Iran

Last night, I dreamt that I walked to Iran. I traversed South Korea on foot, tiptoed across the rivers, pounced between the mountains, swaggered in and swaggered out of Seoul, dashed across the DMZ blowing off bullets until I came to a line in the dirt. One last glance back at the fluorescent pig intestine restaurant over my shoulder and I stepped over the line and vanished into the sandblasted Middle East of my mind. Escherian stairwell minarets spiraled up into a bloody red sunset, sour prayer calls swam through my ear canals, shrouded silhouettes lay piled up like sandbags in the sand. I stood ogling for a moment, then joined a passing tour group of Hasidic rabbis. We walked out of the city and into the desert, walked and walked until we came to an Aztec pyramid. We climbed the steps, thousands of them. At the top was an elevator. We rode down 200 floors and stopped. The tour guide turned and gestured shhhhhhh! A soft tinny bell sounded and the doors opened. We stepped out into a black candlelit Catholic grotto. I took flash pictures even though the sign said not to, because I wanted to remember this when I woke up.

I found myself outside on the street. Dark Latin children in soccer jerseys chased each other screaming madly down meandering gravel alleyways. So this was Iran. I felt suddenly drowsy and began to fall asleep, half-collapsing as I walked. I couldn't find a gas station, so I dumpster-dove for a canned cappuccino. I drank it in a single shot and woke up in my Korean bed. Holding a handful of sand. And wearing an Ayatollah Khomeini t-shirt.

I am grateful that somewhere in the troubled mist of our mammalian evolution, it became beneficial for our fuzzy forefathers to hallucinate in their sleep. Were it not for this lovely faculty of ours, life would be only marginally more interesting than televised poker.

I woke up this morning with a Frappuccino in my hand.

The teaching charade was pushed to new frontiers of realism today as I spent a half-hour writing progress reports for my fifty students. The reports fell into four generic types, certainly not from any disregard on my part, but because there is a limit to what can be said about a student's classroom behavior, particularly when the student is too young and much too Korean to stand out.

Parentheses are mine.

Type One:
Your Daughter Will Make Some Poor Man Very Unhappy Someday.

Jeong Yu-Jin is an energetic (sadistic) and lively (malicious) student with a distinct personality (spiteful grin) all her own. She always brings a positive attitude (pellet gun) to class. She is one of my favorite students (she punches me frequently) and I truly enjoy teaching her (I hide in the lavatory during my lunch break). She has many friends (lackeys) in class and she loves to help (hit) them with their homework. Please encourage her to keep up the good work (please beg her, for Christ's sake, to stop ripping out my armhair).

Type Two:
Bearing In Mind That You Are A 40-Something Korean Father, You Probably Won't Be Able To Read This, But I Will Nevertheless Write A Barrage Of Negative Adjectives In The Hopes That You Will Take The Time To Look Them Up, And Then, Take The Deluxe Kimchi Tongs To That Little Terd-Dropper Son Of Yours.

Ee Ho-Jin is a lively student with a great sense of humor (he laughs when I bleed). I can tell he studies hard (plots against me) in his free time and he has been making progress (a lot of origami ninja stars) in class. Unfortunately, he sometimes disrupts lessons with his talking (he once lunged at my throat with a sharpened compass/ruler) and often distracts (roundhouse kicks) his classmates. The director has talked to him (beaten him with a wooden stick) on a number (37) of occasions. Please encourage him to focus during class (stop attending school) or the director will be forced to take further disciplinary action (his English teacher will board a one-way flight to San Francisco).

Type Three:
Your Daughter Is Creepy But Docile.

Kim Un-Yeong is a young scholar (recluse) with a lot of potential (few friends who are not imaginary). She is the most advanced student in her class (the other kids have been snorting markers) and she always does well on tests (she likes cheese). Un-Yeong pays attention during class time (she is revoltingly pale) and she loves helping out her classmates (she often makes animal noises). She is truly a delight to teach (I joke about her in the teachers' lounge) and her English has improved tremendously over the past few months (she will one day join a religious cult). Please encourage her to keep up the good work (please feed her more fishheads).

Type Four:
I Have Forgotten Who Your Son Is.

Kim Byeong-Ook is my favorite student. He is hard-working, dedicated, and loaded to the gills with genuine linguistic talent. I can tell he studies hard in his free time, as evidenced by the delightful haiku poems he recites to me between classes. He is always eager to help other students out with their homework and he is an active participant during class time. Once, after another boy had fallen and skinned his knee, Byeong-Ook spent ten minutes tending to the boy's wound and dabbing away his tears with a moist towelette. A scholar and a gentleman, your son also seems to enjoy studying math and collecting Yu-Gi-Oh cards. On top of everything, Byeong-Ook is an outstanding ping-pong player and I have had the privilege of playing him in several friendly matches, a few of which I am not ashamed to admit losing. Continue to encourage Byeong-Ook in his studies and his ping-pong playing. (I have forgotten who your son is).

Busan, in four photos or less.

... and now I will answer your questions.

I weren't much of a poet ...

Something was buzzing underneath the pair of boxers on the floor. I rolled out of bed and picked it up. It was Mark, the Bostonian.

"We going to Busan or what?"
"I dunno," I said.
"Flip a coin."

It was noon. We were supposed to be in Busan already. I sifted through the loose change under my bed.

"Got it?"
"Yeah, 10 Won."
"Okay. Heads, we’re heading to Busan."
"Right.''
"Tails, we’re going back to bed. With our fucking tails between our legs."

There is a moment of inertia at the start of any expedition when the hardened explorer can duck his head into the wind and trudge forth towards lands unseen and probably expensive, or just roll back over in bed and maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur. I had been clamoring to go to Busan all week, but I was quietly hoping to roll back over and maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur.

I tossed the coin. It glanced off the side of a sleeping Coke can and skittered across the floor, spiraled and whirred until it died and ... tails.

"Tails."
"Alright, man," said Mark, "goodnight."

I set my phone back under the boxers on the floor, pulled the covers up around my neck and rolled over, warm and content. If the coin had come up heads, Mark and I would have gestured our way onto the cheapest train to Busan, hocked Anglo-Saxon loogeys into the Sea of Japan, played quarters with dusty Russian whores in the pubs on the port, catnapped in a karaoke room ... but fate came up tails. This meant I would sleep, maybe wake up in time for BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur, go out afterwards and hunt down a gory box of potato pizza from the Pizza Bingo down the street ... The whole course of events had been decided by the thickness, density, and upward velocity of a nearly worthless Korean coin, the springiness of my woodgrain-papered floor, the mass of any toenails, dust bunnies, or bits of rice chancing to lie in the way; all of these had some incalculably small effect on the coin's turning up tails, which determined that we would not go to Busan, which would of course determine the height and relative hairiness of my unborn children, how I would vote in 2012, the winning percentage of the 2017 Montreal Expos, and an infinity of other things, among them perhaps the destruction or slightly delayed destruction of humanity, which (depending on the vastness and emptiness of the universe) might or might not have any effect whatsoever on anything.

I couldn’t sleep.

Then, something buzzed underneath the pair of boxers on the floor. I rolled out of bed and picked it up. It was Mark.

"I’m not going to lie to you," Mark said, “but right now, I feel like a real pussy."
"Me too."
"So. Let’s go."

The days don't loiter.

Today, one of my ten year-old boys came to class wearing a green t-shirt that said, "I LIKE TO GET IT ON WITH BOYS WHO VOTE." Which reminds me, I never cast my midterm absentee ballot.

Your next assignment:

Your next assignment is to ask me a question about Korea.

Most questions about Korea have fascinating (and often vomit-inducing) answers lurking around in space somewhere, and the odds are good that I am well-equipped to find them.

I will address each question in a separate blog post. If you ask 47 questions, I will grudgingly write 47 blog posts. I am willing to go to great lengths to extinguish your curiosity about Korea, to spare you from ever needing a reason to visit this sulphurous industrial nightmare.

An interstellar burst ...

I have voyaged to the edge of the world, I have sailed over the edge, I have fallen into another rut.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach.

I become a mountain, a crash test dummy, a trash can for children. I laugh with chilling authenticity at the same gags every day - laughing though I don't find them funny, although I find it funny that I don't find them funny, so I laugh at myself - let's call it doublelaugh.

"Teachel wolf-man!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel clazy!"
"HA HA HA"
"Teachel stinky and clazy!"
"HA HA HA"

My kids love me. Kind of.

I go out, eat intestines. I don't ask from which animal.

I come home. I pluck "Blackbird" on the guitar. It's late, the neighbors are sleeping. I leave the guitar on the sofa. I drink hot cocoa and read books about physics and space until I can no longer see straight. I strap on my sleep visor. I sleep.

I wake up at noon, drink two coffees.

I teach. Kind of.