Day Six Hundred and Forty-Two: Limbo

Every morning when I wake up, I'm in limbo.

I'm dead tired. But I can't quite go back to sleep, or I'll be late to work.

I want to watch TV, but if I merely do that, I still go to sleep.

So I must, must, turn on the computer, and sit quietly and mess around for 40 minutes exactly until it's time to go in to the office.

I maintain this delicate balance every morning.

Also, I've finally seen Twilight. And it's as terrible as possible. And, sadly enough, just so dull.

Day Six Hundred and Thirty-Nine: Darwin

All I have to say is... if you're still fighting against evolution, give up.

You lost.

End.

I have 4.5 weeks left at my school. That is some absolute craziness.

Day Six Hundred and Thirty-Seven: Excerpt.

This is Copyright Justin Gerald, in case anyone wants to steal this random stuff.

Thought I'd post some fiction.

This is the beginning of the novel I'm 110 pages into.

Enjoy, Amy.

From what I’ve learned, I can tell you that Danilo was having a shitty morning, just like every other morning he spent in the bay. He’d been standing on the deck of his pathetic little ship, hoping the bangus would bite but knowing they wouldn’t, and on top of that, the rainy season had showed up, unpacked and begun to settle in for a few months of work. He was so thoroughly soaked that he wondered, as he often did, why the hell he even bothered to wear anything at all. Maybe if he was naked he’d find his situation a bit more hilarious than it was. Or, maybe he’d catch something and die a slow, painful death with lots of bloody mucus and coughing and I probably should have put coughing first if I wanted to escalate properly but now I’ve said it and you get the picture anyway. With his luck, he’d probably just slip off the edge and drown, and Sampaguita would laugh at the pitiful, naked man they plucked out of the water, skinny and smacked around by decades on the bay, and she’d contemplate how she ever allowed herself to believe she loved him.
I’m getting a. off-track and b. over-dramatic here, though. It was the rainy season, yes, and that would depress just about anyone with a job that required them to stand outside. The fish were clearly elsewhere, but when you’ve made it past sixty and you can still function reasonably well – even if your wife shakes her head when you pass and your friends thank you’re worthless and you can’t even succeed at the one thing you’ve ever known how to do on this Earth – then each day alive is a good thing, or at least that’s how Danilo liked to think of it. I figure if he thought of it any other way he’d have lost the will to live a long time ago. But there he was, chewing on a damp piece of pandesal and staring at his mostly empty net, ready to try and drum up interest back at the port after sunrise.
The bangus doesn’t have any teeth, so I probably shouldn’t have said “bite” before. They feed on algae and other amorphous, defenseless things, and they were a big deal in Dagupan, which is in The Philippines, which is where Danilo and Sampaguita lived, and had lived for the previous thirty-seven years. Danilo tried to make it in Manila before that, but I’m gonna have to knock his hustle because the man never had any. He’d always been a fundamentally nice man, and he was the type who deserved a change of luck. If karma’s a thing we can really believe in, Danilo should have been headed straight for the glory. And that morning, he found something that had the power to lead him there.
The solitary bangus he’d caught was more than half his size and took eleven gruesome blows to the head to stop flapping around on his deck. He’d ended several thousand lives this way, but even after all those years, he had never gotten used to the sound of death. If he could have, he would have found a way to make a life for himself and his wife without having to watch so many creatures gasping and struggling for the life he was denying them. But Danilo had long since passed the time when learning a new trade was any kind of possible, and so he watched the fish finally give up and was grateful, as always, that it was dark enough that he couldn’t really see into his eyes.
As he examined the defeated male, he noticed no obvious flaws, nothing that would stop a person from buying the fish at his little shack, which was barely big enough for his stool. Inside the fish’s mouth, however, was something Danilo had never seen before. A plant, no doubt, some sort of vegetation he just happened not to be familiar with. It was green, like most plants, and unremarkable in almost every way, but when he held it up in the rain it seemed to glow with a silver sheen, as if it had somehow been polished to perfection. It was only a few leaves, and his curiosity wasn’t going to outweigh his daily duties, so Danilo tossed it back overboard and turned back towards the shore and the city and his life as the rain kept up a fine pace and the bangus left its mouth hanging open like a grotesque Halloween mask.
After two hours of desperate haggling, the bangus was sold off to a squat little man with an ineffectual yellow umbrella, and Danilo packed himself up and trudged home in the mud that seemed even more miserable than he was. Dagupan was a fine town, one its citizens could be proud to call home, but Danilo lived away from the hotels and the commerce and the things you’d find in the brochure or the one-page entry in a Philippines travel book.
Whenever he walked home he felt like he was sinking, and the thwacking sound the mud made on his boots didn’t help. They lived just off of the street that led to the highway that led out of town, an escape from his life always seeming slightly possible but mostly not, and on that day, he came home to find his formerly-beloved sitting cross-legged on the floor and listening to the staticy music that was screeching its way out of the radio.
He made sure to take off his shoes – didn’t need another reason to be yelled at – and laid out the day’s money on the table in front of her before flopping onto the bed, wet and cold but happy he wouldn’t stay that way. At no point did Sampaguita look up or open her mouth except to say that she was going out for groceries half an hour later. Danilo was fast asleep, or was pretending to be, and she couldn’t have given a lethargic fuck whether or not he was actually still breathing.
And so their ballet continued from opposite sides of the dance floor. She bought what she figured she needed – plus a few things they could both share – and spent the afternoon hoping to hear something out of the radio’s fuzz. The very tip of a melody or a riff or even a jingle shilling a product she’d never buy. The only thing she got was half a word, maybe a syllable here and there, but nothing she could even try and understand. Yet she never the defective piece of junk away. Just kept sitting there and listening to it, day after week after month, and the day Danilo caught his last bangus was no cause for a change in her schedule or lackthereof.
I foretell that there will be no more bangus in his life because this isn’t a story about a man and his fish, fascinating though that might have been. The lives of Danilo and Sampaguita Masipag never changed at all. It was the the same mud, the same toothless fish, the same shit in an endless cycle that doesn’t even bother to rinse before it repeats. It was all the same for them, until it wasn’t.
The bangus weren’t doing anything for Danilo the following morning. His ship was groaning and bucking like a sick, demented horse. With the surf washing up over the deck, he really did feel like the water was rabid and ready to pull him under for good after so many years of treating him with at least a little bit of dignity. So when I tell you he was more nonplussed than ecstatic when a pile of the mystery plant splashed onto the front edge of his deck, you should understand why.
Instead the fish he needed to catch, he now had a deck full of leafy nonsense, and he had no reason to believe his luck was going to get any better in the next few hours. He stayed on the water like he knew he had to, but when the night’s rain finally abated and the sun tried to force its way out from between the clouds, he turned back towards the port, wondering what exactly he was supposed to sell when he didn’t have any fish at all.
Mostly as a joke, he set up his stall with the little bundle of plants laid out instead of his usual selection. He had himself a chuckle as one, two, then seven, twelve, eighteen people passed him by, confused and not curious at all. It was a pretty day, and even though he was a few hours closer to completely destitute, it was the best morning Danilo had seen in a long time. So good in fact that when he came home with no money and Sampaguita’s usual stony silence was contorted into a pillar of rage, he stood quietly, with his head down, until she ran out of words and out of the house, and he sat on the bed with his wet lump of green and grinned a grin he didn’t understand.
It was sort of like he knew he’d heard the wooden thunk at the bottom of the barrel, and was content to stay there without trying to claw his way out. It was no use to kill himself by refusing to accept his lot and so, until he figured out what else he could do to support his family, he was content to stay at home. Sampaguita was something other than content. Perturbed would be a good word for it, but maybe that’s just because “perturbed” is an excellent word. Say it a few times the next time you feel perturbed, and you’ll realize that perturbed is exactly what you are.
So, Sampaguita was perturbed. Confused as well, since Danilo had never been one to give up, not even when his first boat had been vandalized past the point of all usefulness or when the meat from the fish in his haul had gotten a tourist violently ill. Through all his occasional ups and frequent downs, Danilo had pushed himself forward and only complained late at night, to himself, when he assumed she was fast asleep. Or maybe he didn’t, and wanted her to hear. She told herself that he still needed her support, much as they treated each other like reluctant business partners on a deal that was destined to bring them both down.
For four days, they dipped into their tiny pile of savings to feed and clothe themselves, Sampaguita trying to convince Danilo to return to the water and give the bangus life one last real shot. But he stayed in bed, or sat in a plastic chair in front of the door and gazed at whatever passed by.
His little plant hadn’t shriveled or died. It looked no less alive than it had when it washed out of the sea, and as it dried, the edges grew more and more starkly silver, like the hair of a man who was aging dynamically. He decided to try and raise it in the dirt next to the door. With the frequent precipitation, if it was going to live at all, it would live there, and it would flourish in a way that nothing in Danilo’s life had flourished in so many months. He wasn’t expecting much – and idealist is not something you could call him with any sort of accuracy – but there was a tiny tug inside of him that let him know how happy it would make him to see this plant do anything besides shrivel and wither away into the muck.
To say that it didn’t shrivel would be true, but it would hardly paint a full picture of what the plant did. By the time Danilo woke up the next morning, it no longer looked like something that had been spat up out of the sea. It was firmer, and greener, and around the edge was the finest color silver you’ll ever see in the natural world. Without any roots or seeds, it had turned itself into a robust shrub, though it was on the petite side. Danilo was reminded of a porcupine he’d seen at the zoo once as a child, which wasn’t green, but seemed to him to be remarkably impenetrable and lacking any vulnerability whatsoever. It even looked silver when the sun danced off of the spikes on its back.
If he had to choose a word to describe both the porcupine and the plant, it would have been “napakaimportante,” which you can probably guess has something to do with “importance,” and in fact translates roughly to “vital.” It would be very difficult to come across this plant and dismiss it altogether. Danilo tried to explain this to his wife, but she was starting to believe he’d simply lost his mind. He refused to work, he barely left the house, and he tended to the plant like it was a small bird with a broken wing. The food in the house was dwindling, and with no real means of correcting this aside from getting him back in the water, Sampaguita was spending her days in a rageful haze. And the worst part for her was the fact that every time she yelled at him, he sat serenely and smiled, not reacting in the slightest way, except to nod and turn away when she finished speaking. Whatever this plant was, it had turned him into an insufferable being, and one she couldn’t see herself living with any longer.
Finally, on an unseasonably sweltering morning, she woke him up to remind him that there was food in the house at all, and asked him, quite plainly, if he wanted her to starve. He managed to avoid his little smile this time – and it was a good thing he did, because she might well have stabbed him – but when his eyes drifted to the front door, she slapped him, asking if he really believed that that stupid goddamn plant, as she had come to call it, really had all the answers. Was the plant going to give them nutrition? Was it going to fill their empty stomachs? Or was it just going to sit there and silver and pretty and utterly useless? After this, she walked out to leave him alone with his stupid goddamn plant, unaware that she had given him an idea.
Now you might think it perverse to eat something you’ve come to cherish, and in some ways it probably is, but when he crouched down next to it, he felt compelled to pluck off a leaf. He was perfectly confident that it would survive his sampling, and if he could benefit from the plant after having helped it grow to prominence, it would only be fair. Right? Right. Also, he was starving and trying to pretend he wasn’t desperate, though eating a plant you know nothing about is probably a few steps short of wise. Usually.
It had little flavor. And no odor at all. But it was something he could chew, and with the right seasoning would make up part of an okay little dish. If whatever toxins were in the plant hadn’t killed him by nightfall, he might have found himself one last bit of treasure from the sea, one he wouldn’t be selling at all.
Sampaguita didn’t return for a few days. Danilo was worried, and had no idea where she’d run off to, and he began to ask his few friends around town if they’d seen or heard from her. Joselito, who ran a bigger and nicer fish stall but never seemed happy about this, said she’d walked right past him the same morning Danilo had last seen her, but she hadn’t passed by him since. Aldin, who didn’t do much of anything and was perfectly satisfied with this, had heard she might have been walking west, or maybe south, he didn’t know. And that was about the extent of Danilo’s social circle. He asked a few strangers, but no luck there. He resolved to stay home and hope she decided to come back to him, for he had a surprise for her....

Day Six Hundred and Thirty-Four: 1st Grade

Which is what they call the first grade here.

I only see them once every other week. Classes are frequently canceled.

Some of them are great at English, some terrible. But fact is, I see them so rarely (and their classes change so often), that they still cheer when I arrive. It's also structured such that, unlike my 2nd/11th grade classes, where an extra period is created for me, I'm basically interrupting their regular lesson to do mine. It feels a bit like I'm imposing, which is odd enough.

This was the case with the 11th graders last year, who are now seniors I rarely encounter, as I never even go to their floor of the building.

Not really complaining. It's all just vaguely odd. I wish I got to know them better, but it is what it is.

Day Six Hundred and Thirty-Two: Gratitude

My friend Marilyn asked for a post on gratitude. I sent this to her with pics, and she will post it on her site on Thursday.

But I will post it here.

This will be short and very sweet.
What am I grateful for in Korea? Education.
I’m grateful for the chance to try and be a great educator for me 800 students, who still see me as something of an ambassador, a role I’ve done my best to fulfill adequately.
I’m grateful to see them grow and change, not only as students of English, but young adults of the world.
I’m grateful for the chance to educate myself. My job allows me a lot of free time, and while I certainly have my fun, I spend a lot of it reading and writing, and, as some know, trying to stir up discussion among interested parties. During my vacations, I’ve tried to stay away from purely party locales – which isn’t to say I was completely sober in, say, Saigon – and done my best to come away from my trips with a greater understand of the world I am a part of.
I’m grateful to be living in a country that, for all its flaws (and every country has them), tends to treat me with the respect I feel I deserve.
I’m grateful to have had the chance to educate myself through the extremely varied people I’ve met over the last 21 months, people who speak every language and live in every corner of the globe. New York is diverse, but the grab bag of foreigners here is something I’ve been glad to dive into.
I’m grateful to have learned a sliver of a new language, even though I could have studied harder. And I’m glad I’ve used my time here productively, so I can return home truly saying I grew up just a little bit.
Before I left New York, I told myself that, no matter what happened, my time in Korea was going to be used to kickstart adulthood. The half-year or so before I came here I was a bum. I was broke, living on my dad’s couch, buying DVDs and watching them alone, eating and drinking and gaining weight, and being rightfully scolded for doing so. As I prepare to return home in February – after a few short trips abroad – I am grateful that I’ve done all the wallowing I’ll ever do, and from this day forward, it’s merely onward and upward.
And I’m grateful that I can say that at the age of 23, because most people aren’t lucky enough to have that chance at any point.

:)

Day Six Hundred and Twenty-Nine: 2012

Perfect for what it needed to be.


Stupid, hilarious, expensive-looking, brutal (lots of people die very visibly), predictable (they killed exactly who you thought they would kill, they tried to give us suspense on whether or not Cusack would survive, etc), and destroyed the world better than anyone ever has.

The next disaster movie has to actually kill everyone (spoiler: they survive on giant boats, but... most of the world dies).

But, one thing... the final line of the movie is "No more pull-ups." This, this is the worst ending line ever, and we cracked the fuck up in the theater. Oh my god, awesome/terrible.

Day Six Hundred and Twenty-Seven: Ew.

It's disturbing all right. But most importantly, this movie merely looks terrible.

Take a gander, Amy:

Here.

Will be having my next discussion about that on informed instigation.