........

This weekend I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival. Korea has a "spring break," and this is it. It's the only time and place I have been since I moved here almost a year ago where so much flesh was so willingly shown without so much as a single eyelash batted. There was mud, there was the beach, there was drinking (oh was there drinking).

I met up with some people -- good people -- who live further south, in Changwon. I had a (relatively) good time. I think what outings like this just do for me, though, is reinforce the knowledge that I am, in fact, different. I can't nor do I want to go all night every night. It's hard for me to make light conversation out of nothing; I kept listening to what people were saying and found myself being able to predict what would come next. Everything -- the people, the words, what they did -- seemed contrived and self-aware. I had the uncanny feeling that I was surrounded by puppets, mere shadows acting out the ways in which they felt they were supposed to act. But I also felt like a shadow; my body felt loose and empty, as if everything that was "me" had been wrapped up tightly in a tiny black ball in my chest. I was seeing but not seeing.

I am ashamed at the disdain I have for my fellow human beings. But I'm also ashamed of their actions, though I feel I am no better. I pose and posture because it's easy. What I want, who I am -- I don't know these things, how to be these things, and I'm plagued by it. It goes away, sometimes, for twenty minutes or an hour or maybe several hours, but inevitably the feeling comes back -- that everything you say and do, and everything those around you say and do, is a lie, and we are all face-down choking in a puddle of our own mediocrity, gasping for air but too lazy to lift our heads.