Closing

I am saying "anyoungeekahsayo" to this blog and I have started a new project. It is just too weird to post on here after coming home from Korea. If anyone is interesting please check out my new project! It is a blog about finding stuff.

Recyle, Reuse, Rebirth

I've been thinking a lot about science and technology lately. And death. And bugs. And how to kill bugs. And death again. And about the traditions associated with death. And how hard it is living out of plastic containers and only having four outfits to choose from because of these damn bedbugs!!!! Deep breath. But seriously...

I want to donate every cell of my body to science when I am gone, but I have been reading a lot of essays lately (too many actually because once you become inundated with other people's opinions sometimes your own start to fade away like Micheal J. Fox in Back to the Future or become a sort of Frankenstein opinion with arms and feets taken from too many different places). My mind hasn't changed at all, but my heart is singing another tune. Life is for the living and death is for the dead. Therefore, grieving is left to the living, so who should choose what to do with the remains? I have always felt that it was a person's own right to choose what to do with their fleshy matter, but the more I think about it, if your family and loved ones are against what you want and it hurts them to imagine your body being used in some unsavory way, even if it is for the betterment of humankind, it could stunt the healing process. It could potentially rob them of the closure they need to push the grieving cycle to a point where the pain isn't so sharp. Time heals all wounds, as we have all heard five million times, but time takes too long! When something so terrible happens people don't want to wait the interminable amount of time it will take for them to actually feel better. A quick fix is needed. Something to help us say goodbye.

DISCLOSURE:
As I am writing this I feel a bit self-conscious because I have never had a close friend or relative die. I have had other traumatic loses in my life, but never one so final (though divorces and break-ups really do feel like a death of sorts, and some divorces are as final as death, in my opinion). So, I am writing about the grieving cycle through the eyes of other people's experiences and not my own. If you have a different opinion or an experience you would like to share please contact me, I don't want to come off as a know-it-all.

ANYWAY...

So, there's all that. About the pain, and the closure, and the goodbyes and the grieving. So, what are the acceptable options? I personally love the idea of being buried. It seems so romantically permanent (like death, but with added romance...you know, some sexy dude dressed in 19th century poet duds weeping over your headstone...that kind of thing). Though those of us who frequented cemeteries in our adolescences (or who still do, like me! I took a road trip down to Savannah Georgia just to go to Bonaventure Cemetary. Well worth the trip.) know that permanent is about 150-250 years depending on how "perpetual" your perpetual care is...The old stones, though fascinating to see, can be illegible, worn away by wind and time. Some cemeteries aren't permanent at all, if you have read Bradbury's "The Next in Line" then you know exactly what I am talking about. Cremation is another option, but I think funeral director/poet Thomas Lynch put it best when he wrote, " We burned the trash and buried the treasure." I ain't knockin' cremation, but there is something more hokey to me about burning my body down to (unusable!) dust (as if I am subjecting my earthly vessel to the fires of hell) than being opened up on a gross anatomy lab table. I dunno. Just my thoughts.

I don't believe in reincarnation. I am not sure about life after death, but like most people I would love to have some sort of legacy. Legacy isn't exactly the right word, because I don't need people to remember my name specifically, or have a "Son, someday all this will be yours." kind of situation, but I want to help people. Also, I don't like to throw ANYTHING away. Those of you who have seen my mom's house can attest to where I got this from. Over the years, and repeated moves, I have paired down my possessions to a more manageable amount and, I hope, become less neurotic about my saving habits (I don't keep sauce packets and I only keep the take out containers I can't recycle), but I still believe in saving things and using them over and over again. Bodies save lives. It takes recycling to a whole new level. I am not talking about feeding the trees and rejoining the Great Cycle of Life, but saving a life RIGHT NOW. Maybe it isn't always that immediate, but bodies save lives in the Great Unknown Future as well through research and development. How fucking cool is that? To me, pretty damn cool.

I don't think of it as a selfish, grabbing at immortality kind of thing. I think it is probably the most selfless thing you can do because you can't choose how your body is used when you die. You donate it and maybe they take your retinas and that's it or maybe they use you for R and D in a crash test lab. I was talking to Jeremy, my boyfriend, about this (he is an organ donor, too) and he used the term "harvest" when talking about organ donation. It is an appropriate term for the situation, but personally, I don't want to be treated like "a crop" of sorts. It brings to mind creepy faceless dudes in Bangkok slipping me a "ruffee" and slipping away with my liver. But on the other hand, the harvest is the best time of the year! You get to take a break and enjoy the spoils of your toils! The harvest feeds our bellies and our pockets throughout the "winters" in our lives. But I feel it takes away the amazing gift that donation is. Harvesting organs makes it sound like you are taking them from a body that had no choice (which happens...), not from a person's body who made the direct choice to give up those organs prior to death. I don't want to be harvested from, I want to provide the harvest, to be the giver of plenty.

There is also the potential of giving a stranger a second chance, whether it is a heart or some life-saving discovery made down the road. I think of all the times I have seen a person that needed help (usually little things like holding open a door, or help picking up dropped papers) and I just walked by thinking that someone else would help them, or I felt socially embarrassed and awkward if I stopped and helped them. (That is strange isn't it? Sometimes, helping a person is to become an awkward accomplice in whatever tiny/large mistake/failure/problem happened and it is socially easier on one or sometimes both parties if everyone just ignores what happened. Weird.) But being a donor isn't awkward. It is straight-up anonymous help that is truly needed. If you donate people can find out about you, but they don't have the information thrust upon them. "This person died. You have her heart. Here is her picture." Uh uh. Not unless you want to know.

So, I'm thinkin', what if after I die my family is so freaked out that they can't handle the fact that I want my body donated. In my defense, if I am donated whatever isn't used will be sent back to my family eventually, for a burial or what have you, if that's what they want. Though it isn't exactly the quick, put together (no pun intended) kind of closure most people want. But is it wrong of them to change up my final wishes? That is rolling through my thoughts and the only solution, of course, is communication. But even past that, people change their minds, and if I am dead I can't really argue with them about it. Is it my right as a human being to be selfish even after death? I have to say no, but if something happens and I don't get donated I will be deathly disappointed.

Oh yeah. I got a hair cut, yesterday.

In search of...

I think I have finally figured out something blindingly obvious. I just opened a letter from my grandmother. I am never quite sure what kind of information I am going to be on the receiving end of when I get a letter from my grandmother, but I can rest assured that it will always be some sort of cut-out from one of society's accredited news sources (unlike the forwards from her clogging the arteries of my inbox). Usually these cut-outs have some remote connection to my life like random theater clippings, want ads for movie extras or even info about cheap housing being built in my neighborhood. Although, more often than not they are harbingers of doom: clippings of organ stealings and kidnapped girls being sold into prostitution rings (before my journey to the East) the murder rate in my neighborhood (when I moved to Bushwick), deadly diseases lurking in the corners of NYC, women in their late 20's are no longer safe in NYC because...because...because. Anyway, today's installment was thankfully of the "remotely connected" type. It was about Korea. Just a little editorial about a man who is doing a professorship in Seoul teaching writing. The article is all like "Seoul is all high-tech blah blah I almost beat up a Korean guy blah blah". He tells the story of how he and his Korean girlfriend (of course!) go out to eat sometimes in Seoul and on occasion some (probably drunk) Korean man accosts them and basically scolds the prof's girlfriend for not staying within the perfectly acceptable Korean male dating pool.

Funnily (my favorite adverb!) enough, this has happened to me before, too. I'd be out with Korean friends and some middle aged dude with serious Western dependency issues would try to accuse my friends of anti-nationalistic, anti-Korean, America-worshiping behavior for just hanging out with me (Though usually it was some middle aged dude coming over and regaling me joyfully in his below beginner English, which was very cute and welcoming though sometimes invasive.) . It was really awkward when this happened. Beyond awkward. Humiliating on all fronts. I felt angry and sorry for my friends and my friends were mortified by the behavior of their fellow countryman. We would apologize to each other for a good 30 minutes before any other conversing or merrymaking could continue! I feel anxious just thinking about it!

Anyway back to our hero. So, finally on one occasion prof gets fed up and stands up for himself and his girlfriend, Ja-Won, (in English) and the dude backs down (in Korean). He goes on to say that that kind of behavior makes him want to "break faces". I completely agree. That kind of bigotry is unacceptable and can be found all over the world and it sucks. This was all a set-up for the final thing he said which stuck with me, but could not be produced here as a quote without that long-winded prior explanation.

"Other nights Ja-Won and I will be at a restaurant and things will be much different. Our chopsticks will be flying. I won't understand the language going on around me, and I won't be able to fathom the simple miracle of how I came to be sitting there, but I will feel as if I belong."

BAM! That is it! Right there. Ever since I came back to NY I have been missing that "simple miracle". The fact that you are so completely isolated from everything and everyone you have ever known, so utterly alone and at times lonely, and yet simultaneously you feel so perfectly at home, like you have always belonged there. That oxymoronic juxtaposition of contradictions is life-fueling for me! It is depressing as hell and totally inspiring. Since I've come back I have been sullen, anti-social, truly struggling on so many different levels and it is that absence of the profoundness of everyday life that I had in Korea that plays a major role in those feelings. The isolation and the never-ending social parade, the loneliness and the friendship, the feeling of being so at home somewhere, and yet still knowing that you will never ever truly fit in. Does that make any sense? Some people have said to me, "It's hard coming back to the US and being just like everyone else again, isn't it?" Yes. It is. REALLY HARD. But what I have realized is that what defined my day-to-day life over there and made it so intoxicating (other than the sheer awesome-ocity of Korea and her art, history, beauty and people's lifestyles of course) was how much I felt I belonged there even though at the same time I felt so fucking alone. Well, it is something that I am facing now. I hadn't labeled it until today. I feel like kind of a loser still talking about and thinking about this stuff. I mean, I need to get over myself already, right?! RIGHT?! Right. Here's to the first of many steps.

Segue to my ridiculous search for that same feeling here (probably not the best of "steps" to be focusing on...). I am thinking of becoming an embalmer. DON'T LAUGH OR SCOFF OR HAVE ANY OTHER REACTIONS OF RIDICULE. I am feeling very sensitive about this new interest/obsession/goal and I now realize that confronting my life-long fear of corpses while at the same time feeding my keen interest in death and the ways we deal with the dead by joining an almost unanimously culturally repellent job I might be able to attain that level of accepted pariah that I had while in Korea. Don't worry! This isn't the only reason I am interested in this field! I am truly interesting in becoming a person who assists in preparing bodies for scientific research (a subject I feel VERY passionate about and yes I do plan on donating my whole body to science and I hope to get cut up into many different science-y parts and used to benefit society in some science-y way after I'm gone). I think this is something I could do well, and I could still teach if I wanted to. I dunno, but maybe it's worth a try.

Oh Yeah!

I made this crazy drink today after I got back to NY from the Berkshires. It is not Ectocooler, but look at those GREENS!

Im r3t@rd3d

Hello to anyone who still actually subscribes to this inconsistent pity party!

I have some good reasons for dropping off the face of the earth.

First of all, I have three words for alls y'alls: Reverse Culture Shock.

Read up. It sucks. This article is for students, but I personally feel everyone's first experience is still the same.

I am still working at ALCC (and Leadership, but on hiatus until the school year starts up again) and I just got a part time job bartending at the restaurant Counter. It is a cool joint. I love working there. I currently only work 1.5 shifts (brunch does NOT qualify as a full shift) which includes Monday night and Sunday brunch, but I am petitioning for a more permanent posish. We'll see. My bar manager, Tonia is an adorable, fashionable and talented 24-year-old woman with awesome tattoos who does not understand the meaning of "More shifts please!!" The subtle hints continue.

So, over the past 3 months I have had bedbugs TWICE. The new saying is once bit twice had. The first time we confronted these buggers they were only in my roommates quarters, but now, two months later, they have infested my bed and are only biting ME out of my entire household. Here are some unnece-SCARY photographs:

This is the trademark bite-pattern named appropriately "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner".

I haven't slept throught a night peacefully in two months. These are all bite pics of course. You wanna see the real deal? Once day I got fed up and bleached my bedframe and found 10 of the little fuckers bloated on My Own Blood!




To top it off, I also have an ESL student who is obsessed with me. He is from Tunisia. I am at a loss at how to conduct myself in this situation and I can't seem to shake him. STRESS.

At the same time my relationship is going through some major (though not insurmountable) transitions. It is difficult, but necessary and I hope everything turns out for the best.

Also, I just found out that my crazy methed-out brother has started harassing my Grandmother in a very crazy sexual manner and I am not sure how to process this information.

Basically, I want to run away to another country again.

BUT!

I am not going to because I don't have the money and I need/want to work everything out right here. I don't want to ignore these problems. So, here goes nothin' as I try to confront my life head-on. Plus my longest friend is having a baby next month and it is going to be totally awesome. I can't wait!

To distract myself I am trying to read as many interesting books as possible. More on this later.

Also

This is Lucy my American cat and I cut my bangs.

What can I say?

So, I have decided to bite the bullet and keep chronicling, is that even a word? It is! Adjustment is good. I still remember how to count to 10 in Korean (both ways) and I am teaching English here in the US. It is funny though, I feel like my Korean English teacher counter parts because here on the continent I can't find a full-time job and I spend most of my time in-transit which is such a kill-joy.

I am not going to lie. Life has been hard. I decided not to take the easy route and find a restaurant job and I have been pursuing teaching since I got back. I am fucking exhausted. I have two jobs right now. One is with the Leadership Program, a for-profit community based organization that places artists in schools to teach conflict management, anger management, communication skills, provide TLC and consistency, and be good role models for elementary, middle and high schools in the greater NYC area. It is a great job, but very exhausting and when you start working in the middle of the school year there aren't many hours available.

I have a costume/set design club right now. It is not as cool as it sounds. We have no budget and no materials. We drew and are currently painting a backdrop, but my students don't want to do anything, but hang out and shoot the shit so I highly doubt we will be ready for the May 7th performance of our student generated musical "American Pop". Oh well! I took 4 of my kids to the MET and they almost shit. It was amazing. They were running around the museum making everyone crazy and touching stuff and talking too loud and constantly proclaiming "That's hot!" "This is so hot!" "Look at this Miss! It's hot!" It was wonderful.

My other job is as an ESL teacher at ALCC, which is a HUGE English school in mid-town Manhattan with a sister campus in Queens. The classes are also huge. I teach a beginners class and a low intermediate class and both classes are over 25 students. It is a nightmare of bureaucracy...more like bureaucrazy! I have to fill out a form to go to the bathroom! I have to fill out forms for EVERYTHING, and I can't wear my nose ring, so I have to take it out and put it back in EVERYDAY. They monitor EVERYTHING. They make there own text books, which are super expensive and cater only to their own methodology (Their methodology is all about drills. I say something, you say something, repeat, repeat, REPEAT!) which is boring and hard to keep the students excited about. BUT I get to teach people from all over the world. I am currently entertaining students from: Turkey, Morocco, the Dominican Republic, Africa (Benin and Mali), Moldova, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Brazil, Pakistan, France, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Switzerland, Hungary and a couple more that have slipped my mind. How cool is that?! I love meeting people from all over the world. Just the other day in class I was explaining how "snake" is a negative word in English, like a slimy lying person and my student from Mali was like, "Being called a snake is a very positive thing in my country." I love learning shit like that!

I just finished Assistant Directing (I didn't really do anything), Props Mastering and basically doing everything that wasn't getting done for a new play called "Torrents" with my friend Lyndsay's theatre group, The Barracuda Theatre Club. Click on the link for the review. Sadly, I am not credited at all on this website even though I ADed, was the Props Master, make-up person, blood effects, House manager/box office/back stage person, and part-time Stage Manager. Harrumph. It was a crazy time and I am tired, but I am glad I did it and I am glad it is over.

And now I am thinking about leaving ALCC for another part-time ESL job for the summer, but I have to find a night job if I do this because I won't have Leadership again until mid-Sept. Yes folks, I am sending out the ol' B-tending and waiting resume. Sucks. The things we do to stay alive...


oh yeah i burned my arm wicked bad making cupcakes! Check it!