Little darling...

...it's been a long, cold, lonely winter. In fact, it feels like years since it's been clear.

I know spring's not really here, but we've had a gorgeous weekend, sunny and warm. It got up to the mid-60s Fahrenheit today. (And I say it's all right.)

Had a ball at the hash yesterday, though it was a tough one, winding up Namsan, the main mountain within Seoul, where Seoul Tower is. Then coming down we had to scramble down a cement drainage culvert, with three-to-four-foot drops every fifty feet or so. I was lucky to be near the back of the pack with a first timer, a brand-new friend from South Africa named Sin Gwamanda. She's very nice and very cute... clearly whoever coined the phrase "ugly as Sin" never met her.

 

On the left, Sin; on the right, our vivacious leader, Katy.

Meeting her led me to reflect that one of the best things about hashing is meeting people from all over the world; our hash has members from the US, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Uganda, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and-- oh, yes-- a Korean or two. All that's needed is an extremely relaxed attitude toward propriety, a thirst for beer, and running shoes.

Today was even more gorgeous, and a good day all the way around. I had coffee with Lauren in the morning, a very satisfying nap, an eight-mile run down the Yangjae Cheon (stream) to Gwacheon City and back-- incidentally, believe it or not, if you go to Google Images and search for "Yangjae Cheon", the very first picture (and thus the world's most prominent photo of the Yangjae Cheon) was taken by... me!

 

 This is it. Ansel Adams, eat your heart out.

--and then it was coffee and gossip with Faina and Vanessa, our Chinese Chinese teacher, in the evening. I've known Vanessa for a year and a half and just now feel as if I'm getting to know her a little bit. She's really nice; I wish I'd known her better sooner. Oh, and we found that Michelle, our school's wonderful receptionist, had her baby today. (Yay!)

According to the forecast, we have more cold gray yuck coming our way starting tomorrow, but it really was wonderful to have a "here comes the sun" weekend. And, if you were worried... we didn't get a hint of the awful devastation that hit Japan; we're a thousand miles away from the site and Japan itself shielded us from the waves. Korea is, thank goodness, not in the Ring of Fire.

However minuscule this wish is compared to the horrible toll in Japan, I wish it were spring for keeps. I want spring more than I want pizza.

I think I'll go outside for awhile and just smile

It's been another way-past-gorgeous weekend, and I've tried to take full advantage of it.

My world's opened up a lot lately, starting with the spring weather. (It's been a long, cold, lonely winter, since I'm quoting 60s pop songs.) The last few days have seen sunshine, light breezes, and temps in the low 70s. The thing that's really brought me out of my environmental and regular-mental shell, though, has been getting a bike.

First my friend Chris bought a bike so expensive and spiffy that the store gave him a second bike free; he rides the cheap one to work every day and saves the fancy one for weekend expeditions. Then Nicki the art teacher bought used bikes for fifty bucks each for herself and her husband Dex. They were happy with their purchase, so I took the plunge and got my own two-wheeler from the same place.

And that has made all the difference. (I can steal from great poets, too.) As long as the weather's decent, there's no more slogging to school or waiting for the bus to Yangjae or Gangnam for me. It's great to be out, with the blood pumping, the breeze in my hair (though I hope it doesn't blow the rest of the pigment out) and the rushing water of the stream in my ears.

On Tuesday, I rode east along the stream for a half hour, most of the way to the Han River, and on my way back sat on the patio and had dinner at the Loving Hut vegan buffet, warming passing pedestrians with my benevolent expression. On Friday, after school I did my long run for the week-- 60 minutes-- and then Nicki wanted to know where the Loving Hut was, so she and Dex and I rode our bikes there and had a really nice time talking and eating. (No animals were harmed for our dinner, but some bull was shot in the conversation.)

Yesterday I got my run in again, 35 minutes, and a little later took the bike out, west this time. Technically, I live four blocks outside the city of Seoul, in Gwacheon, part of Gyeonggi province, and it's nice being out here; it's less polluted and terrifically less crowded than in most of the city. I didn't have much idea what lay more than two miles or so west of my apartment; that's as far as I'd gone in that direction on my runs.

I buzzed along at a steady clip on the path, past ajummas walking their purse dogs and little kids on bikes and skates, runners and ducks and herons and an old man with an ice-cream cart on a footbridge and a guy playing his clarinet inside a long tunnel under the road-- great acoustics, if a bit spooky-- and, four miles or so out, found a big public park. There were picnic tables and softball fields and an oval for skating and an honest-to-God soccer stadium, with artificial turf and seats for about 2000, roughly 1993 of which were untenanted. And a ten-foot-high pillar topped with three two-foot-long cast-iron statues of sperm. I'm not kidding and I have no explanation.

So I sat with my feet up and a can of Gatorade in my hand watching the blue shirts and black shirts play soccer against a backdrop of lush green mountains as dusk drew near and I thought: this is very fine indeed.

Today, Sunday, I watched the Mets win an exciting game and the Doctor defeat the Vampire Fish from Space, both on my laptop, and then it was time to get out and get moving. I rode the bike to Yangjae, looking for bungee cords to strap stuff with-- no dice, and no bungee cords either, but that's okay. Then I wheeled down to Citizen's Forest Park to sit out at picnic tables and watch the people play and listen to the birds sing and correct papers. After an hour of that, I rode over to E-Mart, then home, then out again to correct some more homework at a table at Alice Park. And then I rode around some more, just because I could.

Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon. Really couldn't get away too soon.

I'm so much better than I used to be. Of course, it's the weather, and the fun of biking, but for all my life even the happy times seemed tinged with melancholy, an awareness that it's all evanescent. But now-- credit spiritual influences from many places, credit my being more mature (don't laugh)-- I know how to live in the now. (Well, not all the time, but...) I felt truly alive; I feel it more and more often.

So maybe I'm halfway, emotionally and spiritually, to where I'm going. The two lessons I've internalized in recent years from Buddhism and other spiritual sources are being present and being detached. I'm a lot better at the former, which isn't easy for someone with my wiring. (They say "Be here now" but a good day for me was, for most of my life, to be somewhere near before too long.)

Regarding detachment, it has taken me quite awhile to grok how becoming detached from outcomes doesn't involve alienation or withdrawal from life. It's really quite the contrary; it allows you to be fully there and truly happy despite transitory conditions.

It's that last part I've not gotten to yet; if I'm dependent on sunny days, warm weather and fresh air to bring me up... well, there are overcast days, winter rain and smog coming. When my inside is sunny no matter what the weather outside-- literally and figuratively-- I'll have reached my next rest area on the path.

And when I get there, I've got a water bottle clamped to my bike.

May eye?

Please press the "play" arrow before continuing to the entry; honestly, it's the best thing on here.




Saturday was May Day, and if Chandler from Friends had been here, he'd'a said, "Could the day be any more glorious?" Here comes the sun and I say it's all right.

The running/biking/walking path; Alice Park is to the left, my apartment in front of the LG building.

After what feels like weeks of wet windy grayness, it was in the upper 60s and ever-so-sunny. I went for a 45-minute run in the late morning and was so full of vim, vigor, and vinegar that right after my shower (which was requested by the neighbors after the 45-minute run) that I decided to walk the 40 minutes to Yangjae Station to start my would-be shopping expedition. On the way, I found the Happy Family Festival in Alice English Park, which is a short jaunt from my apartment. There were families picknicking, kids playing soccer, babies being nibbled on by dogs and vice-versa... it was great. Koreans can be a dour lot, but there was nothing but smiles anywhere.

And I heard a familiar but unexpected refrain; by the time I followed it to its source, I just had time to record the final verse you heard above: Let it Be played on traditional Korean instruments by traditional Korean middle-schoolers wearing the traditional Korean hanboek.

I think that you'd have to agree it's a charming performance; in the state of bliss I was in from the weather, I found it lovely. I saw everything all weekend long with a May Eye: the best stuff was beautiful, the worst was fine. I couldn't have brought myself down if I'd tried. (I didn't try.)

Alice Park and Citizen's Forest Park, a little farther on, were chock-a-block with flowers of every color, the trees full of iridescent magpies and, finally, finally, pink and white and yellow blossoms.

The shopping trip was a dud: the Central City mall was nothing special, the bookstore was ordinary, there wasn't a Home Plus store there as I'd been told, and when I took the long trip to the spot where Google Maps had promised there was a Home Plus, it turned out to be their executive offices.

But it didn't matter, because it was May. I walked home from Yangjae, too. Didn't even want my iPod on, coming or going.

Sunday was more beautiful than the incomparably beautiful Saturday, temps in the low 70s. I ran another 40 minutes-- I really am going to do the marathon and lately there's been a real spring (no pun intended, this time) in my step. Then I showered (by public demand) and walked to Yangjae again, iPodless again.

The locals like their flowers.

This shopping trip was also a washout; the dollar store at Yangjae didn't have any of the four things I went looking for, and on the spur of the moment I took the long subway trip to Itaewon, where What the Book had always had Runner's World magazine until the one time I finally decided to buy it...

But it didn't matter, because it was May. Well and truly spring at last. And, after the subway ride, another 40-minute walk home in the sun and the warmth and the breeze..

I suppose it's (yet another) defect of mine, that my mood is so dependent on the weather. (That would certainly help explain why, living in Ithaca, I was so grumpy for the first 41 years of my life.) I'm beginning to think I'll need to retire someplace sunny but not humid; I need to live outside and not sweat to death. But that's for another day. Just for the weekend, it was nice to be someplace where even the buildings spring up and sway in the spring breeze...

This is not a Photoshopped picture; it's straight out of my camera.

Who knows? Maybe we'll have a lot more lovely weather. Spring hopes eternal.

Spring springs eternal

Happy Easter, everyone!

It's Sunday night and we've had a three-day weekend. (As opposed to a ten-day weakened; that would be the cold I've just gotten over.) Didn't do squat the first two days off; several of us from work keep intending to go to a ballgame, but it's just a tad chilly to enjoy sitting there after dark, and the last drag of my cold has kept me sleeping and reading more than adventuring. I was going to visit the royal tombs of the Chosun Dynasty, but I was afraid someone would tell me to lie down.

I feel pretty distant from Easter, as I'm off sweets, I don't eat bunnies, and I don't wanna dye.

Nonetheless, today was a splendid reminder, in several ways, of how it is a time of renewal:

The trees are budding, finally.

I saw a lovely bird, new to me, all black head and orange belly, while I was running. I think it was a Narcissus flycatcher...

 

 ...but whatever it was, it shore was purty.

Speaking of running, the cold knocked my conditioning back quite a bit, but I'm out there again, and today was the first day of the decade that was warm enough to warrant running in a t-shirt and shorts. The Sun felt so good on my legs, which are even pasty-whiter than in the States, compared to the locals.

It's a week to my first 5K race in six years.

It's a week and a half to our school trip to Jeju Island.


Back in the States, it's Opening Day, and the Mets are still undefeated. Of course, they don't play till tomorrow, but I'll take it.

And Doctor Who is back, with a new Doctor (the eleventh), new actors, and a new production team. And it's glorious. I'd post a photo, but beware of geeks bearing GIF's.

Today's theme: "Talkin' 'bout Regeneration" by The (Doctor) Who...

It feels like years since it's been here

This is Dex and Nikki, who are mentioned below. (The picture's here because I haven't posted a photo in a long time.) They are not like this all the time, externally at least.

I've been remiss in  my blogging recently, and it's gotten worse because, you know, remissery loves company.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Actually, though, after awhile wherever you are stops being remarkable and exotic and just becomes where you are. I went with my friend Ray to the National Museum a couple of weeks ago and saw an enormous number of ancient Korean and (on loan) Peruvian artifacts and couldn't even get worked up enough to blog about it. Of course, once you've seen thirteen 1500-year-old pre-Incan cups, the next thirty or so seem kind of routine.

Also, the school schedule, as I've already moaned about here, is wearing me down, especially because two of the classes are very difficult for me to teach. I think that contributed to my getting a bit sick.

On Sunday, I felt really hung over, which would have been a trick since I haven't had a drink in weeks. I was dizzy and really weak, with all kinds of digestive unpleasantnesses and maybe a touch of fever. Sunday night, I slept fitfully and notmuchally, and yesterday morning I was all set to call in sick. However, we get a $350 bonus if we don't use any sick days, so I manned up and managed to whine my way through the school day yesterday. I even walked to Citizen's Forest Park and waited, bravely muttering encouragement, while my four runners ran.

And then there's the weather... I know I just posted this same idea a few days ago, but I don't know if I can really retire someplace where it's cold and gray for so long. I will always, always be an Ithacan, but I think maybe I need warmth and sunshine.

...and then today I felt pretty much better, and it was sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and I just had to get out after school. I missed running with Lauren, as she'd gone out a bit earlier, but I saw Chris and Zach sitting by the stream, having a touch of liquid refreshment and doing paperwork. Nikki, our new art teacher, who is probably the only 5-foot-9 dreadlocked blonde in Korea, was out running with her husband Dex (sans face paint). And Chris promises that tomorrow he'll go out running with the "team" and me, and Lauren says she will next week.

And the sun was out and my window was open and kids are playing basketball in the park across the street and the Doosan Bears have a home game in less than six weeks.

It's like coming out of a cocoon.