just six days left

not to be reductive about it but i find that saying goodbye is always heartbreaking business. whether it's to a friend, a lover, your family, a city whose people you mostly hate, a way of living you've slowly gotten used to...goodbyes are still terrible, terrible things.

still, one hopes.

tenzin and i had this conversation late last night after several rounds of gin tonics, bacardi and vodka tonics at this rock club* in jongno. we had been moping about the departure of so many of our friends, and my own leavetaking next week, and the fact that he and kalinga will be left here for the next 1.5 years.

because much as i'm excited to go home, crimson house has come to feel like home. i don't know when this happened exactly but after some field trip or another to yet another museum or folk village or buddhist temple up some mountain in the countryside, it just felt like the biggest relief to come home to a cramped room 304, crimson house at jegi-dong, dongdaemun-gu, seoul.

and then there's family. not the one i left at home but the one that i had made while living in this mostly lonely city. again, we're not sure when that happened. maybe it was at sokcho, when kalinga was holding my head up while i was vomiting at the beach, and tenzin was filming me while i tried to drunkenly light some fireworks on the wet sand. with john, maybe it was when i told him to put the "gross, melted chocolate" in the freezer to firm up.

but definitely, by the time john left in early august for tokyo, we knew that something precious had been formed and that it was all the more valuable for its being temporary. chef tristan left for home friday last week, and really, it hasn't been the same without the sulphury smell of his revolting breakfast of boiled eggwhites and chocolate protein shake.

so, yes, i've been crying again recently. but mostly because of so many good memories that's making leaving for home so much more painful that i ever expected. but as i told tenzin last night, i'm just really glad we have this capacity to find home wherever we go, and to become family to those we allow to get close enough to us.

what i really gained during my six months of living in seoul is not mastery of the korean language (haha-ha) but the knowledge that loving people isn't that difficult after all.



* goes to my the top of my list of places/things not done/discovered sooner while living in seoul. being at the quaintly named rockers (60s and 70s rock and roll club) was like being inside that high fidelity movie. the guy at the bar constantly played the most amazing pop music, the highlight of which was todd rundgren's "i saw the light", a song i had been looking for after i first heard it on a pivotal six feet under episode.