It’s funny, I use the word “last” there. My life as connected to Iksan is not over, of course. It’s a half hour away. So I don’t know why, but it does in some ways feel that way, as if I have made some kind of monumental move. It’s only a half hour away from Iksan. But now, I live in Jeonju. I suppose my time in Iksan is over in the sense of it being the place where I spend every day. Ah well. Here are some pictures I took there during the last days I spent in this …

I remember when I was a kid, I was digging through a box of my family’s old cassette tapes. I found the usual: Schubert, Schumann, Bach, Handel, Mozart… and a copy of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, both cassettes. I listened to it once or twice, wondering whose it was. When I caught my mother singing along the “My Sweet Lord” I realized it must have been hers a long time ago, back when she still had long hair and played guitar and sang folksongs. Anyway, as a kid I resolved to listen to it again. I didn’t really …

… perhaps is not the missing of people I like and care about. After all, I can see them when I want, I can visit and pop in and so forth. The hardest thing about moving also isn’t the process, the hauling of boxes and crap from one place to another, because (joy of joys) I own far less crap in general, and I have a friend helping me move it. No, the hardest thing about moving is that I shall have to give up on my petty resentments and annoyances, those things that I realize now have taken on …

… does not exactly describe me at the moment. I have a bag of papers on my desk at work to go through, and all my clothes are loose. My kitchen stuff is not packed, I am to clean the fridge (and the floor near the washing machine) and take apart my desk for transport to Jeonju. On Friday, I’ll move my stuff over, come back for one last night in Iksan, and then I move to Jeonju for real. In Jeonju, I’ll need to buy a yoh, a kind of floor-quilt for sleeping on (because I use that rather …

By the way… yeah, I’m not in Japan. The University I’ll be working for in a week called me to tell me I didn’t need to do it. Some loophole has apparently been found by someone or other over in the admin offices. He says that since I have a foreigner registration card, I will not need to leave Korea to start a new work contract. I was under the impression that I will always have to leave the country to start a new job, just not to continue with an already-held one. And every foreigner I know who’s heard …

oh, one more thing… I am SO glad I started doing my writing in a hidden page on my website, in its own blog. I didn’t lose more than a couple of poems I didn’t much care about, anyway. Whew.