The Distorted Breath

Two Saturdays ago, we went to Quidam, a Cirque de Soleil show at Jamshil. We had been walking around Hong Dae with some friends, checking out vintage clothing shops and sort of lost track of time. We had to take a cab there and I thought we'd be late, but we made it just in time, to my immense relief. It would have been a shame to have missed it a second time (we'd tried going several weeks before, but my tattoo session went longer than I'd expected).

I barely know how to begin writing about this show—I sometimes think that language has far too many limitations, considering its developers were of course, 'only human'; Man-made things do tend to be slightly more flawed and disappointing in comparison to things that simply exist—and therefore, I apologize if my words are inadequate to describe such a beautiful piece of performance art.

At the start of Quidam, a girl sits with her parents (both absorbed in newspapers, blank and expressionless) in a rather sedate looking parlour. Suddenly, there can be heard the deep rumbling of a thunder and lightening storm and a stranger, headless, and carrying an umbrella, knocks and enters. He stays only a short time, this curious and completely silent visitor--just until the rain slows down—and when he leaves into the night, he conveniently 'forgets' his seemingly superfluous hat, which he'd been carrying politely up until this point. The girl, still looking very bored, decides to try the visitor's hat on, either on a whim or by some sort of mechanical inclination or divine intervention.

It is at this point that reality sort of falls apart and is consumed by a starving imaginative force. The chairs where the girl's parents sit are lifted upwards to the ceiling and hover, as the floor clears and the performance begins.

A man in a silver wheel is the first to appear and he makes his entrance suddenly, hypnotically spinning around the stage and approaching dangerously close to the floor, but never falling. He spins in his wheel like a top then drops to the ground, rocking back and forth like a tossed, overly-bouncy hula-hoop that refuses to still itself. It's really a feat of perfect balance, I think, and limbs spread-eagle, for several moments, he looks quite like Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. It barely seems possible.

The cast of Quidam is massive, so, many people are on-stage at once doing different things, creating their own realities. One young girl twirls around the stage, arms stretched and reaching, like a child playing "airplane," for what must be a very dizzying half an hour, as she captures the wind under her black dress, parachute-style. Others perform acrobatic feats to rather haunting music; a group of tiny girls toss spinning wooden hourglass shaped toys on strings, high into the air and catch them again. This trick is quite amazing, so it is even more incredible when they start tossing and catching themselves on each other's shoulders, perfectly, like there's nothing to it.

There are clowns, masters of slapstick, better at moving than any "Kramer," completely uninhibited. They interact with the V.I.P section of the audience, pulling random people on-stage to create a story—in this case, there's one about an unrequited, tragic love with comedic effects. It was truly hilarious, watching Koreans shake their asses in pantomime, ham up overly dramatic death scenes and pretend to drink poison, Juliet-style, after pirouetting crazily around in some sort of manic interpretive dance. I was thoroughly amused.

My favourite part of the show however, was a performance that has remained in my mind these last two weeks, perhaps because it was so surreal and heart-breaking at once.

From the rafters, two long lengths of what appears to be red silk are sent out to the center of the ceiling. From her place backstage, a woman approaches, leaping soundlessly. In a way that hardly seems human, she scales these ropes, quickly, seamlessly, rather like an insect might. She propels herself this way and that, using one rope for a foothold, tangling up her toes, the other for leverage around her wrists. She does this until she is perfectly horizontal, hanging in mid air. The next moment, she drops dramatically, head first, the only thing saving her from a broken neck, the wound red silk. At one point, the fabric expands, almost magically, and suddenly, one can see her form through the sheer red material, sitting as though she were on a swing of sorts. Her foot wraps around the other piece, dangling in mid-air, and then, she is enveloped and struggling to escape, like a bird pecking its way out of its shell or a caterpillar trying to make its way out of its cocoon a little too early. Her struggle seems frantic, yet determined. The music reaches a really forlorn peak. One can see her hands pressed up against the silk, feeling, searching, almost desperately, like one whose life depends on escape, ultimately.

When she finally emerges, she performs more of her tricks up in the air, making love to the silk, though with not as much passion as before, it would seem; the music is quite serene and quiet. The silk seems somehow to be restrictive; she appears to struggle. Perhaps the butterfly woman feels that her life, resigned to these two lengths of silk, beautiful to be sure, but a prison, nonetheless, would be one too filled with restraint and limitation. Up in the air, twisting and spinning like a spider in her web, a noose is fashioned somehow, and by the time the music stops, she has as well, hanging peacefully by her beautiful neck, dead by the red silk scarves. It may just be the most incredible thing I've ever seen.

Several amazing acts follow and at the end of the show, there is seen the familiar doorway, and the headless stranger appears looking for his hat, it would seem. The girl returns it to him and sanity appears to be restored. The sacred and the profane are no longer palpable as separate entities, but have returned once more to an indecipherable, seemingly mundane whole. The stage is calm. The audience is speechless, then roars with applause at this amazing piece of captured dream, the impossible having not only been accomplished, but performed in front of a massive audience, witnesses to humanity's ever-surprising capacity.

To say the experience has left me awe-stricken is putting it mildly. Watching humans move like rubber-bands (despite seemingly skeletally sound bodies) was highly surreal and it will be something I'll remember forever. It's a truly weird thing to watch a distortion of reality which encompasses so many different aspects; love, death, sex, mania, interpretive as they always are, to regular life as we know it.

This Sunday, in Insa Dong, I was talking to a friend about imagination and distortion over a Long Island iced tea. I mentioned the Classical Greek line of thought that had been speculated on quite thoroughly by the foremost philosophers of the day. I brought up the idea that the line between what is real and what is mental fabrication is a highly static one, that it was thought that material things exist because we imagine them, because we will them there. It sounds like a silly idea, I know, but it's one of those sceptical concepts that have been around for an extremely long time.

In an Indian creation story I read some time back, the world begins with nothing and then somehow, a being wills itself into existence before making everything else. It doesn't makes sense, I know, but perhaps, "Nothing" is a poor choice of words and that in essence, the blank, the dark, the void, really is an entity unto itself, a "Something" ironically enough.

Waiting for their friend outside the convenience store, she leans into him, his arm around her neck. He squeezes her tightly and she exhales slowly. He asks her if she is real. Jokingly, she tells him that she is a mirage, a figment of his deluded brain, that she has never existed at all, and that if his sanity is ever regained, she'll disappear, like an absent imaginary friend. "Don't scare me," he smiles. When their friend re-emerges outside the glass doors, and they start walking again, he holds her hand a little tighter and listens to her breathe.

Early Sunday afternoon, tired and a bit dazed, we all went together to Arui, a tea and meditation center in Insa Dong that we've been to several times before. Drinking my White Lotus Flower tea (which is really good and is supposed to be a cure-all for unhappiness), I coloured the mini Mandala that had been provided along with the coloured pencils. We noticed that there was something written underneath each picture and someone suggested it might be some sort of "Confucius Say" fortune cookie type of thing. We asked the ultra-calm waiter who spoke relatively decent English, if he could tell us what the words said, but apologetically, he told us "No," and embarrassed, went to fetch the meditation teacher, who was nearly bilingual. Her name is Eun Jun, I think, but she told me to call her "Amy." She read the Hangeul for us and translated what were basically really profound horoscopes.

Mine was the shortest, just a line. It simply said something to the effect that I should be grateful to be alive and that I should focus on being healthy and happy to the best of my ability. I felt a little trapped by irony and circumstance and John gave me a little nudge. The meditation teacher and I got into a conversation about the practices she teaches and though she told me about a lot of different breathing styles, the one I found really very fascinating was the idea that we need to slow our breathing down; that if we only inhale and exhale two or three times a minute, our lives will be longer and ultimately better. This struck a chord, this notion that we only have a certain number of breaths to breathe per life. It's as though we are each allotted a certain number of breaths and if we waste them on words that really don't need to be said, we're ultimately shortening our lives.

I don't know how meditative a person I have the potential to be. I've got one of those minds that rarely go to sleep, though my body is exhausted. On the rare instance it does, it frightens me, as it's like a black-out instead of a gradual descent into the sort of "Alpha," half-awake state that I'm used to. I mistake this heavy, 'real' sleep for death, and I prevent myself from slipping into it by jolting awake in bed to make sure I can still move. Despite what I've tried, the only success I've had with really deep sleep are the occasional sleeping pills, a temporary suffocating fix to shut the paranoid, gnawing thing up and let me rest.

It's a bit unfortunate, I suppose, that some of my worst habits, which are obviously neither healthy for my body or mind, are really the most calming to me, as it is here when I am most outside myself. It was very intriguing to me, though, the meditation teacher's concept that we're each born with a maximum breathing capacity in life, but that, waylaying any physical intervention or intrusion, we have the ability to cheat our expiration dates and still be 'good,' like mildly-spoilt-is-it-still-okay week old milk. I honestly don't imagine meditation would work for me, but I think I'd like to try it at Arui, just for the experience.

Lately, I've still been feeling really run-down during the week and my boss is still having a lot of problems paying me. He only gave me a portion of my salary this month and I was very upset. He's promised to pay the balance this week. He's hired a new teacher named Ju-Ree Lee, who I like much more than the others before her. She's been here one week now and I've talked to her quite a bit. She's perfectly bilingual, which is quite the comfort, as at least there's now someone in the school who can speak the same language as myself. She's already told me that she doesn't think Wah Jah Nim communicates well and that he never tells her what's going on. I bid her welcome to my world.

Today was Teacher's Day in Korea. My students have been giving me candy all day. The boss gave me a rose (and a massive slab of cake that I was pressured to eat, which was highly unpleasant), all embarrassed, making it clear that there was no romantic intention. I think I rolled my eyes. I can barely stand him. Maybe if he spent his money on my salary instead of roses and cakes, we could be friends or colleagues, but alas, he remains an asshole. He did tell me that I am a very good teacher now though, which makes things slightly more tolerable. I'd be an even better teacher, I think, with a week-long vacation, but he's still undecided on this issue, it would seem.

On the weekends, on the other hand, I feel so much better than I do during the week, even energized sometimes. Maybe I'm happy, though it's kind of strange and out of character. I've never felt it before.

We went to the kitsch museum in Insa Dong on Sunday and I had a great time playing with all the old '70s and '80s memorabilia, Astroboy stuff, chintzy little dolls that I'm sure I may have owned at some point. I was looking for a ViewMaster, but unfortunately, I only found the slides. A LiteBrite game would have been nice too…or an Etch-A-Sketch.

Later, we went to India Style Café with some new friends, a mix of teachers and military people. It felt really good to be in a sort of group and just have conversations and feel like I was interesting. I've never really had that before. I was, of course, the only Canadian in a group of eight or nine Americans with the Georgian drawls and all. It was pretty interesting, I guess, but one of the two military guys was hitting on some Korean girls at the next table/bed (at this bar, you sit on elevated Moroccan, harem-style beds), which seemed a little bad, considering he didn't know a word of her language, or she of his. But, it's something you see a lot here—White guys with Korean girls. Apparently, this pisses Korean men off, but whatever…It's all a bit hypocritical, as I've heard often that Korean men really go for North American/White girls themselves, if they get an opportunity (which aren't as common as those presented to Korean women, of course).

Anyway, it's weird how things work out, really. I came to Korea on a whim. I've met everyone I know here by randomly approaching them and striking up conversations when I decided I felt sociable, or by responding to intelligent, flattering e-mails…J It's weird, it really is how a split-second decision can wind up affecting the course of your entire life. I say this because I feel different somehow; not entirely changed or better (I don't think I've ever consciously felt well), but more "okay," like I'm just going to go along with things and be my own person. While it's true that I've asserted my individuality on many prior occasions, I feel like it may last this time around. It's really ironic too; this feeling of having some control over my life, considering I attribute it somewhat to the effects that someone other than myself has had on my life, thus far, in just a few months. I feel very much myself, which is a comforting change from the tense discomfort I'm used to feeling around many people. I don't know how to explain it, this thing that I was struck with one day, not so long ago, as I am only as articulate as language permits, but it's just one of those feelings that I was sure I was dead to, that I'd never sense or experience at all.

I used to say, "I'm not going to hold my breath" waiting for something good to happen to me. And I'd sigh, voiding myself of air, deflated and limp, absolutely empty. Lately though, I am focusing on conserving my breath (which I've spent quite frivolously up until now, having never really thought much about human expiration dates), figuratively speaking at least. And truth told, prior to my previous assertions, it turns out that holding one's breath isn't so bad after all.

Static

Permanence is one of those concepts that has rarely had much meaning to me. Perhaps it is the sceptic in me who has never quite believed in "that is all," that anyone can really "live happily forever after." Some may chalk it up to paranoia or a lack of trust, to the questioning nature of the human mind that only believes what it can see with its eyes and feel with its fingers. I know that everything is temporary; life itself is seeped in transience for those of us who refuse to subscribe to blind belief in…whatever lies ahead. However, sometimes, some moments, I just want to remain frozen, stationary, a statue to prove to future generations of equally confused people, that I was here and that whatever remains of me, either in memory or material possessions, is highly subject to human bias as well as a special sort of dissolution; an entropy that time lays waste on both the mind and the body.

I've been re-reading Dante's Divine Comedy these last few days. My thoughts are highly influenced by whatever words fall beneath my eyes and so, I guess it's safe to say that it's a good thing I've been writing this year, as my thoughts are very temporary and hard to grasp, slippery as they are.

Fascinating as the book is, one of the best aspects, in my opinion, is how the story is layered, and how seamlessly everything seems to pass, as transitory as one moment is from the next. As Virgil's shade guides Alligeri through Limbo (home of the unenlightened but 'good' heathens and un-baptized infants) all the way to the city of Dis (where traitors are condemned) in the seventh circle, they come across many desolate spirits.

The chapter I find most impacting perhaps is the one dealing with the fate of suicides and those who have harmed themselves; These people lose their independence and become part of an organic whole—a tree in the forest that can still feel human pain and think human thoughts; a tree with a soul that can still recall its earthly life, yet neither move nor assert its individuality. It's ironic really, that in death, these souls become growing, 'live' plants that are even able to produce fruit. Perhaps being forced to 'live' (whether they're human or not), is the consequence of their actions as decided by a life-bestowing universe.

The fruit the suicide-trees produce is the food of harpies (foul, shrieking bird-women) who dwell in Hell. The harpies pluck the succulent fruit from off the trees' branches and devour them. This consumption causes the trees great ongoing physical agony which they can never escape, so bountiful are their boughs. The point is, because these people gave themselves up in life and took control of something that wasn't theirs to control, their punishment is to have no resistance in the afterlife, rooted in the earth as they are. This of course, is the worst imaginable sentence for those who, so to speak, seize the reins on their lives and bodies; eternal torment of the soul when the intention was to attain peace and escape.

I can't say I felt entirely well after reading this chapter, yet another series of thoughts on the consumption of life and its relentless suffering. Like most 'moral' things, it just makes me feel extremely guilty and tired.

It scares me sometimes, to think back on some of the things I've done and how I've lived my life up until now. I look at other people randomly, like on the bus or subway, and wonder about them, these people with their lives, so seemingly different from mine, and I wonder if they look at me and are curious too.

One aspect I have been contemplating a lot lately is layers, not just those in Hell (and there are many), but in everything, both physical and psychological.

Last Sunday, we had our portraits done in the park by three different university-aged artists. Sitting in different spots, they all sketched and painted their subject at the same time, illustrating with their own perspectives (which depended on angle, lighting and the artists' respective milieus) the same person. It was awkward, having not only three artists constantly looking up at my face, but a whole crowd of people with cameras, checking out the foreign girl who had to hold still and be taken in, chin up.

For the artist sitting to my left, the side view of my nose and an exaggeratedly long neck proved to be the prominent features of my face. He made my eyes green (the artists were very liberal with their color choices) with long, spidery eye-lashes under slightly bagged, weary-looking eyes.

To the artist sitting to my right, who essentially drew everyone the same way—in a naïve sort of style on black construction paper, I came out looking like a "little people" doll, those old Fisher Price toys with hollow cylindrical bodies, no limbs and round heads with rosy cheeks, semi-triangle for a nose and big, round eyes, three eye-lashes apiece.

The artist in the middle, who got a straight view of my face, as I stared at the top of his head (my focal-point to avoid eye-contact), first sketched my face in a flesh-toned pencil crayon, and then painted in water colors, creating a beautiful layered effect. My hair in this picture is blue, garnished with the purple flower that John had put in my hair, sticking out of the pig-tail bun just enough. My eyes and the shadows around them are done in yellow and green, suggesting both warmth and ice all at once. My mouth, looks like my actual mouth, really; small, with subdued pink, chapped lips. I look very young. It's a beautiful portrait, though I don't think that it's quite what I look like, irregardless of the odd choice of color.

In any case, the experience made me think of how we are viewed by others on a daily basis, and even more, how we view ourselves. Catching the odd reflection of oneself in a subway window and looking momentarily hideous doesn't necessarily mean a person will look that way all day. Equally, trying to hold a perfect expression will only make one's lips quiver and face hurt. Humans, I've come to realize, are highly dynamic in appearance. Capturing life with a camera proves this. It's amazing to me, looking at old pictures of myself, that a few years ago I might have passed for an entirely different person. I wonder if that person is gone only to me, or if somewhere (about the eyes, maybe?) others can make her out.

Do our collected experiences simply add up, layer upon layer, upon our skins? Are we like tableaux raseau (blank slates) on which the years spackle on exhaustion and bitterness and anxiety and wisdom? Are our sins and weakness perceivable to those who know how to both see and look at the same time, those who can pierce the protective-layer-plastic-wrap and get beneath the surface?

My thoughts, as they often do, return to literature, Dorian Grey's portrait, specifically, and how with each atrocity he committed in life, another layer was added to his picture, making it more monstrous to reflect his inner nature. His outer-self, his public face, that is, remained beautiful, unmarred by time or cruelty. I guess it suggests that we can never really know a person, that we can't assume that a person's character and personality are truthful rather than illusionary.

I sometimes feel a lot of weight, like a sort of pressure on my torso, a constricted sort of breathing; an incubus on my chest. At these moments, I am at my worst. I cannot socialize or speak or focus. I want for nothing but to be left alone and to let the pressure collapse my frame until I'm nothing but an imploded pile of dust on my bedroom floor. But, forced to be out in the world as I generally am, I find myself avoiding a lot of eyes, not being able to find my voice, and walking quickly, twisting my body this way and that to avoid contact, a knocked shoulder, a brushed arm. But, it is very hard to remain inconspicuous here.

Yesterday, in the grocery store, a teenage girl who I've never seen before grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go, forcing me to walk with her and her mother down the soft-drink aisle. Finally, her mother noticed my rather alarmed expression and bade her to let me go. Confused, I muttered "bye," and waved slowly to her, walking in the other direction as the girl whined to her mother, who was pulling her along by the arm, about me being "pretty."

I feel as though I am under constant observation here. People are curious; they check out my shopping basket as I shop; their children come up and stare me down, asking me all sorts of questions, waiting for their parents to congratulate them on their English talent. I've been told by many Koreans that I am very attractive, but perhaps I am made somewhat exotic here, as a foreigner in a rather uni-cultural country. In truth, I feel repulsive many days, to the point of embarrassment. I cannot raise my chin for fear it will be noticed, this albatross, if you can call it that, this weight around my neck that flaps dead and flesh-heavy on my chest, 'thump' with each step I take. Looking in the mirror, I am sometimes demoralized, not because I always feel particularly ugly, but because I come off so one-dimensionally, so flat. And all my steps are like a dull clatter on the pavement, blunt objects smacking together; concrete lips.

When people tell me otherwise, insisting that I am wrong, I am slightly amused that they see joy and light when I spend the majority of my time shuffling around like so much dark matter. Perhaps like the artists in Hongik's Free-Market Park, seen from a different angle or better lighting, I come off differently.

I do have my good moments too, of course. But the warm, headiness of Sunday afternoons is impossible to keep with me throughout the week, as I sit in an isolated teacher's room under flickering florescent lighting, listening to my boss slam doors and clump around with that brisk, aggressive walk of his that makes me angry and uptight; the walk so unlike mine, a near silent, plodding, sneaker-clad tip-toe, making every effort to pass unnoticed, weightless. His walk, which I find nearly audacious, is one that that reminds me of certain family members early in the morning, while I tried to get five more minutes of sleep huddled in my quilt, slamming around cupboard doors and not caring if the wooden steps creaked.

I cringe every time the sliding door of his office opens and 'clump, clump, clump,' he approaches to talk to me or give me negative feedback—apparently I wasn't smiling quite enough for a parent while I was typing my redundant progress reports all this week. Not that this has any reflection on my manner as a teacher in the classroom (my students like me and all seem to have lots of fun, not to mention the fact that they've improved a hell of a lot since I've taken over), but whatever…The boss (Won Jahn Nim) also asked me today whether I had any problems with the job or in my personal life (ha!). I told him that I needed a vacation, maybe in June (he said July would be better), and that I didn't see a point in sitting around bored and doing absolutely nothing for four hours (rather than go home) during the exam period when virtually all my middle school students are absent because they're stressed-out, tired, and busy studying. It shouldn't last too much longer, the exam period, that is, but regardless, I still feel very tired and like I need a bit of time to myself, away from the watching eye of Koreans who discuss me in Han-guk when I'm sitting right in the same room. I guess they assume I can't understand them at all (when in fact, I've picked up on quite a few words and have at least a base vocabulary at this point).

I realize that Koreans view me a certain way and that their opinions are probably based mostly on their expectations; what they know about the few North Americans (with that Anglo-Saxon, mostly Caucasian background) they've encountered before, as well as their biases. I don't condemn them for it or anything, but it just frustrates me that I am viewed here, at Bicycle Language Academy, I mean, and to a large extent, to most of the people in this country, through a very narrow perspective: a keyhole if a might, for which no key has ever been fashioned.

But, because I know that few things are ever really permanent, especially people, with all their frailty and psychosis and vacillation, piled layer upon layer upon their already relatively shaky frames (no foundation necessary), I do have some hope that things won't always be so hard, so sad, so consuming and mind-numbing.

Last Saturday, I got a tattoo to remind me of this. The words 'entropy and optimism' slightly below my navel have become the latest layer upon my flesh. While it's true that I am not a "navel-gazer," if things ever do go that way for me and I become meditative, at least I'll have a built-in mantra, or at the very least, some awesome body graffiti with which to occupy my mind.

Right now, it's kind of itchy and scabby, but I'm sure it will look alright. The important thing to me is that it is permanent, a self-induced scar (via the tattoo artist and 150,000 won) which will remain with me no matter how I might shape-shift, shrink or grow. And like the words I am so influenced by in books, perhaps these words too, as I contemplate my body, day after day, will be able to permeate my mind, or at least the outer-most layer. And maybe they'll resonate in a way that is neither skewed nor shadowed, but visible to everyone in exactly the same way, the variable eliminated.

And until I die and my flesh rots, stripping away layer after layer, like some sort of study shot in still life, it will be legible (a temporary sort of permanence, I guess), not only as a reminder of reality and the fate of those unfortunate enough to be a part of it, but as a chronicle of a time in my life when layers and dimensions really mattered to me, when being clear and legible not only to myself, but to those important to me, was seeped in significance.

Every day and every action and every conversation we have culminates to our current lives. With all the decisions and interacting and talking we make and do, it's inevitable that even the sturdiest of status quos is without a foundation. We are in a constant state of flux, reaching our ends and blossoming all at once.

Right now, despite some very bad days, I think life has never been so full. I cannot prevent hours from passing, words from being said, or eyes from closing shut. But, I've come to understand that I can create a sort of layered static-forever in my dreams, in my writing, and in my soul.