The spare time

Being an English Teacher does not allow much free time during the day. I am usually running around after my co trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, or teaching. So, when I get home and have the much needed free time I sort of become helter skelter. I can't decide what I actually want to do but know I must do something. So I start to pick up activity after activity in hopes of feeling like my time has not been wasted. Thus far this week I've read 400 pages, done two chalk drawings, a 1000 piece puzzle and watched five movies. Not to mention studying Korean, French and my TESOL online coursework off and on between activities. Whew!

So, today I stopped and tried to look at my last week through an objective lens. Meaning, I tried to ask myself if I was wasting my own time? What is wasting time? I'm in a foreign country, I should be seeing IT, right? Not losing myself in pointless activities? I began to wonder why I do do this. What five step cycle am I on that I need to lose myself? I'm still not certain, but the one that rang a bell was the five stages of grieving! Yes! Of grieving. I believe I'm on the denial step, and have been for quite awhile. But first, why am I grieving? What is lost to me? Hm... no not the old man and Mary again. This is something different. Could it be? I don't want to write it, but I think it might be... homesickness?

EEK! I did not want to concede to that horrid word, but it's the only explanation I can come up with. The things I fill my time with are actually trying to fill that dangerous part in my brain that longs for home and for things familiar. I do puzzles because I imagine sitting on my comfy sofa at home, kid movie on and card table filled with a beautiful array of chaos that I alone need to piece together. I study because it reminds me of the fun I had in college, staring at page after page of information, three cups of coffee in my gullet and the only reassurance being the end of finals in two months. Why do I miss these things? What more were they to me than merely time fillers? Than delays to a grand finish?

Ah, there it is. The grand finish. The human need for closure to everything! The need to know that with life comes death, that with activity comes rest and with a goal there comes a red ribboned fini. That is undoubtedly what I'm coping with right now as with this job, and well, with the real world there is no REAL grand finish, except for the one that pushes up daisies. (Yet, that finish is one I think about all too regularly, and is actually WHY I'm so determined to use all my time for life. That is the way I've always lived, a hedonist and flake. I trample about the world trying my best to get the most out of it before my fire is gone. But that's another blog.) Anyways, the grand fini I'm longing for, like college and my puzzles, is no longer quite as tangible as it used to be. I can't make out the red ribbon in this job as a teacher. Heck- everyday is a marathon, and I'm usually very glad to make it through it. When all is over I am lost again, because I can't find another marathon? Is that it?

I must say, living abroad with nothing familiar, I am all too often questioning life. Sometimes a good thing, especially for writers and artistic types who need that time for their own worlds and developments of them. But I'm not always artsy, I'm sometimes philosophical. And for philosophical, it's quite difficult to juggle the real world with the one in their head.

Course, just as with the moon, philosophical is just the waning phase. It will pass and I'll be back to artsy self, or maybe logically inclined towards learning Korean, or maybe adventurous for mountains. I think people eclipse too, and maybe that's where I'm at. Coming back to where I was in the beginning of all this, back to the homesickness.

I guess with this blog I'm more or less trying to get my bearings again, accept my denial and hope it moves on like the ghost in the attic. I can only hope! Though, I should say that with this questioning, I have felt more and more like writing and creating. Both good things, and well worth the hours of worrying if my time is pointless. I do create still, trying all the while to fill my creations with the best of truth about me and about the world.

The pictures below are what some of the consequences of my spare time. I thought I'd share them as it seems quite selfish to not.

This is a chalk drawing of five gifts I've been given over the past year from five different and wonderful people I've gotten to either know or learn from. The leaf in the wind is based on a leaf necklace my close Native American friend gave me for my birthday. He taught me how to be a free spirit, i.e. to be myself. The Buddha originated from a small Buddha statue my good hippie friend gave me before I left for Korea. She kindly reminded me to love everything and accept everything, thus to be open hearted. The flower in flames is from a flower shell jewelry box my friend I met here brought back from the Philippines for me. She has reminded me that friends are everywhere and that beauty is in everything from fire to flowers. The pink bell was a gift from a girl I had the pleasure of meeting in Japan. She taught me to not be scared of what is new and different, and to be open to learning, always! And lastly, the green kitty was from my uncle who lives in Alaska. He taught me to be happy with the beauty of life, not scared of it.

This is was just a comment on the situation in America. If you can't tell, I used newspaper as a base. I ripped up headlines that struck me as either sad or manipulating or hateful and then juxtaposed them to make the outline of America. Its been bothering me that all that's in the news is pessimism, especially when it comes to America. There seems to never be any pax, nor hope of one. (The flack Obama's getting for not having immediate answers is kind of what I was probing at.) So what I wanted to show was that the situation is never as bad as it seems. That there has to be a better tomorrow, because it just has to be. I'm extremely idealist, so this drawing reflects that. I understand others don't feel the same, but this is how I feel. I like hope, and I like color. I want the gay ban in the military to be demolished, and for them to be able to be married in every state. Thus the colorful rainbow expressing the unity of the sexes, the races, the old, young, what's nature and even what isn't. And mostly, how things begin with fire and end with flowers. It is my version of hope.

I did this last summer. It was to comment on the position of women in Korea, and on where I felt myself sliding into. Women here are viewed as objects still, and as you may have noticed, I most definitely do not think anyone is an object, let alone myself just because I happen to be a female. Yet, I still cannot stop myself from wanting to put make-up on everyday, and cute clothes. To wear fun jewelry and too look cute. I was trying to make out whether I wanted these things because Korean society (and American society for that matter- these younger girls, gah!) wanted me to look that way or because I actually wanted it. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I like to reflect my personality, which just happens to fit the social episteme... for the time being. The bolts and blood are of course comments on the social creation of Frankensteins, women who have no self-expression in themselves outside their choice of pink or purple. They seem driven by what society thinks of them because its easier? It is very difficult to branch out of the box here (as I stated in my earlier blog), thus they're happy to be Frankensteins? I'm still confused, and probably will always be. For now I'm simply happy know I've still got some individualism left... for now, again.