Email:  Toronto - Summer 2003

It's a trip in a lot of senses.  Flying in, from flying out of a place I flew into for even less than 4 weeks, to fly out again to a city with a completely different rhythm, a different heartbeat than this city: my birthplace - Toronto.  A city of 13 million, that Seoul, soon to be this Seoul. 13 million crammed into a concrete jungle the size of Lake Ontario.  Seoul, where highrises stand tall in clusters, like a forest of residential concrete, though intentionally planted, like the trees that line the streets of our suburbs, each equidistant from the others.  So much space!  We can almost measure personal space with a metre stick here.  I spent 10 months in a place where you crash into each other's shopping carts every weekend as you select your produce, and soft not extra firm, nor firm, just soft tofu and you don't say "Um, sorry," to your victims, nor they to you, or else the whole country would come to a standstill and everyone would drop dead from the lack of inertia.  Think of it:  13 million in the size of Lake Ontario.  It's impossible to manouever without regular contact.  You might get from your front door to the subway if you're really slippery.  A Frogger of sorts with other bodies, cars, buses, motorcycles, scooters...

Two of those four weeks were comprised of one week of jet lag, mixed with the pinball excitement of the novelty of being somewhere so familiar and so different from whence I came.  This somewhere, Toronto, where language and rhythm are inbred, intuitive.  I can undertstand most conversation, standing at the bus stop, unlike in Korea.  "He says they were in on it," the conversation continues on as it moves with the speaker and her audience, walking hurredly north on Dundas West.  I wonder what the conspiracy is.  A betrayal of the worst kind?  Or maybe just a surprise birthday party.  A part of me wants to follow to catch the rest of it, but I'm looking for Hugh's Room.  Jane Sibbery is playing tonight.  Meeting up with a new friend and her boyfriend who I've yet to meet and I'm late.  That's the theme for the day.  Late.  I'm that character from Alice in Wonderland today.  "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late."  Was it the Mad Hatter?  No. The rabbit?  One of you will know and kindly tell me.

Funny in a city with so many words that I can read and comprehend, I'm having a hard time making out the address on each little donut shop and variety store I squint and peer at.  I'm looking for 6321 Dundas West.  Where am I?  You need to know where you are to know how to get there.  I do find my destination place - where I'll be for a short  hour and a bit.  I walk in, relieved.  I'm here.  The lights are dim.  The candles cast shadows as she sings and no one barely breathes in fear of upsetting the smooth, warm, silk blanket her voice casts, knits with each note, each beat.  A warm blanket that envelops me after a day of ping ponging from the west end - ping from Oakville, pong into the downtown core (ah!  the traffic lights on Spadina!) ping to the airport dropping off a friend who begins her journey to see the love of her life in Italy and to work on her Ph.D research, pong back to Spadina.  Ping, out to Etobicoke, pong now to Dundas West.  The distances get shorter and shorter until I'm driving from point A to B, from the west end to the very west end of Toronto.  Eventually I'll ping to my parents where luggage awaits the stuff I will pack into it and transport with me over the continents, to the city where I take up residence as one in thirteen million or one in forty-seven point five, nationally speaking.

"Don't forget to breathe," she said before she entered the building labeled Departures.

My second week was at a slower pace.  My body and brain slowing down from bouncing around, go, go, go, from excitement.  Everything has caught up to me.  Three weeks prior I was saying goodbye to Seoul.  One week before I was eating somtam among the perfume of jasmine/chili/sewage in the streets of Bangkok, and now here I am, home.  Home?  Home.  Say it enough and it sounds so foreign, so alien.  What is home?  What is home to a somewhat involuntary vagabond, though I'm atleast aware that commitment is something I've needed to reflect on.  My question is, well maybe it's two questions.  Questions of the chicken and egg variety.  Ah well, I have my own ideas.

Week two was surreal.  The body may be able to fly, but the soul, it walks.  Or takes the train.

And in between the bouncing around and slowing down: a wedding; and what seemed like too many hours on the couch in front of the cableless T.V. (my curiosity has been shamefully picqued by Canadian Idol.  The rock star pipe dream still lives inside, and I would also like an update at some point on who Erin picks.  I hope it's Wade, though I'm sure I could get this on the American Forces Network, if I take the T.V. out and plug it in.  I'd happily trade Buffy for Rick Mercer) but seems to be a sneeze now; the birth of a new painting; too much shopping; a Thai feast made entirely by me!; the revival of my cycling muscles and bum callous; and visits with friends, though not enough visits.  But there is always next year.  Eleven months to be exact.

I'll soon be back in my Seoul apartment.  The one the school lets me inhabit, where they have a phone line set up for me.  It's the one my answering machine is connected to.  Where my messages are recorded and will play back to me at my will.  One button.  I'm somewhat excited about the answering machine alone.  (I think the Control - Teacher - Marm instinct is developing nicely).

My father is a less reliable message relayer.  In fact, he's given me two messages in the four weeks I've been home.  My mother is a little bit better.  Her version of each caller's name can be entertaining. It involves some sluething, which keeps things lively.  I have to look at the area code and number to make sense of the geographical location of the mystery caller, then bring to memory anyone I might know in that area.  I know I will miss this jigsaw type of message relaying when I'm in my apartment with the machine.  It's quite interactive.  "Any calls?"  "Um hmm.  Antie called."  She hands me a piece of Lotto 6/49 paper, her stationary of choice in the store below their home.  "Antie?  Are you sure she said Antie?"  "Yuuhh...Antie...She said Antie..."  Hmm...416 - XXX-XXX...Is that a cell number?  Antie...An tie...Ohhh Angie called.  "Thanks for the message mom."  "You're welcome."

If I didn't return your calls, I claim aging immigrant parents, who blast Classical 96.3 over their store air conditioner/windmachine as my very viable reason.  And I supposed it just wasn't meant to be.  You'll have better luck ringing me in Korea.  Pause for 3 seconds after the beep so I get the whole message.  Or email.  Or write.  I miss snail mail, but who has time eh?  (If you write to me, I pledge with all of my eight year old fixation of written mail to write you back.  I may even include stickers.  But writing maybe slow during report card season of which we have four, though who knows, I'm set on getting it down to a science this year).

Now, I must ping home.  Luggage awaits.  And breakfast tomorrow with an aspiring soon to be author, her writing is already compelling, where I will eat a plate of eggs and something that I will regret later and the person(s) next to me on the plane will regret too.  But I won't have this for atleast eleven more months, before my mother delivers me to the building marked Departures, where I will fly away from here.  This city.  Yes, HOME.  It was and may be again.  But right now, it's back to Seoul, with my new treasures, back to all of those people with shopping carts, cars, motorcycles, and buildings.  It's an interesting place.  Must remember to breathe...