Try Not to Blink

Most posts like these hover closer to the turn of the calendar: heralding a New Year, pondering all it may portend while probing the experiences of the one so freshly left behind. Accomplishments are crowed and hopes are cooed, bearing the standards of our midwinter rebirths. The good is grasped tightly in writing so any bad beyond the horizon can't blot it out entirely when the world feels darker and colder. This post attempts these things, of course; however, it requires that I slide the scale a bit. My last and coming year are not framed by the beginnings of Januarys, but the ends. January 25 marks our anniversary of living in Seoul, where we've just signed on for another contract to end February, 2015. My year is therefore slightly shifted from the usual count, and my reflections are skewed accordingly.

'Expect the unexpected' is a trope of the traveler, and, as expected, the past year it has proven it true enough.

I've learned a new language - not enough to hold a conversation, but enough to form grammatically-correct sentences with a little struggle, and more than enough to survive. I learned to read and write a new alphabet in less than a week. I can navigate the subway and direct a taxi with the basics. I can peruse a menu and order the usuals, and while my vocabulary may not always suffice, I can at least amuse those patient enough with a decent accent.

I've tried to embrace the cultures that have welcomed me as a guest, even if there are times I've wanted to fold my arms and click my heels on the off-chance such a transplant doesn't require a tornado and a head wound.

I've visited three countries outside of Korea, four if you count a few steps beyond an invisible line into the negotiating territory of North Korea. Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines have shown me glimpses of worlds to which I'd never previously given much thought beyond romanticized stories or fingers tracing a map. I've stared like a child at whale sharks and guarded my belongings from unscrupulous monkeys. I've sipped soju on rooftops and tasted corner store sake on my boyfriend's lips. I played darts with an audience of chirping geckos and learned how to shuffle cards like an adult. I've wandered through painted palaces built, burned, and rebuilt over thousands of lifetimes before mine, and I've spent several cumulative hours looking for a place to pee. I've collected prayer beads from cool-tiled mosques, shrines in caves, and temples on the edge of the sea. I've retraced countless steps and found my way before I even realized I was lost. I've confirmed an uncanny ability to know my way around by recognition of subtle landmarks, and I've thanked God for Adam's sense of direction in the face of my hopelessness (without a handy compass or the convenience of tree moss, I've accepted that I will never have those bearings - seriously, where the hell is North?).

My ability to endure spicy foods has grown to a point at which I am not filled with dread to try a bite of something new (and instead, every so often, I'm filled only with mild regret and temporary pain). I saw Basquiat's art and remembered to try to make some of my own, too. I nursed bruises and scrapes from a Spartan Race and hunted mosquitoes with vengeance. I explored with my parents when they came for a surreal visit. I climbed a mountain with terrifying, humbling views, afraid to reach the top, but more afraid not to. I was caught by the monsoon in the park when we lingered too long for the summer sun's liking. I cried under cherry blossoms and laughed in the glow of thousands of lanterns floating through crowded streets. I played in the mud, sang in sweaty bars, and fed neighborhood alley cats in the rain.

I've fallen in love with teaching and had my heart repeatedly broken by dozens of unfairly-adorable 6-year-olds. I encouraged sarcasm in a couple third graders, fanned infant flames of feminism in a few others, and asked "Why?" a million times.

I've forged new friendships while aching for the ones on the other side of the world. I've seized opportunities across oceans while missing milestones at home - weddings of dear friends, the birth of my nephew, my cat learning patience - and knowing there will be more. Technology helps to soothe the pangs of these particular casualties of my time here, but sometimes the sense of removal is strong and homesickness flairs when I can only celebrate these occasions via Skype. I also feel these things knowing that one day, I will feel the same for my life in Seoul. There is a certain peril with this brand of adventure: the heart-seam-ripping feeling of longing for home and longing for hazard abroad, as if one can be ignored or made dormant while the other is satisfied. This longing exists, dully, just under my ribs, with semi-frequent  bouts of acute immediacy. It has taught me that Home is not where, but with whom (which seems to make things infinitely more difficult), and it spurs a selfish desire to transplant everyone I love to wherever I happen to be.

I've been reminded over and over again of my luck, that I get to share all of this with someone I love in ways I never knew possible. He has taught me more about living - and about myself - than I'm sure he ever intended. I couldn't ask for a better partner (or a better travel buddy, to boot). I wouldn't be where I am without him, physically and otherwise, and I'm excited for our next year together, and the year after, and the years after that.

I've felt unsure more times than I thought tolerable. There were stretches when depression stole the throne, as it does from time to time. I've known discomfort as a constant shadow, and I've let fear drive discovery.

I've been happy.

Altogether, 2013 delivered more than I could have imagined; I'm sure this year has much more in store. I'll look forward to good things - expected and unexpected - and try not to blink.

Blood Distilled

My grandparents sleep in sensory memory, their blood distilled in me:

A cloud of milk in a mug of coffee. The smell of rose-colored lipstick on her kiss and drugstore perfume on her clothes. Dried lavender in a hot car. The rare slip of a curse-word followed by a laugh and a shrug. Childhood Christmases and Easters orchestrated with hand-stitched, chocolate-molded detail. Thrifty mint-chocolate-chip ice cream in my bowl and Bing Crosby on the record player. A single ice cube in a glass of white wine and a coveted birthday cake. The only woman ever allowed to call me Kaity.

A tissue in a breast pocket. The smell of old maps and books in a dark room, like a forest floor after rain. Green grapes on the vine, the surprise of bitter-fleshed blood oranges warmed by the sun. Dancing that can't be helped if music is heard. A historian of the wars he fought, a lexicon of languages gathered, a loyalist to the dogs he loved. A square jawline, set but soft above a Cuba Libre.

Hot lemon water on cool mornings with the windows open. A crossword spidery with ink. The smell of hot brown sugar and butter smothering a winter kitchen on their way to carmelhood. Rasp on an early-morning phone call and Jack Daniels on the plane. Bumblebees and powder-clean white hair. Poetry: sometimes quiet, often wry, always clever and completely hers.

Photographs and faraway looks. A brief story of being held. Memories I will never share and bullfights in Mexico I never witnessed. The passive humor in the joke of a gentleman dropping his watch with a crash loud enough to startle birds from the wire. The ghost in my father's smile and the secret in my grandmother's wedding ring, fixed forever on her finger by swollen knuckles and a promise kept.

Everything Is So Much

Dreaming by David et Myrtille

This is not a real post. Rather, this is as disjointed and unfocused as my general thought process has been lately... so at least it's accurate?

10 points/observations/odds and bodkins of the last few weeks as my life is gradually turned on its head:

1. Our apartment is empty save for the boxes and last-minute items for packing cluttering the corners. The walls look bleak without my canvases, our collection of streetlight-stolen concert posters, the Haitian, papier-mache-with-pages-from-old-newspapers-in-French taxidermy giraffe head. We've sold, donated, or given away most of our belongings, and our few remaining pieces of furniture have been promised to friends. Most days, I feel good about our progress and our contained chaos, and I can keep my emotions at bay. Most nights, however, I feel overwhelmed and my emotions sweep back in with the evening clouds. I expect this cycle to continue with greater intensity in the coming weeks.

2. To provide a bit of distraction during the more tedious tasks, I watched both White Christmas and Holiday Inn for the first time (thanks to Stacy for the recommendation years ago). I enjoyed both, but I think Holiday Inn was my favorite of the Bing Crosby-fests (barring the atrociously racist black-face routine commemorating Lincoln's Birthday. Yikes, you guys).

3. Speaking of Christmas movies, Adam and I will continue our tradition of watching our perennial contradictory favorites, Elf and Bad Santa. Unfortunately, we won't be able to spend Christmas proper with each other this year, so we'll be having our 4th annual Elf/Bad Santa Christmas tonight with the only officially appropriate pairings: cookies and candy with Elf and whiskey with Bad Santa. Obviously.

4. Against the odds of the holiday season and moving stress, I'm finally developing a 6-pack. Well, right now, it's the top 2 with the middle 2 about half-defined, but I'll take it. We'll see how long it sticks around with all the empty Christmas calories destined for a home in my thighs (see #3).

5. While alone in the kitchen, I was curious to see if I could fit inside the box in which our suitcases were shipped. I climbed in and curled up, and the results were twofold: (1) Yes, I could totally fit, and (2) I am a child.

6. All I will say about Newtown is what I said on Facebook, without mention of sociopolitical policy issues: We can't do this. I cannot bear the trend of waking up to news of such baffling, senseless violence every few weeks. The emptiness of devastation, the fruitless attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, the dread and rage and sadness all waging a renewed war in my stomach - I can't accept this. I'm so sorry, Newtown. I'm so sorry, children.

7. I truly love my usual process of making/purchasing thoughtful gifts for my family and friends, but this year simply hasn't allowed it for a number of reasons. However, I was able to at least frame up a few little pieces for my mom and brother and sister-in-law. I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out, and I'm especially tickled about the idea that sprang to mind for my brother and sister-in-law in Long Beach, CA (that's a peek at it below, with the west coast making up the left outline of the heart). Not gonna lie, I think it's pretty damn clever, and I'm going to be smug about it. So there.

8. Last Friday, I donated blood - something I do as frequently as I can (every 56 days) - and as of that donation, I have given 2 GALLONS of blood to the Puget Sound Blood Center, contributing to hospitals all over the Seattle metropolitan area. I'm proud to be able to do this small thing, literally giving of myself to help others in such a uniquely intimate, human way. After all: give blood, get a cookie! What I'd really love to do is join the national bone marrow registry - I've been wanting to for years - so when I get back from Korea, that's one of the first things I'll be doing.

9. Roasted cauliflower with curry powder for dinner. Do it. Your mouth and belly will high-five each other.

10. As Joy the Baker said, the best way to describe these days and the ones ahead is, "Everything is so much." But as she also said, it helps to think of newness as to distract ourselves from the temporary shortcomings of nowness. I can't help but take this advice and see it as the wisdom it is in times like these. So in the breathlessness of Now, let's refocus on the coming new, shall we? Beyond Now, in the coming new year, lie infinite new adventures, new loves, new losses, new everything. What is Now but groundwork for the road ahead? Celebrate the Now - especially this time of year - and with it, celebrate the Nows that were and will be. They're fleeting, and they're all we've got.

It is terribly romantic

Sunday morning begins as it usually does. It is the only time neither of us face obligations forcing us out of bed; our bodies only stir out of routine, waking whether we like it or not in the moments when, on any other morning, we would be pretending to ignore the alarm. I take heavy steps to the bathroom, the cat dutifully slinking after me, my own drowsy chaperone. He follows me again as I return to bed, thinking as I always do that maybe this time, for once, I will be able to actually fall back asleep. I won't; I never do. I don't really mind.

Lying awake but unwilling to betray ourselves to the impatient daylight, we blame the cat for our laziness; Eliot has just gotten comfortable on my abdomen and we'd hate to disturb him. He settles into me, his purrs more determined as I try to remove him, so I yield, but we both know he will stretch and yawn and find another suitable spot whenever we manage to budge him from this one.

Adam asks me to make coffee. I want it, too, but draw a kiss and a 'please' from him first. A little persuasion never hurts.

I make coffee and listen to the percolation and pops of steam from the kitchen. I move and start to think in this special kind of quiet. Adam's steps toward his desk are slumberous and shuffling, and as he sets himself before his computer, I bring him a filled, well-chosen mug.

Today, we write. I on the couch, Adam in the office - his feet, propped up over the edge of the desk, are sneaking into my peripheral view through the doorframe. The tick-tack-taps of his fingers on the keyboard are sometimes fluid, sometimes hestitant, always comforting. I drink my coffee and try to move my own fingers fast enough to keep up with my mind as it changes too quickly and too often. I am distracted, and Eliot seems to notice from his armchair perch; he picks his way to me and casually shifts his body to lie against the warmth of my computer. The light behind the curtains fails to convince me it's almost noon.

It is terribly romantic, two writers in love. We are no F. Scott and Zelda, no Ted and Sylvia, but neither were they - not at home, not to each other. Adam and Kait will never rival such myths: we are not, of course, of such a caliber, our passion is not born of turbulence or resentment, not of instability of either mind or character. The inspiration and criticism inherent in such tempestuous artistic partnerships is also inherently disastrous. By comparison, we are refreshingly dull; no Waste Land will come of us, though its author is our cat's namesake. We inspire the other and are inspired in return; our critiques are tactful and given only when solicited. I have learned not to read my partner's fiction until it is finally public and exists safely beyond our shared space; I too easily personalize and am prone to emotionally-fueled over-analysis. My partner knows it is better for us to read my writing only after I am physically removed from it, best when I am emotionally removed as well. We love our writing, but we remember to love each other.

So today, we write. We are always writing, and we are always loving each other. It is terribly romantic, and it is delightfully mundane. We will write, and we will live our lives. Tonight, we will eat dinner and happily waste time together being silly and stupid and enjoying each other until it is time for bed. Someone will still need to feed the cat, to scratch behind his ears and lure him into sleep. One of us - usually me - will still need to turn off the lights before climbing into bed with the other. I will tread the path so familiar, it's automatic: reaching out in the dark to find the wall, then following it to my side of the bed, trailing my hand along the cool plaster like a child absentmindedly trails a stick along a fence. We will fall asleep, easily or not, and prepare for tomorrow, for tomorrow is coming. Tomorrow, we write.