Lost In Me

Well, Lostin, I hope no one ever eats anything that plops out of your GI tract.

One of the streets in the richest district in Seoul is named Tehran Road. It is there, as far as I know, to remind Koreans of the treaty of cooperation that they signed with the Iranians some decades ago. I wonder if the Koreans will honor that treaty now, by sending money and aid to earthquake stricken areas of Iran. Though I suppose sending money to Iran would infuriate the Americans to no end.

I've come to conclude that being a chicken must be something like flying on Korean Air... forced to sit all day in a cramped spot, unable to move and continuously fed. I wonder if they have TV's in chicken coops as well, to keep the chickens pacified.

Flying over the Siberian coastline was a stunningly beautiful sight: snow capped mountains meeting ice-covered seas. I love frozen scenery and winter weather, I like to say, because it reminds me of my own soul. Though I'm not completely certain of that, and I'm hoping that my trip will be a chance to re-find myself.

Whatever I may find.

I had a very long and pleasant conversation today with Jen, a co-worker from the summer. Jen is mature, subtle, intelligent, and quite attractive. For the last reason, I've always found myself somewhat on guard around her... careful about how close I get. Though that is perhaps unfair, as it is to allow my behavior towards her to become prejudiced for nothing in particular that she has done. Well, it was a nice conversation nonetheless. She talked quite a bit about her recent visit to Hanna, which I was glad to hear.

I am leaving tomorrow on my trip. I suppose it will give me much to write about.

Over the past couple years, I've been struggling to come to terms with the fact that friendships and other relationships are non-permanent things, and I've observed other people my age dealing with this as well. And it seems odd that I should not yet be used to the intrinsically dynamic nature of human relationships, given my migratory sort of upbringing. But then again, I did not have very many people in my life in any meaningful sort of way until a few years ago, so I never had to confront the issue as a child.

And of course, I’m only thinking along these lines tonight because of the distance that I've felt growing between Hanna and I over the past couple of months. I've never really understood why people grow so cold so suddenly sometimes, but I remember discussing this with an issue-giver after a practice session in my counselor training class. Being a physics major, I came up with a kind of stochastic model for human relationships… and during the debriefing I told my issue-giver that human hearts are like bubbles floating around in calm air. The bubbles do not clamp together permanently; but just as it's certain that some of the bubbles will drift apart, so it’s certain that others will drift together.

Which may or may not be an accurate model… but it does give a kind of comfort.

Today I met Cat, fresh back from Morocco, who had a great laugh after putting a turban on me in the middle of a coffee shop in the middle of white suburbia. It was nice to see her again, and she had some interesting stories to tell about her experience studying abroad.

So I've been wondering why I was so eager to take a trip to Korea this winter break, but after living at home for a few days, it's obvious that wanted to get away from home. I need some alone time, after a rather rough year, and Seoul seems like a nice place to lose myself for a couple weeks. And the hustle and bustle of a major city tends to energize me, which might be just what I need to cure my emotional and psychological burn-out.

Though I'm not sure where my week in China fits into this picture. More on that later.

Tonight I ran into a certain Barbie, who I vaguely remember as being in my group at prom from back in high school. I never actually talked to her back then, and tonight I was pleasantly surprised to have an interesting conversation with her. Though it shouldn't really surprise me, as it's happened to me before that once I finally sat down to talk to somebody I'd known for years, I found somebody I wished I'd been talking to the whole time.

I managed to survive my 9 hour drive through snowy roads yesterday, despite my massive hangover and lack of sleep. Somewhere in northern Ohio, I saw a far-off sign that said "Cantor Set, 1 mile". I laughed, thinking that the Cantor set has measure 0, not 1 mile. When I got closer, the sign read "Center St, 1 mile".

I haven't had much of a chance to blog the past week, because of my illness and finals, and I no longer have internet at home. But I am still alive, though perhaps not quite kicking.

So they've caught Saddam, and so we're going to have to endure a few days of American imperial triumphalism, at least until they realize that his capture will not change the deplorable condition in Iraq; the rebellion will go on, and Iraqis and Americans will still die.

Though primarily, it will still be the Iraqis that do the dying.

I'm sitting here gulping down tylenol and ibuprofen, and I suddenly remember Hanna always had trouble pronouncing ibuprofen. It would come out to be something like "i-boo-profen"... it's funny how remembering even the little things still makes me smile. It's nice because I haven't been able to get much smiling done lately, what with being bedridden and all.

On December 5, 2002, and December 5, 2003, I learned one thing: don't write people meticulous long letters... they're probably too busy to get around to reading it. Ah well, live and learn... I should not be so demanding.

So I'll keep this short. I hope everybody reading this is healthy and warm tonight.

I'm a bit tired tonight from not really sleeping for a week. Which made for an interesting time at my EMT lab... I really should try to be more awake while learning to save lives and so forth. I spent the hour and a half exchanging the usual silly jokes with Rina, as I splinted and bandaged her humerus, radius, ulna, tibia, and fibula, while fending off her bright-eyed salacious little smiles. It's often refreshing to take a class with freshmen... to interact with students who haven't let the institutional atmosphere of this place seep into their bones yet, who aren't yet burnt out from the ceaseless march of industrial education. It reminds me of what I was like before I started middle school in Korea, and gives me a strange sort of hope, though I'm not sure exactly what that is. Maybe just the thought that as a thinking person, in the end I do choose how I let this place affect me, as unforgiving as it may be.

Speaking of bright-eyed freshmen, I haven't heard in a long time from the most unhappy freshman I know. I miss Hanna's delightful laughter and I wonder if she'll let Princeton take any of that away from her. Well, it is crunch time at most colleges, and she is probably very busy, which may be why she never answers the phone. And missing her is in a way just selfishness on my part.

So it's been a difficult week. I just need to survive one more night.

Got woken up again tonight. Though this time it wasn't from troubled dreams, but rather some unruly friends of my housemates. I walked out of my room after being woken up to find a guy in his mid to late twenties screaming at his girlfriend, who had locked herself in my bathroom in order to hide. He didn't even notice I had walked in, as he started to knock down the bathroom door, while the blonde in the bathroom began to scream back at him. I don't even know these people... I just needed to use the bathroom. Tiredly listening to their argument, I started to notice that the enraged guy was not even yelling about anything particular to his girlfriend; he was yelling about himself. For some reason, it reminded me of Fromm's interpretation of Freud: "the individual appears fully equipped with biologically given drives, which need to be satisfied. In order to satisfy them, the individual enters into relations with other 'objects'. Other individuals thus are always a means to one's end, the satisfaction of strivings which in themselves originate in the individual before he enters into contact with others. The field of human relations... is similar to the market--it is an exchange of satisfaction of biologically given needs, in which the relationship to the other individual is always a means to an end but never an ends in itself." It's kind of sad that this seems especially true of most romantic relationships... at least in this culture.

Eventually David came back home and asked his friends to fight elsewhere. I walked into the bathroom, and by the time I came out Panna had appeared out of nowhere, frantically searching for her cell phone. I gave her phone a call, and some random man picked up, claiming he had mistaken her phone for his while he was in David's bedroom earlier in the night. Panna got his address and was about to leave to retrieve her phone, when David began to throw a tantrum demanding to escort her, as he didn't want his girlfriend to meet a man he didn't know in the middle of the night. I wondered why David had let such a stranger into his bedroom, as I watched his stereotypical heterosexual white male machoness swell up and burgeon, much like a certain part of the male anatomy. As if a 180 pound rower girl armed with a knife needed his protection. Panna initially resisted, but in the end looked rather satisfied as she left the door with David tagging along.

Mel, who had been a witness to the whole scene, looked rather glum as she went back to bed afterwards. I'm not sure if it was because David had left her for Panna a few months ago, or because as soon as David walked out the door, his dog decided to defacate in front of Mel's room.

Soon after Panna left with David to search for her cell phone, the blonde who I had seen in my bathroom earlier came back in, and nervously started to smoke while I devoured some toast. I listened to her mutter about her juvenile excuse for a boyfriend for a bit, though I think she was talking to herself and not really me. I had given up on sleep and half-heartedly started to watch the movie that had been playing, neglected, on TV.

The movie ended, and Panna returned triumphantly with David and her cell phone. Now I can hear David talking to Panna and another friend of his in the living room. Apparently his compensatory masculinity has not yet gone limp... "Why's everybody gotta get in my face, I'll fuck em up," I can hear him ranting. Maybe he's just drunk again. I don't mind David. I just respectfully disagree with American social norms, because to me, this twenty-five year old beefy white six-feet tall guy is not the epitomy of manliness he's taken for... just a quitessencially insecure little boy.

At the very least, he makes Panna happy, which is a nice change to see, after her gloom and despair from last semester. Whatever floats her boat... she is a rower after all.

And so, another sleepless night. Ironic how it turned out so silly... this particular night carries a certain significance for me, laden with heavy memories and ghosts from the past. But those are thoughts that I will face alone.

Woke up in the middle of the night. Again. What a time of year.

Working on a computer lab project... a simulation for some kind of quantum thermodynamics thing, and wondering how I'm gonna explain to my partner that I finished it while he was making a booty call to London. I have a bad habit of working on programming late at night when I'm too tired to think but can't sleep. Kind of like a Tyler Durden thing, except just not as cool.

It's gonna be a long night.

Woke up in the middle of the night again, and couldn't fall back asleep. The past week has been like that. But I get a lot of reading done.

So I haven't been blogging much about myself, at least on the personal level, lately. And this is because what I've had to write about myself these days I could only keep to myself.

Hmm... the end of the semester is coming up.