Day 4 - Return to Seocho-Dong

The day has finally come - for years and years I've been wanting to re-visit this place where I spent three years of my childhood. Some of my first memories came from here, vivid ones, sights, smells, impressions - they all came on strong here in Korea. Seocho is a part of my past that until now has been intangible, safely tucked away in young brain cells that must be closed tightly in my mind's iron vault somewhere. But as I step out of the subway station, I feel a sense of familiarity...though it's like seeing someone who you think you know, but not knowing exactly where you know them from, and even then, if you even really know them at all. No matter...I decide to let my instincts take charge and wander through some streets that I'm sure will become familiar any time now. Around every bend my heartbeat jumps as I expect to see that old house with the wrought-iron fence around it, next to the playground with the big metal swings, the village square with the old man and his merry-go-round, towed by a pair of donkeys, and of course the old hill where my dad and I used to walk up for lunch. All in technicolor, of course. Each time I think I've caught the scent, it fades into ambiguity. My instinct is mixing with my imagination, and I soon find myself wandering aimlessly in an unfamiliar place. Still, I find myself looking down a street, seeing a building, eyeing a fence that I think might hold a clue...but now I'm just fooling myself into remembering something that wasn't there. I take a few pictures that I hope mom or dad can interpret, and call it a day.

Stilll, it's a nice afternoon and I head up to the Seoul Arts Center, which is a massive expanse of concrete buildings, fountains, and plaza. A security guard quickly wards off any intrepid child who wanders too close to the fountain - no splashing allowed here! A little bummed that I can't jump in myself, I decide to head up into the wooded area behind the arts center, complete with a beautiful garden and further on up, a Buddhist temple. I catch a whiff of green incense and it instantly takes me back - makes sense as I've read that smell memory is easily stored in long-term memory and has powerful connections to emotional memory...so take care of that nose...

I end up hiking all the way to the top of this small mountain, which wasn't in the itinerary for today but was something I definitely needed - all I'd been doing in the weeks before this trip was slaving away on my finals, frantically moving large boxes around, and generally doing my best not to relax in any way. Not really the point of life though. The fresh air (kind of) and the feeling of being away from it all (if only a few hundred yards from the city) was welcome relief. At the top of this mountain was a shrine of some sort, a guy selling popsicles, and a few hula-hoops to loosen up with after the climb (Why haven't we thought of that?) Along the way there are all kinds of other things to make your leisurely hike harder - pull-up bars, benchpresses, and the like. I end up meeting a guy who has lived in Seocho-dong for a long time, and I try to get some info from him - but it's not much use. We do have a good conversation on the way down about Washington apples and China's global effects on life, the universe, and everything.