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2005.

2005 was the year I lost more than ever before: stability and security, the last vestiges of my teenaged angst (long overdue), and my pants. Many pairs, many times. 2005 was the year that tossed me out in the streets with a degree and a crudely sketched roadmap of the ten thousand places I might go without any real direction at all. 2005 was the year that I finally started throwing myself into things instead of just talking about them.

This time last year, I never would've dreamed that I would get so desensitized to leaving. I never thought I would become so accustomed to watching the people who drift across my path drift away again, and still walk stolidly onwards, always walking, round the bend and ever onwards. Nowhere is life more temporary than in Asia, where the foreigners and teachers you meet today are, inevitably, tomorrow's goodbye. And goodbyes come fast and furiously.

Nic and Jac, I hope you're well in America. This is a good picture of you guys on your last night, at the Green Place. We are still too afraid to clip your hell-rabbit's teeth. Caroline, you were wonderful to meet and you sang through the Korean sickness and sounded great. One day you will rule all the other filthy Australians and I want a free VISA. Josh and Brighty, you were weird in the only way that I respect and am slightly fearful of. No complimentary Chinese blowjobs - that takes willpower. And the goodbyes come on and on and on and on until all faces melt into my mind, a past that doesn't tell stories but sings a song of a thousand voices that makes no sense.

Now this isn't necessarily as lamentable as it sounds - I overdramatize, of course, because it's so fun - because 2005 was really a year of unmitigated hope. I begin the new year awash in possibility and I've always felt that it's better to have too many options in life than not enough. It's better to leave than stay. I remember the graduating business students back at Laurier, frantic for stable employment, desperate to extend the rail of safety they'd clung to so long, and I always knew there was a better way - I just never saw it until I came to Korea. As much as the ESL game takes away from you, it enriches equivocally.

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Last week I had dinner with my privates. That's private lesson, not my balls, although they came along to dinner too now that I think about it. I spilled hot soup on them actually. Anyway, the husband of the well-to-do family that I tutor usually stays low-key and hides in the bedroom during lessons. I know that he's the president of some big company, and I know that he frequently stays at the office overnight: "work so much sleep there", as the wife puts it. Now, in Korea, this means that Mr. President is probably fucking a hooker somewhere but it's a taboo subject. I wouldn't have mentioned it, actually, except that he turned out to be quite a dick at dinner and I hope he gets Type-A herpes.

Mr. President presided haughtily over the grill like some kind of Cookery Nazi, distributing galbi with grudging flips of the tongs. I didn't think much of this because he was, well, The Man and a Korean Man naturally has to show his attention-starved boys how to act like The Man so they, too, can be misogynist bastards in the future. And who am I to interfere with a well-oiled patriarchy? But then came the soju and Mr. President evidently thought he had to one-up me because we drank about five bottles between us with him scowling at me the whole time. He filled my shot glass over and over and over and we drank. We drank without any cheer. He drank to impress and I drank to survive, and by the end we were both smashed and visibly still didn't like each other.

So the wife is looking frightened because we're both gasping and having trouble getting up off the floor (you eat on the floor in Korea, baby!) and she pays the bill and they shovel me into a cab. Mr. President leans drunkenly into the taxi and says something in Korean to the driver and we're off, me trying rather fervently not to puke in the backseat.

Well, I don't know what Mr. President told that old cabbie but he definitely did not drive me home. He drove and smoked and drove and smoked and drove to all kinds of neon places that weren't Sanbon, and when I started asking questions like "Where the fuck are we going?" he got pissed off and started yelling at me something fierce. I didn't like that much and decided to roll, army-style, out of the cab while it was moving. I was heavily intoxicated, remember?

But before I could put my brilliant plan into action, the cabbie, perhaps anticipating my escape, reached over and tried to thieve my wallet! Mr. President's mercenary was willing to stop at nothing. We had a tussle while the cab wobbled into roaring traffic and I punched the flunkie driver in the face, somehow got the door open and fell backwards into a gutter. Everybody knows gutters are dangerous, so I crawled up onto the sidewalk. The enraged cabbie screamed curses at me from inside the taxi, covering his eye (which I had punched pretty hard), and I clambered to my feet, ran into an alleyway around the corner and immediately threw up about two litres of soju. BLAUUUUUGHHH! When I came out, my nemesis was gone, his mission to fleece me failed as I hadn't paid him a single won. I was gross and vomitous, but I had beaten Mr. President's malicious design somehow.

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Now I know you're thinking that this experience probably wasn't enriching, but you're wrong because weird stuff like that happens all the time in Korea. I wasn't even going to blog this story initially, but Michelle and Sam thought it worthwhile. The sheer wealth of storytelling you can glean from ESL is astronomical; experiences pile up like a treasure horde and I know I'll be able to draw from Korea for inspiration for years to come. And that's just what I needed in 2005, as my heart finally began to falter and fall away from documenting trite university life. I needed change.

At the same time, I reach back for the dear ones at home because I know that one day I'll come boomeranging back with all I've acquired, ready to start spending some of that treasure. I'm collecting right now, gathering pieces and fragments, but it's the thought of those at the end of Travel that hold me together. You can fall into a hole in Asia, a great chasm that tears years off your skin and leaves you an ancient relic in a temporary world of rote education. You can live so well out here that you lose all your motivation to make something of your life, to build your personal legacy. You can Get By, but since when was Getting By enough?

So here's to 2006. Here's to finally getting something done, to fond memories and mid-twenties and not updating resumes. Here's to swelling ambition and crazy dreams and question marks that dot the landscape of next week. Here's to the precious change that the new year will hopefully bring you.

Here's to 2006.

Posted by Chris at 08:47 AM >> Commentations (9)