Drift Reality > South Korea > March 2001

I'm going through this absolutely awful phase right now. My shoulders are aching, there is a raw pain on my left tonsil and everything seems to annoy me immensely. The thought of my girlfriend only brings to mind the garlic that I smelled on her breath last night. I feel as though I want to scream at the top of my lungs and plunge my fists into the wall. A second later, I feel as if I want to lie upon a hard mattress and fall asleep for ten hours.

Dong-mi came over last night and I was so full of medication that I started to blab on about all my fears and sacred thoughts. As the red wine began to infuse me with warmth, I started to divulge my most abnormal secrets: How I was convinced that because things were going well for me, it meant that things would inevitably fall. I told her "Things would be worse soon." I also told her about my youth, my struggles with a fractures self-image and my attempts to reach out for a world that I couldn't quite get a hold of. Later, when we were lying in bed, she said, "How can I live when you leave?" I thought about it and it scared me that if I did not respond, it would mean I was another in a long succession of failed relationships with her. So I said, "Yeah, but you have your job, and your good friends." I cringed as she laughed sadly to herself.

I have this image in my mind of the place I would love to be right now and it is my friend's house on the Chesapeake Bay. I spent a week there right before I came to Korea. The house sits atop a crest that descends down into one of the many outlets of the Chesapeake Bay. From the backyard of the house, a person can see a view framed by large oaks, of the river and the bank on the other side. I remember this view like a dream - you walk down steps that are rectangular logs stamped into the ground at regular intervals, surrounded by foliage and trunks. Suddenly, the path opens and the color changes from green to blue. The path turns into a slanted walkway that winds into a thin dock.