Schrodinger's meat

I'm sure you've noticed that there weren't any posts during the month of October. October was not a good month. About a week after my last post I had a total breakdown of the (to quote Boromir) "whatthefuckamIdoingheregoddammit" variety and came within a mouse-click of buying a one-way ticket back to Seattle. I obviously (or not, given that not many of you are in a place where you'd bump into me on the street if I had) didn't, but was never really comfortable with the "why." The best I could come up with was that Korea was just another obstacle (along the lines of Whitman College's first year Core and my thesis defense) erected between me and what I want by people who don't even really know me (that's not an entirely fair characterization: I loved my first year Core class). This attitude did not lend itself to engaging with the rest of the city, and I spent a lot of my free time either pretending I was still a grad student or consuming books and DVDs.

So, in summary:

I spent a lot of September being sad,

and a lot of October being angry.

Then Rebecca came and stayed for a week.

Having someone to explore Seoul with me broke my shell. In eight days, we did everything in the "Seoul" section of Lonely Planet's Korea book that I thought looked remotely interesting. We did noraebang (Korean karaoke, which Rebecca says is very similar to Japanese karaoke -- otherwise known as karaoke -- but, as I pointed out earlier, Korean culture puts a lot of effort into explaining how it is not Japanese culture). We hiked Dobongsan (Seoul's Mt. Cardigan). We saw a paper lantern festival. We found a good district for international eating (and the vegetarian buffet I was trying to find when I stumbled onto that porridge joint). We had the following experience (twice, actually), which I am going to Fox Newsify to clarify the narrative:

Scott and Rebecca sit down at a restaurant.

Scott points to what he wants on the menu, points to himself, and says "I am vegetarian" (still the only complete sentence I can say in Korean; see the whole disengaging from the city thing).

Gesticulating occurs; maybe a waiter who speaks English is called; Scott thinks he's managed to convey what he wants and what he wants removed from it.

The food comes with meat or something that looks kind of like meat and Scott can't tell what it is still in it.

Scott gets annoyed.

Rebecca reminds Scott that everyone is doing the best they can except that there's this three-foot thick solid lead language barrier standing between him and everyone.

The moral of this story is twofold:

On the small scale, I'm either going to have to keep eating the same three things over and over and over and over again, or I'm going to have accept that I can no longer control what I'm eating as perfectly as I would like to. I think I have chosen the latter. That's where the title of this post comes from. There's only meat in it if I'm absolutely 100% certain there is meat in it, in which case, it's so obvious, I can just pick it out and eat around it.

On the large scale, I think I'm also going to have to accept that, for the next two years, my life just isn't going to make sense. The things I want and the things I have chosen to do are not going to be at all related in any way that I can see and that's just the way it is.

I don't know what that means for this blog. It's probably not going to be a very good guide for anyone who ever wants to visit this city -- more engagement will happen, I'm sure, but it's no longer really a priority for me (and in less than five weeks, I'm going back to the States for three months) -- but I guess that's not really what this was ever supposed to be. I will try to do a better job of conveying to you that I have not been kidnapped and dragged north of the DMZ.

There. I've done it. I've written a post apologizing for not posting. My slide into the dustbin of digital background noise begins...

...now.