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 On The BusBarry Walsh
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Where do I go this weekend?
I have made it through the week, once more only through terrible
neglect of the soul - an exile from my freedom. It's Saturday morning.
As soon as I leave school I am a bird - liberated from social
confinement.
I jump on the bus. I am
meeting Jonny, another teacher, living elsewhere in Korea. He's from
Northern Ireland. We flew over on the same plane. I am like a child
again - my self-inflicted alienation only serves for this brief but
acute weekend release.
I stretch out on my cotton
wool armchair. Korean buses are beds on wheels. I listen to music,
watch the passengers, and take in the view outside. This is bliss. I am
the only Westerner travelling today as always - but whereas during the
week I am detached now I feel I belong. My weariness of heightened
cynicism is replaced by a tempered tranquillity. Unhurriedly gliding by
a mountain looms over a flooded paddy field. Workers with bent backs
and straw hats tend the rice. It's idyllic. Inside is in harmony with
out.
 My
mind drifts to anticipation of meeting Jonny. We will eat Korean food,
drink, go to a nightclub and finish off with karaoke. I'll probably be
sick. This is the standard routine. I hate routine but we only meet
every three weeks or so (the rest of the weekends I escape somewhere
alone) and the deliverance from loneliness overwhelms any banality.
Even so we manage to participate in something uniquely amusing every
time. Every little novelty in a foreign country imprints itself on
memory.
This is what occupies my
imagination just now. I want to be reckless tonight. Will we find a
Korean friend to show us some good bars and then, giggling, childlike,
run away from him - his usefulness expired? Will we get into a fight
with some other who frustrated at his lack of English proficiency
torments us to help him out and when we flee still prevails and
ensnares us again? Or will we find we are penniless and so stay in a
five star hotel making use of room service, mini bar, Korean massage
and public bath facilities courtesy of my mother's visa card (to be
used in emergencies only)? Or dance on the nightclub stage with
cucumber in our ears, run across police cars or pretend to be famous
sports stars? The possibilities are tame and hardly daring but they
sustain my excitement. It is enough.
 Back
on the bus I pass pagodas, dried up rivers, template towns, smashed up
cars and pervading all, mountains, neither lush nor barren and fields
waterlogged in spring. This country, the Hermit Kingdom according to
the Lonely Planet, is a forgotten nirvana. Up there below the trees are
temples and hermitages and monks; I could run outside and climb and
disappear forever. Taken in by the trees and the monks, fed and
nurtured, my body lost to civilisation, my spirit found by renunciation.
The service-stop approaches.
I think of coffee and a cigarette. With amazing fluidity the bus turns
off the motorway, enters the service area and parks. I start for the
toilet still preoccupied with my serenity.
To me this is what
experiencing a foreign culture is all about. I have done nothing
uniquely Korean on my journey but my self-assurance is sufficient. I
ask the bus driver in my limited Korean how long the stop is for. I
already know - it's always the same - but right now my self-love is
smothering my self-consciousness. While in the toilet I observe my
appearance - why don't I have a girlfriend?
Over a coffee and a smoke I
watch the clouds intermittently reveal a majestic mountain surveying
all. It is me. Today I am a narcissist.
The bus pulls out of the rest
area and I, we, are back on the road. I listen to Massive Attack's
Mezzanine in expectation of tonight's hedonism. The speed of the bus
and the smoothness of the road work in harmony with the music. There is
one direction and I am floating on an irrevocable stream.
 Why
does it all affect me so? It is only a three-hour bus ride to meet a
friend. I must have sunk so low during my weekdays - I am dimly aware
of this. But the thought of the return journey tomorrow never surfaces.
Today I cannot dispel my tranquillity; tomorrow I will not dispel my
gloom. I have set my moods apart - they are in complete conflict and
cannot coexist.
I feed off Jonny's
enthusiasm. He also has to ride for a few hours for our rendezvous and
his state of mind is somewhat similar. We meet at the bus terminal,
find somewhere to stay the night, drop our bags off, get dinner and
then drink, drink, drink. It's always frantic; I work on Saturday
morning so Saturday night is all I have. On spring shoes we bounce from
pub to pub. Tonight we are going to pull chicks "For God's sake, we're
Westerner's, Asian girls love us", but first we lament about his
school, my flat-mate and the gradual wearing down of our initial
enchantment with the country. This won't do. We progress to talking
about books and their meaning - 1984 and Brave New World. I feel my
being intensified as a result of having read these masterpieces of free
thought while in Korea. He sees Big Brother's influence on the
sometimes-tractable Koreans. Invariably though, all our roads lead to
frivolity and we find redemption only through absurdity.
 It
is here I wish to dwell forever more. Do I hear monks high up in the
hills in a perpetual state of comic relief? I imagine I do. Passing
over a river, I notice its banks are an ugly brown; still showing from
the dry winter that has departed. Just as laughter washes away my
troubles, so the monsoons will erase all trace of this blemish and
restore nature's beauty. In summer the mountains and the rivers reign
supreme, all else takes a back seat. I may have to endure seasons of
discontent but the weekend is my summer and I have banished my demons.
We are nearing our
destination. It is in a valley surrounded by mountains. The road
spirals down from its high altitude right into the downtown area. As
the bus winds down, my thoughts gradually leave me, flushed away to
subterranean depths for another three weeks. Reality returns. Inside a
continuous current of anticipation remains. Jonny is here. And I have
already met him.
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Date Submitted:
2004-01-02 00:00:00 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © Barry Walsh, 2001 |
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