What's The Point?

I've been taking a writing class here on post.

It seems now that that's happened, I can't seem to just write. 

Instead, I try to write. Like the old SNL skit about Acting! I've taken to writing in a Word document so I can rework what I write and then cut and paste it into this blog. 

When it's perfect, don't you know.

As if that's going to happen.

What ends up happening is that I just never get it from there to here.

Thus the title of this entry.

So, I've decided to actually do here what we did last class:

Stream of thought - or - Free writing.

Which is what I mostly end up doing when I don't think too much.

And which is much more fun for me,

maybe even to whoever might take the time to read this.

I want to put down here some bits and pieces of stuff which I've been thinking about, experiencing, observing. What's the point?

I guess just to exercise some urge within me to do so.

Maybe the class clown factor.

I break this up like I'm doing because I tend on paper to do what I tend to do in conversations, i.e. run on until you and I are both lost and probably confused, not to mention exhausted. 

Awhile ago, I was walking back to the hotel where I am housed, Humphrey Lodge it's called. It is just dusk, the sun was doing that really big round orange-red thing just above the horizon. temperature and air like early Fall anywhere where Fall comes - warm with a hint of coolness. The streets were pretty much devoid of traffic, no one walking my way or the other way. Walking was feeling good after being inside reading, writing, talking to people on Skype, on this Sunday afternoon. I felt peaceful and it WAS peaceful. No planes flying over head, no loud traffic noise from Pyeongtaek, the city surrounding this post. To highlight the quiet mood, a dove started cooing and flew off over head from somewhere. I thought how strange to be here in the middle of a military base located in a country both of which exist because of the insanity of war.

I felt like I never wanted to turn on the TV again or listen to another word of political bullshit, or have to judge another person's point of view as bullshit, or to try to make my point of view theirs, or the right one, etc. 

I get all my news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because there is more likelihood that they'll at least give me something to laugh about and they even occasionally present both sides of whatever their point of view is, which I'm not sure i actully know or that they do either.

So, just after the dove flew over, a magpie flew up from the lawn I was passing, you know, the one by the Super Gym I think I've mentioned somewhere before. What the dove did for auditorally, the Magpie did visually, i.e. heightened the feeling of pleasure and absurdity  in the paradoxical experience i was having. Magpies are just so cool looking!

And, at that moment, I noticed the name of the Commander of some Battalion or Brigade (a little foggy still on the Army contractions) posted at the gate of a wire fenced enclosure filled with "Duce and a half" trucks, generators, etc.: Maj.Woo N. Joo. Really. Korean? Porto Rican? Vietnamese? I've encountered all of these in the Army here. The Vietnamese chaplain who I met my first day here was raised in the US, looks more like a Buddhist monk than Buddha, and puts out a staunchly Christian view of life, near as I can tell. "What a world!"

There's a section of this post called Sentry Viallage. Somehow that just sounds cute, like one might find them all living standing up in little phone booth-like houses.

The Air Force has bases, the Army/Marines have posts, the Navy has bases and ports, and the National Guard and Reserves have weekends away from home at these other places, unless they happen to do four or five deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Here's a thought I had: Truth is everything that is, lies are everything that isn't.

I went bungee jumping yesterday.

I think I have always felt curious about how it would feel

to free-fall. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, e.g. or some other high place. The idea of the sudden stop at the bottom has been something of a hindrance to exploring this possibility. The idea of bungee jumping came to my awareness about twenty years ago. One time there was an opportunity to do it in Flagstaff but I didn’t take it.

When I became aware of the opportunity here, in Korea, it seemed a bizarre  thing to do vs. say going to see a Buddhist temple or the DMZ or the islands in the China Sea.So, naturally, I took notice and signed up for the trip (offered by Army Outdoor Recreation who's motto might be, "When war isn't enough!")

So much for my cultural motivation.

There were six of us, five young soldiers and me. In the old WWII movies I would have been the one they called “Gramps,” played by Ernest Borgnine.

On the trip there and back, I sat beside a young twenty year old warrior from PA. I don’t think I ever looked that young. He was from near Valley Forge. His military plan was to go “Airborn” because it would be easier to get a deployment (Afghanistan or Iraq) which he wanted to legitimize himself as a soldier was my impression.  After that,  he would get into the reserves, go to college, get a degree, come back in with a commission and retire from the military twenty years down the road.

My military plan was to survive basic training, A.I.T., Vietnam, and figure out what I would do in “the world” when I got back to CONUS (military speak for Continental United States).

He was going bungee jumping because he said he was afraid of heights and wanted to confront this fear before going airborn, i.e. jumping out of airplanes as one of his military qualifications.

I still don’t have a plan by comparison. So it was easy to tell him that I admired him for having a plan and the willingness to step into his fear in order to overcome such an obvious and significant obstacle.

Our conversation ranged over the typical topics, , e.g. comparing notes as to places we’d been in PA, and the atypical, e.g. agreeing on how surprisingly different life turns out from what we imagined when we were 18 (I realize it is my prejudice the “kids these days” don’t think deeper than text entries. Had to realign yet another prejudice/generalization.

Of course, it took me 66 years to arrive at this and him 20.

I guess things speeding up in the world is a good thing too.

He and I both wanted to go first, pretty much for the same reason. Too much waiting and thinking seemed not to be the friend of courage.

We flipped for it and he won.

However, LIFE had another coin and when we got to the top of the tower we were to jump from, they made him go last (the other five of us could be accommodated with one bungee cord, he needed another).

What was it like to step to the edge of a two hundred foot drop?

I felt a moment of incredulity that I was going to step off,

A moment of fear,

And an inner shrug that felt like I’d already done the hard part getting there; now I could trust the process. They weren’t going to be killing off the customers, after all.

The Korean man who was standing just behind me, coaching me to not hold on, began counting down from 5, during which time, time seemed to change to something more like a state of something else, one in which I was simultaneously aware of the physical reality of looking down 200 ft, and the existential reality that every risk I’d ever taken felt just like this and was no more or less dangerous.

Hesitation – countdown: 5…4…3…2…1…step off

Instantly, it was total exhilaration -

over in the next instant.

The moment of stepping off into space, too late to step back, this was IT!

What I had really come for without knowing it.

The falling seemed to end before I could really comprehend it.

Bouncing and springing up and down which followed was both fun and physically uncomfortable (lots of pressure as gravity forced blood from my feet into my head, the ankle straps tightening.)

Then the adrenaline shaking sense of satisfaction and the physical relief of resting as I was lowered into the raft floating in the pool below the jump.

There was disappointment too, that the experience of free-fall had not been long enough.

Over the next few minutes while I looked up at the next of our group getting ready to jump, another emerged as well: I felt proud. Good enough for me. By the end of the trip, they stopped calling me sir, so long Gary worked.

By the way, I haven't had much to say about all the beauty I've observed in Korea because I haven't really observed much. I have said in the past that with attention, I can find much that is beautiful in any three cubic meters I'm observing. I admit to having been out of integrity with that notion. I'm not sure why, other than it may be that I just can't yet get a hold of the energy of this country and see it through Korean eyes. Frankly, I've been too preoccupied with overcoming jet lag and getting to know the job here to really have energy to care, let alone explore Korean society.

This trip took us out into Appalachian-like mountains and the facility was located above a large lake nestled among these hills. The soldier from PA and I agreed it was very reminiscent of where we grew up. He mentioned the Poconos and I thought about the Delaware Water Gap and Lake Wallenpaupack. Even the two-lane roads winding along the contours of the mountain above the lake were like those back East. I felt grateful to be in theses surroundings, like a vacation for my eyes and a touch of familiar beauty.

Confession: the bungee jumping part was cut and pasted. Oh, well...

I think I've come to a truth for me: I don't resonate with some cultures and others I do. That sounds so, "well duh" to me. But, I've been feeling remiss in my duty to stay open to all possibilities. 

This seems to go beyond just not knowing the language or understanding a different view of life. That may be true and there also seems to be something more to it. What that may be maybe I'll come to see. More may be revealed. For now, what I do know is I am glad that I feel at home on this island in the middle of a foreign place. I have enough energy for that. It's enough for now. I'll let you know.