Saturday, November 1, 2008

Day 2 (ish) Seoul Searching


It's dark . I just watched the last 1.5h of Sex and the City movie, again. My favorite scene is still the part on the bridge when Miranda and Steve meet up. I am such a sucker for romantic moves in a movie (cue strings and running toward one another--I'll eat it up).

Seoul airport is no longer the 1970 version of a Greyhound bus station that it was in 1999. All you could buy was 15 cent plastic cups of ginger tea and admire the brown and yellow stripes on the walls. Nope. Now it is huge, airy, bright, gorgeous, and non-smoking.

Jana and I had to overnight here when we came through last time. I remember the greyness and uniformity of the city, how grimy and stark it was. In our hotel we watched the American military station with commercials for quitting smoking and marriage counseling (and I saw my first cockroach).

I wonder why I always listen to depressing music on airplanes?

I remember having to take a flight once after falling in love, I still listened to the most depressing music (Gillian Welch's 'Time the Revelator') but with a giant grin on my face. I was so filled with joy and hope.

Hope is almost worse than love because hope isn't messy or complicated. Hope doesn't take away your appetite or make you distant, lost in your thoughts. Hope is pure and simple. It erases doubt and smooths over the corrosion's of the past. That is why it is so dangerous. It took me months to recover from that. Losing hope. Months.

Clearly I need to sleep.

2 comments:

Beach Bum said...

Comparisons are interesting. Back in 1999, I spent a few days in Seoul and Beijing. I loved Seoul, but not Beijing. I've been told that China is vastly different now than it was then. I'd be interested to retrace those steps.

What I remember chiefly about Seoul, is the warmth and openness of the people, their delight in our singing (it was a choir tour), how complete strangers would come up to us on the subway to practice English, and the wonderful food. Mmmmm, kim chi.

Albinoblackbear said...

Yes...in some ways I wanted to go back to places I loved when I was in India in 1999/2000. Just to check them out and see how 'progress' would've changed things...But another part of me wanted to keep those magical places just that, and not replace those memories with the 'new and improved' version.

In the end, Delhi was the only place I went back to...and ended up (unexpectedly) having a great time!

Yeah, I ate some kim chi in the airport. Even airport kim chi is delicious! ;)