hi bells bye bells
The best thing about living in Seoul was the ability to walk around in perfect peace and safety at any hour of the night. There was a strong feeling of never really being alone, but always being left alone. The fantasy of being an anonymous stranger flitting between crowds, running down alleys with towering sky-scrapers somewhere in your vision blinking blue blue blue was alive and well in Hapjeong, Seoul –– even at 3am on a Wednesday night.
Never have I felt more free to do whatever I pleased. If I was suddenly and overwhelmingly overcome with the urge to eat a chocolate popsicle at 1am, all I had to do was jolt out of bed, run to my 7-11, slap my public transit card against some plastic and skip back to my bedroom, or maybe to the hut-of-preference by the river to watch the dog-walkers and the nocturnal joggers.
It felt organic to live in a city. Every time I felt restless or filled with knots, it was easy to find an outlet that mirrored and satisfied this feeling beautifully. It turns out that stomping down streets is the ideal way to wallow in chaos. And by the time you’re doing so, you’re laughing so much at yourself for so successfully living out such a cartoonish impulse, that you calm down, snap out of it, and maybe take in some night air. Voilà.
