Have to keep those juices flowing.  It seems so easy to grow sated and bored with life here as a well paid, underworked teacher in Pusan; gorging on  luxurious meat meals and bottled cokes every week, taxi rides all over the city like an instant cheuffeur; as many beers as one cares to drink.  Nothing wrong with that, but after too many months or years of these ways, there's the constant fear that the juices will run cold and settle in the veins.  Then what?  Life as a barely working stiff ... plugged into waking sleep dreamless devices such as computer and tv ... perpetual consumption and a cessation of production.  The way of the robot, we the sheeple ... Turn Off, Tune In, Fade Out ...

     That old dopehead Bocskay once said to me that modern Korea reflects the behaviors and values of 1950's era United States ... the social night life ... the conservative majority steadfast in dress and thought ... values pointed towards towards the monolith of suburban middle class utopoia under the protective wings of the LG or SamSung mega-congloms,  an innocent faith in the status quo ... 

   Well, if so, then so be it ... maybe it's time to ride that cyclical time loop ... reliving the past on the way too the future ... it makes sense in this age where the popular modes of music are based on sampling, recycling fragments of the raging era's gone-by ... I see music as an indicator of larger social trends rising, maybe like a seaman or Indian would watch the weather or listen to the ground. 

     But there's another facet of the American 1950's that grew out of  the suburban conservatism like a festering boil... it's that dirty word ... the movement that dare not speak it's name, for fear of a shallow retro constume party of pretension and insincerity ... back then it was the now ... and now it's a relic of the past, the subject of jaded grins and pop-surface conversaton ... it's the BEAT ...  and if you're in the Then Mind, you can buy it in total at Barnes and Noble's or on Amazon.com  in a few compact volumes ... the beat was co-oped a long time ago by entrapreneaurs who we'll never know.  Even Frank Tedesco, world reknowned Buddhist scholar and sexologist blasted the indulgent nature of the Beats in one of his pieces on Pusan Web ... and not without just purpose and ample reason ... 

     But BEAT means something else to this kitty cat ... it was one of the biggies, maybe Kerouac or Ginsberg who defined BEAT as a state of exulted exhaustion ... it doubled as a banner for the perpetual motion of the bombastic musicians of the time, for whom the BEAT went on ever and ever like the hearts of a crowded generation, beating as one.  And even though we can't live on the shoulders of such a word  forever lest we find ourselves stewing in the juices of its obscelesence, that word is a reminder of a pulse that ran under the surface like a hidden freshwater spring ... a vein of gold or diamond to be mined along it's tributaries all over the world. 

     No, the BEATs of old were not inventors, they really weren't genius's, nor were there creating something that wasn't there before ... they were beloved ... condemned ... exulted ... doomed minors ... dredging up the ife of rythm, the blood of spirit from underneath the earth's cold surface ... and they were handing it out to the people like Robin Hoods of the concrete jungle.  Those dudes, and if you check out the Female beats, dudettes, were merely timeless manifestations of the human spirit that did, does and always will exist ... the amoral jedi knights of culture... as long as we battle the robots of the plastic world that is ever encroaching like kudzu creeper vine or a bad case of cancer ... afterall, wasn't Gilgamesh BEAT ... Sappho BEAT
... Jesus and the Aspostles were so BEAT ... Socrates ... anybody who got ever got beat up, killed, hurt, mangled, fucked up, pricked, stabbed, sunburnt, diarreah, tossed, lost, over charged, peeved, miffed, crippled, drippled, nippled, zippled, tripled, bam-bippled,  Bosche ... Chaucer ... Dionysus ... Okonkwo ... Sid Vicious ... Vinnie Van Gogh-Go ... Cleopatra ... Bootsy Collins ... Buddhas ... Shakespere ... Kool Keith and his 17 personalities ... Murakami and his Tokyo filled with shopgirls blasting Duran Duran from compact cars and wearing plastic bracelets ...  all those nameless lovers in the night who never wrote a book or ran a business ... poors souls who never made a dime, yet managed to revel in their time ... 

     I have a feeling that everybody is filled with the macro-BEAT of the giant human mind at some time or another ... and I for one wouldn't wish it any other way ... every newborn baby, and lively child who bites the hand that feeds it withdull gum-breaking teeth and laughs a pure sort of child's laugh ... 

     Well, as it's Now, and never again will be Then, we can throw that dirty old  word on ice and still feel it and keep dancing the forever dance, with the timeless pulse throbbing in our dying viens. Bucket after bucket drawn from an endless well.  And for those who still feel the life, like anti-bodies rallying against the return of the 1950's dulling infection ... the Bush=Nixon relapse time loop ... the crushing wieght of the world being up in and judging your personal ways and business .... there's an endless supply waiting for you underground, all you got to do is grab your pick and dig in. 

    And that brings me to this dialectic clusterfuck we call Pusan Web.  Because at it's best, it's the revolt of one against the many thereby rejoining the many to the one.  If you're looking for idealogical answers here, you might find them, but they probably won't keep long ... souring after a few days like milk in my poor girlfriend's broken refrigerator.  The goodness and the gold don't  lie in the static presentation of good character or the man on the mountain who can tell you how it is ... it's in the flowing juice ... the chunky turnover rate ... the bloodless scrap that changes everybody's mind just a little ... it's on the move
and it's going nowhere and everywhere ... it's unstoppable, yet it ends for one person tomorrow and started up for another person yesterday  ... so repulsive ... so perfect ... formless, shapeless, so fresh and so clean ... and on that note ... or beat, I'd like to tell y'all a little story that I got to give for the very little that it's worth ...

                                             A KOREAN NOWHERE TRIP

     There I was, at the same bar that I didn't want to be at; with the same nice girl that I couldn't  even speak to because I didn't speak enough Korean and she didn't speak enough English.  Like old friends trapped on either sides of a lead wall.  We were sitting in the plush booth of the New York bar in Seomyeon, nursing aging drinks and pushing the pillows around to pass
the empty time.  We'd run out of interesting facial expressions and funny sight gags.  We weren't going to learn eachother's
language that night. 

    Sitting a couple booth's over was a crew of my western friends, about ten of them.  We didn't join them because I was trying to spend time with her, and if we did, we both new that she would merely fade into the background of English conversation, in which she couldn't particitpate.  Things were at a standstill. 

     So, trying to get those juices up, I decided to send a playful message over to my friends by tossing a plush pillow at the back of one of their heads.  Maybe I was hoping to instigate a slumber-party style pillow fight.  So giving her the mischeif giggle... tee hee hee ... I grabbed a pillow and let it fly.  But instead of hitting Nick in the back of the head, it cruised over his dome and wiped all of their drinks off the table in a choir of shattering glass and scattering ice. 

     The immediate area of the large bar tensed like a war muscle ... my friends spun around as if there'd just been a drive-by-shooting ... the staff came running, ready to break up a fight.  My girl covered her face with her hands and I croaked out a 'sorry' and sunk loooow in the booth.  The staff began cleaning up the wreckage and my table of buddies sat drinkless and stunned with empty cupped hands pantomining the elbow bending barroom motions. 

     It was time to fly.  I ordered them a fresh round, paid and made for the door with my girl.  It was around 2am on a Saturday morning, October 30th if memory serves ... and I felt like the proverbial ship without a rudder. 

     My girl wanted to join her friends at the Dallas for some early morning booty-shakin' ... but as I'd been punching the clock there for countless consecutive weekends, there was nowhere I wanted to go less.  But it was the only option, in this city of one-pronged forking paths, so I bit the rubber bullet and we cabbed it over there. 

     Down the stairs, into the neon cavern that is the Dallas we went.  I felt a wave of oppressiveness in hearing the same music that repeats there like broken records ... seeing the same faces of the regulars ... friendly faces on a good night ... unfriendly on a bad one, which this was.  My mind was burning with the word 'ESCAPE'. 

     So I pulled a flyer.  My girl went up to the bathroom, and I flew out the door without so much as a goodbye to her or the friends who were waiting for us one of the tables. 

     My little 125cc DaeLim Advance motorcycle was parked nearby, and I'd only sipped on a couple drinks.  I had W80,000 in my wallet and I was hot to move.  It didn't matter where, but I had to go go go. 

     3am and I was on the highway to Ulsan, a city I'd never seen, but had only heard the worst of ... I'd been told by friends who lived there that it was an industial cesspit, a smoking boil.  But of course it didn't matter. The light rain was drizzling upon me in my lightweight club clothes, and I didn't care; no thoughts towards the future or the past ... just the now, moving along at a steady 80km per hour. 

     My hands soon grew brittle from the sofly beating elements.  I had a full tank, but I stopped at an SK gas station anyhow, and begged the late night soju drinking, Hwa-To card playing attendants to give me a pair of those disposeable white gloves that they have boxloads of.  I was lucky and happened on individuals who understood the wordless language of kindness.  They gave me the gloves, refused the money I offered them and I drove on.

     Aimless as I was, I soon stopped again for coffee and stale doughnuts at another convenience store, flirting with the cute little all night girl.  I hope it was as light and sweet for her as it was for me.  Finished my victuals and pressed on. 

    Somewhere along the road carrying through Ulsan, I decided that I would drive to Seoul and spend Halloween there, checking it out and hopefully making some new friends.

    I kept on, blasting out of Ulsan on that low powered Korean bike I own with a seat that's almost too comfortable.  But I was getting tired, and so cold.  Somewhere on the otherside of Ulsan, as day was rising in the 6am distance, I decided that I had to stop.  I pulled over at an abandoned factory and snuck into the obviously empty guard shack.  It was one of those Korean style squats with a low table that could double as a bed and filled with old newspapers.  The surrounding area was gray and dull and best unremembered.  So I balled up on the table, trying to consolidate my warmth and used the papers for a pillow. 

     Dropping off for that catnap was hard, as I was a little nervous about tresspassing and the thought of dealing with some dudes who might happen on me agrily and who I couldn't really speak to, but eventually I dropped off for a little bit into a shivering dreamless sleep.  Then around 8 am, after a restless two hours of self imposed bum-sleep , I shot up awake and found myself feeling more tired and haggard than I had when I'd gotten there.  It was still drizzling and the moisture was being carried through the air.  I sat up with a newspaper stuck to my face and announced to no one, 'This is Suck-O".  I scrabbled out of the squat and jumped on my ride, resigning myself to blowing some of my money on a Yogwan.  I was starving for a
shower and a warm bed ... all those romantic notions of living in the margins between saftey and primitivism were out the window. 

     I stopped at the first roadside yogwan and tried to explain to the keeper that I only wanted to sleep for a few hours ... hoping to get the W15,000 rate, but ended up paying the W25,000 rate anyhow.  I didn't care, I would just have to make it to Seoul and back on my remaining W50,000 (after deductions of coffee, doughnuts and smokes) ... I thought. 

     I climbed the stairs and unlocked the room ... the ever same yogwan room that runs like a constant throughout the sex motels of Korea ... oh, Yogwan room, how I love thee ... with your instant light turning-on-sensor and your blue vinyl marbleized floor and brightly colored bedspread, your complimentary toothbrush and tube of past, your complimentary fibre beverage and bottled water in the mini-fridge ... ahhhhh ... but upon entering the room I saw something that struck primal fear in my heart! 

     From under the bed rose a large circle of the deepest crimson red ... reader I shit you not!  For all intents and purposes, there appeared to be an enormous pool of blood leading under the bed.  What sort of charnel house had I happend into?  Was I the first witness to arrive after the fact of a grizzly slaying?  All I could think as my very being froze with morbid dread was that there was a dead or dying call girl or mafioso inhabiting the nether regions under the bed of this Yogwan. 

     Still frozen, I attemted to regulate my panicked breathing.  I knew I'd locked the door ... I karate kicked open the bathroom door with my hands feebly prepared for last ditch combat ... with another kick  and a 'Kiiiiyaaaaah!'I sent the shower curtain flying back ... there was no one there.  Then I crept over to the puddle which was about as big as an extra-large New York style pizza ... apprehensively, I extended my index finger towards it, planning to test it like a toe into the swimming pool ... I gritted my teeth, preparing for the confirmation of terror ... my finger touched vinyl floor!  I swept back the dust curtain surounding the lower edge of the bed and stuck my face down sideways to inspect ... nothing.  It was a giant red stain in the vinyl ... as dry as the rest of the sublimely heated floor. 

     To this day, I have no idea how the stain got there, or what it really was.  Perhaps it was a gruesome palimpcest of a conflict years gone by, or maybe some spilled paint. The motel keeper had given me the creepy joke room ... the menstral suite ... the spacial tampon... the heebie jeebie room ... the fucker! 

      Nevertheless, I checked the inside door latch again, checkd the room again to make sure it was empty, made sure the windows were locked, pushed the gnarly sight from my fatigued mind and stripped for the shower.  It was one of the mostglorious hot showers I've ever had.  I scoured my teeth beneath the showerhead and dried myself. 

     Still ignoring the stain, I jumped naked into the waiting bed. 

     Hours later I awoke.  I'd enjoyed a dream of womb and gurggly amniotic fluid music ... a whispering shadow ... the babbling brook voice of peacefulness ... the lovemother who lives deep in the blood ... I polished off the complimentary fibre drink and bottle water and took another lovely shower.  I told myself that those two showers were worth the money I'd spend in pure sensual aztec gold.  It was 1 pm and I'd driven during the worst driving hours and slept through prime ones.  Ahh ha ... such is the folly of my retarded ways, oh reader!

     I checked out and jumped back on my Hardly Davidson.  From there I crusied into Kyongju and spend some time rolling along the cobblestoned backroads, drinking in the surrounding pine forests and peasant utopian living conditions.  I was swimming in sublime ... I had no questions at that point as to the worthwileness of my fools errand. 

     But the sky was now clear, the fall sun out, and  I was determined to press on to Seoul.  It was at that point that against my better and wholly nonexistant judgment, that I decided to sneak my little ride onto the NO 1 expressway to Seoul ... inorder to cut the backroad drive which had the potential of spiraling into an infinity of lost hours, down to a 3.5 hour strait shot to the big city. I knew that bikes the size of mine were forbidden on the expressway; I didn't know, but now do, that all two wheeled vehicles are forbidden on the expressway.  I don't know what I was thinking ... maybe 'hey, this will make for an impressive story to tell folks later' or I wasn't thinking at all ... so I got on it going north and rode the shoulder like everybodys' business. 

     Everything was cool for the first half hour.  I stuck to the shoulder, maxing out at a pitiful 90 km per hour and let my freak smile fly from withing my bergundy Spiderman stickered helmet. 

     I stopped at one of the larger roadside reststops on the southern side of Taegu for a smoke.  It was one of those places where all the tourist busses stop and which offers all different sorts of food.  It was there that I walked by a hardware cart and spotted one of those green bomber style jackets with the zipper sleeve pocket and the orange lining that all the workmen wear.  Even though the sun was out, the wind whipping I was taking on the bike was cutting right through my red vinyl jacket and I decided that I had to add another layer ... there went another W20,000 from my already slim bankroll.  I realized that I had no more than another W30,000 to make it to Seoul, hang out for Halloween, and get back; but as I zipped up the new jacket and felt the warmth surround me, my regrets vanished.  It was hopeless, but I refused to admit it to myself.  I got on my handphone and put the call through to my fellow associate, 2000 A.D. Pearson. 

      " Pearson,", I hollered into the cell phone, " I'm at a rest stop near Taegu, I'm driving to Seoul". 

    "Oh yeah?", he laughed, " That's crazy, are you driving on the expressway?".

     " Yeah, but there's no problem, it's cool.  But hey, I'm almost out of money, why don't you jump on the train and meet me in Seoul tonight with some cash?". 

     " You fiend!  I'm stuck here, fiending  this stinking Saturday fiending bee, and I just took a bunch of pain fiends.  I'm not fiending anywhere, except to ZYZX for the Hallo-fiend party tonight.  I guess you're going to miss it, you fiend!".  He cackled. " Hey, they're fiending me, I gotta fiend ... good luck and safe fiending!". click! 

     " Yeah yeah", click! 

     At that, I jumped back on my little green Flash-Gordon rocket sled and slipped back onto the expressway.  Within five minutes there were red and blue flashing lights creeping swiftly up my ass ... it was the highway patrol, franticly waving me over to the edge of the shoulder. 

     I knew it was the end of my trip to Seoul, and I suddenly became honest with myself and felt a surge of relief.  The cops jumped out of their cruiser like they were ready to take me down.  They rushed up to the bike as I was struggling to unclasp my helmet with my soft'n'slippery Mickey Mouse white gloved hands.  One of them grabbed my key and pulled it from the ignition.  As I pulled my helmet off, they gave me puzzled looks and said to eachother something about my being a Waygukan
...

     But with this realization, their anger and energy seemed to subside into concern and amusement over my foolishness.  One of them said somthing about ' Baeg-yee-ship-oh cc  Anio! Anio!' ... he was telling me like a big brother that 125cc bikes weren't meant for the expressway.  Then, gently, they put me in the back of the cruiser and asked for my international licsence.  In keeping with my 'playing dumb' approach, I handed them my Denver driver's liscence and hoped for the best.  The other cop jumped on my bike and drove slowly behind us, the cop cruiser creeping along the shoulder, it's lights and caution signals flashing. 

     I looked back through the rear window at the officer riding helmetless on my bike and thought, I saw a glint of glory in his eyes as the wind whipped his finely combed black hair; I also thought how I would never forgive myself if something happened to him while he drove my bike off the expressway. 

     They took me back to the toll booth police station where I'd just shot through while reentering the expressway.  We pulled over and got out into a throng of cops who began buzzing at the sight of this silly waygukan holding a big red helmet with a Spiderman sticker on the front of it.  One of the cops went of to try to run my liscence, and the others looked me up and down, laughing and chattering away.  One of them gave me a ciggarette and another gave me some grapes.  A beautiful lady cop who spoke the best English approached me and told me again that bikes, especially that size were not allowed on the expressway.  I'd known that, but I played dumb, acting surprised in the hopes of damage control.  She said that I was going to
have to tow my bike, and it was at this point that I felt the first twangs of panic. 

     " No, please!", I begged, " I'll go back to Pusan on small roads ... through Kyongju and Ulsan". 

     She conferred with the other cops, all of them still in good humor.  One of the first cops came back and returned my licence. 

     Officer Beauty came back and smiled and said, " Okay, but we give you map.  You go back to Pusan, maybe you have to stay in Yogwan.".

     " No problem, ", I said, so relieved, " I'll go straight back, no problem, thank you, thank you.". 

     Then she handed me a couple road maps, and they took my photo with a digital camera.  It was me, posing my bike, with the liscense plate facing the camera; I was smiling big and waving ... even though it was probably the sort of photo that get's posted in the toll booths with a warning which reads 'look out for this idiot!'. 

     And at that, they directed me to the road that rolls through Taegu towards Kyongju, and sped off, leaving them smiling and waving in the distance.  It was all too silly and painless to be true.  I couldn't help but compare it to run-in's I've had over the years with American cops, thinking, 'Wow, I've just discovered one of the coolest things about Korea ... the non-evil Cops!  Wooo-hooo!'. 

     By now it was around 3:30 pm, and my goals had shifted from spending Halloween in Seoul to spending Halloween in Pusan with all of my best associates.  I had to make it back in time for the big beach party down at the ZYZX ... I had to make it back in time to throw a last minute costume together, lest I be the poop of the party. 

    From there I trucked back to Kyongju.  As I'd never spent much time there before this day, I figrued I could burn an hour or so checking it out. I soaked in a few more back roads, and then I stopped at King Shinmun's Tomb.  I paid the W500 admission, and stolled through the gate to observe the rows of green grassed hills under which the ancient kings of that old beat dynasty are interred. Not worrying about cultural rules and such I started running up the hills, checking out the scene from the top.  And then I got the best idea I'd had in a long time.  I took my new bomber jacket off, with it's slick green statin outer shell and put it down on the grass and sat on it and used it like a sled, going swooooooshhhhhhh! down the green burial hills, and
letting out 'yeeee-hawww!' all the way down, and falling into a grassy steamroller roll at the bottom. 

    Only hours ago I 'd felt like Charle's Bukowski's anus, sitting at the empty bar of soulessness, and now I was five again.  I felt like my rusty cantine had been filled with fresh water.  It couldn't have been more right, or less permanent. 

     After a few jacket-sled rides down the tombs, I noticed that the fall night was coming on, and that I'd better hightail it back to my home city for the Hallow's eve festivities.  Back on the ride for the roundabout trip through smoky Ulsan. 

     Somewhere between Ulsan and Kijang it started sprinkling again, and the Saturday evening traffic was miserable, but I phased it out and sang songs inside my helmet.  Eventually, I rolled into Pusan, having ended up on an unexpected alternate route that landed me up near Pomosa Temple.  It was almost 9pm and I got back on the horn to 2000 A.D..  He laughed when I told him about the cops and my trip getting turned around, and told me to head down to his Namchundong hideout for pre-party partying, to which I said I would attend as soon as I could get there. 

     But first up to my pad near PNU for a shower and a fresh change of clothes ... and a costume!  After sitting on the bike for some many hours and in such moist conditions, my skivvies were dank! Somewhere between ability and intention, I ended up laying down for a second.  When I woke it was 2:30am and I feared that despite my struggles, I'd missed the hot Halloween\ party action.  But I resigned to catch the tail end.  A costume!  I thought quickly about the silly problem.  I grabbed my black summer helmet with the open face ... big black fly shades ... a stroke of minor brilliance ... I found some duct tape and strapped two chop sticks to the sides of my helmet like anntennae ... I was an alien! 

     Then back on the ride and down to Kwang-ali ... it was sprinkling out, but it felt like the greatest, most refreshinly short ride of all time!    By 2am I bounded onto the post Halloween scene.  All of my best associates were standing outside as I pulled up.  They laughed and were happy to see me, saying that they'd heard I was on my way to Seoul and were disappointed ... it felt so good to be missed!  " Ha ha! Whatthefuckeryou?"   " You look like Gazoo from the Flintstones!" 

     " Hey extra testicle!", cried my senior, G. Lenny Munny, " Let's take this doobie down to the beach and get lit!". 

     It was all-right!  Although I hadn't expanded my extreme-multi-cultural head, hell, I'd pretty much chopped my culture-head right off playing dumb all the time, I felt like I'd found the greatest place on Earth.  And I was right. 

     We got down all night, and after that, 2000 A.D. and I took four little college girls from the party to his Namchundong hideout.  They had to stay up all night in order to take the TOIEC exam later that morning, and we burned the dawn tickling and giggling.  There were no anal-gang bangs or sex-billion orgasmo-cosmic voyages to be had and they weren't even missed.  Later that morning, Pearson passed out and I ferried the girls to  an early hours kimche-bap joint one at a time .... drive one, drop her off, go back for another, drive two, drop her off, go back for another, drive three, go back for 4 and all the way back
... with a steaming pot of Kimche Chiggae waiting on the table when I arrived.  We ate, and I wished them good luck on the exams they were about to bomb for lack of sleep, and then I ferried them each to their bustop. 

     It was all so perfect and painless that to think about it is almost sick; and almost seems more like a children's show than real life.  The only backlash is that it makes it so hard to wade through the  months of constant workaday realism, until the next glorious moment of sublimeity randomly clicks into action.  Always waiting to get the juices loose, breath so baited.

                                                         FIN