Shanghai

It was not death
For I stood up
And all the dead lie down

-E. Dickinson

Crossing the street is an exercise is navigation. This is not the navigation required by the pilot of a boat or the pedestrian in the market. No, this is an entirely different field. From the approach you relax yourself knowing that if you're going to be hit you'd rather be hit so that the impact will cause as little damage to yourself as possible. Have you ever come across those mini-articles in the Toronto Star where a baby opens a car window and bounces across the highway unhurt? It is by these that I am inspired. And you can't help but think that this is how you must be inspired. Here's why.

Every morning I cross Zhangyang Rd, an eight lane affair. Now, it's quite normal to, while accepting the green signal, walk across with a modicum of caution. You must, I dare say, do that everywhere. Here you must do it with a dose of optimism. Optimism that this time you'll make it to the other side of the road, unskimmed, whole, alive. Come, walk with me. It's Monday morning and we've just left the apartment, down the four flights of stairs, past the old bicycles in the stairway and out the metal gate. The date palms wave just a little in the breeze. At the corner I turn to you.

"Be careful when you're crossing the street".
I say it because first, I'm looking out for myself.

Our signal turns green and you step off the kerb. A scooter whizzes past, turning right. It becomes a school of fish to navigate, then it's the buses roaring wide around them, puffing grey-black. Now you've got to consider the scooters and bicycles turning left, into the same lanes as the cars turning right. In this game you're no one and the buses don't stop. Well, no one does, but they come roaring across the huge intersections at perilous angles. If they weren't about to hit you you might be concerned that they'd topple over, first. We stop, dodge right, dash ahead to the median and we're clear until we realize the walking signal is about to change so we make our sprint to the other side where I pull on your arm one lane before the sidewalk and as the light turns red a stream of cars brushes our shirts. We cross in peace and just as we step on to the other kerb a bicycle clips the back of your shoe.

I've gotten so used to the morning course that I've become bus blind. Last night death marked himself and I realized that had he pushed me an inch I would be with him - swept, crushed, pushed, pinned, broken, headless, dead.

I thought back to my first days in Shanghai. In the early morning sun the police had stopped before a beige Toyota and behind a cyclist laying on the pavement, chalk outlined. I stared.

I watched tv that night wondering whether the news would report the dead cyclist. She didn't appear, but this is, after all, a city of thirteen million people. Why should she appear? The news went on and on, an economic report, military exercise, classical music, and scenes from the Zhejiang province.

Actually, there were no reported deaths in the PRC. Not one. No murders, infanticides, rampages, suicides. Neither were there car crashes, train derailments, or planes sliding off runways. And were it not for the typhoon that made landfall south of here in Zhejiang province on Monday you'd have to believe that we weren't in for that storm either, the worst, they say, in fifty years.

So too, that brush last night would have gone unmarked save for a clip in a foreign paper of a citizen stepping rashly before a bus. You can be certain it wouldn't make the news here.

sale

Qiamen Gate, Beijing

What's the policy on opening umbrellas indoors, or on the subway? I haven't figured it out, and to be honest, here, no one seems to care. There's the poof-poof of fabric catching the air and a crowd watching the umbrella telescope itself into a microscopic object.

I cringe every time it happens, not because I'm superstitious but because the umbrella flares out centimetres from your nose. You might expect it to close quickly but the ever intrepid salesman must twirl it before your eyes. Now look at the inside, don't you see the quality? Oh it's quality alright. Made in Korea. Look right here sir. Now touch that fabric. Not China made. No siree, and he scoffs a little. China? He closes the umbrella in a flash. Whadda ya say? Two thousand won. No? And he turns with a flourish. Now test here and see... His voice fades a little as he turns leaving the umbrella in my hand, perhaps hoping I'll change my mind after I feel it and open it myself.

keep your head up

In light of things, particularly - Dan - your leaving on this trip. Let Ted Hawkins keep you company this time.

Put a candle in the window
Cause I feel I gotta move
Though I'm going going
I'll be coming home soon
As long as I can see the light

Pack my bags and let's get moving
Cause I'm bound to drift a while
Though I'm gone, I'm gone
You don't have to worry about me
No, as long as I can see the light

Guess I've got that old travelling bone
But I'm feelin' I'm leaving alone
But I won't won't be losing my way
As long as I can see the light
Won't you play that thing for me right now?

Cause I'm going going

-Ted Hawkins

scheduling

I met her in the bookstore near the subway station. I was sitting there by the window, on the second floor, overlooking the bustle of people below, on a Sunday morning. Somehow three days later we ended up at an stylish cafe, late. Lights glittered on the lake and the shadows of people, full bodied passed us at a distance.

I admit I was hesitant with her waiting there for me, her car black, swank, plush just outside the gate but I'd promised to help her along with some material. I didn't expect it to be this. She flipped on the interior light and opened up her book, one page filled scribbled in and the other plain. What exactly was I supposed to be doing?

Do you mind if we park?

The line reminded me of Back to the Future. I stuttered the same way.

Um. Sure. Actually do you mind if we go to some place with a bit more light?
Ok.

She revved the car and drove down the long drive to the lake. We pulled into the parking lot and she tossed the keys to the valet. We flipped open the menu. Ten dollar coffee. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. God what was I doing?

I uncapped the pen and drew idly on her notebook. I walked her through her lesson plan, she was being interviewed for a job and wanted syllabus help. On Sunday we talked about her plans over noodles. Tonight it was in an out of the way cafe. Things were moving fast. I'm sure her husband would be less than thrilled. I had met him on Monday, by mistake. He came in the door and Jo scrambled to introduce me. He grunted.

Why I met her on Wednesday was beyond me. She was attractive enough, though I didn't notice until the light glinted off her pearl pendant and I saw the neckline of her dress riffle slightly in the August night breeze.

She drove back, past the guardhouse, asking one last question before letting me go.

What is the right word for...

I didn't hear the rest. I opened the door and looked up at the blue grey night clouds.

She called again, two weeks later.

My first thought when I saw her name on the phone was that I was moving towards either a venial or mortal sin. Or was it cardinal. I had no idea. I picked up the phone.

China

I had the pleasure of travelling in the PRC for a short time and have come back to sterile Korea now knowing there's something to be said for,

1. cute girls who praise Chairman Mao
2. bargaining for a plastic razor that will probably destroy my face
3. the street markets in old Shanghai
4. the intricate carvings of Ba Hei at the Leifeng Pagoda
5. the variety of two and three wheeled contraptions that fall under the rubric of bicycle and scooter
6. a free room at the Grand Hyatt in Beijing
7. sesame seed buns for 5 jiao
8. jaywalking en masse
9. the overnight sleeper from Shanghai to Beijing
10. the national silk museum of China

taking stock

The rumblings began on a Friday.

The coordinator called me into the office after work. I prepared myself. It wasn't often she sought out teachers. She was precise and quick. Apparently an English teacher for a special camp in Cheongju had dropped out and would I, since I had the requisite experience, education, and desire - I had complained the day previous about the lack of challenge I was experiencing in the classroom - be willing to prepare seventeen students for a one year stay in the States by giving them lessons on cultural appropriateness and study habits?
Sure, I said, when does camp start?

Monday morning I was on a bus to Cheongju with a contract in my hand stating I was to be paid half a month's salary, in cash, for the week's worth of work I was doing. I felt good knowing that this was on top of my normal salary. I didn't know that something was wrong, terribly wrong. I had forgotten that some people throw money at a problem to make it go away. I was about to find out that money simply wasn't enough to smooth things over at this camp.

My coordinator mentioned that the camp director was disorganized. She was wrong. The level of complete incompetence he displayed was astounding. It began rather innocently, I suppose. On Friday, he sent up a copy of the textbook the students were to be using. He had haphazardly photocopied three hundred pages from a textbook, covering American history from 1750-1880. I thumbed through it in the office on Friday night. A useful document for students who were supposed to be learning how to integrate into American culture and daily life across the Pacific.

I received the schedule, a rather scant sheet with hourly slots, from 9 am to 8pm, each hour designated by a simple word - introduction, conversation, writing, reading, history. I asked for a detailed outline of what they expected and was told that these simple words were my outline. I would have the freedom to do what I wished. The faint may have crumbled under such an auspicious sign. Indeed, this camp director was setting a teacher up for failure. How could one put together a cultural program with simply nothing but his wits to guide him? I suppose that's why the original teacher pulled out of the contract leaving this camp director in a lurch, and why I was being paid a ridiculous sum to come to Cheongju. The success of the program would rest on me, the only foreigner in what was supposed to be an immersion program with teachers from the States. And I'm not even an American.

I began to teach and soon found out that I was teaching the lion's share of classes, six hours a day, while two other teachers and teacher's assistants split the remaining two, math and science. It didn't bother me much until Tuesday when I heard the students complain about the program. Someone said they weren't happy and had left. On Wednesday things got worse and though I pressed ahead with my lessons on freewriting, scanning, paraphrasing, and speed conversation drills I felt that I was doing something wrong.

I found that the director had begun a campaign against me, slandering me to my coordinator for things I did not say. This bears no importance for the story save this, my classes on Wednesday were cancelled and I was not told until I went to class. A straggle haired teacher's assistant clutching her walkie-talkie intercepted me.

Your class has been cancelled.
Why?
We're moving your class to later tonight, to eight.
No you're not. I don't work after seven. It's in the contract.
You can't go in there.
Fine.

I came prepared for the next class.

Your class has been cancelled.
Tell me what's going on.
The boss has come from Seoul.
Oh God, I thought. Someone's told him that I think the book is useless and that we won't be using it. Or worse, I haven't presented any plans of what I've been doing or what I plan to do.

But it was worse than that.

I found out that the meeting had nothing to do with me. I began to feel good because despite the camp director's efforts to put me down and generally ignore my requests for simple things like getting photocopying done on time he was being trodden on. I found out that the science teacher he hired made several students uncomfortable. Perhaps it's not surprising that they were all girls. Eleven students left that night. The science teacher's classes were cut and he was forced to observe my classes.

I felt strange with Joe - he could have chosen a better name for himself - in my class, his ratty moustache sitting dirty on his upper lip. He tried to help the remaining six students but they too shied away from him.

The week crawled to an end and I found out that though my contract was up that the camp was scheduled to continue for another week. The camp director who spent most of his time watching baseball on his laptop and having the scores related to him by walkie-talkie by his second in command, had hired another teacher. The students met her Friday afternoon moments before I left.

I would have stayed if I had not been going to China the next day.

On the plane I got to thinking about Korea and the English business. I had heard that bungling the English business was just as big as the English business itself and now I had proof.

dobongsan, or on the subway.

Ajossi, your breath smells
Just like the other ajossi
Soju and stale cigarettes
On a Sunday evening
After a game in the park
And you bump into me
Not caring, eyes on the seat
You'll steal from the child
As soon as it gets off the subway.

You eye me with contempt
At least your left eye does
And you bump into me a little
Harder before the train hits its
Next turn which would pull you
Away from me.

I heard a child call my name the
Other day, playing in the dirt
In front of its house
"Ajossi!" it called and I looked
Around for you, the older man
With a smile that emerges from
Between crinkled lips.

But no one was there
On that darkened street
Where the lamps had burned out
And the shopkeepers had turned in -
No one except the moon and me -
And so when I turned into the moonlight
I saw nothing but the moon above
And shadow below.

The moon rides above us now
Not knowing the hiss of this train
As it pulls in to Cheongnyangni
And you take the child's seat
Pushing her out of the way
Before she gets off the train
Falling on a woman's shoulder
You drift into night -
Ajossi.

weekends

In school, on Saturday.

Houses in South Korea look like houses elsewhere in the world. Surprise, it's concrete.

The War Memorial at Chuncheon, one of the first and most heavily bombed places in the DPRK's assault back in 1950.

Daejon from Bomunsan.

cottage, dacha, villa

It was a hot day so I decided to take the bus out of the city. The countryside was hot, too, and it made me think of Chekov's story in which a man comes into town for the day only to hurry out again to his dacha his arms full of useless things, birdcages, presents, and special foods for his wife, things she couldn't get in the countryside. The story felt hot. The apartment in the city, where the man complained to his friend, was stifling and you felt that the heat never left him, even when he was in the country. He spent sleepless nights on his bed with mosquitoes buzzing around his head and the heat dwindling to a light cool in the early morning. Then before he knew it morning approached and he was leaving, again, for the city.

I had none of his sense of urgency in collecting things I would not use or need. I was simply going out of town but it was hot. Here the countryside suffers under the heat. The rivers run shallow and brown blue over hot white stones sticking out like broken bones, a cemetery aflood. The mountains drink in the heat. Leaves shimmer green from the light. The earth, scorched from the heat, has its revenge in August, giving back everything, burning children's soles, preparing for the cool which will lash the forests beginning with September evenings.

I sweltered on the way to the island, roasted on the lakeside walkway and baked in the shade of the Ethiopia Cafe. The sad blue plastic chairs, feeble in the shade of the cafe, bleached white by the sun and wear, surrounded little white tables from which I had the view across the parking lot, which was really no more than a few meters across, of the memorial to fallen Ethiopian soldiers of the Korean War. It sits there, a foreign tri-domed building, round and smooth. Its ribs are dark brown. They glisten in the sun. Haze rises off the ground like water and the building appears in front of you, out of the heat, like a vision.

Chuncheon was one of the first places the North Korean army attacked. It's the perfect town to shell. The town lies on a flat expanse around two lakes, dotted with pretty islands, and surrounded by hills, high and close. The North Koreans must have bombed this place to hell.

The town itself isn't attractive.

When the Americans recovered most of the peninsula Syngham Rhee went about building his villa on the east side of the peninsula. His life and reign is glorified in pictures and I blanched at the lack of information on this one and same autocrat who ruthlessly cracked down on opposition and riots. Princeton trained - oh yes - with a head for economics and tough love. How else would they have pulled out of a post war slump? Certainly, he was their man. His villa is simple. I went early one morning when no one was there. I looked into his office, his phone where he probably barked commands, the one room where he might have made love to his wife. Are autocrats able to make love?

The wind blows gentle there, the same way it does at my window, rustling the willows like feathers and the pines like clouds.

His villa sits on a rise above a lagoon and overlooks a spreading lawn with several trellises. He certainly had a splendid view. I took shade under the trellis and watched the water ripple. I traced the edge of the lagoon and followed a rocky headland up until my eyes met the sun.

He had his villa built here, within shooting distance of Kim Il-Sung's old villa. The latter's is now nothing at the top of that rocky headland across the lagoon. The only thing that remains are some steps up the hill. The view from the top is impressive and I imagined Kim Il-Sung climbing up the stairs to his retreat when this part of the country was still North Korea, before the 38th parallel moved for the last time. How he must have writhed at knowing that Syngham Rhee built his own personal retreat not far away! Perhaps the pain of knowing your enemy was in your land was a bit like feeling your wife a mistress, and her knowing that you knew she was unfaithful. Maybe that was the cause of the growth on his neck which became so obscene in his later years that bodyguards were positioned strategically around him so that even those who came close saw no more than what might have been a glimpse at something that may have been malignant growth, on the back of his neck.

The land here is magical.

The road runs straight, through Hwajinpo and north to Daejin. It is lined with tank traps and after passing the military checkpoint, razor wire. The Unification Highway appears from the woods, itself secure behind a double fence, barbed wire and invisibly placed dynamite in case of an invasion. It is thick, grey and beautiful. Its light posts feature small metal engravings of the full Korean peninsula, reunited as one country. Hope contained. The forest falls away quickly and the hills look as if they are covered in grass. They are not. The land is methodically razed kilometers before the observation post, which is still a kilometer and a half from the border.

This land, the contested land, I see as if through gossamer.

The road stretches towards the border. The rail line curves towards the checkpoint. Into the distance they both go, towards the mutual place where they disappear. Look into that distance beyond the border where the hills are exposed rock behind a veil of cloud.

fighting

I usually go down to Seohyeon subway station simply to get away from life here, on the mountain.

For the past two Fridays I've watched people pay to fight a boxer. Last week the boxer noticed me and asked me whether I wanted to fight. I declined. Last night the boxer asked me whether I wanted to fight and I declined, again. He insisted, dropping the price from 10 000\ to 3 000\. I tried to walk away but he simply stood there and the crowd was getting antsy at watching this foreigner try to back out of the deal. I turned around and put on the gloves.

Here goes nothing.

October

I was working in a small town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, which twinkles so enchantingly in the summer, a line of silver dividing the country in two.

The Etchemin melds into the St. Lawrence just across from Ste. Foy, after the pounding Chaudiere Falls. Drive along the Etchemin valley and you'd reach a little town, one of the first Irish settlements in this part of the country. The old road heads up the hill and into the town but now the highway cuts around it in a curve, along the river valley. There is a small cluster of houses at the top of the hill. The church spire touches the sky and the library, named after Jack Kerouac, is eternally closed.

I was there in the fall. The trees were bare and the sky, grey as ever, threatened snow. I had signed up as a respite care worker in a town that claimed seven hundred.

The Irish named the town after the prophet Malachi as the Scots did Frampton and the English, Scott. It was a thoroughly English county which was named Dorchester until just recently, and the names, St. Odile de Cranbourne and Ste. Rose de Watford bear witness to the swell of anglophones who called both the Etchemin and Chaudiere river valleys home.

I first saw this little town in the depth of winter. It was a winter from Roch Carrier's book _The Hockey Sweater_, and the road, a thin ribbon, that snaked towards the little lake in the middle the woods at St. Lazare, afterwards ran frighteningly striaight towards his borderland hometown. Nothing stood above the snow. It lay deep, undulating, frozen. A hill appeared, thick with trees and the old road cutting straight through the woods. Houses lined up, small, cozy, hidden except for the thin pipes jutting into the air, smoke rising straight into the sky.

The town was now about to make its turn into winter. The autumn rains hadn't completely passed. Hallowe'en was dark, wet, and the rain felt like murder. I lived in an old white house that was once a schoolhouse I feared was inhabited by the ghosts of schoolchildren - I imagined they would be the worst - or telegraph operators, since afterwards it served as the communication centre for this small town. I worked in the red woodshed across the river. Work was good, though you couldn't hear the neighbours' horses galloping across the fields, whinnying with pure joy at being in the cold, over the scream of air vents and chisel scrapes.

The sun set as I returned from the woodshed, dropping until one day I walked out into the dark. Life was true, though I began to find it tiring.

I asked Marie where she went for vacation. Marie who was so carefree yet direct. She took her week long break not in the Gaspe or in Montreal but on the Etchemin in her one room cottage. Sometimes the river would rise and give her a scare but otherwise she loved the change right there. I couldn't imagine wanting to vacation so close to work, or even making work there a vacation, which is what Roland did, coming down from Quebec City every Thursday to have dinner with the family in /Les Hirondelles/ and then spending time working in the woodshed on the other side of the river.

I never did ask Marie to use her cottage.

I walked out to the bleachers behind the church one night and after looking at the purple blue Laurentides across the river I lay down. The sky turned black, clear, twinkling and I left St. Malachie for outer space.

reading

It was my second year in university. I sat next to an auburn beauty in Can Lit class. I mean, she sat next to me. I was minding my own business, staring out the window at the changing maple leaves in the courtyard when she interrupted my view. The month was September and I was about to be browbeaten by the professor, unable to either define or differentiate between irony and sarcasm. He licked his lips at my plight while I struggled, discerned, then backpedalled in an effort to save myself in front of the whole class. He smirked and then the class released a sigh. He would give us the definition, but first, break.

I don't remember much about the class itself other than the work was dry and boring to read. I enjoyed _Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town_ in retrospect and _The Mountain and The Valley_ not at all. I assume my seat partner felt the same coming less to class, spending more time in the library where we would run into each other after class, she at her carel and I at mine. She read the classics, Ovid, Virgil, while I flipped through the student weeklies, atlases, and perhaps the occassional required reading.

There we sat back to back, she later admitting that she had a crush on Ovid. I wanted to be dead two thousand years, too.

I was frustrated at having thought I had chosen a major that didn't interest me, confused because I did not understand what I read and bewildered because I could not master it. I had only begun reading to understand the year previous and while I understood, in part, what I was supposed to accomplish I didn't know how to go about it. I began writing academic papers and found I was no good, failing miserably in writing English papers, answering multiple choice questions in science, writing short answers for classics, and memorizing French verbs like haïr which, incidentally, means to hate.

The year passed quickly, though by the end of it I still had not learned how to write clearly.

It would land me in trouble the following year where I successfully puzzled professors. They looked at me and assumed I could produce when I couldn't. I did not know how to write but that was because I still didn't know how to read.

I was caught up in symbol and image and history when in fact, the story, the bare enjoyment of what I loved was what these professors wanted to hear. I forgot how to enjoy the stories. I thought professors wanted serious thought, depth, dry wit. If I had known that these teachers had wanted the same passion and simplicity I brought to the Hardy Boys, later to the Hardy Boys Case File series, Encyclopedia Brown's neighbourhood mysteries, and Tintin, then it would have been easier to tell them what I felt.

I felt the stirrings of emotion in my transition from those books of my youth just before university. I read Ibsen, Pirandello, Neruda, Naipaul, O'Neill, and Kafka for the sake of the story. It was pure enjoyment. I ranted with Kafka, labelling the world insipid and cringed at Pirandello's stark landscapes. I was afraid of Naipaul's eccentric characters and moved by Neruda's short poems. I didn't know why. I only know I felt them deeply.

I was puzzled. Was this what these learned men and women wanted? Someone who still enjoyed literature? Surely they still enjoyed it didn't they? I did not know at the time that they could not enjoy the works the same way I could, a virgin to the texts. They enjoyed the works at a structural level and were longing for students who enjoyed it simply for the story but were able to identify structural changes in the work that reflected perhaps the author's intention and creatitvity.

My auburn beauty gave me Chekov's _Collected Stories_ for my birthday the following year before disappearing. I started in on the book. It was a delight to read and I began to understand through what she wrote, how to read. I began to enjoy reading once again.

"To my dear friend Matt,
I started reading these stories on the train. "A Boring Story" looks like the most interesting one, though I didn't finish it. I guess that's up to you. I hope you enjoy the book. All the best for a new year.
Happy Birthday. L."

a boring post

I've made it a habit to drop into a little restaurant on the second floor of one of the myriad of buildings near the subway station to dine on pork bone soup. On my third visit the cook put five large bones in the bowl, up from the normal three, two with hunks of soft pork barely clinging to the bone. Now, my visit on my visit to their empty restaurant - only empty because I go to eat there in the off hours - the cook sat watching karaoke being hosted in the most southerly province mainland in Korea while the waitress leaned on the cash counter at the front of the restaurant. On the television one of the performers knotted his hands behind his back and then brought his arms around his body in a complete circle. I never could watch people dislocate their joints so I laughed uncomfortably. The cook pointed at the tv and exclaimed. I don't know why but I looked back and caught the waitress with her arms behind her back, laughing.

I usually draw out my meal at their restaurant. There's nothing particularly special about the view and they've taped over the tv controls so that customers don't change their favourite channels that show soap operas. I've begun to follow one of the operas myself spending my time there figuring out what could have possibly happened to make the young woman turn neurotic. Was it the overbearing mother or her boss? Why does the father react so violently to the old neighbour who brings gifts for his children? The food is good and the silence aside from the tv is pleasant.

This time, however, as I was leaving the waitress asked me a question. Was I in Korea for money or to study? She smiled, Regardless, we're happy you come here. You have a good appetite. I looked at the cook. She nodded and started talking. All of a sudden I didn't know what they were saying. They went on and on about something I did, I think, and I tried to listen a bit more closely. Surely I'm not incompetent, I thought - and then it happened. I realized that I didn't speak Korean.

In The Mood For Love

I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.' At this point, avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said it what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. [. . .] [B]oth will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony. Both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love.

Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable - Eco

bringin' it

We cycle kids through SeongNam English Town regularly and sometimes the weeks are more difficult than others. Sometimes they are so easy you hardly feel as if you're working. That was the case a few weeks ago when a group of kids came through. Their level was so high that two boys who claimed to rap and beat box, a rare combination, decided to write something for the Friday night talent show. With the help of one of the teachers they pulled it off.

They were amazing.

six2forty: Kids that are Down

jibin'

I'm about to commit a serious faux pas, though I suppose sooner or later it was bound to happen.

I should be thankful, I suppose. Korea's English bound society, in which the optimistic may hope the language be used at least minimally as a lingua franca in the region, but which will perhaps more realistically continue to be used by entrepreneurs every time they set up shop labelling it UGLY Bar or Sea Cruiser Restaurant, has granted me a job with what in English teacher talk is known amongst the cynical as TENOR, teaching english for no obvious reason. My role as a teacher is a solid one, though I can, all too easily, in an instant, make it entirely superflous. It only takes a tiring afternoon and an all too warm odd situational classroom, such as the combination bank/post-office, to turn me into a dull, lifeless teacher. And as my co-teacher muttered under her breath to one of our students today I was merely a window-dresser - I think she meant window-dressing - and though I prefer not to think that she said that on account of the colour of my skin I'd have to agree that sometimes I am. I sometimes simply stare at her. There are things I don't understand. Some might list it as cultural misunderstanding. Why Matthew, you simply don't understand that there is a hierarchy upon which this society is built, and that hierarchy plays into all roles of life. Fine. I accept that, but there are basic human needs which sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, twist those rules to facilitate life.

Let me admit that I don't have much compassion for a co-teacher who when faced with a boy who has a learning disability and needs to go to the washroom forces him to ask in English. The whole situation smacks of imperialism. What can I do but plead for this boy to simply be let go for a minute but then be told that he must say it in English? It's an embarassing situation for both the boy and myself; I've been upended, if we are to stick to traditional hierarchical roles, by a teacher my junior.

Now, being on the outside has certain advantages. Not knowing the language allows you to barge into the bank at closing time and dumbly stare at a teller holding out foreign money until two other tellers open their own wallets and exchange your money into won. And negotiating a cell phone is merely a matter of being fluent in gesticulation and perhaps one or two words such as text and phone card. Slipping on the moving sidewalk and tumbling to the grating is a release from all the bowing and politeness that is like a fine sheen of wax between you and others. Pushing myself up before I reach the lower level of the supermarket is a brief jolt to the reality of life. Complaining, I did it for the first time today, to the teenager who weighs the hand of bananas when it already has a price on it and tries to charge me twice the discounted rate, feels good, and I begin to walk away after a slight pause when I hear him say, "I'm sorry. My mistake. Thanks for shopping at Lotte Mart".

jeremiad

Merciless are you sun!
Yet the month is but May
A tireless rotation of the earth
On its invisible axis -
To call simply a praxis
Would be insensible -
For the practice of turning
Is not practice at all.

Weary do I walk under the trees
My hands dirty
The jug jug of broken fingernails
And T.S. Eliot reminding me of
The indignity of the city.
But here no wrappers lie,
Though the fog curls around the house
Like a cat and promptly falls asleep,
Suffocating, thick, and pale.

Concrete releases its heat
A reverse sun upon sunset
Warmth on a spring night
Along the bank of the river
Smooth, silver, in the half sunset
Glinting yellow on children's faces
And the bowers fragrant purple
Now baked.

We languish in the park.

Oh that my head were
A spring of water
And my eyes a fountain of tears!
Oh, that I had in the desert
A lodging place for travellers!
For this too, is a heap of ruins
A haunt of jackals.

you say tomato, I say tomato

The 9401 from Bundang into Seoul makes its first stop at Hannam, opposite Gangnam and the express bus terminal, on the north side of the Han river. On Sunday you can usually get a seat on the bus. It's comfortable and if you pull the curtains against the sun you can fit in the perfect nap between leaving Seohyeon station and arriving at Hannam. If you stay awake you might notice the bus speeding along the bus lane passing cars, in a line of buses, speeding into the city.

You'd see the green and red of the buses in front and behind you bob like the ferries at the harbour, light, lilting with each lift of the road, not noticing how much your own bus tilts and drops. You'd hear the indicator buzz and see the bus driver's white gloved hand touch a switch signalling it off. The bus lulls then speeds up and the buzzer sounds again. He lets it ring before tapping it off and then speeds up promptly, his hand over the buzzer. Buzz. Tap. Buzz.

Outside the hills rise green. Trees planted after the war still seem unnatural. They rise in straight lines before disappearing completely and the grey white of apartments flock, rising out of the ground like a dazzling thunder of geese, sudden and startling. Then the bridge begins. Metal flashes over us and flicks through the window, reflecting light grey, almost invisible. The river lies beneath us, flat, broad, and shallow. Today it runs silver and clear.

I always look away before the bus finishes crossing the river. I never mean to and I look up again for a glance at the river but it's gone and the bridge finishes itself before stone, then pavement and with a flick the road widens and bends left.

The roads here are wide, as if the city is expecting a military invasion. At Hannam the road is twelve lanes across. The roads might be useful in the near future. On May 18 South and North Korean diplomats made two train trips across the demilitarized zones at both the east and west ends of the peninsula. The western line runs from the recaptured city of Kaesong - home of Division 39 - into the south. The eastern line passes near the old, destroyed villa where Kim Il Sung vacationed as a child.

The train lines don't affect daily life yet.

Most people still take the 9401 to Jongno to do their Sunday shopping, and I plan on seeing Changdeokgung palace. I get off near the overpass look around, collect grime on my shoes, and cough in the darkness of an impromptu parking lot before asking an attendant directions to the palace. It's not far from Anguk station. The palace wall is long but most of it surrounds the secret garden, a large swath north of the palace buildings. Less than half the original buildings remain; the Japanese razed most of the palace grounds on their retreat. Their successors created the secret garden. One path leads back from the palace into the green, towards the pond in which a bent pine stands surrounded by low lush bushes. The sun sparkles through the top branches. It's hard to imagine the city outside the palace walls or anything beyond the city.

I pass through the gate of immortality before the long walk along the exterior walls of the palace to the exit. The city is an affront that crushes the silence and stillness. Cars pack the streets, rumbling.

I want to take the bus home to the mountain. I want the stillness of the palace to follow me. I want the perfect nap between Hannam and Bundang. I board the 9301 to Hanam from outside the Seojeong Arts Centre hoping to catch the 9401 from Hannam. I query the woman next to me.

Yobusayo Hannam buse kayo?
Ne.

Excellent. I doze off and wake up an hour and a half later in the city of Hanam, outside of Seoul. I get off the bus at the terminus. No one is there and the bus driver doesn't care that I'm lost. There are too many buses to count and none of them will take me to Bundang. This is not Hannam by the bridge. It's 10.30pm when I realize this Hanam is not Hannam.

I wonder about the troubles the North Korean army will have if they attack Seoul. After crossing the border by train, secret tunnel and air strike they might be confused. With no street names and with conundrums like Hannam and Hanam the army, instead of crossing south of the river to conquer Gangnam and destroy the rich suburb of Bundang, might find itself stranded at the end of line 9301, in the hills outside Seoul, in Hanam.