Things Written Outside Family Mart

in Busan, South Korea with a pitcher (1L) of beer, a bottle of soju and a bowl of ramyun noodles.
I have on my Waegukin hat right now. Whenever I am in an area that is saturated with us, I feel strangely ill at ease. I am still terrible at shopping. I am still not good at getting girls to sleep with me, but apparently I am talented. Or, at least I have been told so for a couple of mediums (read: writing and music). What do you do when you’re Paul Varjak?
I always want people to sit down and tell me their lives.
Busan would be a very different experience for me, I know that much, but why do I always run away from things that seem like they will mean something in the future?
A Filipino family has set up a convenience store outside of the convenience store, and the store is their van. They seem happy.
Set me straight. Buy me beers and set me straight.
I surprised the hell out of my friend last night be being American. Is it so hard to believe?
There are big things coming in the next short time. I feel them percolating, and soon it will be time to serve them up. The future is a blank slate. We defile with our created meanings. What will you? Just put the pen on the page and see what spews forth.
I am at the scene of previous exploits, wandering through significant memories. You remember when “that” happened? Of course you do. But always bear (bare) in mind the significance of the past tense.
Yesterday I walked for eight straight hours (including four hours of city walking and four hours on a couple of mountains), spent six hours in a spa for eight dollars, went to the beach, played a show that lasted almost two hours, got heroically drunk, played the after hours show, went to a bar where cute girls talk to you while you drink—one of them was dressed as a chicken, before retiring the day at my friend’s rooftop flat.
That’ll do it, hey? If for that one day, the weekend was full.
Hey, remember that time when you slept so softly next to me? It was here in this place that we touched something. What was it? Why do I have to be so intense? When will I learn how to have fun with relationships and words and meaning and all that the world would have me understand?
I wish I understood things. I wish I could concentrate on things for longer than five hours at a time. I wish the world would rotate backwards for just one day, long enough to fuck everybody up, and then return to normal. I wish the best minds of my generation had a voice to say what they see. I wish the minds of my generation weren’t blind. I wish the reality and pain of eternal separation from meaning on no man, but it’s what we are all stuck with. I wish I could see as a Korean sees. I wish life made sense—when it so clearly doesn’t (and that is its beauty). I wish I had some insight into what it is about society that seems to foster a sense of money. I wish anybody could understand why it is impossible to own money. The one thing that makes “ownership” possible—or is it?—can never be said to be something you own, only something you have. If it were consistently seen in this light, don’t you think that we’d understand more about life? It is all fleeting. You own nothing. You are given the care of it for a short time, and the only thing that really, truly matters is the actual care that you give to it: what kind of use you make of it, how you allow it to help humanity, and the utter, delicious, beautiful meaninglessness of it in the long run.
Don’t give me this crap about an after-life, and please don’t call it believe because believing is based on experience. Faith is what it is, but it CAN be totally groundless. Jesus arose from the grave. Lazarus arose from the grave. Did they come back from heaven? If Lazarus was a good man, and ostensibly in heaven, don’t you think he’d be mad if Jesus brought him back to earth? Perhaps heaven is the rest the mind can take when it’s dead, and the nutrients the body gives back to nature that breathed life into it.
It can be amazing what we will endure for the sake of endurance. She’s tall and thin, she’s short and fat, and all we want is to feel something, anything for a pure moment. Keep an eye out for what will come, it might take unexpected forms.
What do the Korean police do, exactly? Or, maybe a more appropriate question would be: what is it about the USA that keeps our boys in blue so busy?
The obvious answer is crime. What is that nature of this crime? Everything. What is it about the USA that makes the crime so rampant? The unwavering devotion to not giving a shit about fuck. Does the fact that the cops actually carry guns exacerbate the issue? Probably. Maybe. Causes and effects are necessarily related. The question is: how?
“What?” is a way of looking at the world honestly. “How?” is a way of making all the necessary connections that exist.
Which one can I bone?
If it were possible, could you break the back of the established guilt purveyors? They sell it as if it’s free, but don’t we all know the truth? You ought to feel guilty for this. Please feel guilty for that. Drink down the insignificant significance.
We’ll feed you until you defeat us.
Hahahaha!
(you never will)
Congestion is relative,
by which I mean, of course,
that relatives
can congest the most free-flowing
of folk.
Friends will do the same,
and things we can’t control—
by which I mean most of a life—
but the trick at this point is fully
to invest yourself in decongestants.
Clear the sinuses with a good book.
Free those nasal passages in writing.
Create your pain away.
Accept the things you can’t control.
Forever seek to control
absolutely nothing.
Remember life is really good if you
simply let it be, and follow purely
spiritual whims to
the ends they’ll carry
you to.