There has been something about my journey thus far into Korea that has been kind of a difficult for me to fully adjust to and that is the transitivity of my relationships with people. It seems that this is something that has been a permeating factor of my time here. Some relationships I have with people back home failed or disappeared into the wind and a vast amount of the relationships I have been generating here seem to have a limited time cap on them, such as my friend Zen who will be moving to Guam very soon (Go you Zen!!!!!! I’m so stoked for you btw) or my friend Jimi who will be moving to Canada in a few months. It definitely makes the time I spend with people that much sweeter because there is that sense that my relationship with them will end very soon, so I must savor the moments. Even I am of a transitive nature here being only allowed to stay as long as I maintain a contract for work thus making myself feel like I am passing through and also not permanent.

For those of you that know me, I really love a good poetic quote that would perfectly encapsulate this situation with multiple layers of depth offering clairvoyance into thoughts of this kind, but sadly I have not been able to find one (even though I guarantee someone has already written the perfect quote). At first what came to mind was “All good things must come to an end” but I believe that the intended thought is something along the lines that even good things end. I was looking for something that made a statement more about how a sense of impeding end makes the time before that much more intense. Using some ideas from that quote that was previously stated, a good story must always come to an end. The ending can make or break a story, but the sense of an end keeps the story vivacious and alive. That is the reason for the phrase “happily ever after” because after that point the story would just become diluted and loose its potency. This is the fate of most serial comic books where the story is forced to continue on endlessly (what does Superman do after he saves the world? Save it again?) and that is why I maintain that short run comics are always superior.

It’s a strange feeling that even though I have an increasing number of friends, contacts, and connections here in Pusan, I still feel isolated. It’s those nights alone in my apartment when the feeling feels most immense. There is no real direct cause or one thing that is shaping me to feel this way but I feel that the transitivity of relationships magnifies this sense of isolation I feel. I heard that when you travel, especially alone, that it forces you to discover yourself. I am beginning to believe this isolation I feel will be the fire that will forge my mind into a more harmonious relationship with respects to myself and how I understand myself socially and as an individual. Even with constant strings of massive amounts of social interactions I will not be able to blind myself from the knowledge that I am isolated to a degree. Those nights alone in my apartment, those times when I am on a bus unable to intelligible communicate with anyone else, or when I could just use a friend but none are there. I have heard it said that when your young you feel like you will live forever, I don’t think that I have ever felt that way, but I think the key idea is the idea of ‘forever’. Perhaps this is just another taste of what it is to grow up and mature, to really learn that there is no such thing as forever, I have always known that to be true but I think I am now feeling it; taking it to heart so to speak. I look forward to see how this will make me grow and evolve…