Crossing The Lines

She is standing at the curb shifting her weight back and forth. She has her light blue Kumon bag full of books from the hakwon she just left at 11:00p.m. tightly clutched to her chest covering her white uniform top that is neatly tucked into her grayish black uniform skirt.  Her cell phone is somehow squeezed between her fingers ready for whatever calls or text may come. Her eyes are darting back and forth looking up and down the empty street across from the Nunghyup Bank.  Her agitation increases with every passing second.  The urges are beginning to overpower her, but they are wrong. She has been taught better. The training from her mother and grandmother for the past sixteen years will not be thrown away in a fleeting moment like this. She can’t do it, not now, not tonight. Her mother has already tucked her little brothers and sister into bed and is preparing rice for tomorrow morning. Her father, who just showered after another twelve-hour day on the road selling fruits across town, is trying to relax for a few minutes before crashing for the night without dinner again.  They have worked hard to get her in to this hakwon, the best science, math and English academy in Cheonan. She cannot disrespect them like this; it would crush them if they ever found out.

Besides, how will she be able to go to Church on Sunday after such disregard for Korean tradition and values? NO! She will not do it! She lowers her head in shame at the very thought of even attempting to be so reckless.

And then as if she just figured out her clothes were on fire she raisers her head and starts running across the street. I can see her sheer delight at this moment of freedom at being like a real woman who is strong and able. Her eyes are wide-open and bright, cheeks flushed with vibrancy and arms lifted with each stride. She is halfway there ands realizes what she has done, almost comes to a complete stop, begins to lower her head again with a natural twitch but realizes she has come too far, she cannot go back now. She panics and hurriedly looks left and right, then forward and again darts across the street, exhilaration pours out of her like she is an American girl who is out drunk with her friends on a Friday night accepting free drinks from all the boys trying to attract her fancy knowing they will just flirt, tease and go home laughing together at their conquests.  She reaches the other side of the road and freezes cold in her tracks.  The momentary flash of freedom evaporates and becomes drenched in guilt, shame and humiliation. She wants to hold back the tears but is not able. She drops her cell phone for the first time and bends over to pick it up forgetting she is wearing a skirt and is supposed to lower herself properly like nice girls do.  Her book bag slides out from her grasp and the books fall all over the black sidewalk, she is aware she will be noticed now for certain.  Someone will tell her mother. There is no way she can now just walk in the door like nothing has happened. They will know even before she runs the final three blocks to their seventieth floor apartment in Highvill 2.  She trembles as she gathers her things off the ground and stuffs her cell phone into the bag and takes off running even faster than she crossed the street towards home with tears streaming down her now pale cheeks. How could she be so careless and ungrateful to her family and bring such shame upon them? They did not raise her to be the kind of girl who crosses the street while the light is still red! Nice girls follow the rules even if there are no cars on the road at 11:20 at night. They obey and follow traditions no matter what.  Crossing the street while the light was still red; who did she think she was and did she forget where she is and what country she lives in?

Me, I am shocked. I have lived here for ten months and waited patiently to see if during my thirteen months stay I would see one, just one young woman or girl cross on the red. Their moms do it, all teen boys do it and certainly all men do it without even thinking, but young women are trained well here. By well, I mean effectively.

It has been three weeks since I saw that girl cross the street on a red light. Every night when I am walking after dinner I think about her and how hard being obedient must be to those who need to dance and stretch their own limits.  What pressure these young girls carry with them day and night to conform to traditions that are so old that there are nobody left to explain why they exist or where they came from. The answer is simple- “It is what we do”.

That being ordinary is acceptable and truthful about any of us. We are so much more than we aim and allow oursleves to be. It is sometimes embarassing for met to witness in myself and certainly in others how far we can stray from who we are and what we are capable of.  Our need for social and personal aceptance hinders us to the point of mere ordonary- how sad.
Greatness; anything less is unacceptable.

A Cass System

His white dress shirt is unbuttoned and his blue blazer stained with some red bean sauce on the right side near the pocket. He is barely walking in a straight line, more like an inchworm than a sword. But he is finding his way towards Ssangyong Junction to hail down a cab.  It is 11:20p.m. His wife and children are home asleep, nearly two hours ago and a five-hour train ride if it was Friday night. It is Wednesday night and he will not se them till after work on Friday when he returns back to Cheongjiu. He hates his little studio apartment in Busan all by himself. He did not get married and have children so he could live alone seeing them on weekends. He blames the Americans and there lack of self-discipline for this. Sine they started with their recession, Korea has suffered even more harshly since a significant portion of their economy relies on the American lifestyle of luxuries and convenience. Now, he had to accept the transfer or be laid off. The transfer moved him across the country and far from his family.

He stumbles into the cab and barks his address at the cab driver while leaning back on the black seat.  He can smell her perfume even this far away. He will never forget what she smelled like the first time they met at Sin Li Presbyterian Church. She was wearing a white dress with a hint of light pink. She looked so pure and innocent when her and her family first moved to the neighborhood. She sang all the hymns and bowed respectfully when it was called for. Anyone could see how well her parents raised her to be a good Christian girl. The perfect wife- beautiful, pure, honorable and a virgin. Her perfume made hi dizzy, still does Although she rarely wears any these days and it turns out she was not pure, innocent or virginal.  But he still daydreams at night drunk about her. Of course, he was never drunk before the American recession. He only drank during customary and traditional circumstances then. Now, all he needs is for it to be dark and lonely.  He has found a couple of guys who also live there only during the week while working and they frequent the Blue Café with the two for one bottles of Cass Beer nightly. Then finds his way back to his place and falls asleep in his work clothes from the day.

Damn Americans! The think they can do whatever they want and it doesn’t matter what or who it affects but themselves. George W. Bush? What did they expect? Now a Black person to fix their economy? No wonder everybody secretly hates them and wants them to fail. But whoever expected it to hurt so many people? This is what he thinks about while falling asleep at night. That and his wife’s perfume that used to wear before the show ended with marriage and children. Now she is twenty pounds heavier, no perfume, hair up all the time and sex on Saturday nights are obviously a chore to get through in marriage to make sure he keeps send the money to pay the bills on time. He can tell she is just doing it to make him feel happy or at least content till he leaves on Sunday night again.  She can still smell the alcohol in his pores on Friday nights from Thursday night, well and the whole week really.  They sure do put on a good show, he thinks to himself. Since she deceived him so much he feels that she should have sex with him whenever he wants as payment for the lies he believed.  The lies she told him before he smoked cigarettes, drank Soju and Cass Beer and lived alone sending text messages back and forth about the children, school and bills. When she at least pretended to be the woman he married. Just because she does not honor the Korean Way does not mean he has to break tradition and get a divorce; he was not raised that way.  They do not do that here.  Marriage is for a lifetime regardless of what lies or pretenses the marriage was based on. He loved her and still does, even the woman she really is as well.  You do not divorce your wife, period.  Now what a man does when drunk in a café is another story but she deserves it for being such a liar and embarrassing him and his family.  Besides, she is good with the children and if he needs to be with one of the special ladies in the Café once in a while that is his business, not hers.

He is almost asleep with the rooming spinning slightly. He wants to call her and wake her up just to hear her voice but the tears running down his cheeks drown his courage.  He misses her and them so much.  He hates being alone and drunk and smelling like a Café all the time. He wants to get back home to smell his wife, even if she is not the wife he thought he married, she is still his wife and he loves her. 
Thank God for Cass Beer

Chicken on a Stick for Dinner

The rain has stopped. This time of year in Korea it rains most days. Fortunately he is let out of class a little early tonight at the Hag won where he studies math, Science and English. He can take his time walking home now to make it before midnight, his mom begins to worry if he is not hoe from class by midnight, even though she is already sleeping but not enough too not hear every time the elevator reaches the ninth floor of the building. Tonight she was not able to bring him rice, kim, meat and Kimchi for his twenty-minute break between classes at 6:15 because she had to bring her youngest son to a school performance tonight where he played the violin. So, tonight, Minsu ate two pieces of chicken on a stick for dinner during a day that included him leaving home at 7:50 this morning and getting home just before midnight with enough time to walk from his high school to the hag won without the teacher yelling at him for being late again. Today he made it on time! Now he can walk home and stop for some bread with red bean paste in the center at Paris Baguette. This is the highlight of his day.

Minsu, like his mother an father know that if he does not level up at least two more times this year, he will not be able to get into a decent local college. His grades are good at the high school; 3.87 but that is not enough any more. These days he needs to speak English somewhat fluently, receive nothing but 4.0 in both math and science and be ready to take the toesel test in august if he plans on being accepted at Nazarene University in the fall of 2010. And even then it is still along shot. His friends are mostly all receiving 4.0 grades and that is just his high school. He sometimes cries at night when he cant fall asleep from the constant pressure of knowing two or three wrong answers on a the next test are enough to exclude him from entering college. He dreams of living in America where kids play after school, watch TV at night and do all kinds of fun stuff at night on weekends with their friends. He attends another Hag won on Friday nights and Saturdays just to keep up. Sundays, they go to Church, lunch together as a family and maybe shopping at the E-Mart before he goes home to make up for all the time wasted with his family every single Sunday. He knows that if he doesn’t get his grades up to 3.96 or better, he will spend the rest of his life working at a local supermarket on the microphone calling out sale prices on vegetables or delivering merchandise on a truck. He just wants to be a businessman, not a doctor or computer programmer but he is well aware that tomorrows testing may sway his future one way or the other. Three cups of instant coffee with sugar and dried creamer, Xylotol and one can of cold coffee are usually enough to keep him going throughout the day. Then he takes two sleeping pills when he gets home to catch five hours sleep before testing tomorrow.

A deep breath before entering 815 Mart to get a snack and cold coffee for tomorrow morning. “I can do this. I have to. How else will I find a good wife that will marry me if I don’t get a 100 on the test tomorrow?” he fights back the tears in the bright lights of the store with Big Bang, his favorite group blaring in the background in the store. “I can do this. Today was only sixteen hours since it is summer and next week we start summer vacation and then I will only be in classes for six hours a day. I can’t wait for vacation so I can watch some TV and play video games between studying! One more week till vacation!”

NO.
It is why i do not try to get any of my written material published or anything similar.

As much as my ego loves the attention, i preefer to be somewhat low-profile. I have witnessed too many folks get their names thrown around and they become different.  I think it is extermemely difficult to keep any kind of humility and spirituality when famous. Most end up new age gurus or pop psycholgy experts when they started with deep, rich spiritual teachings.Thanks but no thanks. I will leave fame and fortune to folks better equipped to handle it. My teacher has told me many times, "Keep your work in the basement".  Words of wisdom for sure. I am learning how to hide in plain-site these days.

Soggy

It has rained much lately. Korea has a rainy season during the summer and we are in the middle of it.  This weekend has been wet, very wet.  I feel soggy inside although I have only left my room once this weekend. 

Soggy but not wet from water. Soggy with laziness. I feel fat but not from food.  I feel tired but not from activity. 

I am an active person who also enjoys being still. I have not been active or still this weekend. I have been sitting but not still. The only thing that is active is my mind’s need to avoid feeling, being. I am not present while sitting heavy for hours. I had a long deep nap from the exhaustion of non-activity.  Non-activity. There must be a name for activity that isn’t, inactivity does not quite cover this state.

Many years ago while living in an intentional community of hard core activists except me; one of the community members used to laugh warmly and appreciatively at my desire to sit and be still and do meditation while they were out doing their thing to change the world full of anger, rage and self-righteousness.  I would sit. I was not soggy then the way I am soggy now. Then I was full of presence, focus and depth with a mind willing to be with itself, at least sometimes.  One night sitting up late listening him play guitar and trying to sing folk songs, we were laughing at where I fit into the community.  Then with his brown eyes below his long reddish auburn hair and fare skin bursting with excitement, he yelled out in the middle of a Woody Guthrie song, “You are a Passivist! Not a pacifist, you are the opposite of an activist. A Passivist!” He was so ecstatic he found a way to identify my spiritual and personal way of dealing with change at that point in my life. That became how I was identified back then. Who knew I would less than ten years later become a slothful man in South Korea hiding from rain and himself after existing as a man who used every season and natural experience as an opportunity to get know myself and our world better?  When did I become slothful? Lazy? Gluttonous?  How does this happen?  Why is resistance to greatness so seductive and powerful?  Is this why so few can find and then hold on to answers; the real answers that the rest all sit around filled with alcohol or caffeine intellectually pondering over without any real experience or personal knowledge with words like existentialism and Darwinism rolling off their tongues like the granola they ate for breakfast?

How did a mystic become a mystery to himself?

And more importantly, what does it take to return to such a state of being but with the added knowledge and experiences to integrate, creating maybe one or two steps further along the staircase of life?  Can we ever return to the Garden of Eden once we have eaten the apple and still be true to each other and ourselves? Is there a way to go back AND go forward?