One Night in Korea

I spent two years of my life in Korea, not moving forward, not moving backward, only living in a kind of dream-like limbo in my early 20’s.  During the day I was with American soldiers who I had little to nothing in common with and at night and on the weekends I was with Koreans who I felt more connected to but still felt the weight of a language and cultural gap.  I did not want to return to the States after my one year tour and so I volunteered to extend my time there for my full two year commitment to the Army.  

I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish, only I did not know what the next step was to be in my life.  In this regard, I hid from my stateside-self and his future by staying overseas in a magical land of strange and exotic experiences.  Every time I went out with my Korean friends and their friends I felt special and was treated as such by virtue of my non-Korean-ness.  The experience was at once exhilarating and terribly melancholy, trapped as I was in a cage of my own making.

I tried to make the best of the Army part without fully buying into what it meant to be a soldier.  I was the best runner in my brigade and maybe even the division, a good marksman, and great at land navigation to the extent I was the only private in my unit to achieve the coveted Expert Infantryman’s Badge.  But I had no intentions to serve past my two year commitment and the NCO’s could sense this in me and it generated friction between me and those above me in the chain of command.  I had a reputation for disappearing at the earliest possible moment of being off duty (although you were never really “off duty” in Korea).  One of my fellow platoon members described me as a “shadow” who could slip off without anyone noticing.

Part of this shadow-like behavior had to do with an ongoing attempt to immerse myself as much as possible in the Korean culture, language, and geography.  I built up a whole network of Korean friends throughout Dongducheon, down through Uejongbu, and stretching all the way to Seoul utilizing bus, train, and subway.  It was like a series of safe houses that I could crash at on the weekends.  The other soldiers in my unit were self-confined to the base itself and a small part of Dongducheon just outside the main gate that catered to the “needs” and wants of Americans.  They suspected that I wandered far afield, but I never talked of it with them in order to protect my hard won freedom that could easily be taken away if proof surfaced of what I was doing.

So, this poem “One Night in Korea” is just a glimpse of one particular night that looked like so many other nights while I was living there except for the peculiar incident of sneaking into the base pool after midnight and drowning myself in its glowing waters.  Which, in retrospect, was breathtakingly foolish but not out of character for me at that time.

I was young and free

to roam and do

what I pleased

though hopelessly lost

in a foreign land,

a soldier of fortune

looking to connect despite

incompatible voltages.

Chin-gu’s who thought

in a different language,

peering through narrowed 

eyes while chain smoking,

nighttime neon glow

with no lack of laughter,

coffee, tea, maek-ju, so-ju,

and the smell of kim-chee.

Until I found myself alone,

separated from so much 

and from so many,

wide-eyed and weary,

the long walk back 

to the barracks still ahead.

I was drawn to the glow of 

the base swimming pool.

It called to my spirit,

a beatific blue-green light,

just past the witching hour.

I scaled the high fence,

squatting Korean-style

at the water’s edge

peeled down to my boxers

and my burdens.

Time took a time out

as I balanced between

life and death,

strife and breath,

teetering

:

tottering

:

tumbling

:

all things diverging 

all things converging

my body floating

betwixt and between.

***

Pretending to Fly

Hanging dead from a string

pretending to be in flight.

Trying to catch up with those 

above me, only to realize

that they are also dead 

and it is only self-delusion 

that keeps my spot in line.

***

Just reminding myself...

... that kids are not accoutrements.  They do not exist to bolster our egos.  They deserve our blood, sweat, and tears.  They deserve every ounce of selflessness we can muster.  We do not own them.  They are not property.  We should not put them into a box of our own making, disrespecting their uniqueness and singular beauty.  

They will not ruin our lives.  They *will* ruin the lifelessness of an existence we imagine is about simply enjoying ourselves while our souls skitter along the surface, unable to penetrate into the depths of what being human is all about.

It is about love and love is not a feeling that changes with the fluctuation of chemicals in our brain.  It is deeper than that and transcends biology or circumstance.  It is about the privilege of taking on the suffering of another person.  This is something our culture does not understand.

  

Not that I am some expert, heavens no!  But I see it all around me and feel it gnawing at my edges trying to get in which terrifies me.  Our kids dangle at the precipice of our selfishness, oblivious to the possibility of disaster at arm’s reach.  

***

Charity Rolls Her Window Down

She sat at the red light 

where the man held the sign

that said his car needed fixed

so he could go back to work.

I felt the purr of my own 

trustworthy vehicle under me,

the soft edges of a robust credit card 

nestled in my cashless wallet.

She had pulled in front of me

without signaling her intent.

She had sat too long at the previous 

light, likely looking at her phone.

But when her hand extended from 

her window with a dollar bill

lightly held for the man to take

I suddenly felt all was forgiven.

That whatever she did or didn’t do 

(apart from crashing into me) 

I would accept graciously from this 

mom smiling in her rearview mirror.

***

The Plate

PROLOGUE:  This is a story my Mom recently shared with me by phone and I wrote out my version below, but then had her snail mail me her version and I subsequently combined the two by changing a few details in my account and then added parts of her account [in brackets].

***

My Mom tells me she recently found an old plate in the back of a kitchen cabinet that has special significance for us.  It has survived for over forty years without being broken, given away, or misplaced.  Since it came into her possession in the mid to late 70’s she has moved at least three times which can be hard on a large fragile plate.  And when I refer to it as “large” I may be misattributing to it the status of “plate” when it is in fact a “platter” but I will keep calling it a plate.  She told me the story behind the plate last week when we talked on the phone and it conjured up only the slightest bits of memory in my mind, though some of the details have been revealing themselves to me the more I roll it around in my head.

The story goes that I was outside shooting baskets one summer day in ‘77 or ‘78 when the basketball bounced off the court and onto our back porch hitting the charcoal grill and knocking off a plate and breaking it.  My Mom was waiting for my Dad to get home to get the grill started and was unaware of what had happened when I came back into the house looking sheepish.  I disappeared into my room and she heard me shaking money out of the wooden trolley bank my Dad had brought back for me from a business trip to Chicago (or was it San Francisco?).  She tells me she yelled down the hallway, “You better not be getting money out to buy comic books or candy!”  

[The first thing that came to my mind was he was going to go down to the Drug Store and buy more comic books.  I always thought they were a waste of money, but he was always excited to find a new one.  He came out of his room and I assumed money was jingling in his pockets, so he passed me and I followed him out on our deck.  As he descended the stairs I hollared like a raving lunatic “If you think you’re going to the Drug Store to buy more comic books you better think again!”]

I would not let her anger dissuade me from my course of action and when I returned some time later I had a large decorative plate in hand that I presented to her to replace the one I’d broken.  She tells me she felt bad about yelling at me and later learned that I’d ridden my bike to an old flea market/antique store on the town square where I’d found the plate and was able to work out a deal with the owner [Linville Ferguson] to purchase the plate with whatever money I had on my person after explaining my situation to him.

[I sure didn’t get mother of the year award but I was very touched by what he had done.  Many years later I shared the story with some of my friends and brought the platter down from the top shelf for them to see (I do not use it because I am afraid it might get broken).  I sat it before them and they stared at it like it was the Holy Grail.]

She found this quite amusing and now considers it an heirloom of sorts that may have been the first glimpse of a future that did not include me leading a life of delinquency and irrectitude.

We finished talking on the phone about this particular episode in my life and she suggested I should write about it as I have been accumulating stories from my childhood that have been finding their way onto paper (figuratively speaking... I type them into my iPad) the past few years.  She has put the stories that I’ve printed out and mailed to her in a binder that she requested from my Dad so that they are all in one place and can be easily grabbed if her house ever decides to catch on fire.  

I proposed instead that she write down this story because she remembers it more fully than I do.  She could then mail it to me and I could edit it and add my perspective while typing it into my iPad.  She loved this idea and when I called her yesterday she said that it was almost finished.  I suggested as part of this project she have someone (probably one of my sisters) take a picture of the plate on their phone, front and back, and message it to me so I could create a title image for the story.  Seavor ended up being the picture-taker (thanks Seavor!) and now I am just waiting for Mom’s story to arrive in the mail.

***

EPILOGUE: when the picture arrived on my phone yesterday from Seavor I looked up “CANONSBURG” from the stamp on the back of the plate and learned it was a decorative china company near Pittsburgh that started in 1900 and became defunct some time in the mid to late 70’s.  As a kid I imagined it was some priceless antique that I’d somehow miraculously convinced the store owner to release to me at an exorbitant loss after hearing my heart breaking tale.

Wheel inside a Wheel

The circle of the dome is 

the Father 

at the center of which is 

the Son 

and (con)descending is 

the Holy Spirit,

a wheel within a wheel...

rotation - procession - connection

***

Isn't that Funny?

Humor 

like water 

douses the 

flames of despair.

Humor

like salve

heals the

languor of living.

Humor

like a knife

can be 

wrongfully used.

Humor 

like a hole

is a place

I can hide.

Isn't that funny?


***

The Easter Egg

God is Dead

It snowed on God’s tomb 

this blustery April evening

as we carried it around our

church in a swirl of snowflakes.

“What?” you say, “God is dead?!”

Well, it was necessary as we are

all dead and He has come

to show us the way back to life.

***

Somewhere West of Here

The man and woman who came together to

give me life are dying somewhere west of here.

Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sooner 

than I can even imagine, living as I am so far 

away from them. Gone are the days of village 

life with multigenerational families living

in the same small hamlet, maybe on the 

same street or even in the same house.

We have reached even further back in

time to a nomadic existence, a pitching

of our metaphorical tents on the sandy

wastes of a barren and lifeless culture.

I wouldn’t even know who to blame for 

such a thing but somewhere west of here

my parents are living out their last days 

and I am just waiting for the awful news.

***

An American in Paris

I saw An American in Paris this weekend and was wowed by the music, the dancing, and the incredible stage effects, but the story itself clanged in a way that might not have been the case even a year or two ago, prior to the current social upheaval surrounding how women have been  treated in our culture.  In the story an American GI named Jerry falls for a local French girl who is already engaged.  He is head over heals “in love” with her.  He has two friends, Adam and Henry, one of whom is also smitten with the girl and the other who is French and happens to be the girl’s fiancé unbeknownst to the other two.

So, the “American in Paris” (Jerry) starts trying to woo her away from this unknown fiancé by pressuring her to secretly meet him every day near the Seine River just as “friends.”  But instead, he uses the time to try and hound her into becoming involved with him romantically.  He shows little regard for her feelings, obligations, or cultural context even insisting that he be able to call her by the name he finds most comfortable.  “Your name is Lise?  I’ll call you Eliza.  No, Liza!”  She firmly rejects this attempt to americanize her name though he obnoxiously persists.  He doesn’t care.  He’s in love!  

At some point when Jerry learns that Henry is Lise’s fiancé he secretly arranges a scenario that is guaranteed to humiliate his friend and put a barrier between Henry, his parents, and Lise.  That is to say he continues to show how shallow, self-centered, and insensitive he is and how incapable he is of a love that is true as opposed to “true love” as he imagines it to be in his fevered romantic imagination and spiritual myopia.  As Adam astutely points out, “You don’t even really know anything about her.”  

But then (inexplicably) Lise finds some cathartic release in dancing a ballet performance created for her with the help of these three men and afterwards she excitedly tells Jerry she danced so well because she imagined him as the lead male dancer (the scene is one of poetic license where Jerry is actually dancing with her but dressed in black to signify it is her imagining him, but not really him).  They embrace and when he calls her “Lise” she exuberantly exclaims, “Call me Liza!”  

What?!  Are you kidding me?  I think this musical would be more accurately entitled “The Ugly American,” but did I mention how much I enjoyed the music, dancing, and amazing stage designs?

***

One Punch Kid

I was four years old and trapped in a land of giants.  They lumbered about jostling my small frame while speaking to each other at an elevation that made their words distant and mostly indecipherable.  I did my best to stay out of their way, but confrontation was inevitable.  All the more so because they constantly felt the need to impose their will on us smaller creatures.

Being small had its advantages in regards to staying off their radar.  I could insert myself into places that they could not access or would not think to check if they were looking for me.  It was a matter of size, but also of imagination.  I had hidey-holes and escape routes to protect both my physical and mental integrity from these sometimes unscrupulous beings.  Some of these places were only in my mind, created of a necessity when the giants raged and forgot themselves.

But the day came when there was nowhere to hide.  It was during Sunday School at the church where my father was the pastor.  My teacher was a pillar of the community and a regular leader of the congregational singing.  Her name was Opal and she was not someone to be trifled with.  She asked me to say a prayer to start the class.  I ignored her and tried to disappear into the corner of the pew where I sat but the wood was too hard and repelled my efforts, leaving me vulnerable and exposed.  

I did not want to pray in front of everyone.  I’d never done it before and had no idea what even to say, Lord have mercy.  I believe the correct word for what I was feeling would be “mortified” which is derived from the Latin word for death.  Opal did not pick up on my distress, or if she did, pressed on anyway.  Her large frame stood towering over me and her request (demand) was repeated.  When compliance was not forthcoming she crouched down on her haunches with a hand on either side of me grasping the pew so there was no chance of escape.

I was a cornered animal (literally) and instinct took over as my little fist found her nose and she rocked back on her heels and then onto her rump.  I remember her grabbing her nose and exiting the room as quickly as she could get to her feet to find my mother.

Was I a juvenile delinquent?  No, I was a four year old boy.  In retrospect it seems that it was a time when kids were expected to be unwaveringly compliant, like diminutive automatons, with no consideration for their thoughts or feelings.  There would have been no asking of the teacher what had led up to her being punched in the nose or why, only that it had happened.  There would have been no thought to try and understand the situation or its context.  The giant was the giant and the little person was the little person, and that was all there was to it.

***

The Bitter Arrow

He’s nine, maybe ten.  I can see him below in the yard.  I am standing on the second story back deck of my childhood home, like God looking down.  I am forty nine now.  I am losing my hair and my beard is graying by the day.  The forty year span between us obscures the scene a bit, but the feelings are still sharp.  

***

That Christmas Aaron had asked for a bow and arrow.  In his immature way of thinking he imagined he needed a weapon to embolden himself.  He longed to have the power of death at his fingertips with a pull and a twang, like in his books and on TV.  The wrapped box was long and narrow and as he ripped it open he felt the excitement ballooning in his chest to see the top of a bow!  But as he unwrapped it further, what should have been the feathered end of an arrow became visible as thin plastic strips in the shape of feathers.  His eyes moved down the shaft as he continued to tear the paper until he discovered the tips to be topped not by a metal point, but by rubber suction cups.  It was a kid’s toy.  His chest dropped, deflated, as the last piece of wrapping paper fell from his fingers and the realization hit that his parents did not trust him to have a real bow and arrow.  They still considered him a child.

***

Summer came and he learned his friend down the street not only had a real fiberglass bow, but two!  He was somehow able to buy or barter for the smaller of the two and he found himself in the possession of a real honest-to-goodness bow.  His parents had been bypassed but, alas, he had no arrows.  

In a serendipitous series of events his mother took him and his younger sister to a hardware store across town to have professional pictures taken.  The photographer had set up a makeshift studio by laying down a carpet on the worn wooden floorboards and hung a backdrop.  Aaron was suffocating in a plaid wool suit and turtle neck while sitting on a box with his sister in his lap.  His little sister was painfully cute and all smiles, but he had to be coaxed by the photographer to squeeze out even a pained grin.  And just when all hope seemed lost for the perfect shot, he spied a box of arrows for sale in the store behind the photographer.  His freckled face morphed into a magnificent smile and the camera clicked.

A few days later he had some money in his pocket and made his way back to that hardware store.  The arrows were sitting loose in a cardboard box with the price written in marker on the side.  Of all the colors he chose blue to match the color of his bow.  The weapon was now complete and he was eager to use it.

***

What is a weapon for?  To kill, plain and simple.  To bleed the lifeblood out of a creature.  Aaron thinks he understands this and I can see him foraging in the cornfield behind our house from my perch on the deck.  He has found a corncob with only a few hard kernels left on it that he quickly removes.  He has surmised that if he wants to kill a bird he will need a larger end to his arrow.  The metal point is too small and he is not Robin Hood after all.  He breaks the corncob so that it is only a few inches long and pierces its core.  It reminds him of those movies where the archers dip a similar looking arrow in oil and set it aflame to send over the castle walls.  He could do the same, but it would be a bit overkill, even for him.

This modified arrow is now a blunt instrument for stunning a bird if he is lucky.  He is creeping around the side of the barn with his bow and arrow at the ready.  I watch him intently as he peeks around the corner.  A robin is looking for worms about ten feet from him and has its back to the little assassin.  Aaron swings the bow around the corner ever so slowly so as to not startle the bird into flight.  There is a pause as he lines up his shot and then a sudden release of the string.

The corncob-ended arrow finds its target and crashes into the robin.  Aaron cannot believe his luck!  He is immediately upon the vulnerable bird who is now unable to fly.  I watch him pull the corncob from his arrow and re-nock it as he stands over the wounded bird.  The bow is drawn again and the arrow pierces the bird pinning it to the ground.  He expects an instant death as he picks up the arrow with the bird impaled on it, but the creature continues to struggle to escape.  The sparkle in his eye disappears and I can see his exhilaration extinguished like a snuffed candle.  The bird is not dead.  It is dying and it is this reality that he did not anticipate.

***

From my elevated vantage point I see him come back around the side of the barn with tears welling up in his eyes.  The bird continues to struggle at the end of the arrow in his hand.  I feel his fear, a panicky feeling that he has made a big mistake that cannot be unmade.  He disappears into the barn and when he comes back out he has a ball peen hammer in his hand.  He awkwardly wipes some tears with his t-shirt sleeve as he lays the bird on the concrete pad outside the barn.  He is almost directly below me now and I feel myself falling, merging with my younger self.  There is a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach.  There is the feeling in my arm of the hammerhead bouncing off the soft body of the bird, then the crunching sound of its head collapsing.  And it is finally still.

***