Seoul, 2009
That winter in Seoul I was really lonely. I would listen to Stereolab and Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” as I practiced what I could remember of the Ashtanga yoga sequence. It was so cold outside; the moment you stepped outside, you could feel the freeze within the marrow of your bones. Inside my simple studio apartment in Mapo-gu, Suryanamaskar A and B on the ondol floor kept me warm. Across the alley from me there was a church. It was around Christmas time and they put up some lights in the shape of a giant star. The lights blinked on and off in yellows and blues. Why is it that when I see these lights blinking like that, I miss home?
It felt strange to be in Korea. When I arrived in late summer, I felt so untethered, disoriented. I wore clothes I would never usually wear in America. I was dressing for some unidentified part in some undisclosed play, and I thought, this is how the person I will be in Korea should dress. My body felt electrified most of the time, like there was a frenetic current running through my nervous system constantly. I could not shut it off or quiet it. It made me feel on edge, or low-key possessed. But by what? This was a question I could never quite answer. Everything was so deeply foreign to me. My body did not feel like my own, and sometimes I wondered if I was walking, eating, breathing in a language anyone could understand.
In the summer, there were so many cicadas. Their song created a wall of sound starting from early morning, becoming ambient, engulfing you everywhere in thick humidity. Summer months bloomed and receded. Fall came. I was surrounded by new faces, Korean faces like mine, other transplants, migratory people, ex-pats, adoptees. We were all untethered, not belonging to whatever land we were raised upon, and not belonging to this one either. We were here and nowhere, unable to understand the inner unease, grasping for anything at all to anchor us or to help us flee ourselves.
It was mostly through alcohol, but maybe there were other substances too. I was always naive about these things, but I knew about drinking. The constant edgy current in my body, the feeling that some unknown energies had taken over, was often too much to be with. I could not tolerate it, and I thought I needed to aggressively grasp at anything outside myself for — what? What do I do with all of this energy? It feels so unsettled, so prone to angst, unwieldy, frenetic. So I just went with it. And those around me seemed to have their own versions of this pulsing within them, so we all just went with it. Separately in our own confusion, together to the bars. All of Seoul felt full of people unable to sit with whatever suffering was in their hearts and minds, and alcohol flowed freely through the nights, every night, spilling onto the sidewalks and park benches and into the deafening songs of cicadas in the morning hours.
Eventually, my body said, no more. Or I should say, my body, my psyche, my heart, all said, stop. All the darkness could not hold. It should not hold. In the late fall, I would do sae-bae for my ancestors, I would feel energetically cleansed by just being in the presence of my aunts, I would visit the land that my grandfather donated to the Catholics, and I would seriously question all of the choices I had made since my arrival in Korea, and before. I would see everything around me, everything inside of me falling apart, again. It was fine, it all needed to implode, I needed it to destroy itself. It was a relief when it did and I never really saw my fellow wayward souls again.
As winter drew closer, I spent more time indoors, and while indoors, I spent more time detoxifying my energy. My body was tired from all the alcohol and cigarettes and frenetic angst. My moon in Aries has always had a tendency to flare up, and when the flare tipped into aggression, I always knew it was time to reel it in, stop the harm to self and others. Is this the karma of a Korean body? Perhaps a Korean body, post colonization, postwar, post division. A body full of haan.
But I knew I also had a body that could know and receive goodness, light, nourishment, because my relatives and grandparents did. I just had to remember, recall the images of these other versions of me, other lives when my internal navigation system would naturally bend toward the light, orienting toward a kinder north star.
In a room full of diffuse bright white light, framed photographs of grandmother and grandfather on a short table with bowls of fruit in front of them. Three sisters and their niece bow three times. First kneel on both knees, hands at the forehead lead your body to the floor, as you bend at the waist, torso falling over thighs, place the head on the hands and remain in silence here. Then slowly rise to your feet, repeat three times.
Next, lay the yoga mat on the floor. Find the album on your laptop, press play. As the notes begin to sound, so slowly, and then resonate, take a breath. Both feet flat on the mat, sense into the energy of the earth below. Head slightly tilts forward as the eyes are closed. Hands rest to the side, palms facing forward. Tadasana. Breathing in slowly through the nose, filling the body with air, breathing out slowly through the nose, compressing all air from the body. And stay.
Notice the urge to flee. Notice the agitation. Notice the pressure in the head when it feels like everyone is staring at the shortcomings of your life. Notice the urgency, the wish for things to be different. Notice the wish for yourself to be different, to be better, more successful, more together. Notice the shame of remembering your age and immediately asking: where am I going with my life? Stay here, and breathe out.
From here, bring palms together in prayer at the heart. Set an intention. I wish to feel at home in my body. Take a breath. On the inhale, raise the hands above the head. Exhale, swan dive hands to feet. Inhale, lift the torso, heart floats forward, hands on shins, exhale, hands to floor as you jump back to plank. Let Brian Eno take you there, he will guide you through the flow. Finish out the sequence, move on to the next, complete standing poses, move to seated poses, do this for the entirety of the album, do this for the entirety of the winter, everyday for two months, in your little studio apartment in Seoul until the demons have left your body.