An old man sits on the subway caressing a new cherry pink padded toilet seat in a land straddling the divide between the squat and the western style toilet. no bag around his prized possession in a country given over to packaging. bizarre contradictions.
jane, the girl who said hello to me in the LG mart late on a saturday night. she wasn't in class
yesterday because she was sick.
a man stands up on the subway and launches into his spiel for the wares he is selling. i don't ignore him like everyone else until suruptitiously giving him money without making eye contact. nor do i giggle internally at the absurdity of this army of people trying to scrape by, moving from carriage to carriage. standing boldly asking for peoples attention (i think)
before delivering a succinct speech on the merits of the junk they are peddling before systematically moving up and down taking the living so underhandedly given.
for he is very nervous. he stutters and looks at the floor rather that waving his glance around
proudly at noone in particular. maybe it is his first day. my heart goes out to him.
monika tells me of an adjama, a little old lady, riding down the street with a new pair of training wheels attached to her bike.
i walk past a shop where a trail of small dogs are unceremoniously humiliated in the front window. all their hair shaved off. they look bewildered.
i walk out of munjeong subway station. close to home. after work i have travelled an hour away and an hour back from the other side of the city to teach my privates. good money. it is almost midnight. i am tired. a billboard grins at me. we have laughed at it a couple of days before. an older western man grins, mischeviously, almost maniacally, at me. he has a two tone pastel pacifier in his mouth. i don't know what the ad is for but i laugh again and forget my exhaustion for a moment.