Dreamland

“Describe a cube," she said. "A cube in the desert.”

“Okay…all right," I said. "The cube is heavy and dense. It’s made out of basalt. It’s seven by seven by seven. It’s black and it’s wedged into the sand, like buried halfway up, like it fell from the sky.”

“Good. Okay, now, describe a ladder.”

“Right. All right, the cube is in the foreground, the ladder is in the middle ground, and it’s a steel step-ladder, tall enough to perfectly frame the cube if you look at it right, from far enough away…the cube sits in the triangle it makes?”

“Okay. Now, a horse.”

“All right, it’s a palomino. It’s off in the distance on the horizon and it’s walking away. It’s a spec of dust. It’s too far away to hear you. You can’t call to it—-it won’t save you.”

“Okay…that’s it. That’s good.” She smiled and looked at the space around our feet. “Now do you want to hear what they mean?”

“I knew it. I knew this ‘meant’ something. That’s why I didn’t want to do it.”

“Well, the cube is good. It’s you—-what you think about yourself. The ladder is your family. And the horse,” she laughed, “the horse is love.”

“I told you what I think about that.”

“I know you did.”

We were sitting on wood benches under a canopy of overgrown vines draped over the edges. She sat across from me; we weren’t touching.

~~~

It must have been good once. We had left her apartment for a walk and saw a sign hanging over the center of the street—-Dreamland—-and followed it. We followed the signs for miles. As we walked we talked about the possibilities—-with a name like that—-for greatness.

“I bet the whole place is one giant cloud.”

“Isn’t this the same as heaven? Isn’t that what heaven’s supposed to be—-dreamland? Are we going to heaven?”

We walked up the sidewalk, past heaps of piled up trash on the street corners, under ginko biloba trees, smelling the grilled beef galbi restaurants, until we saw the gates at the end of the street.

Before the entrance a parking lot—-in the parking lot two cars. Inside the gate we came upon a place, frozen. In the air the still echoes of a once happy park. A spot where families would come with full vans, where the children would—-not hearing their parents’ words of waiting—-leap from the car and run to stand in lines. Where those same children would remind themselves to brag to their friends at school on Monday. Now, the muffled noises of unseen children, now, the faint sounds the whispers of wishes.

An Italian carousel spun for a boy. He sat in a teacup, with his knees wrapped around the center wheel, tongue out of the corner of his mouth, bent in determination, hands working to make the cup spin. No workers, no people—-only the spinning boy.

We held hands. We gave the carousel a wide berth and on the other side found an arcade. Most of the games were turned on and in the corner a man and his son played a gun game. They stopped laughing when they saw us. The park led us past the closed doors of an aquarium, where the paint on a killer whale flaked under the white spot, giving him a grey eye. We walked past a cage of tom turkeys and baboons. The turkeys didn’t recognize us but the baboons clung to the face of the cage and followed us with their eyes.

“This would be a good place to shoot a horror movie.”

On one edge a small forest. We opened a short wooden gate. An overgrown path led us up and out of the concrete. At the end of the path a lone tree lay felled, dead, in a clearing. For a moment we felt as though we were alone in nature—-surrounded on all sides by grass and bushes and magpies talking in the tops of the trees.

We walked in circles around the dead tree. It was here she started talking about the cube. We still had time left on our tickets, so we went on to the back of the park, where we passed a family that would not look at us. We stopped to look at the mural painted behind one of the rides. It had likenesses of famous American musicians and some men and women painted badly enough to appear monstrous. Maybe the bad painting scared the people away. But no, that wasn’t it. At the place where we sat and talked a yellow and red spider waited in the center of a web. It had a warrior face painted on its back.

~~~

The mosquitoes that the spider couldn’t catch drove us out. We took another way back, to the center, where we walked into the blue glow of an empty swimming pool. It stretched away from our feet. It would have been good for skateboards—-long rides to the end.

“I like the color.”

I smelled decaying suntan lotion and heard murmurs of splashing, of children’s feet running through, though their parents had told them not to. I saw a game where they dropped a baekwon in the deep end and dove for it. We left the pool and walked down a grass hill to the gate.

“Do you want to hear mine?”

“Sure.”

“Mine was a Rubik’s cube, unsolved. The ladder was a wooden ladder, laying in the sand, and my horse, my horse was great. It was a pink pony prancing.”

Spirits In the Moonlight

I woke to the sound of drums in the temple yard. I dressed and stepped down from the door of my room onto the grounds. There were nine buildings in the temple yard, all with the sloping, tiled roofs of the Orient. It was cold and still and the sky clear and black. My friend and I pointed out constellations, speaking in low-voices to preserve the calm. Our breath came out in warm vapors and a mist rose from the ground all across the yard. Ahead of us two monks walked slowly in single file, both in robes and shaved heads, and the lead monk carried a small wooden drum, singing an old song that came from deep in his body. The fog, the way they walked, and their robes flowing over the ground gave them the impression of floating. They were spirits awoken in the moonlight.

The monks disappeared into the largest temple. We heard a sharp signal from inside and then, across the yard, three more took up the song. One stood in front of a drum and began a soft tapping that escalated into a tribal march, where he was using the short sticks in his hand heavy and hard against the center of the large drum. Then the song was taken up by one standing under a wooden dragon, where he too held short sticks that he used inside the dragon's belly. And then the bell. In my travels of Korea I have often seen these bells and occasionally heard them rung, but never in the still of deep night. Never only feet away. Never felt the vibrations move the water in my body.

When the drumming stopped we entered the temple and bowed repeatedly to three gold Buddha statues. We joined a dozen or so monks and would kneel, then put our heads to the floor with our palms up, then up to our knees, then in a standing position with our palms together, then back down again. The monks sang in voices immeasurably old. Songs about salvation and torment, about elevation from pain and release from struggle.

After the worship, Muchin, a leader, invited us to sit in an open-air temple. It was black and cold. He told us he was a Zen master and instructed us in meditation. When the lesson was finished he took us to a room and gave us both gifts of tea grown across the river from the temple. He told us it is important to remember that life will rise and fall, and that when it is good and high, to remember to be polite and kind, because it will fall, and then we will need help.

Then we left him and walked into the forest. Autumn had come to give color to the trees. We walked a mile along a stream, breathing in the air. The hike was good in the cold air. By the time we returned to the temple we were warm and the sun shone over the mountain. The temple was holding a photography contest. In order to preserve our calm, we quickly packed up as a group of fan dancers introduced the contest.

The Table is the Plate

Bondaegi (Butterfly larvae)

I have been hiking in the surrounding mountains all day and I am hungry. I find a good clean restaurant. Inside, I spread out the mats on the wood floor and sit down cross-legged at the knee-high table. I open the wooden box and take out a silver spoon and chopsticks.

I order dolsat bibimbap. Before the main course comes, the woman brings me a warm wet towel to wipe my hands and neck and sets out the side dishes. The side dishes, or banchan, are numerous and varied—-of course there is the red, fermented-cabbage kimchi, but beyond that I sample from mackerel cooked but left intact, fried tofu squares, and vegetables covered in red pepper paste or sesame oil.

My food comes in a hot black stone pot. A raw egg rests in the middle of sliced mushrooms, dried seaweed, chopped zucchini, soybean sprouts, and white radish—-all atop a mound of rice. The woman makes the motion of stirring and I comply. The hot pot cooks the egg and I add a little red pepper paste for spice.

I chose the bibimbap not so much for the taste—-I think other Korean dishes taste better—-but for the way it makes me feel. That’s something I find often in Korean food. Many of the meals are energizing rather than crippling. They’re light-—based around vegetables and broths, and some incorporate ginseng as an ingredient, which is a natural stimulant.

Sam gye tang comes in a similar pot. It’s a game hen, or “young chicken,” boiled with dates, rice, ginseng and chestnuts. Koreans traditionally eat it on the hottest day of the year. Compared to Westerners, their logic works in reverse. Where an American would reach for a banana split in mid-July, they actually make themselves hotter to lessen the severity of the outside temperature. This is like chicken noodle soup or menudo-—intended to make you feel better. If you’re already feeling good than you win again.

Koreans eat a lot of meat. They go heavy on pork and beef, but also eat chicken, fish, and have many restaurants that specialize in duck. Males occasionally bond over dog, but it’s difficult to find an admitted dog eater. In my eleven months I have yet to see a dog restaurant. I have eaten American beef twice since Korea lifted the import ban, and both times found it superior in quality to its Australian counterpart.

On the coast, along the harbors and on the piers, raw seafood restaurants abound. A few weeks ago, I met friends in Sokcho, a city on the East Sea. We walked under awnings past large round tubs of swimming sea life—-crab, shellfish, sea anemone, and many types of fish I am not familiar with—-basically whatever they can net. We watched as a woman hoisted an alive, two-and one-half-foot octopus out of a tub, turned its head inside out and tore out its ink bag. We ate three types of fish and a squid that was so fresh it still had life in its suckers.

The most enjoyable aspect of eating in Korea is the experience of shared food. We sit around the same grill built into the center of the table, with everyone adding meat or vegetables as they see fit. We dip our chopsticks into the banchan if we’re bored with the main course. Often we don’t even have our own plates. The table is the plate.

Five pictures of Gangwando

Dusk

Harvest

North Korea

Into North Korea

Peace

Seoul Glows In Technicolor Korean Neon

Seoul is the epicenter of all culture Korean. The people of South Korea need fed and watered and they go to Seoul for the best their country offers. They demand satisfaction in bars, shopping, and restaurants. And their needs are met. On the weekends traffic stacks back kilometers before the city limits even begin. The culturally rich city calls in the crowds.

Looking out from the Seoul Tower in the daytime, the city maps out like most of the major cities we see in our lives. Landmark buildings, a downtown district, and a river runs through it. But look closer. There are worse evils than tract housing. This city sprawls away from the downtown skyscrapers into districts and housing like other cities. Yet where others might spread out into housing developments Seoul stands tall. In place of gated communities colonies of high-rise apartment buildings stretch on forever, out beyond the city limits.

Along the Han River, like many Korean rivers, white herons stand in sandbars. Legions of orange dragonflies hunt mosquitoes—-flying, diving through the grass, hovering like helicopters. The surrounding mountains are green, verdurous, and at their foothills rice grows knee-high. Eventually, we turn and look to the north but we can’t see very far. Gray fog veils the border, where beyond a country skulks condemned for its secrecy and suppression.

At night, red crosses burn among the apartment lights. They float in the darkness—-a gang of kinsfolk with raised fire marching to torch a house of heathens. They seem to always face you, with more behind them in the distance and on the horizon, the Lord’s cavalry. These red neon crosses raised my first question when I came to Seoul nine months ago. I soon found out they signified Christian churches and sit at the top of steeples, lighting the way for wayward sinners, driving out the dark.

Scanning the nighttime city from the banks of the Han, neon grids trace building edges in pink, green, and blue. Low clouds obscure the tip of the Seoul Tower and the cyclopean light glows white gray. Around it clouds drift and swirl then suddenly the red and white spire succumbs to the Korean Neon. It climbs the tower flashing purple and green and the panoramic restaurant halfway up switches on into a spinning carousel of circus lights. Below it on the edge of the river we watch the lights on the bridges slow-fade change in the colors of the rainbow. The murky water turns royal blue, then blood red, and the current carries on.

Friends call from a bar in Itaewon, the district near the American military base. Walking up the hill we pass two boys, not older than 20, shuffling back to base. “You have to remember to cherish every day,” one says, dead serious, looking at the sidewalk. They disappear. At the top of the hill our friends are out in the street in a crowd of foreigners. Through the windows of a bar a crew-cut boy dances shirtless with another boy. People yell and jump and break glass. Everyone’s trying to live a life in one night.

A missionary for an organization called Kingdom Builders hands me a flyer with Bible verses and a paragraph that reads: “As you take this paper tonight, stop and look around you. How many people are running into places that lead to destruction?”

We drive out of there, tuning into the base radio station and it’s American Country Countdown, counting down America’s greatest hits. We listen to the strange canned country music and public service announcements with hotline numbers for victims of sexual assault. The shirtless boy runs through the sidewalk crowd back down the hill, racing against his curfew. It is late but the city will stay up. Those tired of bars will find street-vendors or karaoke rooms or love motels. All around us, keeping out the dark and the stars, the buildings glow on, bright neon and vivid.

A Bell Rings In a Bamboo Forest

The weatherman lied. The forecast had called for a typhoon. It said the rice fields would be battered and blown by high winds and rain. But, instead, I woke to thin white smoke on a sky blue sheet, a real summer-in-Korea day—-hot in the early morning and full-on humidity.

The heat pushed me outdoors. I rode south toward the mountain for hiking and better air. I followed signs for Martyr’s Mountain (Chimyeongjasam, in Korean.) Parking, I read a sign that told me this was where seven martyrs were buried. They had died during an 1801 Catholic persecution, when Confucian standards opposed Catholicism.

I took the trail into the forest. A cross, two or three meters high, marked each grave along the trail as I ascended. I walked on a stepped path and not much about the terrain was rugged. But just to breathe hot air filtered through leaves of trees and hear birds fly and call was enough. Along the path (and in Korea this no longer strikes me as strange) were speakers hidden in the rocks and trees playing orchestral church songs.

The trail took me up alone until I came upon a group of Catholic nuns sitting on a bench in the shade. They served in a building carved into the mountain. They bowed, said hello in Korean, and I returned the greeting. I walked on thinking about the great lengths we go to for religion, how we move and shape the earth for it.

Onward up to the top of the mountain, where a rock stood exposed and marked with a cross. A woman stood looking up at the stone, peering into the cracks. She held her hands as though praying or meditating.

Behind her, the view from the rock overlooked the city and for the first time since coming to Jeonju I had a good map of the major landmarks. Beyond the city, where the buildings hadn’t spread, Korea summer mountains were verdant and deep green. I looked past the city to the American Kunsan Air Force Base, and farther, to the Yellow Sea.

As fortune would have it, I took another way down and happened upon a small Buddhist temple. Three tiled-roof temples with intricately painted exteriors were lined in a row. At their back, up the mountain, a smaller temple and a white, concrete Buddha completed the site. This Donggo temple was built over 1,100 years before I walked there and had undergone reconstruction after a Japanese invasion. Coming from such a relatively new country accented my appreciation for the age of Korean culture. I took a few pictures of Buddha’s mustache then walked down and filled my water bottle from a small waterfall.

As I left the temple I walked among bamboo forest and pine trees. I approached a man sitting under a tree. He was alone. He sat cross-legged on a fallen tree with his eyes closed. He looked at peace so I walked on, careful not to disturb him.

A slow creek told a story under a small bridge and I stopped to listen. The water spoke as it smoothed the stones. There were more birds in the trees. Then, and it wasn’t on the hour or for any reason I could discern, from deep in the woods through the grass and into the places where the sun didn’t reach, came the sound of a deep bell rung by hand. It rang in sets of three. Again and again, it rang deep and resonated through the mountains.

From a Korean street corner

Written on a Saturday morning from the corner of the busiest street in my city.

Traffic goes four lanes each way. An endless supply of taxis and buses rush by—-even in this relatively small Korean city the traffic is thick. Little space for more cars, the population fills in the margins. Scooters, bicycles and motorcycles race through the cracks of the car, bus and truck traffic. Delivery drivers cut time by disobeying the traffic signals, as do the rest of the two-wheel transport drivers.

Shade drapes the bench but heat and humidity permeate. It’s about 88 degrees and feels like 95. I’m drinking a Vitamin C drink from the pharmacy behind me. I haven’t been able to adapt to the air quality so I try to keep my diet healthy and my vitamin levels high. Working with children and breathing this air, it’s good to try and prevent colds before they come on.

On the side street, I watch people wait four minutes to cross the street, whether or not cars are coming. Koreans follow the rules, and as illogical as it seems to this North American, they will not cross against the light.

A woman walks past with a parasol. The women began walking with the sun-umbrellas in May, when it got warmer. They protect against the sun to prevent tans. In fact, often the sunblock they wear doubles as skin protection and skin whitening cream. A few blocks from where I sit, a woman works in a convenience store with a white painted face.

As I’m sitting on this bench, the family of one of the Kindergartners—-Uni is her name—-at my school stops directly in front of me and motions me to their car. Through the window, her mother gives me two handfuls of homemade cookies! No joke. What kindness!

Elderly men and women ride past in bicycles. A man in his ‘70s, wearing white gloves and a sun-hat, rides a scooter past on the sidewalk, holding a walking cane against the handlebars and a bag of groceries between his legs. I wonder what he thinks of all this growth, rapid industrialization and increasingly prevalent influence from the West.

Jeonju built its first McDonald’s around the turn of the century. Now, there are two Golden Arches, an Outback, Pizza Hut, T.G.I. Friday’s, and various other Western restaurants and retail stores. I have seen America’s capitalism change the landscape of my own country, but the change must be more acute for Koreans.

The Korean economy has been strong for successive years and the cars that pass are newer Kia, Hyundai and Ssanyong. The peculiar aspect of the cars is that, stopped at this intersection, I count roughly 40 cars and vans (not many trucks—-not enough space) and nearly all of them are white, black or silver.

I was told that a few years ago the car manufacturers released a line of primary-colored cars but they didn’t sell. The companies give the customers what they want, and they want the three neutral colors.

Then, a college-age female passes wearing a pink shirt that reads Hollywood. I am near a university and many of the passers-by are college students. They are well-dressed and stylish. No one wears old clothes—-no holes and no stains. They look as though an MTV wardrobe crew dressed them. As is true in the U.S., television plays a strong role in their culture and sets standards for self-image. However, young people in the U.S. look shabby and lazy in comparison.

The sun moves overhead and we’re getting hungry. The Koreans are headed to restaurants for kimchi jjigae or kamjatang. Me, I’m going to sit here a little while longer and hope for some more homemade cookies.

Korea lives tight and dense

At night in Jeonju, the sky doesn’t go black enough for stars. It glows bluish-purple. The hue makes it hard to know when dawn approaches—-once it becomes dark the sunrise seems to loom, literally, always on the horizon. Star power cannot compete with this light pollution.

During the day, it is even harder to find an escape from urbanization. Korea’s density has not allowed much room for parks, open space, or preservation. After the Korean War, quick growth meant building the economy and clearing a path for industry—-trees and bushes were speed bumps for development. Why leave a few trees where a classroom could be built?

Granted, all the cars and concrete, the air pollution and noise, are common aspects of living in a city. The packed-tight people move together with grace and fluidity. They have grown with the streets becoming more populated. They don’t try to fight it, and, as a new generation is born into it, they adapt. I, on the other hand, still look for places where I can find quiet, places where others don’t go. I look for space.

I once heard a story about a group of boys from Queens who visited a small town in Kansas. When they got out in the country all they wanted to do was swing their arms and spin in circles. They didn’t talk, they didn’t know how to express it—-they just swung their arms and smiled. I imagine I’ll feel something of the same when I return to Nebraska.

I have a picture of my parents’ farmhouse north of Minatare, where I lived before coming here. Taken on a cold March morning, heavy moisture in the two old and largest trees on the farm froze and turned the branches into white crystals. I showed the picture to three elementary-age Korean girls at my school. One of the girls became visibly upset and told me it wasn’t fair that she lived in an apartment and I was raised on a farm.

Even as I write this the urbanization is all but inescapable. A few weeks prior I found a good place to write-—outdoors and away from other people. As I mentioned in a previous article, the Korean mountainside is often used for gravesites and cemeteries. Mountainsides are difficult to pave over.

In looking for space, I found a spot that requires a short hike up to a stairway of about 100 steps, leading to six graves. Out here, the pines surrounding the mounds have been cleared away and grass grows around the headstones. In the middle of the graves, a stone table with stone benches sits.

From the table, I can either look up the mountain into forest, or turn the other way and look over a valley and more mountains. As picturesque as this might sound, and I do love coming here as an alternative to the city, I am still in Korea.

When I look out I see an interstate under construction and hear another construction crew hammering in the distance. A radio is playing somewhere deep in the woods. But aside from that I hear birds and the wind in the trees. I have sunlight on my back. I have grass to lie upon. I have the place to myself. There is no one here except the six others, and they are sound asleep.

Singing at night, bathhouses in the morning

Two of my favorite things to do in Korea share the same name: Bang.

Noraebangs are karaoke rooms and jimjilbangs are combination saunas and public bathhouses. In the noraebang, they charge by the hour and the rooms are small. Couches line the walls with a big screen T.V. on one end so no matter how blurred your vision is you can still read the lyrics.

In my set, everyone’s a star. We fight over the two microphones. I rarely sang karaoke in the States. But in a noraebang it’s different. In a noraebang no one’s watching, everyone is either dancing or singing along. There’s always soju (Korean rice wine) but if for some reason there isn’t any soju, there’s always beer.

After nights like these we hurt. We’re swollen and bruised. Luckily, the Koreans like their good times as much as we do, particularly the men. In order to stay functioning they need to detoxify their systems. Enter the jimjilbangs: where Korean men and women soak, relax, and gain peace of mind.

Jimjilbangs are as pervasive in Korean culture as drinking. The one I frequent is in the basement of the towering apartment building across the street from where I live, but it seems like there is one on every street. Many are open 24 hours and travelers seek them out as cheap places to stay.

It goes like this: I walk in the door, remove my shoes and place them in a locker. Then I pay about three dollars and walk into another room. There I give a man my key for my shoe locker and he gives me another key for a clothes locker. Then I completely undress and put the key, which is connected to a plastic band, around my wrist. Again I go through a set of doors into a room where there are three circular stone tubs, each holding water of different temperature, all hot—beyond those, a cold pool of temperature similar to a mountain stream in Spring.

Water is constantly flowing into these pools. But they aren’t fountains, because the water isn’t recycled. Next to the cold pool are two sauna rooms—one dry heat with wooden benches, the other a hot mist with a quartz-type mineral lining the walls. This is where we get the alcohol out.

The part I enjoy the most is a stall where you stand in knee high water and hit a button on the wall. From the ceiling a nozzle sprays a stream of water three inches thick with enough pressure to work out muscle knots, which is perfect for exorcising a day of screaming kindergarten kids.

On the other side of the room there are stations where men sit and scrub their skin with abrasive towels. They help each other remove layers in one sitting, a kind of self-induced shedding. We just got a new teacher at work, from Idaho. He had one of the Korean men who works at our school scrub him. They said they made skin-noodles from his arms. I’m staying away from that.

The sauna rooms are extremely hot. They have been part of Korean culture for hundreds of years and the Korean people can take the heat. In order to stay in for any real amount of time and take my mind off the heat I’m forced to recite poetry.

When I’ve had enough of jumping from room to pool to room, I sit by the tubs and listen to the water pouring into them. I love the sound of water and I do my best thinking here.

People might think it strange—a bunch of nude men and boys, strangers, jumping in and out of pools together. But I understand why the men enjoy it. Most of them live in small spaces, have families and don’t get much time to themselves. Here not many of them talk. They listen to the water and let the heat help work out problems in their bodies. Plus, they like to drink, a lot, and jimjilbangs are the best hangover cure in the world.

Me, I always feel better afterward—clean, relaxed, and at peace. Ready for another night of singing.

Hiroshima, Yet Still War

At times I ask my Korean students “What do you think about the atomic bombing of Japan?”

“Very good,” they reply in unison, “very good.”

More than ten years ago, my classmates and I folded origami paper cranes in my country school. After the multi-colored birds were folded, they were sent on to the Peace Memorial Park as part of the Children’s Peace Monument, in Hiroshima, Japan. The cranes symbolize peace in connection to Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old in 1945, when America dropped the bomb. Ten years later Sadako was dead from leukemia caused by the radiation. Now, approximately 10 million cranes come each year to the park.

A dozen years later, this February, I stood at the display of the paper cranes and photographed men and women ringing a gold crane bell for peace. The sound carried out loud and resonant, and it sounded good, but I wondered to myself as I stood there, who was it for, and who really heard it?

“Talk not of the good of war to those in Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” Chris Hedges writes in War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Hedges, a war correspondent for many years in many countries, says: “There is a spiritual collapse after war. Societies struggle with the wanton destruction not only of property and cities but of those they loved.”

From the surface, Hiroshima looks and feels rebuilt. That late winter day it rained as I walked to the pinkish metal and brick A-Bomb Dome. The building was closest to the epicenter of the bomb and is left as it was the day it fell.

Preserved as a shell of brick and twisted metal, the tree that grows over and around it is larger and more luminous. Standing there I couldn’t help but think about the way the grass and flowers and plants grew in the days and weeks after the bomb. Those there in the aftermath say they sprouted bold and green in thick life--stimulated by the radiation.

In Hiroshima, John Hersey writes: "Over everything--up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks--was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city's bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew."

That rainy day Hiroshima looked healthy and alive. Modern buildings, streams of cubish Honda and Toyota models they don’t sell in the States, clean fashion-driven people walking with umbrellas. Save for the park and the shattered rubble of the A-Bomb Dome I saw no real evidence of the act of war.

I spent a good four hours in the park. Watching digital cameras flash over the pools and burning torches. Sleeping on a bench under a tree. Listening to the Peace Bell ring. Once I awoke, I walked through Hiroshima, thinking about the cost of war. About how many lives are immediately touched, then, more importantly, how it ripples through generations and history.

Wars don’t end. The bloodshed stops. Bombs and guns are put away, but the effects last far beyond the last bullet fired, the last flash of light.

After the bomb there is the fire; after the war there is the lesson. What have we learned, class, about pride and nationalism?

Another hour passed and I still couldn’t shake my confusion. I had waited to write about this trip with the hope that time and distance would help me gain perspective. It didn’t. I’m still confounded by the reckless decisions of the U.S. administration.

How did we create another war?

How does it continue?

Eventually, I left the park for sushi (it is better in Japan) then stopped for coffee to process the Park. Sitting alone, lost in thought, a man, about 50 or 55, came and sat down with me. He had learned English for business. We talked in simple sentences. He told me his parents were killed by the bomb. He said in college he had studied nuclear engineering.

Maybe he chose that as his course of study for the same reason I chose psychology—to try and better understand the incomprehensible. In the end, I’ll never understand the human mind. That man will never understand the Bomb. Surely, we’ll both never completely understand war.

Before I end, here’s Hedges once more: “The cost of war is often measured in the physical destruction of a country’s infrastructure, in the blasted buildings, factories, and bridges, in the number of dead. But probably worse is the psychological and spiritual toll. This cost takes generations to heal.”

Hiroshima, Japan (Pictures)

A man rings a bell for peace at the Statue of the A-Bomb Children.

Statue of Mother and Child in the Storm.

The A-Bomb Dome. The building closest to the center of the bomb that remained standing after the destruction, never repaired.

20,000 Koreans were killed on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima.

Off the coast of Hiroshima, on the island of Miyajima. The Torii of Itsukushima Shrine.

A Yellow Sea Winter's Day

A Sunday and snowing in Jeonju. Woke up with a longing for the sea. So I walked to the bus station and, not knowing anything about so-called "good places to go" I chose a name from the map on the wall. Gyeok-po. The name of a tiny red dot straight west of here and on the edge of the peninsula.

On the drive out, from the bus window I could see the blue and green layered tiles of the ancient building rooftops. The farther from town I went the more space opened up--into ginseng and rice fields, mountains in the distance, ginkgo biloba and pine trees--and with less city came more blue sky and cleaner air. For the first time since coming to Korea I could see into the distance and it made my soul open up and unfold. I could breathe again.

Korea has an ancient past. To know this one only needs look into the country hillsides where the open spaces that cannot be tilled for farming are covered with mounds the size of a Volkswagen Beetle cab. The mounds are covered in grass and usually accompanied by a marker-flag with Chinese script. They prevent people from walking over the coffins underneath. The hills are covered with these graves like a case of the hives.

An hour and a half later the bus drove along the cliffs at the western edge of the country, where Korea meets the Yellow Sea. The shoreline there is calm, the sea is a sliver between China and Korea, but the waves still lick the rocks and cliffs and carve away the earth. The sea is the northern part of the China Sea, but the Koreans refuse to call it that--instead choosing to name it after the yellow sand that colors the water.

The bus stopped in town and let me off. After negotiations with the bus driver for a ticket home at the end of the afternoon, it was off to find a beach to drink the bottle of wine I carried with me. I walked past seafood restaurants with caught creatures swimming in tanks, a carnival with a shutdown Ferris Wheel and everything else stopped, everything around empty and dead and stopped. Live in Korea long enough and you'll know how rare it is to walk a city block and not see another person.

Once through the town, a bay with a long pier extended into a white lighthouse. Ships anchored in the bay--none coming, none going. It was starting to snow harder now, the flakes big and wet sticking in my beard. Walking out on the pier, toward the lighthouse, I passed tents lining the walkway on my right. At least a dozen, and they all had orange, plastic traps for roofs. Inside, arranged in pairs, one tarp covered bucks of sea creatures: octopus (live), squid, sea slugs, clams, oysters, mussels, sea cucumbers, shrimp, lobster, crabs, and other creatures I cannot name. They floated in the bucket water. The next tent covered a long, short table with a grill in the center and cushions to sit on cross-legged on the floor. The way it worked, you would point into the buckets, tell the man what and how many, and he would slice the sea animal into chunks and take it to your table, where you waited with chopsticks at the ready to cook, then eat, the creature.

I wasn't hungry. So I kept walking to the end of the pier, to the towering white lighthouse. Once there, I could look out to an island that loomed gray and fog-covered in the distance. The gray sky and snow-laden clouds prevented me from seeing beyond it, farther, to China.

Wet snow drove me back, for shelter. I found it in a cliff the Koreans call "The Library." The rock formation looked similar to books stacked upon one another, with the striations, the lined markings, creating a sense of thousands of pages. Legend told of a Chinese prince who drowned in the waters there, drunk, leaving his boat to swim after the moon's shadow reflected in the water. The overhang of the cliff blocked the snow. I sat on a stack of the collected works of Vladimir Nabokov and watched the waves crash and spray over the rocks at my feet. Out on the horizon, the clouds and fog were gradually lifting and, behind the first island, another began to reveal itself. It was as though I was moving to them--or they were coming for me. I took out my pocketknife and the wine and drank from the bottle. I watched as more islands came closer.

The snow stopped. The sky colored as the sun went west to light the rest of Asia. Then it was far too cold to stay on the cliff and I found my way to a restaurant for coffee and bibimbap. After dinner, the bus ride home was quiet and dark. The moon followed, smiling.

What teaching teaches me

This comes at the end of my second month in South Korea.

In my last longer piece I talked about a few snapshots in my daily life as a teacher in Jeonju, S. Korea.

I discussed taxi-drivers, surface level observations, and my interactions with other foreigners from all over the world.

This time I’ll try to describe my initial impressions as a teacher.

That said, I realize my observations come after a mere two months on the job and are in no way complete. Still, here goes.

First, a rundown of my job:

I teach four classes. In the morning I teach ten kindergartners, boys and girls, age 7.

In the afternoon it’s elementary and middle school children.

I have one class of four 9-year-old boys, one of five 10-and 11-year-old boys and girls, and one of eight 11 to 13-year-olds, all boys except for one.

The students are good—for the most part. Of course there’s always a clown. Or a nerd. Or a donkey.

I don’t necessarily think of any particular child in this sense. But these are traditional societal roles and they have to be filled—even at age 7.

When I started working with the children, one of the first observations I made I passed on to a fellow teacher who has been doing this for going on three years.

“Being a teacher really makes it hard to argue against evolution,” I said. “The case is made for natural selection almost constantly.”

“Or made against it,” he replied. “You wonder how some of these kids have made it this far in life.”

From a social science perspective, it’s difficult to determine, to pinpoint, what is more important for a child’s success in school—her genetics or the guidance she receives from her parents.

Inside the classroom, however, and I’ve spoken with other teachers about this and we agree, the most important and beneficial trait a child can possess is a good attitude.

Natural intelligence factors in, as does parental pressure and emphasis on work and discipline. But when it comes to the classroom and what a child gets out of their time sitting in front of teachers, a willingness to learn and a good attitude about school make a significant difference.

(Yes, I realize what my high school teachers are thinking when they’re reading this—that they can think of a pretty good example of someone with potential but a misplaced attitude toward education. His mug shot’s looking right at you.)

My job teaches me so much about myself. I have some students that I can tell devoutly despise school. They don’t like being there even though they’re completely capable of doing the work.

I see myself in that. I had many school days—practically every day after the start of the fifth grade—where I thought to myself there was something I’d rather be doing.

Recognizing the same sentiment in my students helps. I don’t pander to that behavior just because it’s familiar, but when I do see it I avoid becoming frustrated or taking it personally.

Which in turn lessens the pressure on the student and, though I still maintain behavior standards, I have gotten good responses.

I know. It sucks sometimes. Just do it right and do it now and you’ll be better off.

I see myself in those students.

I see myself in all my students. As a child going through kindergarten, as a young student who knew a lot of the answers and always raised his hand, as a good student until being a good student became less important than being cool.

It’s one of the most rewarding things about this job. I love my students. Some more than others, but even those I love less I learn from.

Like them, I’m learning every day.