the prettiness in busyness: people are beautiful IV

i'm sitting in my glass office blogging again. this job makes me crazy. bored. monotonous brain-numbing screen work for 8 hours a day. well, i had been duly warned before i started.
i've just been assigned nearly a 100 odd papers to determine the future educational process for a 100 odd incoming college students. it's crazy to imagine that this sandpaper on my eyes will have longer-reaching effects than the 4 minutes it takes me to assess them.
this actually is important work people.

but i can't really complain. i love that i have a job that i can get paid to take breaks to catch up on news and emails and write.
(yes news, darlins': like i said while out on December 28th, 2008. i will also dance for the rest of my life. follow thru is actually occurring. what a marvelous sensation!--this is what it feels like to be a person. a real aLive person.)

some of the busyness i'm speaking to is the lifestyle stuff. because everything is on foot or by public transpo, there is only so much a person can do on a given day. everyday there are errands to run or bus or subway.
dinners shopping language exchanges relationships to invest in advice to receive, give gossip groceries--oh crap--that reminds me. i need some 멸치 and 버섣

this is mixed in w/ the fact that there has been a non-stop flow of visitors.
wonderfully, fortuitously, i've spent some real time w/ visitors that i've been invested in or have been curious about or have shared a mutual personal interest w/.
(and damnit. there have been some grudging obligations)

but it's been fun, sweet, sometimes somber
pleasantly stretchy
i love people. i love people. the life stories. life!
bah! it is good.

the things learned and unlearned b/c of road bumps
and the miracles and the bliss
the car accidents
the mistakes made and remade and then--one more time! let's make that mistake just one more time so that we can clearly see some reddened sensitive scar tissue
or burn marks

the small rounded moments and the derailed trains
the smudged eyeliner that a friend licks her finger to touch up,
soft touches on your face
the major crises and then the rising epiphanies
and fuck. the continuous tragedies of love lost or lost vision or health problems
does that cover most of them?

Seoul is the perfect place to receive visitors--for me in particular, i think. everyone that comes out here has ~some~ reason--generally pretty fascinating. most people i know are from Chicago or someplace in the Midwest--usually ones from what i can now call my "past". history.
only the more offbeat ghosties and ghoulies invite themselves to haunt. this really accommodates me.

two moments:
*
my darling friends
we laughed and giggled and anthropomorphized a stuffed monkey
smokes. wine. pics. pjs. reminisce. wonder. plan. confusing relational life stuff discussed.
there were surprising bewildering tears for me at some point--not the deeply cathartic kind, but the welling spill
dear to shed in this refuge of near affection

where are we going?
dunno.
but you're coming w/ me, wherever that is.

**
an old friend? there's history.
he's part of another context that few who know me in Korea are really privy to
a connection based upon mutual consideration, esteem, estimation, regard
and curiosity about the bizarre and strange things that come out of one another's heads

loud chortles of merriment. always. sometimes when i'm not even trying to be funny. it's funny. so, despite all of the running around and busyness, making time was worth it.
Korean food, complex vocabulary--(i believe i got to use the word 'acrimony'?), tea, sorrow shared, tears, pizza, chortling, ridiculous stories, and discussions about music and Archie comics

*
like i said before
there are so many many of these beautiful people
helping me to unfurl and grow and learn and believe a little more about life and love and what it means to be a whole person

God. i am thankful. i am blessed.

every single day, there are more