Thanks

who are you,little i

(five of six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold

of November sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

– e.e cummings

.

Korea doesn’t really do Thanksgiving, but I just can’t avoid catching the spirit of the season. It seems inevitable to think about the things in my life that deserve thanks around this time of year. So vaguely and as briefly as possible:

1) Experiences gained while studying/travelling/living abroad–

Being abroad always gives me perspective. I see parts of myself more clearly when I’m away from home. I have yet to decide whether or not that’s a good thing because, at times, those parts are not all that impressive, and sometimes they’re just terrible. But there is something about being stripped of familiar faces and comfortable situations that causes things to shift and surface. Even now, years later, I can still see the ways in which Hungary has changed me. So how much more will Korea? There are good things happening for me here.

2) Unexpected and surprising relationships (and all the blessings that come with them)–

This really needs no explanation. Everyone always says they are thankful for friends, so it’s not particularly original either. But it must be said. I always feel quite lucky because no matter where I go, I end up befriending really decent people. I have really different types of friends and why they’re all willing to put up with me and my ridiculousness? I’ll never know. I don’t think it has much to do with being particularly friendly or likable. I think it’s just grace and good luck.

3) Simple moments and small victories–

Lately, I’ve been rejoicing in simple moments and small victories. Sharing snacks with students I happen to pass on the street. Eating ice cream on a hot day, drinking coffee on a cold one. Walking down the street and kicking up autumn leaves. Dancing wildly in my apartment while I procrastinate cleaning. Sharing comfortable moments with new friends, and brief, poignant conversations with old ones. Reading on the metro. Eating good food. Living here alone and constantly trying to figure out what it means to be a teacher has been rough on me, and it’s these little, unimpressive moments that sustain me.

It’s those times when I’m surrounded by new friends and I think back to May when I didn’t really have any at all. It’s talking to old friends and feeling such closeness in the face of great distance. It’s seeing 성민 change from one of the worst, most inattentive students to one of the students I really love teaching. It’s being surrounded and greeted by students while walking through the halls. It’s feeling my spirit revive and renew and grow. It’s placing these small things next to all the discouragement and the frustration and the confusion… and feeling calm. And feeling clarity. And feeling that even though I am a creature of scattered thoughts and irrational neuroses, there is hope for me yet.

Summertime

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Stargirl

When I visit a used bookstore, I always go to the young adult section. Maybe I should be embarrassed because I am usually the only one over 14 and I’ve been known to leave with at least three books in my arms. But then I think– to hell with it. This section has been good to me over the years. I’ll never give it up.

Before I left the country, one of my latest ventures into adolescent literature brought me to the book, Stargirl.

She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

I always heard it mentioned, but I had never brought myself around to actually reading it. I really needed to read it and I’m grateful that I did.

Recently, I’ve felt strangely self-aware–more so than usual. At first I thought it was because I was an aimless post-grad, unemployed and still adjusting to being stripped raw of my comfortable identity as a student. Then I thought it was because I was pointless and misplaced in my poorly scheduled corporate job. After that, I was certain that it was because I felt isolated and amazingly foreign in this bizarre new country.

But really, I think I just feel it when I’m by myself. All those situations give me far too much time to myself. It’s when I have the time to think. It just kind of rises to the surface once everything else is cleared away. When I’m focused or occupied, it shrinks back.

I don’t want to always have to be distracted to avoid being self-conscious. It’s not like there’s anything really wrong here. I guess it’s fine for the most part, but I’d like a little more stability in my own self-assurance.

I’d like to be like Stargirl Caraway. Or maybe I’d be okay with just being me, only with a little Stargirl swagger. She is who she is. She finds good in unfavorable circumstances and casts off the temptation to seek external acceptance. She embraces her own oddities and finds joy in her own flaws.

I want to stop questioning the things I do and the reasons I do them and the way it appears to others and what it says about me. I want to be strange and unapologetic. I want to be frighteningly confident. I want to let things go. I want to accept and move on. I want to be weird and uninhibited.

When I was reading this book, I just kept thinking– what a way to be.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone can be like that all the time. Even Stargirl had her moments of failing confidence. Everyone is self-involved and sensitive, even when they say they’re not. At least a little. So I guess I, too, am entitled to weak moments and wavering individualism every once in a while.

But even if that’s true and I’ll never fully get rid of this itching discomfort of the self, I guess unaffected self-assurance would still be something nice to work towards.

I am geek.

I accept it. I embrace it. To be honest, I kind of love it.

Oh, to pack

Packing is just this really horrible thing. I’ve never been a very effective packer. I don’t think I have the foresight to prepare for things I will need down the line. I’m a very immediate person, and packing for a year is quite long-term.

I’m leaving for South Korea today and I’m terrified. Yes, this is a new experience. Yes, this is an adventure. Yes, this is the convenient escape from home that I’ve been anticipating since September. But I am terrified.

Right now, I have reached a place of blind panic. Leaving is petrifying. Staying is impossible (and horrible). Packing is disastrous. Procrastinating is just irresponsible. I keep thinking: there’s no way I can survive. There’s no way I can go to this whole different country and live by myself and actually survive.

But the more I sit here with all this stuff, the less I realize I actually need. When talking to people, I’ve been telling them my new mantra: one friend. They take it to mean that my goal is to make one friend and they laugh because they think I’m bizarre and crazy. And I say “one friend,” but actually, it means something a little more, a little different. It means all I need is one friend to bring me in. One friend to understand me and accept me and love me despite my absurdities. One friend to provide comfortable refuge from the unfamiliar. Maybe not even a person. I just need one thing to be constant and comforting and familiar. I think if I have something like that, then I can probably do this.

So right now, I tell myself that if I take a deep breath and stop thinking so much and quit living in the worst case scenarios of my head, I can probably do this. I can probably make it out alive.