Singaporean Passage, Part 1

Despite spending a total of seven hours in the air on Christmas Day, I still eventually came falling back to Earth like one of gravity's bitches. But the day almost didn't happen.

It was around 10 after 6 in the morning when I awoke, and my panicked senses flooded me with the realization of the time. My alarm was bleating like a possessed sheep, and the vibrating portion of that alarm (I have this because of my near deaf-ness), which I had placed conveniently right next to my weary head, was flaying on the floor, beating like a heart. Alana and Erin later informed me that they had heard my alarm quite clearly from the hall.

Incidentally, they were the ones who wrested me from my dreamless sleep, by concurrently pounding on my apartment door, and by pressing the god-awfully loud doorbell.

I was awake and cursing. "Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit." Together, Erin, Jason, Elena, Alana and I were supposed to leave for the airport at 6 a.m. sharp. We would catch a cab to the nearest bus stop which the airport shuttles serviced. "Fuck, goddamn it." To the two ladies outside: "Hold on! Dressing!" I didn't even have my hearing aids on!

Once dressed -- at least enough to show myself -- I opened the door, still swearing.

"Awake?" came the gentle prodding from Alana. I chuckled.

"Do you have everything packed?" was Elena's inquiry.

I sighed, stuffing the remaining belongings into my backpack. "Yeah, all packed. I did it last night."

"Okay, well. We're going to run to Paris Baguette for some coffee."

"Alright. I'll meet you there in 10 minutes. I just have to brush my teeth and double-check everything."

"Brush your teeth? Okay," and they started to leave. "10 minutes?"

"Yes. I'll run."

I did just that, only to receive a text shortly afterwards informing me to meet Erin at her apartment, where she, too, had only just woken up.

"Ready?" I asked when I got there. Erin shot me a sideways stare, laced with unspoken sarcasm. "No?"

In 5 minutes, we were out into the cold air, with the night still perfectly dark and bleak around the edges of our vision. It was a brisk -2 (in Celsius), and we were all heading for eternally-warm climates. We dressed in long sleeves, jeans, a jacket, and beanies and hats; but in our bags the clothes were shorts and t-shirts: the dust was still settling in the apartment after their removal from the corners of the closets.

Elena and Alana took a cab together, while Erin, Jason and I took a separate one a few minutes later. After we caught the shuttle a few minutes later, Erin and Jason sprawled asleep instantly. I lay awake, unable to sleep despite having had only an hour of it.

I had planned my trip late, up till the minutes before going to sleep. If I managed to pull off this trip without losing my mind, I would be impressed with myself.

Sauerkraut and arsenic sauce

There is relief in the air (polluted though it is here in Korea). Yes, relief. The Christmas festival at Boston Campus is over. My kids were full of vim and vigor as they took their turn on the stage.

To bring you up-to-date: Every year, Boston Campus hosts a Christmas festival. This festival is of terrible importance, both to the school and to our kids' parents. Stress is a disease, more common than a cold (which is pretty damn common when working with children), during this stretch of a month leading up to the actually concert date. We practice every day, sometimes several times a day: Songs, scripts, dances!

My class, which is the oldest and smartest of the kindergarten classes, was doing the most difficult production of the bunch: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It was a long script, interspersed with a couple song-and-dance numbers. When initially told about this event, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to pull it off. When we started the whole shebang finally, things started to get better. The kids learned the script fast, within a couple weeks, leaving only the songs -- and those dances that I had to choreograph -- to memorize.

It took work, and determination, and when the day came full, we put on our suits (not me, obviously) and trekked onto the stage to perform. Beyond the heavy and hot lights of the ellipsoidals glaring down upon the kids, the parents stared anxiously, beaming with pride whenever their child recited his or her line perfectly.

Overall, the production went smoothly. Thomas, bless his lingering baby fat, froze once and completely forgot his line. But Erin ventured up to him and reminded him. After that, it was near perfection. The kids did have a little trouble with the songs, which were complex (yes, if you were 5, you too would have difficulty memorizing a line like the following: "Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable"), and having to dance at the same time didn't always make it easier. But they pulled it off well, and at the end were met with polite applause (thunderous applause from their own parents, of course). I hopped onto the stage then and, together with my kids, took a bow before leading them off at stage left.

All the hoopla was followed with a cordial ceremony afterwards, wherein the children got changed backstage while the foreign teachers like myself were introduced to everyone. We even received bouquets -- yes, bouquets! -- from some of the parents. It was quite a nice moment. There was chatting afterwards with the more fluent parents, many flashbulbs, and a fond faretheewell. The day had ended early, with a nice layover until the post-kindergarten classes began at 2:30.

I donned my jacket and headed out into the brisk cold. I got a bite to eat before proceeding to walk home -- with a bouquet of flowers in my left hand, of course. (I pondered whether I should've just walked up to a beautiful Korean woman and said, "These are for you, love" and then walked away.) When I got home, I sat listlessly and exhaustedly in my chair. I took a nap then. And an hour later I woke up and went back to work.

Roses and beams and candy-appled everythings

Tonight is December 20th. It was a brisk Saturday, which I predictably spent indoors, cleaning the walls and floors, decidedly unsocial. The time has passed slowly. But I'm not complaining, for Christmas approaches again, bringing its cheer once again to all of us. The roses now exist only in greenhouses, supported by the sunbeams that morph inward to the flowers' light-hungry cell structures. I find this way of the world's workings a great and wonderful thing.

I am listening at the moment to a song called "Prove It," by a band called Television. The song is more than just a bit dadaist, but the chorus has this tidbit worth the quotation:

"Prove it, just the facts
The confidential
This case, this case, this case
That I've been workin' on so long"

The song is about chasing some thought so far that you get lost along the path it leads you.

I haven't much to tell, but I feel like I have a lot to say, to the point of deluge. I have spent much time lately wondering why this is, but I don't think I have come to any worthy answers. I hope this trait is atavistic, and that I will pick up my pen soon and never put it down again.

The truth is I do not tell much of anything. I fancy myself some great enigma, and perhaps I am. I have always been honest, true, but I have become uncomfortable with the facts. It's not their reality that I distrust; it is their barrenness, their lack of contextual and relative grip. I turn instead to emotional honesty, and thus circumvent both truth and falsehood on a path that was built for the candy-apple-colored marching bands as well as the dark, chambered dread of a glucose-draining gothic sensibility. I communicate in images, and teeter that walk of insane hyper-surfeit cumbrance. Even now I am doing it!

When I was young, I was a talker. In fact, my youth was one of surprising garrulity: Words flew out of my mouth like atoms through a particle accelerator. My parents must've thought me an outlier in any statistical measure of speech patterns.

One day, when I was 7, standing in the half-kitchen of my home in Orlando, something happened which I think changed that, however slowly. (Okay, the specious quality of this self-analysis is certain; perhaps I am projecting in imagining the significance of this moment.) Dressed in a red sweatshirt, which my mom had made, I was looking out the window into the refractive embrace of the late afternoon. The sun outside had never been brighter, and at that very moment, it was sinking through the net of the basketball hoop outside on our patio. I was speaking with all the usual rapidity, about something or other, oblivious to the annoyed exasperation around me.

Finally, gently, my mom said to me, "Joel, you're talking too much." The command implicit in this was met with enthuastic relief by my sister. I defended myself with some weak argument, contending that I had a lot to say. My mom replied that we all do, but that we don't always need to say it out loud. With blankness etched on my face, I asked what that meant. I was politely informed that it meant to confine my words to my brain, and let them tumble in there like the clothes in the dryer.

With a look of eureka on my face, I comprehended her, and them, all of my family. And nothing's been the same since then, or ever.

Greeting whatever comes next

The night is begun, with the temperatures already approaching an ungodly low. It is barely 6 p.m.; the sun has only just been pushed past the horizon. And yet it is already below 20. For you metric-practicing readers, that is a stark -6; and for the dubiously-extant scientist who might read this, that is a moderate 267 Kelvin.

I came tonight to tell you of some sudden thought that struck me, a thought about the dichotomous natures of human motive. I wish to tell you my thoughts, but as always I don't think it's worth relating. So rather I think I'll keep you up to date, and inform you then of what I think.

A new semester has begun at Boston Campus (I have here linked the school's website, on whose main page you can see me). Mountains of stress accompanied the week, manifest in the multitude of lesson plans and dictating once again to the oft-mutinous kids the importance of their attention.

On top of all this, I have begun to have dreams, of the nocturnal kind, with vague and frequently confusing imagery. Truthfully, sleep has left me, and in its void only a stoniness lays beside me. The solitude of sleep is in its reprieve from the noise I hear daily, that sound I can't escape, like a cryptic conscience with a bullhorn. Deprived of this, I distort strangely.

The only time I ever drink coffee is if I need the caffeine. Yet this week I drank coffee daily.

Such tiredness can make one cranky. I am not given to such outburstings, and instead tend to become even more quiet. As a result, I become more unhappy. This is okay. As must happen, unhappiness leads to reflection, and ultimately, hopefully, to action. I discovered in my time that my thoughts, whose liquidity I have always joyed over, have become illiquid. My mind, my reason, have somehow become solid, and intractable.

If this seems boring, I apologize. But this was fantastic to me, an awakening. I had forgotten myself, in (mis-)adventurous whimsy. Left behind among the rubble and ruin of whatever troubles I concerned myself with understanding, my mind sat undisturbed and vacant. Why? Why did I forget the instrument whose melodies had always sounded so sweet to my ears?

And this brings me to my point of understanding the dichotomy of human motive. I have long seen myself as sincere, as honest. The motive for all human action flows out of two desires: love and pleasure (or to escape their inverses). Whatever may have been my ideas about coming here, and whatever they may still be, I have acted largely on the side of pleasure. I don't mean pleasure in the Biblical sense, which might conjure up images of strange, awkward sin; I am far too simple for such ideas. It has been a period where I have unwittingly attempted to restructure my character. Now I find it is vile.

Except for my sincerity. Here my honesty has been the subject of shock, and even of ridicule. Even as this weird fact frustrates me (I understand the ridicule of ignorance, but ridiculing sincerity is insensible to me), I am thankful for it, for apart from it, I might be left to whatever impulses I could indulge here -- whatever impulses I don't want to follow.