Hardly Noticeable

Thursday, November 10, 2005

I am a poet's poet's poet.

10/3

Taking a taxi to work is starting to drag on me. Today I stood outside in the rain for fifteen minutes before the first one even stopped, and when the driver saw my WaeGuk face he drove away. Eventually, my neighbor Mi Hwa walked out of her apartment and hailed the cab for me. The cabbie nearly drove off when I quit obscuring myself with my umbrella and he saw who was getting into his car. I’m assuming Mi Hwa threatened him (the whole conversation consisted of snaps and pops and syllables I’d never heard strung together before, galvanized by a fantastic scowl that creased her forehead), as he allowed me to tell him where to go and drove off. The drive was a solid half-hour of griping and complaining and the smell of kimchi emanating from a bag on the front seat. I watched the digital dial move with inexhaustible momentum towards the 13000 won that the trip would end up costing me.

Woong-han kept me away from Kindy (word got out about Kenny yesterday and he decided that it’d be best if I stayed away from the younger kids) today. I agreed with him, as I didn’t particularly enjoy reliving, being reminded, etc. The older kids all laughed at my story about the cabbie. They said that Korean taxi drivers didn’t like foreigners because they couldn’t understand them. I said, “That’s interesting, because in America people don’t like cab drivers because they can’t understand THEM.” They didn’t notice the chiasmus.

John called from San Antonio. He asked all the roommate questions first (“How much was the last gas bill?” “How about the last electrical bill? Cable bill?”). He has by now started his motivational speaking business. He has zero clients, but he has enough startup capital to put some commercials on television. He attempted to extract various details about my personal goings-on for the last few weeks, but I managed to distract him by asking about his commercials.

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