Foreign Pigeon

It's unnerving how often mothers are right about these kinds of things. I'll admit, I stalled for a couple hours before leaving, including a turn around after I became convinced that something had fallen in my eye a block away from the apartment. But I did it. I took a taxi to the nearest subway and back. I took two subway lines to the palace and back. No hiccups.

Tourism-therapy. I'm a believer. I spent four hours walking through the massive Gyeongbokgung palace complex. It was a refreshingly no-frills kind of cultural treasure; big blobs of buildings here and there among the lupine and long grass, plenty of shady trees, even the occasional dragonfly to complete the idyll. There were no winding rooms full of Baroque artifacts, no commitments to be made to one exhibit or another - just the offering of open spaces, courtyards, and open doors everywhere to allow for a delicious meandering of mind and body.

I was making a video in front of the Heumgyeonggak Pavilion to try the capture the remarkable racket a batch of insects was making in one particular clump of trees. A pair of pigeons wandered over and as the got closer and closer I had the odd sensation that they, like the throngs of dark-haired people around me, were foreigners to me. The belonged and I didn't. I had an overwhelming urge to get out of their way because this was their land. The fact that they did not seem afraid of me at all only reinforced this unease. I finally moved away, and the closest pigeon, right by my foot, didn't bat an eyelash. Pigeons could have eyelashes.

I saw perhaps 6 or 7 other people who were obviously expats today. I think I threw more than one of them a good dose of puppy-dog eyes. Four days in a strange country and I'm already desperate for connections with other outsiders. But we have this problem of First Contact. Yes we see each other and instantly recognize each other for that which we have in common...but how to bridge the gap between recognition and actual conversation? Somehow I don't think running up to them, tugging on the end of their shirts and babbling "Hi I'm American. You look American. Are you American? Let's be American together" would work too well.