I am sitting on my couch with my old laptop on my lap; something I haven’t done for a very long time. The whole situation has an old comfortable feeling. Yes the blog is back. Why now? What in God’s name took so long? All questions that won’t be answered.
I’m going to go a bit out of order. The first new blog entry was going to be “Traveling Home: The Christmas in Racine Spectacular”, but that has all the makings of a looong, multi-evening creative process; not really what is called for here. Although I have gotten some good feedback on the long postings from the past; Joey Granite for one, loves the multi-night entries. No what is called for here is something shorter, something that can be started and finished in one sitting. Luckily I have one of those stories, it concerns something that happened just yesterday, my first day back in Korea and I like to call it The Second Coming, God the Mother. Before I leave this little introduction let me say how encouraging it was to hear all the kind words about the blog while I was home. For the longest time I thought my readership numbered about 3 people, but after being home I honestly believe the number has got to be at least 10; TEN, which is double figures. Lastly it hasn’t been said here before but Hannah Nilles has to be about the coolest person in the world. And oh yeah, I know no one named Carl; never have.
After not sleeping more than three continuous hours the entire time I was back in Racine, it was an amazing and somewhat surprising feeling to get a full night’s sleep the very first night I was back in Korea. Truth be told, it almost didn’t happen. After 23 straight hours of travel I walked into my apartment here in Joy Palace to find the temperature at 13° Celsius which is somewhere around 50° F. It seems my heating oil tank ran empty while I was gone leaving my apartment at the will of a Korean winter. This seemed especially cruel after first walking off the plane in Chicago to a 6 below Sunday morning complete with a 30 mph wind and leaving 10 days on a 9° F Wednesday morning. I was honestly excited about getting back to Korea and some warmer weather, and let me tell you warm Korean winters are not what you hear too many people talking about.
It was about 9:00 PM when I walked through the front door of the apartment; a real problem if a warm night’s sleep was to be had. The best I could muster was to go upstairs to my neighbor’s who was still in the states and raid his apartment of any kind of space heater I could find. What I found was three, of which only 2 worked. I set the quiet one up in the bedroom and the loud one up in the living room. The sleeping bag was rustled off the couch to supplement the blankets already on the bed and to bed I went. The secret I found to staying warm in a situation like this is to have a good warm blanket underneath you and not just layer upon layer on top of you. Having never been a boy scout and having been an unenthusiastic Army man, this knowledge came late in life to me, but when it came it came with a sense of real pride.
(For the record, there is no way this is going to be finished tonight)
Alright let’s get back to it. It’s Friday morning and I’ve just had my first good night sleep in over a week; surprisingly nothing was able to stop this, not the outdoors-like coolness of my indoors bedroom nor the soft orange glow of the borrowed space heater. Of course there really is only two things I need to concern myself with on a morning like this, eating some cereal and checking the internet; luckily I can do both at the same time on my sweet living room set-up. Breakfast went quickly so after that my total attention was directed to my email (kevfrancerson@yahoo.com, send all confidential comments here) and other various semi-important websites. Suddenly the door bell rings which downright surprised me, so much so I forget to look at my cool little doorbell activated video screen which allows me to see who is standing on the other side of the door. No instead I jumped right up, opened the door and found 3 bundled up Korean people, two females and one male. Now either this is the luckiest day of my life or I’m in big trouble. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for the luckiest day of my life because the first words out of their mouths were something along the lines of “Hello, we’re from so-and-so church and do you have a moment”. The let down from the disappointment of this not being the luckiest day of my life must have been extreme because I said yes, yes I do have a moment.
I’m asked if I could fill out a short 6 question survey, again I say yes (trust me, I was bewilderingly disappointed). The stairwell of my building is not heated so it gets quite cold in the winter, considering this and the fact I’m already stuck, I invited them inside my (I just got home) ramshackle apartment. To this invitation the male amongst the three lets out the most satisfied, heart-felt sigh/chuckle I’ve ever experienced.
I sat down at the table behind my computer while the two females took up places directly to my right and my front while the guy moved to the center of my living room all too obviously looking for a place to sit. Unfortunately for him all there is is a couch covered with a sheet with the back cushions thrown off; a site probably a bit to comfortable for him to immediately take up residence upon.
I got to the questionnaire and the first question is the big one “Do you believe in God…?” This put me in a bit of a pickle. The choices listed are the standard “Yes”, “No”, and “Maybe So”; none of which I really like and if I bust out with the No or Maybe So choices am I going to get an hour long lecture/pleading to change my answer? I mean they were in my house and they had books with them. For all you who are wondering, whether God exists or not makes no real difference to me; if someone could definitively prove to me the existence of God or the nonexistence of God, I wouldn’t change how I live my life; I really never pay attention to the question. Lacking a suitable name for this belief I came up with my own, I consider myself an apathist .
I know some of you are thinking “whooogh, just a minute, didn’t you work at a Catholic high school?” and the answer is yes; I needed a job. With that said I’m happy to have been at St. Cat’s, I met a lot of great people there; and let’s face it those connections are helping pad my blog readership rolls. I will admit to feeling a little awkward during the more religious moments of my tenure there. Taking their paycheck made me feel obliged to fake it during some of the ceremonies; I did however draw the line at Ash Wednesday, I wasn’t about to finger up the cross on someone’s forehead, I really thought someone more devout should do that. And oh yeah, those times in Appalachia were a little tricky too.
Back to business, I thought long and hard and decided the easiest way out would be to say “Yes” and move on. Whether this was the best way to go or not, I’ll never know. I finished up the 5 other questions (well actually only 4 of the 5, I refused to answer the last one; love that quiet defiance). After this the lady who is doing all the talking asked me if I had a moment. OH NO, what the hell was I going to say to that? “NO, get the hell out of my house”, of course not; it’s impossibly hard for me to be rude to strangers; people I know, I can be rude to, strangers not so much. I know now that I’ve been sucked in and gave a lame, tired reply of “Well, I have a little bit of time”.
(OK it’s at least 2 weeks later now. The good news is the oil tank is full and the house is warm and I finally found where the car wash is on base so the car isn’t the disgusting mess it has been. Being weeks later you may be thinking to yourself “how in the hell is he going to remember all the little details I’ve come to love and expect from this blog”. Well rest your worries, what ever I don’t remember I’ll make up.)
At this point I should probably better describe my three guests. The leader of the pack is obviously a woman named Lee. Why she was the leader I’m not quite sure, maybe because she spoke the best English or perhaps there is more to it; perhaps if you belong to a church who believes the second coming will involve not only Jesus but also his bride, it makes sense for a woman to be out front. Lee is a short, thin woman, maybe mid to late 20’s, with short, I-have-more-important-issues hair. As you may expect she had an intense, focused manner; one of true belief. She wasn’t beautiful and may not even have been good looking, but she had a face I couldn’t look away from; it was the most interesting face and I have no idea why.
The other female was younger, with the more typical, round, Korean face. She was bundled up to the extreme and stood directly in front of me as Lee stood to my right in full sermon. I would later learn her name is Hwang. There are certain people who you can easily tell, love the word. As Lee raced from one passage to the other and as I continued to uncontrollably stare at her trying to figure out what it was about that face that made me want to stare; out of the corner of my eye I could see Hwang with the sweet look of rapture upon her face. She was still but her face seemed to light up and sway with every word Lee would say.
At this point it was really starting to get weird. I was sitting wondering what it was I had gotten myself into. The true believer turned oracle Lee was flying through the bible in hard-to-follow English, trying to sell a story that had something to do with humanities’ oversight of women in the process of salvation, a problem she very well intends to correct. All the while Hwang stood in front of me as some sort of angelic figure whose face continued to rise closer and closer to heaven leaving her overly winterized body behind. But of course the scene isn’t complete without a description of Paul, and I’m not talking about the Apostle.
It was obvious from the moment I opened the door that Paul was the goof of the bunch. The moment I invited them in was met with the loudest head-nodding “Ohhh-hooo-hooo”; to look at his face at that moment could only bring pity. This was a man of much simpler needs; he didn’t seem much worried about God, he was worried about getting warm. As mentioned earlier the other two entered the apartment and immediately took up battle stations; with bible in hand, one was going to convince me of the truth while the other displayed the living beauty of that truth upon her face. And then there was Paul. Upon entering he walked to center of the room and looked around, completely uncaring of my possible spiritual needs. He immediately eyed up the couch and was so plainly wanting to sit but yet stayed standing. For the next ten minutes Paul was pretty much lost to me, my eyes were stuck to Lee and my mind was nearly as stuck save for the few moments I actually tried to understand what she was trying to tell me. Strangely something behind Lee suddenly caught my attention and you can probably figure out it was Paul. By this time Paul has conquered his inhibitions and has sat down on the couch which was really no big deal, unfortunately he really wasn’t sitting still. As Lee was flipping back and forth through her bible calling my attention to a passage right at the very end where it mentions how Jesus AND BRIDE will come again and how this obviously means the old trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is just simply inadequate and how since the second coming will involve a woman we need to add God the Mother, Paul was swaying back and forth on my couch. He was directly behind Lee in my line of sight so when I saw him it would only be momentarily after which he would disappear and then reappear on the other side of Lee; and sit and sway he would continue.
I must admit I did give up hope. It got to the point I really didn’t know how long I would be stuck with these people; one seemingly off his rocker, one the new female voice of God, and one halfway to Heaven already. Eventually they got to the point of asking me to join their church, to which I thought “what the hell?” and asked them where it was. They did eventually leave but not before leaving their names and number and telling me worship day was Saturday and then assure me they were NOT part of that Seventh Day group. They were nice people but it was good to have them gone and I probably will from here on end, make sure and check the video screen before answering anymore doorbells.
Well there you go, the blog is back and I hope you enjoyed the story. Don’t really know when the next entry will appear but I, right along with you, hope it isn’t very long. I need to thank Hannah and Ellie for their coercive motivation in shaming me into finishing this thing, and Ellie I fully expect to see a new profile picture soon.
