Fall and the Harvest Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Jet lag. That Korean stomach bug. Surviving still. High winds today. Bright blue Colorado Sky. Great Sol out and shining. My son, Seoah, Murdoch. Their big apartment. Songtan. The family practice doc. The orthopedist. Bongeunsa. Seoul. Jeoju. K-dramas. Gabe. The Rockies. The Ancient Brothers on savoring. Korea. Repine. Bradshaw. Derm. Recollecting Korea. Distances made real by the body’s unwillingness to leave one place for another. Breakfast at home this morning.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Moments. This one.
One brief shining: I could tell you my fingers curve, strike the keys from long muscle memory, my feet crossed on the small foot rest, my back slumping in the Henry Miller, now upright again, as the folded, bathed neuronic miracle between my ears sends messages and has them spelled out here in pixels by the keyboard’s link to the computer screen, no prior knowledge of what I’m about to say necessary, write this word, then that one, they come down from the boss organ.
The unexplored regions of our own body. Have you seen your brain? Probably not. Yet, it works, anticipates, sees to fuel and motion and elimination and rest. All on behalf of… What?
That was weird. Two blackouts. A third. High winds can screw up the power lines. Even cause fires. After the fourth pulse off the generator kicked on. Going now just below where I sit. Its reassuring purr makes me feel taken care of. Glad I had Bear out in May to do the maintenance on it.
Before the blackouts, I planned to do a short disquisition on how the brain/mind sends messages without a conscious decision. That would be pretty slow, wouldn’t it? Let’s. OK. What’s next? See. That’s good. Where was I? We’d never get anything said or written if we had to will the words to come out. No, we talk. We write. And our brain/mind sees to the flow. And, oddly, the content.
Had to send Gabe the tickets to the game, hoping he can find someone to take him and a friend to the Rockie’s last game. This jet lagged, stomach bugged elder was not up to it. Hate doing that, but self-care comes first. Nothing serious. Disoriented and tired of my colon saving me from myself. Real tired. Will pass. Sooner rather than later, I hope.
I know. Sorry. A life full of the occasional woes these last few weeks. I try to document them and not over report, leave a trail so that if I want to know what happened right after Korea I’ll have enough recall it. Still, they’re not uplifting even though each one a part of this human experience.
That said, I’m not into uplifting anyhow come to think of it. Thoughtful. Sensitive. Emotional. Descriptive. Questioning. A bit of diatribing. Analysis. Fun. Yes. But uplifting for uplifting’s sake? God, no.
Gonna go slow today. Rest. Eat. Read. I will return to my former brightness when it happens and not before anyhow.
Did not stop us from going to Jeonju or doing screen golf and having a wonderful evening with Diane and Daniel. In Jeonju we saw the hanok village built around the turn of the last century. Wandered around for half a day. Seoah got her fortune told. She’ll live to 158 and come into a large sum of money in her late seventies. May it be so. We also had bibimbap, a signature Korean dish which originated in Jeonjeu. Rice and vegetables. A sunny side up egg on top.
Senior, Jake, my son, and Seoah drove golf balls into an soft projection screen. A delivery guy brought pizza and hot wings, a bottle of Coke. The game went on.
Still jet lagged and much less aware than I prefer we drove down to Okgwa to Seoah’s parent’s brand new house. I fell into a deep sleep after the three hour drive. Around 5 we got into cars and headed for Gwangju to the Outback Steak House where we met Seoah’s two sisters and their families to celebrate Seoah’s mom’s 70th.
The next day when we went into Seoul for the first time we made two stops. One at the Noryangjjin fish market where we had sashimi made from two large fish alive until we purchased them a half hour before. The second, the palace of Sejong the Great. By the end of a hot tour of the vast palace grounds I found myself in a lot of pain. That hip. Remember me?
The next weekend we went to Gangnam, the fancy neighborhood of hip Seoul. My hip behaved as I tried out my new way of walking, that is, walking like Mr. Lee taught me. We saw the Bongeunsa Temple and I saw the Korea Frieze show in the Coex mall right across from the temple By the end of the day I was tired, but still able to walk. A big improvement.
The Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 has cast a pall over contemporary Koreans. Got another taste of that in the first part of our trip. We made Korean rice wine.
