I have unfortunate news. I don't think the news is unexpected, but it is still tragic. It adds up. But you sort of wish it hadn't. My flower is dead. Not sickly, or dying but in fact dead. I need to post a picture to illustrate the extent to which this is a damn dead flower. It already looks like something fossilized, something anthropologists might have come up with after long digs in Pompeii, shifting through volcanic ashes to discover a once glorious marigold (I never did find out what the hell the plant's species actually is) petrified by the unlucky turns life can take.
It started to die at my place, which it communicated to me by curling its little leaves into fists, like many faces distorted by suffering. Panicked, I decided to take it over to Geoff's, where I imagined it possessed a better chance for recovery. Geoff is from New Mexico. So I presumed he would be knowledgeable about crops.
I had to either walk to Geoff's or take a bus. After a heady internal dialog, I opted for a walk, misguidedly thinking that the fresh night air might be good for the marigold and that a Korean bus ride would be too unsettling in its weakened state. This was a bad instinct. You shouldn't walk a plant, the way you walk a dog. A plant has roots for a reason and I have come to understand that this should probably suggest that a plant doesn't want to move a whole hell of a lot.
Sadly, I did not come to this conclusion merely through cool logic. It occurred to me as I raced through two lanes of signal less street, which caused one of the plant's little blossoms to break and hang limply, dismal and decapitated. I was horrified. Up until this point, I knew I was probably going to be a plant killer again. But I'd come to understand that I would kill only due to negligence. But now I knew my murdering went beyond negligence and had attained something legally more like manslaughter. I had gone from idiot to monster.
Standing by the side of the road, holding back my futile grief, I raised my hands, like many regret filled super villains before me, and cried out to the heavens above me: "NOOOOOO!" Then I remembered that I was in a foreign country and so I raised my hands a second time and cried out, "ANIIIIIIII," so the Koreans could understand my sorrow and great guilt over my beheaded brethren.
I knew this would have long standing psychological affects on the second blossom, assuming my farmer boyfriend could revive it. The second blossom would grow up with a tragic sense of loss, something inexplicable and alienating. I would have to be the one to tell him. I pictured myself in a high necked dress, wearing a veiled , Jackie O type hat and clutching an embroidered handkerchief. Geoff would sit solemnly by my side, my hand in his, supporting me. I would tell my son that in his infancy he'd had a baby sister, a baby sister who hadn't made it out of the grim world of childhood. And my son would be struck with such dreaded certainty, he'd realize he'd known all along. And he would cry. I would cry. Geoff would probably not cry. But he wouldn't be doing any back flips either.
It would be tender and touching and it would bring us closer together as a family. With renewed hope, I set off for Geoff's. It was a gruesome death march, to walk all that way with one of my passengers pretty thoroughly offed. But I am tough. We made it.
At least for that moment. Geoff, it developed, does not possess any magic, backwoods farmer skills. The brother blossom held on for maybe like a day before succumbing to generally being as dead as his sister was. I felt bad obviously. But at least the burden of responsibility was lifted. If one flower had lived, they would have always felt guilt for being the one who survived. The way it worked out, no one survived and no guilt was had. I had some. But thankfully, I also have a pretty bad memory.
Saturday night, Geoff and I went out with Guy for a movie, dinner and an nightclub. It was good. I'd bought Guy all sorts of strange gifts (because I'd recently done something very rude and was intending to apologize), including most recently a ridiculous mug (I bought Geoff one too, so it could be a like a friendship/pseudo gay thing) that had a hilarious inscription written in broken awful English. The mug reads "Happy Wildness Men" and has a little poem which I will inscribe here for you, leaving the grammar and diction errors:
We are happy men!
We love ourselves; We love nature;
We live together; We enjoy music;
We love freedom; We enjoy music;
There is no polity, no war, no money;
The only thing we want is to go along with
the men we love and binge together, live up together.
How amazing is that? I like how completely nonsensical it is on the one hand, but how, on the other hand, it exactly captures the inane experience of being a man, at least from my own observations. The Koreans may possess poor English skills, but their observation skills are right on. I want to buy every male friend of mine one of these mugs. I am seriously considering it. If you are a male friend of mine and you would like such a mug, immediately contact me.
We went first and saw Iron Man. Which I am almost embarrassed to admit was distinctly enjoyable. Robert Downey Jr. did a wonderful job. A lot of the writing decisions felt inaccurate as far as Tony Stark's character, but it was still excellent. Then we had dinner and sort of told stories. Guy makes me nervous and its obvious I don't make him especially comfortable, but considering that, it was a fairly enjoyable dinner. I felt generous and noble and decided to pay for the dinner, due to being the oldest and the wisest at the table, which is the Korean way anyway.
Filled with food, we stumbled out into the night. Artur jumped on Geoff's back and they entered a convenience store and then decided they didn't want anything and exited. I apologized in the most polite Korean way possible to the cashier and bolted after them. Geoff got on Artur's back and Artur nudged two Korean girls using Geoff's ass. I again made use of my Korean apologizing skills, this time opting for the informal apology, since the girls were my age. We entered a nightclub.
This is when I discovered something amazing about a country and culture that places such a high premium on conformity. You know how you used to watch musicals as a kid and sort of feel skepticism regarding the prospect of a whole town of people who know the same dance moves and the same songs and were willing to drop everything at a moment's notice and carry on in a distinctly similar fashion? So here's the deal. Korean nightclubs are musicals in action.
For each song (usually American hip hop, sometimes remixed all crazy), the Korean nightclub scene had distinct dance moves. On certain beats, they would all shuffle left and then on corresponding, opposite beats they could shuffle right. At the chorus they would wave their arms. It was so cool and ridiculous. I was in awe. All I did was watch and pretend I was in some Korean version of West Side Story.
The best part of this is that Koreans youths are all such lithe, fit creatures. They are also relatively good looking and discrete. It was like fiction. It cannot be real. But it was.
Geoff informs me that what the Korean kids were engaged in was merely line dancing and that it wasn't nearly as impressive as I made it out to be. This is possible. I am prone to exaggerating the brilliance of experiences. But for now, I will remember the Korean clubs as something from my childhood, something quite the opposite of Santa, something I never believed could be. But something that lives and breathes and that I have bore witness to with mine own two eyes in Korea.
I should also point out that these kids were basically unblemished, cool and cosmopolitan. Line dancing, as I understand it, occurs between people who inhabit the lower portions of the United States, the type of people who wear cowboy boots for the sake of function over fashion. They are the people who call people folks and who have little experience with escalators.
If these kids were engaged in line dancing, they had revolutionized it; they had taken it from the swamps and the muddy fields of the Southern States of America and they'd put bright heels on its feet and spread a disaffected smile across its face. Then they'd taken it to the city, to the clubs and they'd made it cool.
14 years ago
