I bought a green plant today for 5,500 Won. I can tell we're going to be good friends, until it dies in three weeks. I'm going to Fukuoka, Japan for two days next week. This has nothing to do with obtaining a working visa, because that would imply that I don't have one presently, which would be illegal. I've been told it's balmy. Is balminess photographable? No, it's just an abstract concept, and our camera doesn't have a setting for those.

Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11th. This is a sad thing. Perhaps no sadder than any other distant and unknown death, but sad nonetheless. He inhabits a rare writing niche: his novels are both substantial and accessible. Finding that balance is something extremely difficult to do and one of the biggest obstacles for any artist. It's not particularly hard to make something obtuse which stakes its value on its very obscurity. Nor it is overly difficult to create something that panders to the "lowest common denominator." And there isn't anything wrong with either of those things, but credit should be given when the elusive middle ground is found. There are no such things as books that everyone should read, but if there were, Slaughterhouse 5 would be one of them.

On Easter Sunday I went to Yeuido island, an island in the Han river, which runs through Seoul. The aim of my trip was Yoido Full Gospel Church, which by some measurements has the largest membership of any church in the world. Yeouido island is only about 8 square kilometres--not so big, I thought. The church has services pretty much all day, so I decided to just walk around the island until I found it. I like doing things that way, when I have time. It was a nice little (2 hour) walk. I walked clockwise around the outside of the island, because I had a (correct, it turned out) idea that the church would be on the outside. (The middle is a lot of businesslike high rises and TV studios.) Little did I know, if I had walked counterclockwise I would have found the church in about 5 minutes. But, owing to my fear of spontaneous time travel, I don't trust counterclockwise. Anyway, I finally spotted it in the distance at about 2:55, just in time for the 3 o'clock service.

It wasn't as weird as I thought it would be. It didn't seem that big, maybe because it was only half full. There were two bands and a 50-person choir. There was also a group of about ten people singing up on stage. They seemed like aspiring K-pop stars--but who isn't, really? What I really liked, though, was the dance team. It was nine young women (don't get the wrong idea; they were conservatively dressed). They were kind of like a mix between Dance Dance Revolution, the "hand dancing" team from Napoleon Dynamite, cheer leading, and traditional Asian dancing of some kind. I can't really explain it better than that, but they really kicked ass. They had elaborate, lengthy, high-energy routines for each song, and they never lost their synchronization. (Korean people can synchronize dance your face off.) One young woman, in particular, impressed me. She was more of a blur, since she was so far away (I was in the balcony), but somehow she exuded an unmistakable positivity. I can't really explain it, but her dancing communicated a profound contentment and thankfulness for life. I really appreciated that.

So, it was a worthwhile experience despite the fact that no one talked to me, I couldn't understand the sermon and the songs were unfamiliar. Actually, one song was sung to the tune of "Because He Lives." So I just substituted the English chorus, which, surprisingly, was stored in my memory. So, I was singing the same song as the other thousand people, but with my own words. Although, as solipsists would have it, that's all anyone ever does. So it goes.

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