The Star Wars Nutcracker

I am at the Ohio Theatre in downtown Columbus
with wife and kids in tow to see the Nutcracker.
The lights fall and the curtain lifts to reveal a party.
I feel the warmth of my sweater weighing me down
as Herr Drosselmeyer makes a one-eyed introduction
and casts a hypnotic spell over my weary bones.
I feel Clara's tug into the dark world of dreams and
as the triangular tree grows to gargantuan size it
transforms into a Star Destroyer cruising overhead.
Mice in white helmets scurry from the fireplace which
has transformed into the ramp of a troop transporter.
Jedi Nutcrackers meet them in choreographed lines,
drawing swords that glow and crackle with a blue fire,
their brown hooded robes flitting and fluttering like fairies.
A rhonchus rat twice the size of the others and fully
shrouded in black descends the ramp ominously and...
"Dad!  Wake up, you're missing the Sugar Plum Fairy!"
It is my daughter in the seat next to mine, her eyes
narrowed and accusing, but I am just a tired old man.


***

One Thing Needful

Seeking the solid ground
of my own understanding,
only to find it is illusory,
that it shifts and shakes,
an earthquake of seen
and unseen realities interacting
in ways beyond my experience
or poor comprehension.

It forces into my awareness
that I am weak and ignorant,
often seeking the wrong things
in the guise of good intents,
which I can either accept
with humility or bitter denial,
the one thing needful embraced
or left woefully unattended.


***

The Cell

The cell was almost cozy,
the bed narrow, but soft.
He had made a bookshelf
of the high window ledge and
learned to read by the
light of a bare yellow bulb.
It was quiet here, noiseless
except for the drip of water
from a battered corner sink.
He slept during the day to
avoid the slanting sunlight
that reminded him of the
time he walked among men,
making decisions, supporting
various dependencies, and
reaping consequences like
the whirlwind in his Book.
It was the song of a bird
that disrupted his solitude,
fluttering at his barred window,
coming and going as it pleased.
It visited him in his dreams
and its sweet song echoed in
the empty chambers of his heart.
At the point it became unbearable
he grasped the bars of his door
and gave a tug, finding
that it offered no resistance.

***

Painting Christmas Ornaments

The tree is up and we have completely covered it in ornaments with no room for garland or tinsel.  Each ornament brings with it a strong flow of memories: a time, a place, a feeling.  It tells the story of my little family and provides a framework for those memories.

***

My wife introduced me to the tradition of painting Christmas ornaments early in our marriage.  It is something her mother did when Jennifer was a kid.  After Thanksgiving we would head over to Michaels or Hobby Lobby to acquire that year's supply of unpainted ornaments and new brushes/paint.  In Indianapolis she used the dining room table to set up shop and even got me to paint my first ornament which was a lighthouse.  I concentrated all of my creative energies into that one ornament night after night while Jennifer worked through several others of differing complexity.  It was great stress relief from the pressures of Medical School and gave us time to talk in our cozy apartment while Christmas music played in the background.

In Washington DC, our rental house had a knotty pine basement with a matching bar that became our Christmas ornament painting headquarters.  Once again, I worked on my one ornament while Jennifer cranked out several others.  That year I painted a train in memory of my Grandpa who we called "Poppy."  He absolutely loved trains and had rode the rails as a young man during the Great Depression.  He had several large picture books of trains, record albums of train sounds, framed pictures of trains, and for a time he had a large train set that spanned his living room.  I signed that ornament "Ol' Roy" which was his given name.

These days Jennifer has quite the ornament painting operation going.  There are now special craft bags to hold and organize all of the paints and supplies as well as clear plastic containers with dividers to hold the unpainted ornaments she has accumulated.  My participation stalled five years ago, the Christmas prior to Anya's birth.  The last ornament I painted was a collaborative effort that Elias and I worked on when he was five.  It was an airplane.  He painted each body section a different color which I cleaned up and added to.  The past two years it has been mostly a mother-daughter thing with Jennifer and Anya, but the tradition continues and I imagine Elias and I will be sucked back into it in future Christmases.



***

The Stubborn Astronaught

When the earth opened up 

to swallow him whole

he refused to fall,

a stubborn astronaught 

floating over the abyss

yawning below his feet.

He spun once, then twice,

head over heels

in determined defiance

unsure of how long

he could keep it up,

not caring, yet not wanting

to give into despair

hanging in the air

for a moment that might 

just last a lifetime.

***

Prayer Contra Nightmares

Demon King of the Dog Clowns
do not visit us in our bed

Necromancer of Nightmare Towns
do not visit us, dead or undead

Deep Dreamer of Hell Hounds
visit those who annoy us instead

instead, instead, instead, amen

***

Hiding from the War

I hid from the war
behind the walls
of an Army compound
in Northern Iraq,
hearing occasional gunfire,
explosions, and
the constant drone
of gas-powered generators.

I hid from the war
in our clinic compound
shooting hoops in the
shrapnel-scarred courtyard
or throwing the football
with a volunteered
soldier who had
better things to do.

I hid from the war
in my sand-bagged cell,
lost in my laptop
photoshopping images
and writing poems
to feel connected
to my son turning two
six thousand miles away.

I hid from the war
singing karaoke on a couch
in the Commander's office
laughing as a car bomb
detonated in the distance
and the black hawks
lifted from the tarmac
to retrieve what was left.

I hid from the war
until called to see a detainee
standing in his underwear
on an ice-cold concrete slab,
crying and shivering,
while I stood before him
in insulated boots and
wrapped in layers of warmth

and I could no longer hide.


***

When the Storm Comes

When the storm comes,
the head becomes a cave
in which to hide from danger.

When the storm comes,
the world closes off and
we feed ourselves on anger.

When the storm comes,
love grows cold and
all becomes a stranger.

When the storm comes,
Wisdom is a homeless child
who cries and we harangue her.



***

The Murderer

He was a murderer from the beginning, 

and he will kill your body and soul if he can.  

Do not partner with him or those with him.

Resist in whatever way you can: with humility, 

with patience, and most importantly with love.

A selfless love achieved only through action,

not always feeling it, but always doing it.

Your strength will grow, become death-defying, 

thoroughly destroying the work of him who 

was a murderer from the beginning.

***

baby ate him like a man

We visited our optometrist's office this weekend where there is a children's nook full of books and toys.  Anya and Elias decided to occupy themselves with building a castle out of blocks, working from opposite sides.  This kind of sibling simpatico is more rare than I'd like it to be, but an absolute joy to my heart when it occurs.

While they placed block on block I squeezed past them and into the nook.  I discovered a bookshelf that was hidden around the corner that is not visible from the waiting room proper.  On a middle shelf was an old weathered set of Childcraft books with an "annual" from 1973.  This placed the collection squarely in my early childhood and as I read the titles I felt the surreal sensation of time bending in my brain.

I pulled out a volume or two and flipped through the pages.  The images were vaguely familiar, but did not elicit any strong feelings.  Then I spied the volume "Poems & Rhymes" and I felt my heart skip a beat.  Every image on every page brought on a torrent of memories.  This was the volume that I'd spent the most time going through as a rambunctious boy.  It had held my attention and taught me the traditional poems and rhymes of youth.

One picture in particular has remained crystal clear in my memory since that time in the early seventies.  It was the Fishy-Fishy in the Brook poem.  It fascinated me because it was a real picture taken with a camera, not a flat illustration.  I wasn't sure how it had been made which was part of the fascination.  It had reminded me  of claymation films, like "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" that was on TV every winter.

In the late eighties I was a student at Indiana Wesleyan University and took a World Literature class with Mary Brown.  I was an avid reader and this class felt more like a fun college interlude than a course requirement.  Some of my classmates would brag about how little they'd read of the assigned literature which for me was like having a gourmet meal set before you and
thinking it was cool that you'd only eaten a few peas from the plate.

That first day of class Prof Brown had a handful of cutout goldfish that she was giving out as rewards for students being able to finish a poem/rhyme/lyric that was on the theme of "fish."  I secured my first fish by finishing a line from Dan Fogelberg's song "Longer."  A few fish awards later she recited the first half of Fishy-Fishy in the Brook.  I think mine was the only hand to go up for this one and that image from the Childcraft book came vividly to mind as I finished the line  "...Mommy fried him in a pan, and baby ate him like a man."

***

The Autumn Years

In the Autumn years

full of hopes and fears

when the heart grows bold

with the ease of tears.

The Tower

Solar Sam beamed in the full length mirror, turning left then right to capture his appearance from different angles.  He was wearing a linen suit and panama hat found in the empty clothing store in which he stood.  His long unkempt beard was gone, replaced by a goatee and mustache framed by smooth cheeks.  His hair flowed over his shoulders, clean and wavy.

It had been at least a few weeks since the tower had appeared and the city had emptied of its inhabitants.  He had hidden himself away in a cardboard recycling bin until the need for food and water forced him to return to the streets he knew so well, streets which now felt alien to him in their near absolute silence.

He had set himself up in a nice high-rise apartment with a view of the city that had not been available to him before.  A bird's eye view required money, to live high or fly.  The water and electricity still worked, though he was not sure how much longer that would be the case.  The first thing he'd done was eat his fill from the refrigerator, then take a shower and shave.  He could not remember the last time he'd been able to do these things in his own space without other people around.  A keen sense of wariness borne of equal parts street smarts and paranoia had assured that he remain unshowered and unshaved for long periods of time.

The tower sat not far off with its bulbous head visible from nearly every room, craning its neck to peek through his windows.  He avoided those rooms as best he could.

Back at the apartment in his new duds he popped a cork from a wine bottle and took a swig.  A voice addressed him, "You are welcome."  He recognized the voice and did not bother to look around.  When the tower had appeared he'd headed for the bin without returning to the homeless shelter where all his worldly possessions resided in a canvas bag.  His medications had been in that bag and after a two-week lull the voices had returned right on cue.

***

The elevator waited patiently for Solar Sam.  It had no one to call it elsewhere and so, like an obedient dog, it opened to him immediately when he pushed the button.  As the doors slid open he heard music, "Blinded by the light, revved up like a Deuce, another runner in the night..."  He knew it was not his voices because those confounded things never sang to him.  It was a catchy tune and he found himself smiling for the first time in forever.  It reminded him of his childhood before mental illness had insinuated itself into his life.

He was well liked and well known in the homeless community of this city, but he never felt comfortable with this kind of familiarity if not pseudo-fame.  Keeping a positive outlook was a constant struggle, but it was an effort he felt kept him from the precipice of self-destructive thoughts.  He'd lost too many friends on the street to overdoses, some intentional and some not.   His struggle to connect and ease the suffering of others when he could was a rare attribute among those who tended to be self-consumed and self-medicated in their misery.  He suspected this was not a problem confined to street people.

The elevator door opened to reveal a woman facing him just a few feet away.  She was wearing clothing that was multicolored, layered and raggedy, her hair long and tangled.  Her bony fingers were covered with gaudy rings which she waved from her elbow like a metronome, her cracked face drawn up in a smile.

"Hey Solar Sam, you're lookin' mighty spiffy."

***

"Oh, hey Mary."  He looked around to see if there might be others, suddenly feeling silly in his clothes.  He took off his hat and fiddled with the brim, clearing his throat, "How have you been?"

"Oh, you know, wandering the streets and lookin' for trouble."

"That's good.  You always know how to find trouble, Mary."  He forced a smile.

It was a bit shocking to see another human being.  If he were honest with himself, he had grown to enjoy his solitude and Mary's appearance was a bit of an irritant.

"How you been holding up?" he asked.  He knew this would open the door for her to bury him in an avalanche of words, but he could not do otherwise.

"Have you visited the tower, Sam?"  She paused long enough to take in a quick breath and as he started to answer, she started talking again before a sound could escape his mouth.

"Mercy me, Sam.  That thing is huge.  Where did it come from?  I was in the park feeding my squirrels when it felt like a wall of wind hit me and there it was!  Next thing I know, the squirrels are gone, the people are gone, and I'm left alone starin' up at this thing and gettin' a crick in my neck."

Sam remembered where he'd been when the tower appeared.  He'd been on the third floor of an abandoned warehouse polishing off a fifth of gin in front of a window of mostly broken panes reaching almost from floor to ceiling.  He'd crumpled a large cardboard box to function as his recliner with a view of the city's skyline.  The skyscrapers formed a dark and jagged line as the sun rose behind them, painting lovely shades of pink over scattered clouds.

And then, there it was, a black spike dominating the scene.  It was half again as tall as the tallest building.  He remembered rubbing his eyes vigorously, sure that it was just an artifact of bleariness and alcohol.  It did not go away.  He stumbled up off of the crumpled box and staggered to the window where he stood swaying.  He felt his insides quivering as tears began streaming from his eyes and a pool of urine formed around his feet...

"Where'd you go Sam?  I lost you there for a second."

"I'm sorry Mary, but I need to be alone."  He walked past her and exited the building without looking back.  On the street, he tried to avoid looking in the direction of the tower but then the voice came again, "You are welcome."

***

His dad had been a tall beanpole-of-a-man with a bulbous nose that was too red and too puffy from too much alcohol.  It was rare for his dad to be at home when Sam was awake, but when he was he sat alone in the basement watching a small TV set attached to a wire that snaked up out of the window well, climbed the side of the chimney, and terminated in the base of a TV antenna on the roof tottering in its loose bracket.  His mom warned him not to go down there when his dad had been drinking, which was most of the time.  He typically heeded her warning but that particular night he had heard him laugh.  He imagined the sound was a sign of good will if not a good mood.  His dad was happy about something and he wanted to share in that.

He quietly made his way down the stairs and stopped halfway, peering into the flickering darkness.  "Dad?"

"Yeah, wadya want?" came a voice like a surly dog snapping at his heals.

He was afraid he'd missed his moment.  "Uh, how was your day?"

The vertical hold became unstuck and the picture on the TV began to cycle upwards.  He saw his Dad lean forward to whack the side of the TV and nearly fall out of his chair, "Goddammit!"  The enraged man who had been laughing only minutes before tromped up the stairs holding onto the handrail and passed over the boy as if he were not there.  He jumped up and followed the swearing and swaying man outside and watched him sit a ladder against the side of the house and make his way up to the antenna.

He was afraid his dad would fall and turned to go get his mom.  As he rounded the corner of the house, he heard one final loud curse, a moment of stillness, and then a sick thud.  He ran back around the corner and saw his dad lying on the ground, head tilted at an odd angle.  Above him the antenna dangled from the side of the house as a soft rain began to fall.  The frightened boy did something that he'd never done before.  He grabbed his Dad and rolled him over into an awkward embrace.  The body offered no resistance.

***

He felt a sort of emotional imperative compelling him to walk in the direction of the tower.  He responded by taking a wide circular route several blocks away,  moving in one block at a time with each completion of a circle.  In this way, he spiraled in little by little over the course of the day until, exhausted and foot sore, he stood at the base of the tower.

He faced a side of the tower that had not been visible from his apartment.  Its immensity could hardly be taken in at this close range.  A square opening the size of a garage door revealed a dark hollow interior.  Above it a translucent strip the width of the door ran up the side of the tower, terminating in the rounded structure near the top.  It was the golden hour and the light from the sinking sun shimmered up and down its length giving the appearance of a living thing.

Solar Sam approached the door and stood just outside its frame.  From this closer vantage point, he could see that the scintillating strip was actually three dimensional with only one side visible to the outside.  The bottom side formed the ceiling of the room.  It too was translucent and the experience was like peering up from the depths of the ocean to the sparkling sun somewhere above.  He suddenly felt overwhelmed with it all and dropped his eyes to watch the rainbow of refracted light play on the grass at his feet, unsure of what to do next.  The voice came again, this time warmer and more resonant, echoing in the cube-shaped room, "You are welcome."

He stepped into the room and the world became fire.

***

Mary was watching Sam's progress from a distance, a little hurt that he'd blown her off.  It was unlike him to be so abrupt.  With so few people around she'd even entertained fantasies that they would shack up like Adam and Eve in the Garden, granted that they avoided the Tree of Knowledge that had been planted so unceremoniously in the middle of their city.  She hadn't figured on him entering the tower as part of the plan.  These thoughts evaporated when she witnessed him step inside the large opening.

His linen suit immediately began to glow and flutter, his hair flying up about his head.  Tendrils of light began to peel off of him and rise into the column above.  Mary saw them ascend in a playful dance, like leaves blown up a tree trunk by a burst of wind.  Sam appeared to be unraveling and within seconds, he was no longer standing in the space under the tower.  The leaves of light swirled their way to the top of the tower and when the last one had disappeared the strip went dark and opaque.


***

Solar Sam had either lost consciousness or gained too much of it to make sense of the ascent.  He found himself standing in a room with a high domed ceiling encircled by windows looking out over the city far below.  He was naked but not naked.  A tall man also naked but not naked was waiting for him.  The man stepped forward and Sam wondered at how impossibly tall he was.  He felt small, like a child again.  The man leaned down and pulled him into an embrace which he did not resist.

"I've missed you, Sam."

"I've missed you too, Dad."

***

The jagged green line spiked and then flattened out on the ICU monitor setting off a melancholy drone.  The man with the unkempt beard and sunburned face had been brought to the ER of this inner city hospital two weeks ago, but the damage done by the fall had proven irreparable.  Mary had been his only visitor and she was there when they pulled the life support.

She pulled her shawl up over her head and held it in place under her chin, stroking his matted hair and beard with her free hand.  "Such a lovely, lonely soul," she whispered.  "Go on home, my friend.  Go on home."

The Mermaid

I hear a mermaid and
a mermaid hears me.
She tells me her secrets
of the deep blue sea.
I tell her of my life with
a brother and a dog.
My Daddy takes a picture
and puts it on his blog.


***

to live is to love

An illusion
of endless
time in the
corporal self.

A delusion of
disconnection
from those with
you in hell.

Such a grace
for the body
to weaken
and crumble.

To know that
to live is
to love and
be humble.


***

I'm Just a Poor Boy

I remember him as an awkward elementary school kid with buggy eyes and a slack face that quickly corrected when he smiled.  It was 1980 and I was a sixth grader helping the younger kids as a "Reading Buddy."  He struck me as a person moving in slow motion, encased in a kind of physical and mental molasses.  I felt something akin to pity, seeing his vulnerability and the reluctance of others to engage him.  He lived on 2nd Street which ran North-South for the entire length of our small town of two thousand people.  My neighborhood was at the Southern most end and the High School was at the Northern most end.  It was the perfect conduit for my bicycle explorations, running parallel to Highway 37 which cut the town in half as it connected us to towns above and below in the Southern half of Indiana.

I would pass his house on the way to Park's Grocery where I'd exchange an empty pop bottle or two for dimes to buy a sour sucker or multicolored Sprees sealed in a small paper packet.  These were Sprees the size of peas, before they made them larger and packed them in paper tubes.  He and his sister would be playing in their yard, dirty, dog-like, smudged and subservient.  His face would light up when I passed by and he'd wave enthusiastically with a wide goofy grin.  I even stopped once out of curiosity and made the connection that he'd been my Reading Buddy once, in case he'd forgotten.  His Mom must have offered me a drink because I remember stepping into their house and wondering at its disarray, its smell of smoke and sour body odor, incredulous that people lived this way.

Before we moved away from that small town my family attended some kind of community service at one of the local churches.  It was part of our local festival that was going on at the time.  His family was there, to include his Dad whom I'd seldom seen.  He was wearing a set of ill-fitting Army Greens with a few ribbons on the chest that must have been a left over from military service, hair slicked over and shiny.  I recognized that it was likely the only suit that he owned and was brought out for these kinds of occasions, when he needed to present himself with a bit of dignity.  His son was there with his lazy smile and lanky limbs now that a few years had passed.  They were a mystery to me, poor in a way that my young mind could not quite grasp or understand.

Punctured

So much beauty fills the earth
but all of it tinged by sadness
as if it needs to puncture the
heart to let out all the badness.


***

two hats

I wear two hats,
no, really
I wear two hats.
They are both
in my work bag,
one grey and
one olive drab.
They're the poofy
kind with a bill,
maybe Scottish
in origin and design,
acquired at a hat shop
in Annapolis, Maryland,
one for me and
one for my son.
He no longer
wears his hat,
so I stole it.
The colors match
every piece of clothing
in my wardrobe.
I've always loved
hats, but even moreso
now that my hair
is on the way out.
They make me
feel older, adult-like,
covering up the
vulnerabilities of
childhood buried
deep inside.



***

No Matter What

How many times has he tried to annoy me,

a poke, a punch, a negative answer to a 

positive question.  He needs to know I love

him no matter what, even after all the yelling

and threatening that ends in the ill advised

epithet.  Gawd, why am I such an idiot?  I 

can't help but think that he deserves better,

some ideal parent somewhere who sees

him more clearly, who loves him more

dearly, this boy of ten for whom I would

suffer any insult, any degradation, any 

slight to see him fly higher, freer, stronger.  

***

The Eye of Jupiter

Who could find fault with their mission
aboard The Beam, lights playing off the
surface of its long cylindrical shape, as
it approached the swirling eye of Jupiter?
From orbit they launched a small probe
known as "The Mote" to scan for a
suitable landing site in which The Beam
could be safely lodged, not realizing
that it was all simply part of an elaborate
biblical allusion they had been judged
worthy to act out on a cosmic scale,
puppets of a pseudo-delusional poet.


***

The Long Bike Ride

This was cut out of "Sleepless in Seoul" because it did not involve insomnia or being homeless in the city.  It is simply a memory that fell out while writing about my time there.

***

Probably the craziest thing I did during this time of transition between tours in Korea was to decide I wanted to ride my bicycle from the small town of Dongducheon to Seoul.  It was a nutty idea.  I didn't even know how to get there other than to take the main road south and hope that I eventually ran into Seoul.  I had no idea how long it would take so I started early on a Saturday morning to give me as much time as possible.  These were pre-Google days where you either had a paper map or you had nothing.  I had nothing but a bike and my (dim) wits.

I alternated between riding on the road and riding on a sidewalk, if one was available.  I got more than a few angry honks and almost clipped someone stepping off of a bus at some point.  Probably the scariest moment was when I was getting closer to the city, after having peddled hard for at least two hours, and a bus had stopped in front of me to let people off.  Because of the near-clipping incident I decided to go around it on the traffic side.  As I started to pass it, it began moving again and accelerating.  At the same time another bus rolled up along side it so that I was sandwiched between the two.  It was like navigating a narrow gap between two sheer rock faces, but with the rock walls moving!  My heart was pounding and I felt the adrenalin begin to flow, supercharging my legs.  I stood up on the pedals and began pumping for all I was worth, gaining enough speed to pop out from between them and continuing to accelerate until I was clear to get back to the side of the road and then up onto the sidewalk.

I eventually made it deep into what I recognized as a very large city and my suspicions that I'd found Seoul were confirmed when I spotted the Seoul Tower perched on top of Namsan (South Mountain).  This mountain sits at the heart of Seoul and the main American Army base in Korea (Yongsan) is just south of it.  Now I had to figure out how to get around it so I could secure my bike at the Army base and navigate on to a friend's house using the subway.  I saw a Korean man standing on the corner with a shopping bag in his hand and so I stopped to ask directions.  He looked at me with a somewhat bewildered expression before saying anything.  I assumed my Korean was very poor and that he had no idea what I'd just asked.  Then, with absolutely no accent, he said, "I don't know.  I'm from California."  Twelve million Koreans to ask and I picked the one from California.

Now I had to decide which side of the mountain I would try and go around to get to Yongsan.  I followed a major road straight towards the mountain and ended up going through a very long tunnel that actually went under the mountain.  At one point there was a long straight stretch that must have been tilted downward, but with no visual reference point it simply looked flat.  There were no cars and I let go of my handlebars, sat up straight on my seat, and stretched my arms out to my side with eyes closed.  I was flying along without peddling, seemingly propelled by mysterious forces in the belly of the mountain.

***

I eventually met my friend at his apartment.  He was an engineer that had visited Shalom House on occasion to practice his English, though he lived with his wife and two kids in Seoul.  When I arrived I was soaked through with sweat and smelled strongly of body odor.  I explained to him that I'd biked from Dongducheon which he couldn't quite get his head around.  He wanted to take me and the kids to Lotte World for the afternoon which is a gargantuan amusement park housed inside a massive building in the southern part of Seoul.  We decided I should take a shower first and he loaned me a t-shirt and shorts.

Lotte World is hard to describe in its immensity.  It bills itself as the world's largest indoor theme park which has the stamp of approval of the Guinness Book of World Records.  On the bottom floor is an oval ice skating rink that is open to the glass roof that spans nearly the entire length and width of the roof about one hundred feet above it.  The third floor includes the theme park which surrounds the rink and looks down into it.  Off and on throughout the day a full on parade makes its away around a wide oval track.  There are floats, people dressed as Korean cartoon characters, and a marching band made up of prancing young ladies in brightly colored band uniforms.

At some point we were standing in line for a particular ride and a small group of non-Korean men were talking boisterously amongst themselves twenty feet or so further up the line.  They stood out because it is rare to see foreigners in this part of the city.  There is also the reality that Koreans never talk that loud in public or draw attention to themselves in that way.  I don't doubt this group of men had been drinking and one of them caught sight of me.  He may have called out "Hey mate!" or used some other outlandish greeting in an accent that I couldn't quite place, though I thought it might be Australian.  As it turns out, they were New Zealanders on a business trip.

We engaged in some loud and light hearted banter as if the people standing between us did not exist.  My Korean friend was amused by the whole thing, partly because he could not understand a single word they were saying.  He prided himself in speaking English very well and assumed they were speaking another language altogether.  He asked me where they were from and had a hard time believing they were speaking a language that he felt himself proficient in.  I found myself in the peculiar position of being a translator for him.

The day ended with him inviting over some of his male friends for a feast of a dinner followed by liberal amounts of alcohol.  His wife prepared the sumptuous banquet and set it out, then retired to the kitchen with a female friend where they talked quietly until called by the men.  There's a saying in Korea, "There are three equals: the king, the father, and the teacher."

The next day I returned to Yongsan and opted to take a bus, stowing my bike underneath for the long trip back up north.  A one way bike trip like that had been quite enough, thank you very much.