I'm listening to the Lost in Translation soundtrack and missing Korea so much it hurts.

Last August, I couldn't wait to get back to the States, back to grassy spaces and quiet cricket twilights, back to driving down long windy roads alone under the stars, back to gas stations filled with trucks and American flags and cigarette butts. I remember watching Cold Mountain in Korea; it mirrored the image of home written on my heart--one full of green fields, rolling hills, and trees lining the horizon.

In Korea the only horizon I ever saw was building upon building. Even the grass was scrawny there, like it couldn't get enough air to breathe or ground to grasp.

But now I miss the lights, the action, the noise of the city. I miss hearing hundreds of voices babbling, smelling the food in the streetside stands, being shoved around by strangers and greeted by staring hordes of children.

I really miss the subway at night, slumped in a seat facing expressionless businessmen, teenage girls text-messaging, mothers with children strapped to their backs. Or, worse, standing on the crowded train with aching feet, holding the ring like a monkey, shifting my weight with each corner. I liked to look at my reflection in the dark window and watch the stations flash by outside--Gupabal, Jichuk, Hwajeong, Jeongbalsan--and (finally) home, in a taxi with a strange man driving, who has no clue that I'm tired and lonely . . . and even if he did, what could he say?

It sounds funny, but I miss it.

KATE News Channel 24: We BS . . . You Decide.

Today, in world news: I checking my e-mail today and ran across this, which reminded me of church when I was a kid. This guy at our church used to give me a stick of gum after Sabbath School every week, and my mom would make me wait to chew it. I guess it makes sense--little kids smack their lips pretty loudly. Plus, when you're a novice bubble-blower, there's always the chance that you might accidentally spit your gum into someone's purple bouffant a few pews up.

Poor guy. I wonder what his sentence will be. In some countries they cut your hands off for stealing. Maybe for an errant chewer, it's the lips that go. Or the gums. Ha.

In local news, you'll all be pleased with my horoscope (courtesy of the Onion): A gunslinger will come to town and promise on his mother's grave to put you in a box in the ground, but he will turn out to be the colorful, well-armed architect you hired to build your subterranean mansion.

And finally, today's weather has a 87% chance of being FAR too nice for me to be inside. But I've got 100% chance of having FAR too much to do to go outside. Boo for school. Yay for summer.

The Bike Song

Ever been doing a common activity, and have the same song pop up in your head as last time when you did it? Does your life have a pretty predictable soundtrack? There were a couple years there when "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" would come into my head about once a month, for no perceptible reason. Each day, when I entered one of my fourth-grade classrooms in Korea, I'd start singing, "Good Day Sunshine." The kids eventually caught on and started singing it with me, beating the tables in rhythm. Everytime I've gone to play rehearsal for the past month, I've hummed "Strangers in the Night."

Well, for the past week, each time I get on my bike, I've been singing "Lonesome Valley" from the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. I ride on the path between my house and the school, along those apartments on Garland, startling the kids and mothers with baby-buggies, growling out, "You've got to gooooo . . . to the lonesome valley . . ." It's kind of fun to see the looks they give me as I breeze by, shouting, "You've got to ask the Lord's forgiveness!" I'm like one of those streetside preachers, only on a bike.

Yesterday morning I woke up early, got dressed and rode my bike to the gym. After I worked out, I cycled around the sidewalks on campus, looking at all the flowers and budding trees in the soft morning light. Hardly anyone was out and about yet--it was delightful. I had the whole spread of green lawn and wide sky to myself. And yet again, "Lonesome Valley" was in my head, while I was drinking in the scent of tulips and decomposing magnolia flowers.

I've expressed my heartfelt love for my bike here before. Last fall, I wrote a poem called "Ode to My Huffy" (even though she's a Yukon Giant), and it got honorable mention in the Parnassus, the English major's version of Nerdular Nerdance. But, seriously, I LOVE my bike. It makes me so happy. I want to ride it everywhere. The only things causing me to travel on foot or by car in Berrien are items I have to transport, because I don't have a basket, and my clothing. Skirted bike riding can have near-disastrous effects. I need to get some of those spandex biking shorts to put under my skirts, so I can stop accidentally flashing bewildered seminarians and administrative employees.

But I think I gotta find a new bike-song to sing. Any suggestions?

The PCA/ACA conference in Atlanta went well. Our hotel was awesome--47 floors of Ewok village sloping outwards toward the ground, with fountains and pools at the bottom, and frightening glass elevators that looked like shuttles in a futuristic city. Jessica and Tanya and I were on the 24th floor--I really don't like heights.

Not liking heights was quite the issue Friday night. Tanya was being nominated as the chair for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy division for next year, so we all attended a room party on the 41st floor--much farther from the ground than I'm comfortable with. As we boarded our elevator/rocket, people crowded in after us.

A loud buzzer sounded, and I thought, "Well, we've exceeded the weight limit. Someone needs to get off." But people kept getting on . . . the doors closed . . . we were going up! The ringing persisted; I was panicking. Jess and I exchanged frightened glances. Why was the elevator going up if something was wrong?

A voice came over the intercom. "Is everything all right in the elevator?" "No, it is not alright! We're going to die!" I screamed (in my mind). Then finally this lady stepped away from the button panel and giggled. "Oh, I was leaning on the Alarm button!"

Very funny. I almost had a heart attack.

Then we got to our crazy par-tay. Take a room obscenely high off the ground, add a tub full of Sam Adams bottles, and mix in about 30 people making obscure StarTrek: Deep Space Nine references, and you've just whipped up a batch of Sci-Fi fun unrivaled anywhere in "the 'verse" (that's S-F code for "the universe"). Jessica and I spend most of the time looking at each other, wondering what the hell they were talking about, wishing some of them looked more like Han Solo and less like Jabba the Hut.

We started to leave after Tanya won her vote, and some men near the door, fake teleporters pinned to their shirts, yelled out, "No one leaves the Battlestar Galactica! The airlock is closed!" I rolled my eyes and muttered, "Beam me up, Scotty; get me back on that elevator."

I'm finally done with the paper--thank heavens. And what a weight off! I don't get test-anxiety at all; I strode into my SAT, ACT, and GRE without a lick of worry. But I have major paper-anxiety, agonizing over every step of the process. (Kind of like packing--it takes me forever to move, because I stress about putting everything in just the right boxes.)

Last night when I finished, I went outside and ran down my street in complete exhilaration. Then I watched two episodes of Sex and the City, eating chocolate and drinking tea. What can I say? I know how to treat a girl right.

Today the weather is perfect and I have Atlanta still to look forward to. Everyone is complaining that it will be hot, but I can't wait. Peachtrees in bloom, surrounded by the Southern drawl, and basking in the brainwaves, a veritable feast of mind-matter. My first conference ever . . . oh, how cute.

I realized something yesterday: cats are the only talking animals in my dreams.

Now, don't go thinking I got the talking cats from entropy. I've seen the movie, but it didn't impress me that much. I think the loquacious felines derive from my real love of and empathy for cats. I feel like they are human, or share our emotions. This is called projection, and I realize it's illogical. Be that as it may, cats are yet the only animals in my dreams who have spoken to me, with whom I've had relationships. And usually they morph into human beings at some point--often kids.

Usually the connections between my dreams and real life are very tenuous. However, last night, I dreamed about Eddie Izzard. He was on my mind, I guess, because I had recently watched his Definite Article with Addie. I almost rolled over my plate of pizza in spasms of glee. That guy is amazing--intelligent, hilarious, and a fashion icon in his own right. I don't often idolize celebrities, but Eddie Izzard has earned my adoration for being multi-faceted, brilliant, and uber-talented.

In my dream, Eddie was giving a performance for an elite group of females here on Andrews campus, of which I was one, and afterwards there was a Q & A. I wowed him with my incisive questions and witty remarks, and afterwards, I helped him paint a wall, using my bare hands to smear on the gooey yellow and green. Then I got to see his wig collection and even tried on the blonde spiky one before he drove away in his Mini, his wide mouth lipsticked and laughing.

At least I know where that dream came from. I still have yet to discover why cats change into children.

So this paper I'm writing--the paper from hell--is actually turning out to be pretty interesting. However, I feel like one of the characters in the books I'm reading, because my progress in writing has been similar to their progress in the books.

The paper is about destiny vs. free will. In each of the stories, a hero arises, destined to save his nation. King Arthur, Frodo, and Harry Potter all have high callings. They are marked by the powers that be for greatness. The details in between are a little fuzzy, but each of them has a clear end in mind, with a potential heroic death to go with it.

However, where's the choice in that? If they're marked from birth for greatness and death, are they mere pawns in the hands of fortune?

No. Their wizard mentors, (Merlin, Gandalf, and Dumbledore, respectively) model to them the life of grace and choice in the face of predestination. These "destiny-makers," for they are men of great power who alter circumstances, are actually themselves just tools, instruments of fortune. However, they've accepted the cause of the supernatural so wholly as their own cause, integrated it seamlessly into their lives, that when destiny chooses, they choose along with it. It is their free will that allows them to be used so perfectly by the higher powers.

Eventually they each model this attitude with their willing deaths, not shrinking from it or crying out to the heavens against it. Merlin fades from history, locked in a cave. Gandalf goes down to the grave with the Balrog, urging the rest of the Fellowship forward. And Dumbledore . . . well, if you haven't read the sixth book, I won't spoil it for you.

And the young hero, forced to grow up, takes responsibility for the course of his own life. Arthur knows he is destined to die an early death at the hands of his son-nephew, Mordred, but he works as hard as he can to unify Britain in the meantime. Frodo, knowing that Sauron sees all and wants to kill him, still treks on toward Mordor. And Harry, with the foretold certainty that either he or Voldemort must die at the hand of the other, continues to fight against the Dark Lord.

The difference between them and us is that, in their worlds, the supernatural is right beneath the surface. They listen to the voice of destiny and follow it. If they didn't, as Sam Gamgee says, "we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten."

I guess I feel like one of those heroes--my end was laid out before me (the conference, looming ahead like Mount Doom). I could sense something underneath the surface of my paper, a meaning welling up, but I had no idea how to get there. But I was guided, step by step, and now I know what I'm writing about, thank God. However, now I have only 3 days to do it--wish I had Hermione's time-turner.

DST Monday is horrible. I woke up to my alarm clock about fifty times. At one point, a bright light shone in my window--I think it was the sun rising, because all at once the birds began to sing. But when my alarm rang again five minutes later, the sun was gone and the sky was slate-grey.

All my students came in late today--not that I blame them. I wrote "April showers bring May flowers" as their quote, and we talked about how it might be better to live in the Arctic circle, where people drink themselves into oblivion during the sunless winters, rather than in Michigan, where freak blizzards blanket the aforementioned May flowers in snow.

It's freaking April, for goodness' sakes! Right now Collegedale is in bloom and feeling spring's full force. In Ilsan, Lake Park is covered over with flowers, ducks, and children. In Nebraska on Saturday it was in the 70's. And here, only the grass and my pathetic envious heart are green. One little sprig of forsythia outside my window is in bloom, like Waiting for Godot--a miserable beacon of what (if you believe the evidence of years past) is yet to come.

I guess it doesn't help that in Children's Lit., we just finished The Dark is Rising: a book about interminable winter and pure evil if ever I read one. As if things couldn't get worse, it's beginning to sleet; the wind is howling; and all of campus smells like manure from the dairy. I think the Wicked Witch of the West just blew by my window--that makes number three on my list of green things.