*Sigh*

I'm in a funk.

Not a major funk. Not a major depression by any means. But definitely some kind of funk. And a persistent one.

I suppose it's just the winter thing. I'm usually in some kind of funk starting around February. But I don't know. The funk blocks clear thinking on the matter.

There's really nothing wrong. I like my job a lot, though it is exhausting. I like living here a lot, though it can be somewhat lonely at times.

Often I don't know what to do or how to spend my time. I come home from work and I cook dinner, and then I just have this "now what?" feeling. I need a hobby. But I have a bunch of hobbies. But I always seem to have to force myself to do them. Like drawing. I have a set of oil pastels. I like to draw. But lately I haven't wanted to. Why? And chainmaille. I have at least 2 chainmaille projects I'm supposed to be working on. I downloaded a few seasons of Star Treck: The Next Generation thinking I could get some chain work done while watching. I'm almost done with season 2, but I haven't started any chainmaille yet. And writing. I like writing. But it seems that I never want to sit down and write. I didn't even want to write a blog post today. I'm forcing myself to. I feel like I don't know what to say, or how to say it. I feel like this is the worst blog post ever. Stupid post. All disjointed and even more rambly than usual.

*Sigh*

So yea, I'm in a funk.

I don't know what I want anymore. I don't know if I want to stay here for a second year or come home. Or go somewhere else. I don't know where else I want to travel to, what other places I want to see. I don't know what I want to accomplish in life. I don't know what kind of person I want to be. When I do come back to the states, I don't know where I want to live or what I want to do. I don't really know anything. Nor do I really want to think about it all that much. When I first got here my mind was buzzing with thinking about my dreams, and my next steps, and blah blah blah. But I don't really have any dreams at the moment. Nothing specific anyway. When I think about my future, all that comes to my mind is a big, endless, gray field. No, seriously. I used to see different possible futures, like me as a researcher, or living in an earthship, or this or that. Now I think about it, I just see the color gray stretching out infinitely. And I guess I'm scared that if I don't fill that void with something, some kind of dream, than I'll never do anything. Which is silly. I suppose life happens regardless of intent.

And I want a girlfriend. I think. I assume. Or am I just in the habit of wanting a girlfriend? No, I'm pretty sure I actually do. But that's complicated. The temporary nature of my being here. The plans I used to have for the future that have been replaced by the gray void. How do I explain polyamoury to a Korean girl? As fringe as it is in the states, it would sound completely ridiculous here. Of course, I could do monogamy for a while. In fact it might even be nice for a change. But can I permanently part with such a fundamental aspect of my philosophy? And if not, than any relationship I get into based on monogamy must be temporary. But is that fair to someone? Is it right to get into a relationship with someone based on terms you know will force an end to the relationship at somepoint down the road?

Besides, the truth is I don't just want a girlfriend, I want a domestic partner. I guess I'm starting to feel those adult hormones or something. I don't just want a person to go out with, and hold hands with, and have sex with. I want a person to come home to, to cook dinner with, to be silently in the company of. Of course, I realize that that doesn't just happen. You need to start out with one and it builds to the next. But, in this life here, I fear that any sort of domestic partner situation is really quite impossible. And of course it all goes back to the complications of my non-permanence here as well as my less than typical views on love and relationships.

*Sigh*

This sure is a funky funk....

Dreams

First of all, it should be noted that this post might be somewhat more rambly than normal. Which I suppose is saying something. I'm feeling philosophical and I just feel like writing I guess. Thoughts, you know. Nothing to do with Korea.

Dreams. What are they exactly? I'm a dreamer. Which isn't to simply say that I daydream, or that I envision an idealistic future, which I do, but that I'm very into the act of dreaming, you know while I'm asleep and stuff. Do you dream vividly?  Do you wake up with detailed memory of everything you've experienced while asleep? I do. The term "experience" is completely valid. While dreaming you experience whetever your mind creates, you believe it to be real, during those hours of "rest" you find yourself in worlds and environments that you completely accept to be truth. They are experience as valid as any that you have while awake.

And what does that mean exactly? What does it mean that you exist in a place that waking reality says is meaningless, but that for the time you accept as all there is. Do your decisions in such a reality matter? Decisions that don't affect your life in anyway, sure, but while you are in the dream world, you don't know that. I have struggled with the question: if you do something immoral in a dream, believing the circumstances of the dream, and still feeling as if your actions follow the law of free will, is the act actually immoral? Despite the fact that it has no real world consequences, is the fact that you believe the act to be based in reality at the time mean that it is in fact a matter of morality? Similarly, if you display an act of great bravery in a dream, if you believe the dream to be reality at the time, does that speak to your character? I believe the answer to these questions to be, "yes".

I dream extraordinarily vividly. From discussing the matter with other people, it seems that I dream more vividly than the average person. I have had occasions in which, upon waking, I have remembered my entire night of dreams, from falling asleep to waking. And I don't care what science says on the matter. I know what I've experienced.

And I've began noticing, evaluating, and at times experimenting with my experiences while dreaming. And I absolutely believe that you exert the same degree of free will in your dreams that you do while you are awake. The environment, the circumstances, may simply be a manifestation of your subconscious,  but at the root of the dream is the experience of consciousness, the ability to make choices, the belief that what you are experiencing is real. And isn't this in and of itself vastly meaningful? I have recalled in my dreams, upon wakening, the moment of choice, the instant of deciding this or that, and have been able to then analyze the effect said choice had on the dream as a whole. I determine this to be significant, if not the entire purpose of dreaming in the first place.

I believe that through dreaming we discover who we truly are, we find out how we react to the most extreme of circumstances when we assume those circumstances to be completely factual, despite their extremity. I have had occasions in which the events of my dreams, and my choices therein, were so intense, as to elicit contemplation on the matter(s) for days to come. I have grown and changed myself in certain ways solely on the basis of such dreams. I have examined the decisions I made in those dreams, regretted my psychological response to extreme fictional events, evaluated the underlying reasons for such responses,  become more in touch with my emotional and logical decision making processes, and then altered them. How is this not a beautiful and powerful thing?

Where am I going with this, or why am I bringing it up? I'm not sure. It crossed my mind tonight. I'm in a philosophical and artistic mood, I felt like writing, and this is something that is frequently on my mind. Pay no attention to it if it means nothing to you. I know some of you don't ever remember your dreams. But if you do, know please know the power that they hold.

      -Mongoose

Whistfully Whimsical Whispered Words

I sit and sigh,

But don’t know why,

And listen as the time goes by.

I start to cry,

But don’t know why,

Perhaps because I’ll never fly.

Life is a place,

And Earth is a time,

Where wonders ceaselessly wander on.

And on that note, I’ll wander too,

While with that note, I play a tune.

Did you ever ask

To sip from a flask

Full of remorse,

To later endorse,

Or even enforce,

The way we play the game?

Or maybe you said,

“I wish I was dead!”

Only to find,
in time,

A feeling of a different kind.

The answer, my friend,

Is not with the wind,

Though the wind is with the answer.

A dancer may sing,

Yet no one will bring

The truth before a king.

The rest, you see,

Is far beyond me,

And while I truly hate to leave you,

The rust on my face

Affords me no grace,

Allows me no space!

And so, with haste, I depart from this place.

But remember my friend,

It is only the end

When there is nothing left to mend.

Adieu

The Untitled Title

First of all, before getting into the body of this post, I would just like to say: I see you. Yes you. You know who you are. The Russian. See, I can look up a lot of interesting stats about this blog. I can look up page views by date, by browser type, by hardware brand, and by country. And I'm well aware that there is somebody from Russia reading my blog somewhat regularly. And this has been going on almost ever since I started this blog. In fact, Russia has the third most page views of any country, after the USA and South Korea, both of which make sense. I have 24 page views from Russia, which doesn't sound like a lot, but then, I only have 10 posts. So that's over 2 page views from Russia for each post. And it's not like this is a widely read blog. So I just want to say, to whoever is reading my blog in Russia, I know you're there. And if your some sort of comie spy....well that's fucking cool. I'm honored to have your attention. And if I have some friend in Russia that I didn't know about...well why the fuck didn't you tell me you were in Russia?! Send me some Borscht! I love that shit...

Alright, back to your regularly scheduled nonsense.

Lately I've been feeling more and more connected to Korea, attached to this life, comfortable, and less attached to the life I had back home. It's been a good feeling. I'm honestly consistently happier in this life than I've ever been before. And there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for it. Except, I suppose, that there's nothing on the horizon, nothing to anticipate, just the daily routine. And that's comfortable, and this is a comfortable place to have a routine. Or perhaps it's just the simple fact that this life remains a change of pace, a change of scenery, from the 25 years I spent in Cleveland, and that the simple freshness of it all still gives me joy even after 6 months here. Granted it is a magnificent city, with one of the best metro systems in the world, a myriad of wonderful parks, an endless number of things to do and places to see, and lots of cheap seafood.

Still I've become aware lately that lots of Koreans feel very much about living here the way I felt about living in Cleveland: "Yea, so?". And that fascinates me. I mean, it makes sense I suppose. But I've talked to so many Koreans who feel depressed, and stuck in a rut, and like they aren't doing anything interesting, and I just want to scream at them, "You live in Seoul! Do you have any idea how interesting that is?!". I want to take them to the endless cornfields of Ohio and ask them, "Does this look more interesting to you?". But the truth I'm realizing is that they probably would find it interesting. Because it's different from what they know. After all, that's what it means to be stuck in a rut, to be surrounded by what you know and to never experience anything new or different. I suppose then that there's something endemic to the modern psychology of the human race that spurs us to desire a variety of experiences. A Korean who moves to Cleveland might be just as happy and interested as I am to have moved from Cleveland to Seoul. Though the city of Seoul may be objectively superior in a number of definable ways, the subjective nature of experience is more affected by the variance between the two than anything else. I wonder why that is. It does seem as if for the majority of human history our survival depended on being in familiar territory, thus this must be a fairly recent development in our psyche. But I digress, that is an investigation that I am not prepared to entertain at this moment.

Still, despite how happy I've been recently, today something is different for some reason. I feel weird about everything. I feel very much in a kind of limbo. I don't feel connected today. I suppose I feel very aware of the temporary nature of this phase of my life. 6 months in I have a handful of friends, but nothing on the level of what I had back home. I have plenty of people to spend time with, but overall I feel more independent here, more on my own. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact I think it's part of the reason I came, to develop that kind of independence and self sufficiency. But today the sense is that the whole purpose of being here is almost entirely self improvement, and that I'm not advancing my social life in any permanent or long term way. That is to say, I've made many alterations to my way of life that I think are very positive. I use public transportation almost exclusively (I don't have a car after all). I dry my cloths by hanging them (no cloths drier). I cook more frequently. I write more. I draw more. I feel productive and fulfilled. So I feel like I'm becoming a more complete individual, more like the person I want to be. But it's amazing how many of my long term desires are social. I want to build a community. I want to participate in and contribute to something larger than myself. More than just wanting a girlfriend, I want a domestic partner. These are goals that I can't fulfill here, that have to be on hold indefinitely until I return.

Simultaneously, however, I'm feeling less connected to back home as well. I'm so established in my life here, that I don't really feel any attachment to the life I had before. For the first time, I'm not excited when I imagine coming back home, but a little scared. There's people who I'm very connected to back home. That hasn't really changed. But when I come back home I won't have a job, or a place to live. I won't have a routine. I won't have this city, that, as mentioned, is a truly fabulous city. I have people back home and a community back home, but I don't have a life there. I have a life here, but I don't have a community or a future. Thus, at this moment I don't feel anchored or attached to anything. It's kind of a lonely feeling. And it's not a sharp, intense, or terrible loneliness, like I felt when I first got here. But it is deep and pervasive, though subtle.

In the past week I've heard from a lot of people back home about how proud and impressed they are with me for doing this. I have to admit, I have mixed feelings every time I hear that. Certainly it's nice to feel impressive, and to know that the people you care about are proud of you. But the longer I'm here, the longer it really just doesn't feel like all that big of a deal. Additionally, while back in the states I had this self impression of being an adventurous person, my experiences since coming here have forced me to reevaluate that position. I've met people that humble me in that sense. I've met people that have traveled all over the world. I've met people that have lived for more than a year in 4 or 5 different countries. For all I've seen and experienced, I've met people who have seen and experienced so much as to make me feel truly naive and uneducated about the world. So I'm left feeling, thinking, "What of this year in Korea? It's nothing. It's insignificant. It's a mere taste of the world, and nothing resembling a full portion." If I leave at the end of this year and come back to the states, and live there for the rest of my life, I won't be worldly, I won't have significant perspective, I won't have achieved any great understanding. I'll have a very limited perspective of a single culture out of hundreds. And what does that amount to really?

I realize that that paragraph sounds very negative. And I want to emphasize that my feelings aren't nearly as negative as such writing might indicate. The negativity is meant only to bring a degree of balance to the overwhelming positivity that I am receiving from all of you. I also acknowledge that what would be required in order to achieve such worldliness and such vast perspective would involve sacrificing the deep bonds that I have to the people who I am close to back home. Truly, I have come to realize how very fortunate I am to have bonds as strong as I do. While perhaps being incompatible with the epitome of worldliness, I realize that such bonds are something that those who are so worldly do not have, and in fact by definition are incapable of having. It is my hope that my limited perspective will be of some value to my community when I finally rejoin it.

And on that note, to those who consider themselves a part of my community, please comment on this post. It matters not to me whether I receive the comment here on the blog itself or on facebook. I receive so much feedback verbally, on the phone, often second hand, weeks or months after the post. But I can not convey how uplifting it is to receive written comments from you. Even if you are reading a post a month after I have made it, and you leave a message on my facebook wall about it, please know that such a gesture will uplift my spirits the moment it is received. My love for you and my deep connection to you has become more a part of my identity now than it ever has been before. Indeed, it has proven to be the strongest and most enduring thing within me.

    -Mongoose