The Unseen Muse

It is 5:30 Saturday morning. I have been asleep since midnight, but my next-door neighbor has not. Now he has returned to his identical one-room apartment with a girl who speaks English at a volume unmediated by comfortable fluency or sobriety.

She is 23 in Korean age. She is interested in his family. She says actually he is Korean. She reminds me that the fundamental state of humanity is stupid, stupid loneliness, and I wish that the two of them would kiss.

It would be quieter.

I have been in Korea for five months now. This week I threw out empty toothpaste and deodorant containers that I carried full from the United States of America. I decided not to quit my job. I bought three new toothbrushes, four tubes of toothpaste, and the only deodorant that I could find after looking in two different mega-stores. Toothbrushes come in packs of three. Toothpaste comes in packs of four. Deodorant you can buy individual containers of, when you can find it.

I eat curry rice for breakfast. I drink apple juice. I will get my hair cut today. I will be bald soon. They are having sex now. I am an old man.

It doesn't take long, does it?

I continue to study Korean. Now, if someone tells me I speak Korean well, I can say, "I wish I could speak Korean well." I don't know if this is a culturally sensible thing to say; many expressions don't work in translation.

I am very tired by the end of the week. I wish I could be in Madison for Breakin' the Law. I would have gone this weekend, and been there a week early. I am out of touch.

I would like to reject all dichotomies, but then naturally I reject the dichotomy between things that are dichotomies and things that are not, and so I have to reject either nothing or everything. A common problem. Maybe there's no difference.