at: http://www.buddhasangha.com/quotes/quotes/spiritual_quotes_ego.htm#sthash.ISf270Qa.dpuf

Living in living color

Last week, I wrote a post that was triggered by hearing the lyric "Nothing's gonna change my world" in a cover version of John Lennon's Across the Universe. Go ahead down a couple of entries and read it if you haven't; I've got time.

Okay? Back?

Well, a day or two later, I happened to show the delightful movie Pleasantville in class, as a suggestion of the conformist 50s society Holden rebels against in Catcher in the Rye, as well as a basis for analysis of satire and the extended metaphor. And what should come up on the soundtrack but the same recording, by Fiona Apple. Hollywood is striking it rich with sequels, so here's my sequel to the previous post.

In the movie, teen siblings Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon, in a kind of Twilight Zone conceit, get visited by a mysterious TV repairman (Don Knotts!), who zaps them back into a 1950s Leave it to Father Knows Ozzie and Lucy TV show. The teen couples do nothing more than hold hands, there are no toilets or double beds, the fire department only rescues cats in trees (when you're in a rush, someone will ask, "Where's the cat?"), and the basketball team never misses a shot. And everything and everyone is in black and white.

Then Reese introduces a boy to the back seat of a car, and on the way home, he sees a rose. A red rose. Soon more things and then people are turning into color, which frightens everyone else. (At Tobey's trial for fomenting this un-American trend, the "colored" people have to sit in the balcony. Joan Allen, as the mom, puts on gray makeup to hide her shame.) It isn't sex that turns them; it's the ability to change and grow. For Reese, it's learning to enjoy reading. For Tobey, it's being brave and defending his mom. For the soda-shop guy, it's being introduced to art. And the soundtrack swells with Fiona Apple: "Nothing's gonna change my world."

And thus, finally, I get to my point. I generally do, eventually.

I have lived in black and white. I'm a very cautious guy, by upbringing and nature. I would never have dreamed of running cross country in high school, or joining the Peace Corps, or sneaking into a movie. I'm easily habituated, which is why I don't have a video-game console; I'd never leave the house. I don't like surprises. I wear the same type of clothes (if not literally the same clothes, although with some of my socks I can't be sure) that I wore 40 years ago.

When I came to Korea, it was one of the few Technicolor/widescreen moves I'd ever really made. I know nobody was more shocked than I; it was a monumental change for me.

That was living in color.

And I've had flashes of color here from time to time, such as hashing or taking the train to Busan on a whim because I missed the ocean, or sending a message to someone on a dating site. But mostly I'm still living on a 16-inch screen in grainy monotone.

I swear there will be more color! I'm never going bungee jumping (the thought makes my palms sweat), and I'm not going to take up macrame or the zither or ice climbing. But I'm going to live more.

I guess I should start by turning off the compu