Part VII.

He was trying. He was trying hard. Trying to become that which he knew he would one day be. He was hurting. He had his good days and his bad days. The problem was he could not tell them apart any more. He had lost his dog. He always wanted a dog but he had wanted to wait until he could take care of one properly. It seemed he was always waiting until the timing was right to do things. What if he spent his entire life waiting? He hadn't planned on owning a dog and he had not planned on that dog dying so quickly. Was the universe playing some sort of trick on him? He remembered those stories from his days in Catholic school. The stories from the bible involving plague, death, famine, murder, lies, etc. God always seemed to be testing people in the bible. He wasn't a big believer these days but a part of him thought some higher power might be fucking with him lately. On a particular day which did not seem particularly special he got into a taxi and headed for the nearest supermarket.

So far the day had been unremarkable and he zoned out as he tended to do on these rides. Life was moving along at a snails pace and he was forced to watch. Then, quite suddenly, someone had pushed the gas pedal. This ride he was taking to the supermarket, a ride he had taken hundreds of times before, just became interesting. It became interesting because he found himself in a mud filled ditch wondering what had just happened. Just like that color was brought back into his life. Like Dorthy stepping outside of her house after the tornado placed it down, he was awake. He was alive! He could feel the blood surging through his veins. He could feel the wind cooling his skin as he climbed out of the upturned vehicle. For a split second he even thought he understood Korean.

But it wasn't Korean the on lookers were speaking that he understood, it was the look of "what if". That look was universally understood. He could have died in a ditch just like that. He could have died without seeing or talking to the people whom he cared about most. He had been sleeping. He had been going through the motions. "Message received", he thought as he took in the cool air. He savored it as his lungs filled and then exhaled its contents. All of it was a gift! The pain, the hurt, the disappointment. It was all a gift and he had forgotten how lucky he was to be alive. He had woken up. He was in a ditch and surrounded by strangers, but he had finally woken up.

Teeth and things

I've had these things on the for almost the entire times I've lived in Korea and last week I finally got the bottom ones taken off. Yes, I'm talking about by braces. The bottoms are off and the top ones come off in about seven days. Needless to say I'm very excited about having my teeth back. My tongue won't stop exploring the new sensitive it gets every time it runs itself over my teeth. My very straight and white teeth! It's strange to see them now, they look naked. I got so used to having them sealed in tombs of plastic and metal I forgot how damn white they are. I think it's only fitting that in my last few weeks inside of this country I'm getting my teeth returned to me. It was a big deal for me (being as vain as I am) to get braces in the first place. I can't believe it's really been over a year and a half since I had them put on. I can't believe it's been over a year and a half since I set foot inside of this country. I don't' read my blogs once I write them, which probably accounts for all the spelling mistakes and grammar abominations.

I feel like I woke up since I've been here and it's such a strange sensation that can't really be put into words. I still have a wonderful memory and I can remember all the things that have happened to me and all the things I've done but some of those things feels like a life time ago. I don't feel like that person any more. I know that's not some new and deep concept but it's the truth. A small part of me is worried that I won't have a place to fit into when I go home. But then I know that's just ridiculous because I've got some great people in my life. This exchange rate is killing me because I'm going to have to send my money soon and I will lose. There's just no way around it. Some of my friends are telling me to just send a little bit and leave the rest here and wait for the exchange rate to go back up but I don't think that rate is going to go up for a long time. I don't think it's every going to break even again actually. But, these things happen and I have to take my lumps. I've become used to taking lumps here. In the end, it's just money. Not that money isn't great and important but it really is just money. I hope to have a lot of it one day but if I don't I think I'll be alright.

I'm returning home with less stuff then when I came here. I think I've already talked about this but I've come to the realization that I don't need as much shit as I thought I did. When I get home I'm going to go into the garage that I have my crap stored and really thin it out. I don't like having too many things. I've never been a collector and I don't' think I ever will be. A collector of things any ways. Portland garage sale, TBA.

I just found out that I've never had the chicken pox or measles. This could complicate some things if I plan on going to Vietnam I guess. How the hell did I not the chicken pox when I was little? I remember all my friends having those nasty looking bumps and I remember hanging out with them while they had it. This isn't the first time I've missed the infectious bullet. People always seem to catch shit and I somehow escape, knock on wood. I remember everyone got poison ivy and I didn't get so much as an itch. That said, I do tend to think I have everything in the book. Ball cancer, brain cancer, Ebola, etc.

It's been a while since I worked with the kids at my job and this past week was my last week working with them since I will be in the adult program for the remainder of my time here. So I think I'll end this random ass blog with a cop of a letter one of my students gave me on Friday. Her name was Ji Yun but I nicknamed her "sleepy" because she fell asleep her first day in class. As always I will type the letter out exactly as it was written to me. Sleepy's English was actually pretty good however.

Dear Chris,
I believe that you remember me, (unless you have a terrible memory, i guess.) "Sleepy", when I first came into the Village, I really was sleepy. But I promise that I did not fall to sleep! I heard that I look sleepy a lot in school, too, so I was pretty much disappointed when I heard it again. Ha, ha...

But I had a fun time because of you, since you joked to me. I was happy to have a lot of homeroom classes with you. You are kind and handsome...my first black face teacher too!! I really like the "Stop the bus" game. Remember when I asked you why you had no hair? You say your hair does not like you so it ran away. You are funny like Will Smith. Any way I had a good time here. I hope you like me, too. Bye!

Sincerely, Ji Yun
P.S. Today's T-shirt was cool, with the same color with your skin.

Part VI.

He had turned down the advances of a few females lately. He just wasn't in the mood yet. He had lost his mojo a long time ago and he had no plans on looking for it any time soon. He wasn't secluding himself away but he was spending a lot of time alone. So many things had changed. He had to find himself and in order to do that he knew he had to get lost for a while. He hadn't realized how hollow he had allowed himself to become through out the years.

He went for a jog and that's where he found her. The first female he had truly touched in a long time. He wasn't looking for her but there she was. She followed him home and they would spend the rest of her life together. His heart was in desperate need of this. He had no idea how desperate. They spent long hours together. Late at night he would listen to her shallow breathes. Sometimes he would put his head on her side and listen to her heart beat. She was always warm and her warmth helped to fill his hollowness.

Their relationship wouldn't last very long but it would leave an everlasting mark. She had saved his heart from self imposed isolation and for that he would always be grateful. She died with his hand over her heart while he listened to her shallow breath.

Plans

Due to the current political environment my business has decided to buy tickets for all teachers who are not re-signing and are leaving in the next three months. I fall into this category so I was asked to tell them what date I wanted to return home after my teaching contract was up. My ticket was bought and paid for within 24 hours of telling them the date and they even took suggestions on what airline to fly me back home on.

I will be flying into Portland International Airport on Monday August 3rd at around 4p.m. My good friend Alex claims that he will pick me up at the airport but I think we can guess how that will turn out. So I'm asking some of you (Toby, Monica, Caitlin, Teresa, etc. to please mark that day on your calendar and have access to a car as I will most likely be calling you for a ride from the airport. It would suck to touch foot on American soil and have one of my first acts be to stuff my foot up Al's ass.

Anyways, I am very excited about my pending return and I cannot wait to spend quality time with my friends. The plan so far is that I will be taking a solo trip somewhere around southeast Asia two weeks before I fly home but there have been some complications to that plan. I might end up in Mongolia after all. Yes, that's right, Mongolia. We'll have to wait and see. In the mean while, time continues to tick by and I'm counting my days. I have never had so many job opportunities without really looking in my life, but it's time for me to go, at least for now.

People keep asking me what I'm going to do when I go home and I tell them I have no idea. It seems to make some people uncomfortable but I'm hoping something speaks to me when I get back. I'm going to fly back to Michigan to visit family in September and then I'm going to fly down to L.A. soon after that to visit old friends and remind myself why I left there so many years ago. The risk of visiting L.A. is that I might stay and I think some of my friends down there have a plan to convince me. I'm going to leave myself open to all options when I get back though. I've got friends in Chicago who make a strong case and I do love Chicago.

I think I'm going to take a month or two and just relax, hang out and re-adjust myself. Portland is such a great place to do all of these things. If I can find a job that interests me in Portland then I'll stay there for at least a year. One day, either soon or later I will go back overseas to work though. I'm sure of that. In the mean time, I've got some peeps I've made here who are leaving around the same time as me and are planning to come visit me in October and November. I guess I've talked up Portland so much that now I'm gonna have to prove it. And at some point I'm going to have to make it up to Canada about 2 hours north of Winnipeg and visit my very special friend, her husband and their newborn boy or girl, she's due at the end of this month.

Needless to say I've already got plans on top of plans, and somewhere in all that mess I'm going to look for a job at some point and find a place to rent. Thinking about all this brings one hell of a smile to my face. I really do love being alive...even when it sucks there's still that potential of things looking up.

What does it take?

Okay. Some people might take this the wrong way but I'm sure the majority of you will understand what I'm getting at. With recent events I'm pressed to ask the question, "What does it take for White People to be labelled as terrorist?" I've been talking to some of my friends around here and other back home about some of the violent acts going on in the United States right now. There's the shameful case of the doctor (that's what he was) who was murdered in his church by a man claiming to be on the side of God and the millions upon millions of unborn children. A man who by the way has not admitted to killing this doctor, even though there were many witnesses to the act. Then there is the case of the old ass man who walked into the holocaust museum, with the intention of killing himself some Jews I imagine, and managed to kill one guard (African-American, Black, etc.) before getting himself capped by two other security guards at the museum.

Besides being white both these men belonged to established influential groups. One was a white supremacist and the other belonged to several different anti-abortion groups. I would say they are "pro-life" groups but that's obviously, not the case. Both crimes are sad and apparently both crimes could have been prevented had people done their jobs and enforced the laws of the United States. I'm going to spend most of my time talking about this Scott Roeder character. He's the guy who shot the doctor for doing what is considered legal in the United States. He's the guy who seems to becoming somewhat of a hero in parts of the anti-abortion community. The reason I'm not going to spend much time on the 88 year old white supremacist dude is because he and his group are more honest about what they are. The don't like Jews, they don't like blacks and they want to live in a country that protects God fearing white people from the savagery of those other folks. I got it. I can roll with that. These men and women are on the losing end of history. They will never succeed in their goals and their time has passed. I know some people believe the "race war" is coming one day but I am not one of those people.

But then there's this Roeder motherfucker. He apparently wants to protect women against themselves. He doesn't care what the law says and he doesn't care about self determination. The groups that he belonged to and the groups that he had contact with get support from all over the country. There are silent supporters in the United States government and I'm sure people are denouncing the act in public and smiling in their private lives. The murdered doctors clinic will not reopen apparently. Which actually means this act of terrorism worked. Roeder and his other anti-abortion people got just what they wanted through their acts of violence. How are they different then the people who blow up airplanes and bring buildings crashing to the earth. Where is the outrage that these acts deserve? Where are our leaders denouncing these acts as "evil" and "cowardly"?

Where are the voices that echo so loud when acts like these are done by someone with a strange name that begins with Muhammad? What does it take for people to fear white men? What does it take for the authorities to start profiling white men with all American features? They have been known to blow up buildings in states such as Oklahoma. They have been known walk into schools and start shooting people while throwing home made bombs all over the place. They have been known to hold the nations highest office and start wars over false information.

Where is the fear when Scott Roeder announces this is only the beginning of such acts? How should we proceed in getting more information from this violent person who has extremist views and shares those views with a larger population of people? During this next political election cycle will it harm someone running for office to say they are against abortion? Will people cringe at these words? Will it hurt someone if it comes out that they gave money to an anti-abortion foundation?

Of course not! And it shouldn't. Just like it shouldn't scare people to find out someone running for office is a Muslim or has Muslim ties. No one will, nor should they ever consider torturing this Scott Roeder motherfucker. Torture is simply unacceptable for all human beings, even Scott fucking Roeder. This is the United States of America and one thing I've learned while being away so long is that I really do live in a great country. We need to hold our countries ideals to a higher standard than they have been. We all have blood on our hands. I have a responsibility to question the choices my government makes and I have a right to point out the mistakes I believe have and are taking place. That is what being an American is all about. So when I bring up the fact that the war in Iraq has cost many more Iraqi's their lives than it has Americans I'm not saying I hate the military, I'm pointing out a fact in which our media and our government doesn't seem to like to talk about. The same is and will be true when things start heating up more in Afghanistan.

So when I ask the question, "What does it take for white people in the United States to get labelled as terrorists" don't laugh it off because it's a serious question that deserves some serious thought. Perhaps in answering this question people might start to see how ridiculous some of our choices have been in the past decade or so.

Part V.

A "worry wart." That's what he was. He tended to worry about everything and not in an entertaining Woody Allen kind of way. He had been raised to worry about things. From going outside to eating food, he had learned to worry from an early age. "Is that chicken cooked all the way through?" In his pre-teen years he believed that every time he left the safety of his house that he might never return. A car could run him over. A crazed child molester could kidnap him while he was playing with his friends around the neighborhood. The different ways in which a young boy could meet his maker were endless. Although the years has softened his edge somewhat the worry still remained a part of his person. This worry would eventually morph. into the serious trust issues he currently housed inside of himself.

He didn't want to worry about everything any more. It had never really helped him anyways. Things happened, both good and bad, regardless if he spent time worrying about them or not. He was still here. He could still feel. He was still alive. He had outgrown the small child who worried about all things bad. It was time to let go. It was time to allow space for something new. He was alone. He was living in a foreign country. He was growing.

Rant Rant Rant

I was speaking with a friend today and we got to talking about words. The language of words and how naming something can change peoples reaction to it. I brought up torture because it's been in the news for such a long time. The "false debate" continues to run through the news cycles about "is water boarding torture or not?" The short answer to this question is "yes." I told my friend that asking if water boarding is torture is the wrong question. I believe it's a way of getting people to focus their time and energy on something that will yield no results. Everybody knows water boarding is torture, even the people who say it's not torture no it is. I honestly believe this. They simply don't want to name it but they no the truth within themselves.

I guess for legal purposes some people in our government may shy away from the term torture like they shy away from the term genocide. But, torture is torture no matter how you dress it up. You can call it "enhanced shower taking" or whatever they were calling it during the Bush Administration but it's still torture. The leaders of the world can sit in a air-conditioned room and watch videos of mass grave sites. They can hear first hand testimony from people who escaped mass murder on genocidal levels taking place in their country. These seem leaders can then decide not to label what the just saw and heard genocide but that doesn't change the fact that it is genocide. They know what's going on in these places is genocide just like we know that water boarding is torture.

Words do not change the action of the thing. Thousands of people have been wiped off the face of the planet, on purpose. Okay? Don't call it genocide. Does that mean you can't do anything about what's going on? Does that make these actions (murder, rape, brainwashing, etc.) any less horrifying? Does forcing water into someones lungs while they are strapped down seem any less torturous by not calling it torture? Does not calling it torture make it okay? We should be more concerned about the actions than the words. This is actually how I pick the people I spend time with. I pay more attention to what they do. The kind of person they are. Someone can smile and say hello to you but that doesn't mean they have a good character. I know many a person who knows just the right thing to say but behaves in ways that turns the stomach.

Apparently you can claim you're in the "pro-life" camp and then shoot someone in the head who performs abortions. Then I guess you can remain in the pro-life came and cheer the assassination, bombing and harassment of something that is legally protected in the United fucking States of America! I just killed someone but I'm pro-life. You're going to burn in hell and I hope you die, did I tell you I'm pro-life? I always feel strange talking about abortion because I will never know what it is like to have one. All I can say is that it is a deeply personal decision and I believe whole heartily in a woman's right to choose medical procedures concerning her body. I am curious though, and I don't know the stats on this, how many "pro-choicer's" have blown up the work place of pro-lifers? How many have walked into a church and shot a pro-lifer in the head?

I've been listening to a lot of alternative news lately on the Internet and the frustration is getting to be overwhelming. I'm remembering quickly why I stopped watching the news and listening to Internet radio in the first place. But then I think to myself that I'm giving up and washing my hands of the current reality. But when I find out things like one of my best friends is getting married in July or that my brother and his wife will be having their second child early next year I can't wash my hands of anything. As frustrating as it is change really does have to start somewhere right? As cheesy as that sounds.

Obama had a good message but he's having a difficult time convincing me he's not just another politician. But, that's actually exactly what he is, a politician. Is it possible to get into a position of power and influence without selling a piece of your soul? If the answer is "yes" then where the fuck are these men and women? When Obama won the election I wrote that he would for sure disappoint because it would be impossible not to. I was never in awe or in love with him. I think he is miles and miles ahead of what we've had sitting in the White House but that doesn't mean I'm complacent.

His whole "looking forward" message is bullshit! Yeah, I said it. It's bullshit. Of course, we need to look forward as a nation, as a country, as a people but does that mean all is forgotten? Hell no! People have to be held responsible for their actions. Isn't that what justice is? Looking forward does not mean that you cannot question the choices of the past. It does not mean you can't investigate the sincerity of what was said and how events unfolded. And it for damn sure doesn't mean that you can't bring people before the LAWS of the land and hold them to answer for what they have done. But I guess some businesses are too big to fail and some people are to powerful to be held responsible for anything they have done. That's not the kind of society I want to live in and it's not the kind of world I want my second niece or nephew to grow up in.

I just had to vent for a little bit. I can feel myself getting more and more annoyed so I think it's time for me to end this blog. And don't even get me started on marriage. I'm calling it marriage because it doesn't matter if someone is gay or not, it's still fucking marriage. We are just not allowing people to marry because they are gay. I'll just say one thing on this topic and then I'll really be done. I can't help being a black person and a gay person can't help being gay. I didn't choose to be black (although I thank the universe every day I am...I've been watching all the white people here tan on their days off and I'm so glad I can spend my time doing other things. Side note: Why do white people always have to show each other their tans when they are done? And why do they love to put their now tan are up against mine and say "I'm almost as dark as you?" No your not! You're not even close to being as dark as me.....you're white!) Black people used to be punished for simply being who they were born to be, that's why I think I get more frustrated with people of color who support oppressing gay folk. Imagine in this day and time if someone got on the television or the radio and said something like "I believe marriage is for white people". The point is so fucking obvious it doesn't even seem like it needs to be said. And before you reach for the bible black folk remember that that same bible was used to justify your great great great grandparents being systematically oppressed.