Life and {Metaphorical} Death in Korea

"It's a metaphor" is one of the most ruthlessly abused phrases in contemporary English. See the famous Nightman episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for verification. Other candidates including any grouping of words that contain "random", "smart-______", or "historic". But it's metaphors I'm worried about here. And at the risk of sounding like an illiterate Philadelphian mop-jockey, here goes...

Many Buddhist teachers speak about the countless little deaths we die each day. Pema Chodron is the first one that comes to mind - I'm thinking of her excellent book When Things Fall Apart. She describes the death of each moment as it passes from immediate experience, never to return again. Chodron explains that it is important to allow that death to happen, that holding on to the past {and our ideas/opinions of it, whether positive or negative} causes suffering that could be avoided by the devilishly simple understanding that all things eventually come to an end. Then other things begin, which then also end, and so on...

These little deaths happen in every home, workplace, city, continent, etc. Sometimes the process can seem awfully slow, however - usually in the sense that things we would like to see "die" stubbornly refuse to do so. Obnoxious co-workers aren't transferred, toddlers scorn conventional toilets, sports teams remain frustratingly inept. In certain environments, however, the life cycle of everyday experience is accelerated. Not to mayfly-extremes, but certainly more rapid than poor Solitario Jorge. Korea is one of those environments.

There are many foreign English teachers who choose to remain in Korea for two, three, or four+ years. There are many more who bounce after a single tour of duty. For those of us who stick around, this means we have dozens of opportunities to watch our friends depart from our daily consciousness {and often from our lives altogether}. The degree to which this bothers us is largely dependent on the connections we feel to those who leave, and whether or not they owe us money.

I have been in Korea for about fifteen months, and I've lost a handful of close friends. I've also lost a lot of  acquaintances, affable semi-strangers, and people who are fun to run into on weekends. I still have the phone numbers of at least twenty people that are no longer here. When I see some of these numbers, I am tempted to purge my phonebook. Others inspire me to look up old Facebook photos. There's really no rhyme or reason to it - some of the people who conjure the nicest memories are the ones I barely knew. Sometimes the name of a close friend just reminds me of the time they crashed their paragliding apparatus into a clump of trees and cost me a chance to fly off a mountain. So there are more variables at play here than a relationship's degree of "closeness". But the point is they are gone, dead in a way, and there's really no option other than to move on. I can't afford plane tickets to twenty different cities on four different continents. 

Recently, one of my good buddies left Korea for the balmy shores of the Upper Midwest. His departure was less bittersweet than most because he seemed genuinely happy to leave - unlike many ex-expatriates, he had a proper job lined up once he touched down in the U.S. Let me clarify - it was probably less bittersweet for him, but it was still a bummer for me. Mainly because I liked and respected him a lot - as happy as I was to see him excited about blazing new trails or whatever, it was disappointing to know that we'll never get to climb Jirisan or sing in another noraebang or gag at the smell of dried squid again. Those moments are gone. Dead. Sad. 

I suppose this is practice for another departure that is coming soon. My closest friend in Korea, a guy who I consider a brother in all of the beautifully cliched ways that our generation is programmed to express, is leaving. Dying from my life, at least for the foreseeable future. This dude has been right next to me for some of the best experiences of my adult life. We've taken photos with hordes of English-speaking Korean coeds between the garish souvenir shops of Insadong, spent countless hours philosophizing outside cheap convenience stores {Family Mart being the unequivocal favorite}, been chased down by the Sihanoukville tuk-tuk mafia, see the first sunrise of the New Year at Angkor Wat, rode speed boats in the Celebes Sea, eaten fried noodles at midnight on the streets of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown. I love this guy, and he will be dying soon. He'll still be in this world, of course, but in much the same way as Grandpa's ashes in the old urn on the mantelpiece. Pictures, disembodied words, memories - but not a physical being whose socks I can borrow anymore.

At the same time, there is life. For every person that leaves Korea, one arrives {sometimes the ratio is skewed upwards, as recruiters are fond of reminding us; English-speaking labor is plentiful at the moment}. Miraculously, these newcomers are often pretty neat human beings. Plenty of opportunity to make new friends, and therefore plenty of chances to create wonderful new memories with aforementioned humans. 

It's impossible to replace Old Yeller; comparing grief-assuagement puppies to old legends is hatefully unfair and has not, in my understanding, ever worked out well.  But life and death goes on in Korea, and it makes sense to embrace those who have just been "born". We'll hopefully be sharing a lot of time together before it is our turn to die, and in those doddering last days I hope they will be kind enough to buy me dinner and maybe store a few small boxes of unwanted bulk goods. It will be my turn to die in Korea, and some other poor bastard will be born into my disorganized desk and moldy shower. 

End note - the other day I found out that an artist, gentleman and true mensch has somehow cheated death and and will be returning to Korea in less than a month. It's a much-welcome slap in the face of the laws of Korean-teaching-thermodynamics. If you're reading this, welcome back good buddy...

Cabinets

"You left a lot of weird stuff in the cupboards," he said to me over the roar of a mind-bogglingly untalented indie rock band. 

The fat drummer was flailing wildly at the cymbals while the lead singer loudly encouraged us to rock and/or roll. He was largely ignored by the audience with the notable exception of some extremely intoxicated Filipino factory workers with tremendous hair. I thought about the two-year old Tabasco sauce and concluded my friend was probably right.

As far as I can remember, which isn't especially well, when I moved out of my old apartment I left behind the following items: seven packets of dried seaweed, a small tub of pseudo-American peanut butter, half a bag of penne, an odd assortment of spices {salt and pepper are the only ones I'm certain of, though they were mostly empty}, large bags of peanuts and sunflower seeds, and the aforementioned Tabasco. There were some other things in the refrigerator/freezer, but again my memory is fuzzy. I think there was a bottle of aloe juice and some very frozen packets of Korean dumplings {mando}, however.

I started thinking about these things because the guy I was talking to that night happened to be the same guy who replaced me at my old school, Cheonan Wonderland. He had, as we discussed at some length, basically become the "new Nick". By that I mean he now inhabits the basic environments and roles that I once occupied. He teaches my old kids, sits in my old desk, poops in my old toilet  Being replaced isn't that unusual in Korea - few people make a lifelong career of teaching kindergarteners here. But not many ex-teachers get to sit down with their replacements and hear an analysis of the life they left behind from the person who now lives that life. It was interesting, to say the least.

Before going further I have to mention the oddly antagonistic relationship I held with my cabinets in Cheonan. When I arrived in August last year, I was intrigued and mildly horrified by the contents of my kitchen. The cabinets were coated with a strange dust that looked oddly reddish, as if someone had spilled a bottle of paprika and then let it sit there until the grains had some kind of Vulcan body-meld with the wood. I made a few extremely half-hearted attempts to scrub some of the dust off but to no avail. In some places there were darker reddish-orange circles - it reminded me of the ring a very hot/cold cup of coffee leaves except this coffee was the color of Ron Howard's hair. 

Over the next twelve months I existed in a weird state of detente with my cabinets. I did not try to clean them, and in return they did not smell too badly or attract insects. A co-worker living several floors above me {and her eventual replacement} was plagued by cockroaches during this time and I didn't want to risk an infestation by altering the cabinets' natural equilibrium.  I have a very basic grasp of science mixed with a strong superstitious streak, and my thinking ran something like this:

 "There must be some combination of herbs and spices within the confines of the cabinets that is keeping the insects at bay. {Co-worker} is female and thus far more hygienic than me in most ways. What prevents me from suffering the same fate as her? Guess it's the protective scum-layer."

During the entire time I lived in that apartment, I never had a single problem with roaches, spiders, ants, or any other creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. No harsh ecosystem destroying disinfectants = no insects. And I do remember my co-worker being a compulsive germophobe. 

In fairness this is the same type of mental gymnastics that leads Chinese people to believe ground-up panda cocks are a remedy for male pattern baldness. Science is not on my side here. But I'm wandering way off track - the important thing is what my dirty cabinets said about their previous owner.

I'm not sure where to begin with that question just yet. But for an interlude, I will describe the various cabinets of my new apartment and what I assume their contents say about the girl who lived here before me.

First, let me say that moving into a Korean apartment is far more pleasant if the preceding occupant was female. This place was stocked. Granted, many of the items were baffling to me - I'm not sure why an outwardly healthy single-headed human needs three hair straighteners. Does a sock drawer really need an air freshener? But I'm not complaining - it was great.

In the kitchen, she left behind a wondrous assortment of foods that I mostly didn't feel like eating. I bequeathed that poor bastard some stale pasta - she gave me four different kinds of ramen. Plus curry, though I am pathologically terrified of Korean curries and won't eat it unless the alternatives are fish-based or even more yellowish. There was a large box of sugar-free crackers that I did eat, feeling mildly homeless as I munched on saltines while walking by the local galbi place where people sat demolishing giant slabs of meat. 

There were at least three boxes of fabulous teas, all of which bore the images of pajama-clad teddy bears, gently snoozing moons, piles of thick warm blankets, and other things that subconsciously encourage you to go the fuck to sleep. I tried a cup or two and it seemed to really work - though I was hellaciously exhausted 

and in all likelihood an IV of Red Bull wouldn't have been enough to keep me awake at that point. So the people at Celestial Seasonings still have my slightly hesitant trust.

Beneath the gas range there were enough varieties of cooking oil to perform some kind of task that requires a hell of a lot of cooking oils. Olive, canola, peanut, sesame...some other things that I didn't look at closely. Also a couple types of vinegar and something called "balsamic", though I am pretty sure that is just a fancy vinegar. 

On to the bathroom - this is where things get interesting. Not in that way. Or I guess really any way, to a normal person. In any case there were no sex toys, lubricants, or other items that would suggest the bathroom was used for non-personal-cleansing purposes.

But there were Q-Tips. Oh, were there Q-Tips...and an obscene amount of combination mini-flossers/toothpicks that stood with their points in the air like a tiny phalanx bent on making my gums bleed. And a nice large bottle of knock-off Advil, or something like it that presumably contains most of the same ingrediants. Tons of bandages, but no anti-bacterial ointment. No toothpaste or mouthwash either, though there were some bottles of apparently expensive shampoo and conditioner {so I was informed by my girlfriend}. 

The thing that really stood out for me, though, was the cold medicine. There were at least a few dozen packets of cold-remedy powders designed for every conceivable time of day. In my life I have been accustomed to curing cold symptoms only with soup or pills. Possibly Sprite at times. I understand the drinking fluids part - it makes sense to prevent dehydration and promote regular cellular function and some other stuff as well, I assume. What doesn't make sense to me is purposely making those fluids taste so horrible that swallowing them is more unpleasant than the cold itself. But I gave some to my girlfriend, who had a pretty awful cold at the time, and she seemed to get better after taking them. So maybe there is some payoff to the horrible taste, though personally I will stick to Campbell's.

One more note about the cabinets - kitchen, bathroom and "main room" {I'm lumping those in with the others even though traditionally they'd probably be considered closer to dressers} - they were all occupied by air fresheners. The air fresheners were all purplish in color and smell remarkably unobtrusive. My dishes, toothbrush, and jeans don't smell like lilac or lavender at all. Nor do they smell bad - the air fresheners just establish like a scent vacuum so that no smells exist at all.

So what does this say about the girl who lived here before? I feel confident in saying that she liked things to smell nice and made an investment of sufficient effort and capital to ensure that her dwelling did not smell like a locker room. I can also assume that she valued a good night's sleep and did not like sniffling. Also that she was at least a semi-skilled cook who enjoyed making food and did not resort to peanut butter toast and apples four times a week like I do. 

Behind those fairly certain theories lie a vast array of entertaining and irresponsible hypotheses I could make. She might have had so many Q-tips because she had abnormally dirty ears...or cleaned a lot of computer keyboards in her spare time. She was either hopelessly addicted to camomile or just liked the sound of hissing kettles. She flossed three times a day to maintain her movie-star-perfect teeth or to correct years of Britishly bad dental hygiene. There's really no way to find out without asking her, which I probably won't do.

So if such an extensive and intimate stash of evidence can tell me so little about the character of a fellow human, what is my poor replacement supposed to make of some legumes and crusty Tabasco sauce? Maybe if he heard my explanation he'd understand that I'm not really a Pledge-averse dietary freak - that there are perfectly reasonable reasons why I left things in the condition I did { I should mention that my diet consists of more than seaweed and sunflower seeds - I just ate all the good stuff before leaving}. It could change his opinion of me, possibly. But I don't think that I could really explain to him who I am or other deep metaphysical ponderings just by describing my housekeeping routines.

I think this is why it's hard to really know someone without making a concerted effort to dig into their brains, and past the brains, in many cases. Even the things we surround ourselves with can sometimes cause misleading impressions about our personalities and what we consider important. It's tempting to classify folks into neat Odd Coupleish categories, especially with oodles of evidence, but this strategy can lead to completely false conclusions.

I didn't have a bottle of Tabasco sauce in my cabinet because I loved it so much. In fact I'd never used it once during the whole year I was there. I hate Tabasco. I just didn't throw it out because it made the cabinet feel less empty between shopping trips.