How could I not derive comfort from remembering the pizza joint which I dedicated three years of my life to.
For that matter I have difficulty remembering my life before Piezano's. Classes, future plans, grades, girls, drugs, and college came and went but Piezano's stayed with me. From the day I turned on my application (written on a piece of scratch paper) to pilfering the picture of Pizza Mannnn which hung in the store for two decades I have seen just about everything a driver can.
So hard to believe that I will not drive a car for the next ten months.
I can say with great confidence (no hay dudo que) I left it better than I found it. I didn't do it alone. I didn't do it all. I did make a contribution that lasted.
The week I left the dining room was in disarray. I walked down the stair I'd walked down a thousand times before. The dead leaves and spiderwebs exactly where I left them. The carpet still bunching up by the door and the handrail pulling away from the wall as I used it to stabilize my flight. Everything seemed muted. Quieter. The ringing of the freezers and refrigerators dulled by the news. In five days I'd be off to a foreign land to learn a professional trade without anyone familiar.
First to find me, which meant first to know, was Kylie. The little blonde girl with aspirations of superstardom. She reacted with a mixture of excitement and loss. "What will we do without you?" she said. Half out of congratulatory teasing, half as an eleventh hour attempt to convince me otherwise.
The news spread like Jenna Haze from there. Some reacted with sarcasm, such a classic defense mechanism. Telling me I'd be back before my contract ended or I'd be caned within hours of my arrival or (my personal favorite) I'd be deported for saying "something stupid about Communism." The year is young.
A group of young 'uns were chatting by the destroyed dining room before they found out. I walked up to them to give the news, which they already knew. Drop clothes on the floor, a drill on the table, a paint roller running over the exposed walls which once held an odd paneled mirrors which reflected me in so many mindsets and moods. The plans on the way, new paint, new art, new ceiling tiles, new chairs, new tables.
I remember the rickety chair that collapsed under my weight two years ago. I remember the day the "Weasel Jungle Gym" (a lattice octagon reaching from floor to ceiling completed by the vines of a long dead house plant creeping up the side before expiring) was thrown in the garbage. The ancient wood cracked and flaking at the screws which barely held it together. The checkered table clothes stained with the oil of a decade's use. The New carpet to be installed after my departure was the most crippling part.
"When do you leave?"
"Five days."
Perhaps the real Piezano's came to me that day. This was really happening. This was the end of an old life. The florescent lights did no reflect well off the dried pizza sauce and drain cover oozing the orange grease I identified with so many late nights and freshly awake afternoons. But it was never about the job. It was about the people.
Driver's Wanted:
Local restaurant is looking for car owners to stand in raw sewage for five to nine hours a day for minimum wage. Must have middle school education or equivalency degree. Pot smoker preferred. Benefits include gas compensation, free uniform, unrestricted smoking on deliveries, and all the refuse of the elite you can eat.
What will become of you, my first occupational love?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Fog
What happened to my homeland? It seemed so clear yesterday.
It seemed so eternal. It seemed so mine. Where is my homeland? It must be here, somewhere.
The art of losing isn't hard to master, I'm told. My homeland, my native soil is dimmer and dimmer. The maze of memory dead ends for you for now, my country of origin.
Where is Able Hall and Air Park's gossamer twilight, oh nation of mine?
Those landscapes and portraits that once belonged to me in such vibrant colors and compelling hues. First they turn sepia, then grey before fading to black. My sweet, sweet homeland.
I left you on such natural terms. We'd seen so much. You're five dollar packs of cigarettes and one dollar coffees couldn't keep me for long. A year of aimless degree went so fast, my homeland. And then I knew I had to go.
I had a friend named Levi. He hung around the gas station. A good guy and a quiet guy. He liked car. No shame in that. He joined the marines, to defend my homeland, where is he now? I had a friend named Travis who I called Lurch. He went off to Boston, is he still there, my homeland? You have a new President soon, my homeland, how will you handle this change, can I believe in you now, my homeland?
I left you behind weary and unpopular. Too powerful for your own good, I suppose. Wishing for something new, but perhaps to blindly. But I love you, my homeland. You'll always be beautiful to me and will always perform my duty to you. Do what you will.
I walked into the dining room for the hundredth, thousandths, millionth time. The restaurant I loved. The Mexican gentlemen carting carpet out the door. The faded, bunched up red and blue rolled up and hauled off. The dining room closed for the day as new paint and ceiling tiles took the place of the mirrored panels and yellowed skylight which stood there for twenty years without shame or repair. I didn't get to say good bye. My little pizza joint grew up. The time went too fast.
My homeland, my pizza you're on your own now, but you always were. I watched you change these years with only minimal impact. An impact none the less which I can take pride in.
"What will I come home to?" is the question hanging over 2009. Who will still be there? Where will the others go? Who will be in school? Who will drop out, vomit, smoke or die? As I sit halfway around the world I hope I did the right thing and I know I didn't do the wrong thing.
It seemed so eternal. It seemed so mine. Where is my homeland? It must be here, somewhere.
The art of losing isn't hard to master, I'm told. My homeland, my native soil is dimmer and dimmer. The maze of memory dead ends for you for now, my country of origin.
Where is Able Hall and Air Park's gossamer twilight, oh nation of mine?
Those landscapes and portraits that once belonged to me in such vibrant colors and compelling hues. First they turn sepia, then grey before fading to black. My sweet, sweet homeland.
I left you on such natural terms. We'd seen so much. You're five dollar packs of cigarettes and one dollar coffees couldn't keep me for long. A year of aimless degree went so fast, my homeland. And then I knew I had to go.
I had a friend named Levi. He hung around the gas station. A good guy and a quiet guy. He liked car. No shame in that. He joined the marines, to defend my homeland, where is he now? I had a friend named Travis who I called Lurch. He went off to Boston, is he still there, my homeland? You have a new President soon, my homeland, how will you handle this change, can I believe in you now, my homeland?
I left you behind weary and unpopular. Too powerful for your own good, I suppose. Wishing for something new, but perhaps to blindly. But I love you, my homeland. You'll always be beautiful to me and will always perform my duty to you. Do what you will.
I walked into the dining room for the hundredth, thousandths, millionth time. The restaurant I loved. The Mexican gentlemen carting carpet out the door. The faded, bunched up red and blue rolled up and hauled off. The dining room closed for the day as new paint and ceiling tiles took the place of the mirrored panels and yellowed skylight which stood there for twenty years without shame or repair. I didn't get to say good bye. My little pizza joint grew up. The time went too fast.
My homeland, my pizza you're on your own now, but you always were. I watched you change these years with only minimal impact. An impact none the less which I can take pride in.
"What will I come home to?" is the question hanging over 2009. Who will still be there? Where will the others go? Who will be in school? Who will drop out, vomit, smoke or die? As I sit halfway around the world I hope I did the right thing and I know I didn't do the wrong thing.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
The Food Here
Some time ago I decided it was a good idea to gain some weight before Peace Corps.
My goal was to gain twenty pounds before being shipped off to Russia based on the assumption I would be in mortal peril if my current frame became any leaner. So I ate and I ate. Even when I didn't want to. When stressed or lethargic I crammed something down my throat.
Slowly but surely over the course of a month I added an extra five pounds. I was quite elated by this. I was on the road to filling out six years after puberty. I kept on eating until the Avalon offer came on the table.
Within a week of my arrival I lost those five pounds.
Things were leaking out of me for days. If I can expel a liquid I have done it in this nation. First it was the cold. Snot coming out of my nose, snorted up and spit out. On my bed, on my floor, on my clothes. Then it was the diarrhea. The food initially reacted poorly with my Americanized digestive track. Every time I took a shit there was some bizarre concoction in the toilet. More a kin to fireworks than human waste. I still have yet to make a completely solid deposit over here.
But my favorite was the food poisoning. Some subway green peppers incapacitated me for a day. After a night of drinking and drunk food I expelled the contents of my stomach in too desperate bursts. The pink slime of the former Southwest Sauce burns. More than the vodka, the sandwich sauce expulsion was pure, unadulterated agony. When it was all said and done I think I threw up about seven thousand calories.
My precious bodily fluids have been affected profoundly by the food even in this very westernized country. Me, the man who ate four packages of pesticide-coated morning glory seeds and didn't vomit.
I leave you with the words of the prophet:
"If we have learned anything in this life it's that the more drugs you do, the better time you have."
-The Hon. Matt Moore
My goal was to gain twenty pounds before being shipped off to Russia based on the assumption I would be in mortal peril if my current frame became any leaner. So I ate and I ate. Even when I didn't want to. When stressed or lethargic I crammed something down my throat.
Slowly but surely over the course of a month I added an extra five pounds. I was quite elated by this. I was on the road to filling out six years after puberty. I kept on eating until the Avalon offer came on the table.
Within a week of my arrival I lost those five pounds.
Things were leaking out of me for days. If I can expel a liquid I have done it in this nation. First it was the cold. Snot coming out of my nose, snorted up and spit out. On my bed, on my floor, on my clothes. Then it was the diarrhea. The food initially reacted poorly with my Americanized digestive track. Every time I took a shit there was some bizarre concoction in the toilet. More a kin to fireworks than human waste. I still have yet to make a completely solid deposit over here.
But my favorite was the food poisoning. Some subway green peppers incapacitated me for a day. After a night of drinking and drunk food I expelled the contents of my stomach in too desperate bursts. The pink slime of the former Southwest Sauce burns. More than the vodka, the sandwich sauce expulsion was pure, unadulterated agony. When it was all said and done I think I threw up about seven thousand calories.
My precious bodily fluids have been affected profoundly by the food even in this very westernized country. Me, the man who ate four packages of pesticide-coated morning glory seeds and didn't vomit.
I leave you with the words of the prophet:
"If we have learned anything in this life it's that the more drugs you do, the better time you have."
-The Hon. Matt Moore
Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas 2008
I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.
For a decade now I found this trite, sentimental claptrap . Just part of the over-capitalized bullshit that mutilated my pristine memories of the classic childhood Christmas. At best it earned a scoff but mostly it played unacknowledged. Part of the soundtrack to something puerile. Something to be endured for three months than thrown aside to be picked up by a lonely garbage man still walking the beat while the rest of the world stays warm. A bland aesthetic experience shoved into a month of bland experiences, appearance makings, and super-structure demanded activities. Yet here I am, freshly twenty-four years old, humming this song under my breath and holding back tears as I speed walk to teach the disconnected children of the South Korean elite.
Cheers, reader, to my first Christmas away from home.
I sit here with my rattling cough. I am not the first of my DNA do spend Christmas in this nation. I had a great-uncle who was here sixty-some years ago. But he was a lot further north. And I'm sure he'd love to trade Christmases with me. Clutching an M1 in a ditch probably isn't as fun as moping on a laptop.
I believe the technical term for it is “taken for granted.” After such reliability those relationships that were so important to me became important for me. Like the mountains around me in this growing nation, I thought they'd be there to mark who I am forever. Sure, telling my Godmother I wanted to be Jewish because I'm old school was fun, but I didn't know that it got me through the year. I didn't know the astounding growth spurts of my younger cousins made for such gripping information. I didn't know Christmas actually meant something.
And here comes the reflection.
What will I come home to? A year is a long time, especially now. As my friends grow older and gain more direction they will scatter across the country. Some will stay but more will realize the Nebraskan dream of leaving home. Entering this wide world and roaming for a while. Who will go where and will they remember me? And if they do will they want to see me? As usual the future remains hazy.
But more importantly, what did I leave behind? So many friends, I tried my best to see them all.
As a form of therapy I hop onto interlink. They have live webcams there that update every fifteen seconds. Home looks beautiful. The snow covers everything. The cameras aren't wonderful but it looks like Christmas. Like I could reach out and touch it. The life I made for myself. Google Lincoln, Ne and put something as a background. There's a one for 27th and South. I can see a corner of the gas station I spent so many hours at.
If they miss me now it won't last.
For a decade now I found this trite, sentimental claptrap . Just part of the over-capitalized bullshit that mutilated my pristine memories of the classic childhood Christmas. At best it earned a scoff but mostly it played unacknowledged. Part of the soundtrack to something puerile. Something to be endured for three months than thrown aside to be picked up by a lonely garbage man still walking the beat while the rest of the world stays warm. A bland aesthetic experience shoved into a month of bland experiences, appearance makings, and super-structure demanded activities. Yet here I am, freshly twenty-four years old, humming this song under my breath and holding back tears as I speed walk to teach the disconnected children of the South Korean elite.
Cheers, reader, to my first Christmas away from home.
I sit here with my rattling cough. I am not the first of my DNA do spend Christmas in this nation. I had a great-uncle who was here sixty-some years ago. But he was a lot further north. And I'm sure he'd love to trade Christmases with me. Clutching an M1 in a ditch probably isn't as fun as moping on a laptop.
I believe the technical term for it is “taken for granted.” After such reliability those relationships that were so important to me became important for me. Like the mountains around me in this growing nation, I thought they'd be there to mark who I am forever. Sure, telling my Godmother I wanted to be Jewish because I'm old school was fun, but I didn't know that it got me through the year. I didn't know the astounding growth spurts of my younger cousins made for such gripping information. I didn't know Christmas actually meant something.
And here comes the reflection.
What will I come home to? A year is a long time, especially now. As my friends grow older and gain more direction they will scatter across the country. Some will stay but more will realize the Nebraskan dream of leaving home. Entering this wide world and roaming for a while. Who will go where and will they remember me? And if they do will they want to see me? As usual the future remains hazy.
But more importantly, what did I leave behind? So many friends, I tried my best to see them all.
As a form of therapy I hop onto interlink. They have live webcams there that update every fifteen seconds. Home looks beautiful. The snow covers everything. The cameras aren't wonderful but it looks like Christmas. Like I could reach out and touch it. The life I made for myself. Google Lincoln, Ne and put something as a background. There's a one for 27th and South. I can see a corner of the gas station I spent so many hours at.
If they miss me now it won't last.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Korean Wal Mart
The soul of this culture is here. It lurks in subtle gestures and back alleys but it is here.
When I first arrived in Korea everything carried the mark of the “Modern” (American) era. High rise apartments, cell phone stores, taxi cabs and grocery stores abound in this nation. At the clothing store the underwear models are white. The mannequins have Asian eyes with blue pupils. Brittney Spears and Jay-Z play in public squares. A few of my kids wear NASCAR shirts.
I can't assign blame to the leaders of this country for embracing the West. For the past sixty years it's been a small nation surrounded by hostile forces while waving the flag of someone else's democracy. Seeking shelter under the world's most powerful nation is only logical in a country still technically in a state of war.
What gets me is the fury, the unwavering force South Korea embraces Western culture. HomeEver, the Korean version of Wal Mart, was my most recent stop in my acclimation tour of 2009. In full force I witnessed the decadence which I comically scorned in my more Marxist moments. Children grabbing for Power Ranger's masks. Mothers on iphones (the sound of nagging is universal) and teenagers slacking by the McDonald's. I flew half way across the world to watch people degrade themselves for cheap crap and status symbols. 'Tis the season, I guess.
But there was an upside in all this. In my futile attempt to find a Starbucks (all the other coffee in town sucks) I found a narrow and unassuming alley. I would have passed it over except it didn't look like anything else around. I followed its cobblestone street and misshapen stone walls. I turned and there it was. What I've been looking for.
I stood in a different part of the city and a different part of history. Before Harry Truman. Before the DMZ. Before the thirty-eighth parallel. The houses were small but proud in this courtyard housed under the shadow of Westernization Incarnate. The slanted roofs and stucco walls of the pre-war generation.
Bonzi trees grew in ornamented pots. There was a small statue of the Buddha in the center. We did not touch this haven. This active museum of a life soon to be nothing but a tourist trap.
God, how I hate the twenty-first century.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Weekend
Jostled. Jarred. My experience in this country so far is nothing but a series of plane rides, bus rides, car rides and waiting.
Sitting in an IHOP at five in the morning. Warm inside. Safe from the cold. She smiled. But it wasn't for her. She couldn't be selfish if she tried. The warmth surrounded me. Surrounded us. Her hand slowly gaining feeling as I rubbed it for her. We looked at the Christmas tree. Her head on my shoulder.
I try to sleep, quite a feat in economy class. The lack of leg room leads to contortions normally reserved for the circus. I still haven't slept. I nod off. I wake up when the plane changes direction of altitude or bumps. The stern resolve to die with dignity before the information is processed.
"This is the most EuroCentric International List of Crepes I've ever seen." She laughed. A genuine laugh. For just a moment she forgot why we're here: breakfast before I'm gone for a year. In that one, gossimer moment we are together for ever in this spot. This is the epiphany Keates spoke so highly of. To live in this one moment. Forever. Truely that would be heaven.
I'd rather go to hell than purgatory. At least hell is honest. It's cold on the plane. It's freezing in the bathrooms. My breath freezes. My foot aches with the pain normally reserved for full days of hiking over rough terrain. My I nod off, my leg falls asleep. I wake up. I watch Pineapple Express for the third time. I don't understand the plot, i just want something somewhat familiar. I nod off. Repeat.
We are intertwined now. She puts her four foot long legs across my lap. I pretend to kiss her but tell her a secret instead.
"I love you."
And her eyes radiate like a thousand suns and we are even warmer than we were. This is the last time I will be warm for a year. Will she still provide it when I return? These questions are drowned in the elegance of the moment and the only thing is us when she whispers her secret.
"I love you, too."
Our food arrives.
I'm on a bus now. The heat is broken. I wear my trenchcoat like a blanket. This is the last bus out of Seoul tonight. Had I stopped to use the bathroom I would be sleeping in the airport. Everywhere around me there is neon. Lights, colors, clothes. This is an optical assault without at least an hour of sleep. We bounce and jumble down the highway and I hope to the god I don't believe in that someone, anyone can take me to a bed.
I wake up dizzy. I always do. She is holding me from behind. She's been asleep for sometime. There is a wet spot near my shoulders, where he face was at one point. I missed the session but I know the evidence. I roll over to kiss her in the warmth and softness of her bed and our bodies.
"Are you okay, sweetheart?"
"I will be."
Sitting in an IHOP at five in the morning. Warm inside. Safe from the cold. She smiled. But it wasn't for her. She couldn't be selfish if she tried. The warmth surrounded me. Surrounded us. Her hand slowly gaining feeling as I rubbed it for her. We looked at the Christmas tree. Her head on my shoulder.
I try to sleep, quite a feat in economy class. The lack of leg room leads to contortions normally reserved for the circus. I still haven't slept. I nod off. I wake up when the plane changes direction of altitude or bumps. The stern resolve to die with dignity before the information is processed.
"This is the most EuroCentric International List of Crepes I've ever seen." She laughed. A genuine laugh. For just a moment she forgot why we're here: breakfast before I'm gone for a year. In that one, gossimer moment we are together for ever in this spot. This is the epiphany Keates spoke so highly of. To live in this one moment. Forever. Truely that would be heaven.
I'd rather go to hell than purgatory. At least hell is honest. It's cold on the plane. It's freezing in the bathrooms. My breath freezes. My foot aches with the pain normally reserved for full days of hiking over rough terrain. My I nod off, my leg falls asleep. I wake up. I watch Pineapple Express for the third time. I don't understand the plot, i just want something somewhat familiar. I nod off. Repeat.
We are intertwined now. She puts her four foot long legs across my lap. I pretend to kiss her but tell her a secret instead.
"I love you."
And her eyes radiate like a thousand suns and we are even warmer than we were. This is the last time I will be warm for a year. Will she still provide it when I return? These questions are drowned in the elegance of the moment and the only thing is us when she whispers her secret.
"I love you, too."
Our food arrives.
I'm on a bus now. The heat is broken. I wear my trenchcoat like a blanket. This is the last bus out of Seoul tonight. Had I stopped to use the bathroom I would be sleeping in the airport. Everywhere around me there is neon. Lights, colors, clothes. This is an optical assault without at least an hour of sleep. We bounce and jumble down the highway and I hope to the god I don't believe in that someone, anyone can take me to a bed.
I wake up dizzy. I always do. She is holding me from behind. She's been asleep for sometime. There is a wet spot near my shoulders, where he face was at one point. I missed the session but I know the evidence. I roll over to kiss her in the warmth and softness of her bed and our bodies.
"Are you okay, sweetheart?"
"I will be."
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