oh my sweet carolina

in this between, some ancient and misunderstood
architecture has the murky iridescent look
of an oil spill or a new jersey welfare line - your name is
too clean. there, where metal and rebar are part of the geography,
you are whiter somehow than you are red, and you make days
longer. some old stories have lost their meaning since we came,
and we don’t know the history of this place any more than our own,
but i haven’t turned to bird watching yet.

***

it isn't so much that i don't like mandu, as it is that it represents something ghastly to me. there's home, and all the comforts associated with familiarity, and then there's the mundane. mandu is mundane. they should call it mundane-du. that's all i have to say about that.

korea has invested me with this constant need to make things up. not like lying so much as propelling. it's just that boring. i'm tired all the time for no reason. i think of things i'd like to do, or things i think i ought to do, but then i just go to bed instead. maybe i have lyme disease. maybe i am actually an extraterrestrial being not meant to live in this environment. more likely, i'm just really lazy and in almost desperate need of a kick in the ass. i should start doing meth maybe.

today would have been... three years? he is... inspiring ellipses, apparently. there is this blue and gray striped shirt with a blue collar. actually, the gray might've been white at one time, but this thing is so threadbare now, stitching coming out, holes in the armpits, and so forth. but i can smell this shirt. it's absurd. why am i writing about this. the point is, smells will stay with you for your whole life. i don't know how the brain does this. and boys are really smelly. so sometimes there is just no shaking them.

sometimes you think you have someone's number, i mean you really get what they're about, and actually you're just pigeonholing them because you've had a few disasters and paranoia strikes deep. so i think he's probably dangerous and one of those people who plays the misunderstood victim with more walls to break down than could possibly be worth it when in actuality he just enjoys his freedom a little too much and wants it guilt-free or nothing, but... those are just words that don't stand up next to what he actually is at four in the morning when we're finally alone. i've said enough about that, too.

if i could just lie down in the parking lot of the manor at 2 AM and watch the stars revolve. if i could just walk down to riverside and sit between the rows of little gray tombstones and talk to the soldiers. if i could just have one slice of the sheer delight and a pint of white rascal in the theater at apbc. or light up with the girls on dogwood. or lie on the sand at north fork left fork and talk about that time. if i could just go home for a moment. i'd come right back.

bones, bones, brittle little bones

i am realizing that the home plus speakers i bought today were 6 bucks for a reason. it's kind of like listening to a band playing while wrapped in aluminum foil inside a microwave.
this morning, a washing machine, desk, rolly chair, tv table, and tv were delivered to my door. now it actually looks like someone lives here. it's pretty exciting. especially the rolly chair. i've never had one of my own. i feel like i can roll all over my apartment without worrying about what other people think.
i'm going through that high fidelity stage of my life where i start thinking about my exes and wondering what went wrong. last night, i stared at the ceiling for two hours reconstructing scenes from sapelo island, trying to remember what it smelled like, what we said to each other. i can never remember the mundane everyday dialogue, the real fabric of relationships. what did we talk about? did we laugh as much as we should have? was there a real connection, or was it just static? how do these things happen? it means so much, and then one day you wake up and you can't remember someone's middle name or what their voice sounds like. and yet we're really all just composites of our past. the people we knew, the ways we knew them, the places we knew them in... that's what makes us. but we lose the details and retain the impression.

fall again

today, i ate at least 5 chocolate-covered mint oreos, which cherith brought me from the army base in daegu. they were good with just milk, but would have been better with a woody allen movie and someone to spill crumbs on.
i moved into my new apartment on the same day i turned 24, which i think is probably significant. like a fresh start. seoul kind of makes me feel queasy and uncomfortable now, but suwon feels like the kind of adventure you want to go on when you're 24. i think even kaji likes it better. she seems less wary and more playful.
it seems strange to me how little i have thought about home. the trees in asheville will be just starting to change, and the air will have that indescribable smell... that smell i have tried for years to put a name to, only to be left with the impression of memories... pumpkins and hayrides, soulfully blue skies, dry grass, and the changing leaves. i hate to be away from asheville in the fall. but what is so much worse, i have forgotten the life i had there. i know it was so specific - i did certain things, felt certain ways, knew certain people. but now it feels like a movie i watched months ago and half-asleep.

wonderfoot

by the window tonight, i think of you,
a swollen hill at your hairline
turning purple in the afternoon when we
went to see the picture show in vegas.
i was menstruating that night, and you traipsed down to the lobby
to buy a box of midol and two peppermint patties.
these days, there are others. i am colder now.
i wear my hair long and swallow pills with my spit.
i read novels with no climax, and i
climax with no sound. you are in the desert
sketching monstrous windmills in the sand with one finger
while i bring up old demons over coffee.

my life in 24-bit color

during lunch today, i decided that korean tv is largely centered around the entertainment value of people making complete asses of themselves in front of a live audience. especially really obese women. the 300-pound woman wearing a bathing cap with a giant sunflower sticking out of it and an enormous t-shirt depicting the cartoon torso of a tiny-waisted, big-boobed beauty did make me smile, however.
also during lunch, my chopstick skillz failed me at the worst possible moment. the waitress is bringing me some delicious so-and-sos, she says something completely unintelligible, i give her my best bewildered foreigner look, and promptly drop a large piece of kimchi in my lap. and then what do you do? do you attempt to recover it with the chopsticks that so recently failed you? or do you just leave it there and hope it goes away? i opted to pick it up with my fingers and eat it as quickly as possible, hoping she hadn't noticed. she took pity on me and brought several wet handclothes to my table.
the smell and feel of fall are changing me like they always do. something inside me just settles into place, and i feel totally at peace. on days like this, i can think of nothing better than to sit by an open window with a good book.

there is nothing quite as sad as a lost dog flyer

scooters, vacation, fall.

everything smells really good. like dead leaves and newborn babies.
my cat has discovered her tail seemingly for the first time.
i am on a path for rebirth right as the season is dying.

i need a lawn, so i can yell at kids to stay off it.