On the Way Over

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31 May 2008
Somewhere over the Sea of Okhotsk

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I’d forgotten what it looked like on the map, the Sea of Okhotsk, with its fault arching up from Asia briefly and then cusping, curving down again eastward like a flattened 人 with its right leg pulled. But upon waking up, it’s good to see it again, and fitting.

As I was stacking my shirts and pants in front of my suitcases last night, a phone call from Sogang came in to place me. Asked what I most wanted to see on my visit to Korea this time around, I blurted out that I couldn’t wait to see the National Museum (국립중앙박물관), and launched into an explanation about visiting Buddhist temples during the fall, when the foliage would be aflame and the gwaebul (괘불) would be dusted off and unrolled from the sky. Some things never change – I’ll wager that I was about as interesting as when I gave my paean to samgyetang (삼계탕) during last summer’s placement interview. But this time my interviewer told me that she was placing me in level 5. So now I’m back and feeling that if the Aleutian Islands were milestones, then so now is the Sea of Okhotsk, my point of departure just beyond it and my deposit something more than my day.

I am beginning my year in Korea on the Richard U. Light Fellowship. Last night, walking through the security gate at LAX, I saw my parents and my sister together for the last time in an unmeasured span. I’m working to persuade them to visit during winter break, but for all I know, this could be it for over a year. And this is not the first time in recent days that I’ve had to choke down a sob and a shudder upon considering distances as incomprehensible as a year. The day before, I saw Sejin off for her summer on the other side of the world, and for a series of long stretches away from her. During most of May, I’ve been hugging friends, family, and teachers goodbye for years.

During my last few days in California, the sky and the sea were fiercely clear and bright. In all that acute light, I could make out trees on nearby islands and windows on the skyscrapers of Los Angeles. Reminding myself to remember it all, waves of feeling washed over me. Many were sobs, shudders, and the general numb fear that the unknown, in such dimensions, inspires. Sometimes it was the odd feeling that as I return to school, my classmates will be gone and in the offices, classrooms, labs, libraries, and lands of some beyond, where there might not be a winter break for reunion. The riptide running quick and out into the Pacific is the excitement and outrageous ambition that I feel upon thinking about a year of life in Korean.

I was rushing around to return emails “before I leave the country,” until my dad reminded me that I could just as well write them in the airport, and in Korea. He’s right – my life doesn’t stop and start up anew in Korea, it just goes and goes. The telephone wires of the heart have spools to stretch as far as you will them. This weekly blog is one effort, and my webcam, installed on a Powerbook G4 and linked to iChat and Skype through a series of software divining patches, is another. If my seoye (서예) improves, I will send beautiful letters in addition to my illegible ones.

So please keep in touch. I miss you.

Coming in over Japan
2.46 am

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