Seoul -- May 2023 ☮

Our uber driver to LAX was named "Sunday". I love him. ☮

My art from the airplane ♡︰↷ 🥛꒷﹒₊˚੭

We were stranded at the airport at 3AM after a 10HR flight delay and were never compensate for it. Lol

도산분식 was the shit back in 2018 and it still is. I always forget how busy it is.

And I did!

I fw good vegan food. How do they do that...

Me

The cakes were so bad, but a seat away from the rain made it okay.

The twopenny-halfpenny skirt in question.

I heard the taxi driver play this and I can't find this song anywhere (at least in the US), but it was pretty.

I love him!

I think Babycheeks makes for a soul-crushing petname for someone you love.

Bodied that

말차 초코 숲..............→˚₊· ꒰🧸꒱ Please

A few months before this trip, it was my birthday. We were somewhere in Larchmont and Jennie pointed something out that would later become a turning point in the rest of my life, but I can't reveal it quite yet. It didn't cross my mind until after I got home from Seoul when was riddled with abandon and jetlag as I returned to work, and then later as I lingered around my studio trying to regather myself.

Like every strange trip of mine's, it rained. It rained so much the hot pink of my Tamburins shopping bag bled onto the rest of my stuff. I would feel relief weaving in and out of air-conditioned shops and being in the small hotel room in Gangnam that was reminiscent of Japanese capsule hotels.

I thought I would feel something new coming back to Korea after not being there for four years, but it felt the same way it did when I couldn't understand who I was when I was living there for school. Bonjour Hawaii was closed, and if it weren't for the group of men who harassed me in the elevator right before my eye surgery, it would have been the most gutting part of my trip. I wore a dress because I didn't realize that Lasik eye surgery required me to lay on one of those sterile examination beds(?) under fluorescent lighting, so when the lady was leading me to the operation floor and we stood in front of that group of men waiting to reach our floor, I walked into my own personal realm of hell and discomfort. It wasn't pain that I was feeling, just a familiar uneasiness. I felt like a puppy at the vet getting the cone of shame. Then it was all over and it was back to the sweet release of passing out in the hotel room.

All I can remember now is the rain. It was one of my best friend's first time in Seoul, so I took her down the Hollywood Sign, In-N-Out, Griffith Park, LACMA route. Cafes, Gentle Monster cum Tamburins cum Instagram photo op. I think for the short time we had, it wasn't too bad. It would have been a punishment for me to drag her through Insadong in the pouring rain. I was on autopilot and the rain and my temporary blind then not so blindness made it difficult to bring her to places with more depth, but I set a To Be Continued vibe to it.... It also helped that she enjoyed GS25 so much that she would frequent it while I was out cold in bed with the nasty post-surgery taste lingering in my mouth. I had money this time and I wasn't a university student reliant on meal replacements and coffee. I bought a dumb skirt from The Open Product, that was overpriced and so badly made that the zipper caught the day I wore it. It still hangs in my closet on the occasion that it magically fixes itself. Lale stick perfume akin to a grandma who cares for you, a bear keychain from Daiso because it had such a stupid (lovingly) look on its face that I was charmed by (like I typically am in my endeavors of charm and all that is relative), instant coffee.

I went to meet Mish near Yonsei and the taxi driver was confused and just dropped me off wherever so I just let him and I walked around trying to look for something familiar to guide me to our meeting spot. I didn't realize how long it had been until the rain hit my face and I had to pretend I wasn't feeling stranded the same way I was that first day in Tokyo. I walked until I saw the red tube in front of the subway station. Life was on track again and Mish and I went to a different location of the vegan restaurant that served the best spaghetti and meat?balls I've ever had. Spaghetti and meat?balls wasn't on the menu. We had good pasta regardless. We caught up in the rain and looked for the café that Mish wanted to stop by. It was closed. We ended up somewhere else and it wasn't good, but it felt good to be away somewhere completely different than what I was used to. I was haunted by my reflection at this point and my rain-soaked being and post-Lasik makeup-free face felt discomforted by the same but different streets I used to frequent when I was something else. 

Revisiting my revisit over a year later at a time when I wish so badly to quit everything leave this room, leave this place, leave this world. It feels weird to see how much time has past and how much I change and grow so quickly. But at the end, I'm still writing blog entries and still listening to my hipster music from when I was in grade school and much cooler less stricken with everything than I am now.