Now

Tuesday, I finished work at 8:00PM and decided to walk around the city for an hour or so. I stopped into a cheap, little variety store, and like all stores of this type, the junk was compelling in all its useless glory. A lot of stuff at dollar stores in Korea have English print on them for whatever reason. I purchased an insanely grammatically incorrect folder with psychotic babbling about vitamins and best friends or some other such cutesy drek. The rabbit on the folder had big westernized eyes and the electric nature of the sugar-fiend who designed it was clearly palpable in the "artwork."

Anyway, I came across some seashells that were kind of nice and decorative, so I bought them as I am forever in search of objects to spruce up my rather sedate-looking apartment. Upon examination, most of these seashells have little concentric lines and bumps running through them. It's easy to forget sometimes that something used to live inside, and that my recent dollar-store purchase used to be something's home. I guess that's just like the irony of most true-life situations: People value things for the wrong reasons. We live in a society that worships the tasteless, tacky and innate…we admire objects for their aesthetic appeal rather than their actual purpose, if in fact there even is one to find. But, I guess I shouldn't criticize, since I can barely find a use for most individuals, myself included.

Lately, as far as the issue of purpose is concerned, I've been considering my own quite a lot. It is amazing to me that someone as shiftless as me has managed to successfully become an adult, if not an adult who is entirely successful. It's annoying that I still suffer from teenage existential angst and dissatisfaction at my age. This makes me neglectful, I think, not only of my ever-growing responsibilities, but of finding means to my ends that I actually support unwaveringly. ..As far as reaching this realization and actually getting the thoughts down in print, I am generally uncertain. Furthermore, were it not for my life-long habit of procrastination, I may have made said discovery a decade earlier and now be a very self-aware person. Unfortunately, no.

I have always had trouble approaching the ends of things. I am terrible about putting things off and very few of my projects reach their end-stages. Maybe it has to do with the fact that much of what I would like to do ideally, is too lofty, ambitious (I am a girl with big plans, though I've learned throughout my time on Earth that disappointment affects me too dramatically, that the regular pitfalls of life may floor me, demoralized, inward, hopes crushed like a paper-cup in a zealous hand.

I am sure I come off this way to people also, like a girl who looks a little unsure, unprofessional, unfocused. I have to concentrate really hard to blink away the cloudiness ever-present in my eyes, but often I don't bother…My face always looks exhausted and my shaking coffee-cup hand gives away the truth. I am also a terrible liar, though I often find myself wishing I were more gullible.

I am getting used to my job, if 'used' is an expression I can actually be justified in using given that a steady routine, a schedule, and the acceptance of said schedule tend to play a requisite part in being 'used' to anything, situational or otherwise. In any case, I have entered a sort of groove at work— the days just sort of bleed together. My boss no longer criticizes my teaching style, my students attend class regularly, I correct journal entries, and I drone on about how to write proper thesis statements. My life has reached this weird state of pseudo normalcy, of expectation, which I'm not entirely sure I'm fond of, but can definitely get 'used' to. ..Though it's exhausting me and potentially using me (and my remaining resources) up.

Sometimes I am hard pressed with the feeling that there's only so much time in life and that one ought to (as they say) "make the most of it." I know I am young, (though I am approaching yet another birthday), but as I often say, some days I just feel incredibly, decrepitly old. It makes me reluctant and terrified to think of what 30 will feel like and I am certain I will not see 40. I'll have just become too accustomed to life, or rather, too 'used' to life by then, or maybe, in some weird cosmic megalomania-driven twist; life will have become too used to me and all my melodramatic whining. And finally, desperate for some fresh air, I will be thrown upon the scrap heap with all the other empty shells. And maybe some will think of me, the absent person, as valuable and worthwhile (for their own reasons), while others will consider the things I leave behind, my paper-trail, messy like cut up bits of confetti paper, as representative of my legacy, proof of my significance.

So, I've decided that if the world ever deems me a worthwhile person, I'd rather it not be a posthumous realization. I'm just going to live (if that's the correct term to use) for each day and discover that I've yet again managed to somehow wake up for another day of work or school, or whatever the case may be. And when I am all used up, I hope I can just vanish from all memory, my paper-trail burning up behind me like a lit fuse.

I haven't had much time to write these last few weeks, but I suppose time is still moving very quickly. So quickly in fact, that days and memories get confused in my mind. It makes me think of Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory, that all too famous, verging upon the cliché painting of clocks hung out on a mindscape, lingering, gradually dripping like slices of melting cheese. It makes me hope that most minds are in as disarranged a state as my own, that different moments are hung out to dry all at once and are slowly becoming less solid as time progresses. With all this lack of clarity, of certainty existent within most human minds, or at least within minds that consider such matters, who can even account for what they did earlier that day? Is it not reasonable to assume that quite likely if one wished to remember morning, they'd have countless near identical memories from which to draw.

Maybe the "Now" moment, which so many people claim is of the utmost importance, is not actually "now," but just some celestial trick on the (mind's) eye; smoke and mirrors; a parlour game…It would certainly account for the many creepy déjà vu experiences, or those strange times in cities on the other side of the world when you see someone you've never met, who despite their race, looks identical to someone you know at home. Maybe it can all be traced back to the elusive melting clocks…or that great mystery of the divide between time and space…

So, yeah. Purpose. Maybe the point is to see how much a human can actually remember in life. If that's the case, the school system would make sense I guess (history class was worth it, maybe?), and perhaps then, we'd have very fulfilling, purpose-driven societies. On the other hand, it could instead be that the point is to remember to forget, or to forget to remember, whichever makes the most sense. If one were truly to "live in the moment," memory would serve no purpose, it would in fact, be entirely against the theory of 'now.'

Someone, somewhere (I can't recall, ironically enough) once told me that goldfish have a memory of only 10 seconds. So, they are literally forced to just live when they are alive and nothing more. As they swim around their little domes, the last 10 seconds of swimming is all they remember. I suppose this is why they never appear to be bored out of their tiny little minds—they've only been trapped in this dull little enclosure for 10 seconds. When they die though, the only thought they'll have left is of the previous 10 seconds, which is unfortunate since this means that their only memory of life will be those final 10 potentially unpleasant seconds while expiring. I suppose it cuts the messiness of life into more palatable bits, but it does seem just as pointless as the alternative—producing a million or so new thoughts a day, which many humans suffer to keep in check.

Sometimes these thoughts melt right away, like how we often only remember dreams for a moment, then can never recall them again as they soak into our individual subconscious realms (what a scary place mine must be!). Others stay, hauntingly, stubbornly with you for always, like a stubborn birthmark…on the surface, an item of disdain and reluctant acceptance, something we try to hide. Make-up helps to mask these types of blemishes only slightly. Some tell me that the goal of life is to interact with people, to make connections. If they're right, I am in trouble. In my next life, I'll be back as a goldfish.

I have been getting better in the area of human connections, I guess, but sometimes I just feel so hollow, vacant. Other times I find myself missing the company of particular individuals. And while this sentiment makes me smile, the memory of select moments, the very notion that I, girl that I am, could possibly desire, perhaps even need someone I don't know entirely (how could anyone ever succeed here, at a rate of a million or so new thoughts a day?), terrifies the hell out of me. Perhaps it has to do with the previously discussed issue of control. If I can control nothing else, at least I should be able to control my body and its actions. Being involved with another individual, there is sometimes that fear of a loss of self, somehow. Even if one is particularly fond of said individual…I don't know, but upon letting a new person into one's life (for me, this is not often), there is always this strange sense of self-division in an attempt to sort out the reality of one's self and how to best present it to another person. Maybe we're all just show-pieces. That would explain a lot about modern culture, I suppose.

Essentially, given that I fear the uncertainty and spontaneity of my own thoughts so often, when I am with another person, and can't remember to forget to remember that I shouldn't be thinking of such things, I am terrified…There beside me, so physically close, is a body (warmer than mine), with a mind I won't ever be entirely aware of. It is distressing, but the fact that I am currently willing to accept it gives me an odd sense of peace and has made me contemplative, which is a distraction for less pleasant pastimes, I suppose.

Anyway, in recent weeks, I've been to Coex Aquarium in an area that is rather far from the now familiar Insa Dong. This Coex Mall is extremely crowded and though it wasn't a lot of walking, we were exhausted from the tiresome shuffling of moving at a snail's pace and manoeuvring through throngs of people, mostly squealing, hyperactive, smelly children. Fish sort of freak me out, but I must admit that some were pretty beautiful, hypnotic even, to watch. I thought the jellyfish (the ones in the aquarium lit with a purplish sort of light) were gorgeous. We watched them for about 5 minutes. They were translucent and had a way of moving that seemed to me to be very precise, leisurely almost. They reminded me of ballet-dancers, bobbing up and down in ultra-slow-motion, their appendages (?) like gorgeous skirts blessed with kinetic energy.

I was induced to pick up a starfish. I was a little wary about it, but it was incredible, if a little slimy, to feel its breathing on the palm of my hand. It's wonderful that something so…decorative (?)…could have life. The axolotls (essentially fish with the beginnings of tiny legs) were really amazing to see. They must be a link in that evolutionary chain Darwin dreamed up over a century and a half ago—one of those creatures who pulled itself up out of the swamp waters (how, um, inspiring!) and learned how to move around on land too.

The seahorses (or sea-dragons, as they are called here) were so brilliant. I'd only ever seen fossils before, so I was very intrigued. They have these amazing tails that coil around each other and plants, and they just float in the water, heads bobbing up and down, tails ever coiling, always graceful. They look like they don't belong on this world, but would be better found in a fairy tale or off some hidden isle veiled in fog and mist, the inspiration for fantasy stories, the offspring of a more magic and more ancient time.

Essentially, even if it was an ordeal to walk, and the aquarium was sorely lacking in big fish like whales and dolphins, I'm glad to have gone. I'm sure that if it is ever quiet there, it would be a beautiful thing to silently walk around, listening to your footsteps and surrounded by water and the movement of so many other strange creatures…There was of course, a tacky gift shop (nothing is complete without one). I bought a keychain flashlight sort of thing that lights up in (red, blue, orange, yellow, green) the shape of different sea creatures. It's kind of a pretty, if a bit tacky sort of souvenir, but sometimes those are the best kind.

We also managed to get to Seoul Tower, which is on Mount Namsan ('Nam' means 'North,' apparently. There's also a mountain on the southern edge of Seoul, so the city is essentially enclosed, or so I've been told). We caught the cable car up and this experience was thankfully, briefer than I'd anticipated, as the volume of people along for the ride made me feel much like a canned sardine, a feeling I've experienced often since landing in Korea… Unfortunately, the most vivid memory I have of this place is of being freezing. Upon consideration, it probably wasn't the wisest choice to visit the top of the mountain on one of Korea's colder winter days. It was nearly 5pm by the time we got there and nothing was really open except for restaurants, ice cream shops and the observatory. I wanted to go to the zoo (I haven't been to one in so long!) and the botanical garden (apparently there's one somewhere, as well as some sort of art museum housing ancient Korean artifacts), but according to the woman at the info booth, who put up her arms to form an X, nothing was open. The only thing of actual interest was the old towers where they used to light signal fires to alert the next post that danger was near. We took a picture. Overall though, it was kind of disappointing. I wondered why so many people had come to visit the tower on this day and why it was an important enough outing to wait awhile in line for the opportunity to do so.

The weekend before was spent going out to a myriad of bars and clubs, including one in Hong Dae called "S" bar, which I've decided I don't really like very much. It was a typical club, awful hip hop music and eager young people using social lubrication as an excuse for their behaviour. It wasn't our first choice, particularly, but Pam, the Irishwoman, who we met on New Year's, was out and we thought we'd say hello.

These sorts of clubs have always irritated me. No one acts this way in real life, the way they would act in a club, I mean. But I guess the table-dancing, ass-shaking, essentially unreal personality of this kind of place is what gives its appeal to so many people. Maybe people don't want to think about anything but the "now" either. It makes me doubt my convictions when I consent to go to these places…But yeah, like my Coex souvenir, bars like these are basically tasteless little distractions one can hardly help but be compelled toward (ooh…shiny). And "Now," ironically (and slightly hypocritically), I am writing this blog about past weekends, writing now, but on subjects entirely divorced from the current time, proving that being who I am, it is with difficulty that I remember to forget even the foggiest of experiences.