Nostalgia in the Land of the Morning Calm
There are certain moments when the past does not feel distant at all. It arrives quietly, without warning, usually through something small. A song overheard in a café. The smell of rain on a cool autumn morning. The metallic sound of a subway train pulling into a station. Lately, I have been thinking a great deal about nostalgia. Not as sadness exactly. More like a kind of emotional gravity. The strange pull certain places, songs, and memories continue to have over us no matter how far we travel from them. Living in Korea for so many years has given me an unusual relationship with time. Sometimes I can walk through my neighborhood in Daejeon early in the morning, before the city is fully awake, and feel as though several different versions of my life are walking beside me at once. The young man who arrived in Seoul in 1990 with two suitcases and very little understanding of what awaited him here still feels close sometimes. I can still picture those crowded subway platforms on Line 2. ...
