I arrived in Osaka en route to Pusan on my 27th birthday, almost two months ago. I had flown from Istanbul. I was burnt out, heart broken for having left my girlfriend behind in Istanbul and I felt like my uselessness spread out in all directions forever. I was being eaten inside out by regret, self pity and doubt concerning all I was doing. I was kicking myself for not saying bye to all my friends in Canada and Istanbul but I had discovered that I was more inclined to run away, rather than put on airs like I was actually doing something I wanted to. Fueled more by a need to escape under the scrutiny of my shame, I said a quick good bye to my sister at the airport in Toronto and departed. I spent a week in paradiszical good humour on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. I had been reunited with my girlfriend and we  found a garden speckled by falling fruit blossoms to spoil ourselves in a sensuous atmosphere of great food and red wine conversation at a tree house pension. Again I disappeared from there without giving old friends even so much as a phone call of greeting.
 
 The reason for my communicative reluctance was that only four months before I had been teaching in Istanbul. The thought of doing it all over again in Korea made me weary. A year or so before that, I had said good bye to friends and family and flew out of my bottled universe, out of the sea it floated in, and into Istanbul. After a year I had returned home invigorated with plans for making plans for the future. In a couple of weeks I was broke and looking for work as an english teeacher in TOronto. In the meantime I slept on my moms couch with my ever loving sister and watched comfortably as the vector that was my life wasted away into a pathetic limp french fry on the end of a plastic fork.
 
 Depressed and desperate I jumped at the first opportunity suggested to me by a friend from Istanbul. Come to Korea if you need a job. O.k., I said. And I was gone before anyone knew it. I couldn't muster up the strength to say good byes again and again. I justified my inability in many ways but I still felt like an idiot. That week in Turkey up and ended and I got on a plane drunk and sleepy, numbed to any idea of good bye or missing you or caring where I was going. Someone was supposed to meet me at the Pusan airport and I was going to try and be there.
 
  I arrived in Osaka en route to Pusan almost two months ago...The challenge of learning about a new culture which quite honestly I didn't care about was a bridge that was approaching fast. My aspiring young dreams, born of some unexplained spiritual craving, had occupied the last eight years of my life. I had been questing for the blissful awareness of eternity (experienced once before, by accident, as a pile of shit stinking in the back of a chevrolet station wagon). The dreams though left me stumbling blind and broke and still I clung tenuously to their sinking walls. But, I had to put them on hold for awhile so I could make some money and pay back those god forsaken loans which I had accumulated in a typical bout of self indulgent anti utility at University. The entire masquerade of revelatory revaluation of the soul was unwrapped, chewed up and spit out in a matter of months despite a Herculean will for postponing reality in favour of transcending ones responsibility by diligently working out on the couch.
 
  I remember in one or another of these work out sessions, blessed with the company of a likeminded individual I sat up and pronounced, "You know, I just realized the other day that all this shit on tv is really really SHIT! Isn't it?" I felt as if the words had touched something beyond me. As if for the first time language had successfuly traversed that crevass between world and self and actually came to mean something. My friend nodded in benevolent understanding and was thoughtful enough to encourage me by saying, "I'd be proud to realize that shit on tv is really shit." I looked at him and marvelled at my new understanding but fearful of presuming too much and not seeing the greater picture, I secretly questioned the point of being proud when after all, if the shit wasn't shit so I could realize it as shit then I would never have found myself in this moment of enlightenment. Shit! I thought. It's part of the masterplan, it's not a mountain at all, and I glanced sideways to suppress a little grin. We flipped around the channels some more looking for something to watch but it was too late anyways so I passed out.
 
It was this environment of love and security that I had left. A freezer bursting with lasagna, ice cream, meat pies...cupboards stuffed with soup, granola bars and kraft dinner and then there was the cheese. The beautiful cheese. Old cheddar, havarti, swiss, blue and to go with all of that red hot chili jelly, fine pickles, spicy salamis. All gone, I stood in Osaka airport waiting for my connecting flight. I stared out the wall of glass onto the airstrip. i dipped my chopsticks into Ramyon (cousin to Mr. Noodles) and tried to lift the wet wriggling stuff to my mouth. It might as well be pubic hair for all the mourishment it gives you. I was reminded of university and the black cloud of a government loan that had sealed my fate. I wondered about the future...
 
Suddenly I'm in my new apartment looking out over the scrapyard which is my backyard. I've become quite fond of it and the alleyway that leads me to and from every new day. It's Sunday, two months later and the day is sunny, quiet and calm. I am alive and although I'm nearly as ignorant as when I arrived in matters of language and culture (not to mention logic) I have been able to send some money home towards my loan. My job pays and my boss treats me well except when he's beating me senseless on Saturdays with a podium used for spelling bees. People have been real kind and have been showing me around. Where to drink, what to eat...I'm going to the beach now. See ya later.
 
Everybody. Here comes the Pusanic phenomenon.cheers.
 
love and thanks to all,D. and Uncle Nasty, Cathy and Jade, Willybach, the Camel, Annabel, sada. Saban. Mikey, Mr. Tooth, Keith and Ryan, Brooks' and the boyz, family, grandma and sister love, all the girls travellin around the world, and Buddha who told me to"not let belief in the self be compromised by what you are taught to believe."
 
A special thanks to those caged birds who inspired me to start writing after such a long time running.

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