Swallowed in the Sea

I love my Ipod. Since I have had it, I play it almost continuously, boxing myself into a world of my own creation while reality plays around me unheeded. At times others attempt to break through my little cocoon, happily chatting at me while I obliviously sing a tune in my head with a voice much better than my own. It's such a great little device. Although it is small, it holds a plethora of songs, making it hard for me to become bored with my music selection. I still have songs on here that I haven't yet heard.

Currently my favorite is "Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay. It's one of those that I sing repeatedly, both with Chris Martin's sexy voice and with only my own, decidedly less sexy one. The lyrics are such that I assume an acute profundity without ever really considering them. It starts, "You cut me down a tree/ And brought it back to me/ And that's what made me see/ Where I was going wrong." What does that mean, really? Without the music and the Voice, it sounds a little different. But let me sit here with my song and think that it encompasses the full meaning of life in only 3 minutes and 58 seconds.

Here, this is better: "Oh what good is it to live/ With nothing left to give/ Forget but not forgive/ Not loving all you see." This stuff should be canonized.

Oh, and just so I don't go to prison for plagiarizing the Voice, I'll add links to their official website and full lyrics. Can they arrest you for this? It would look quite interesting on my record.

I should say that my choices in favorites are rather fluid. As soon as I tire of one song, I move on to the next. But my all-time favorite never, ever changes. Quite possibly the best song ever to be created in this world. Ok, maybe not, but I sure do like it a lot. Aubrey. I was named after it, so this was somewhat inevitable. Many of my poor friends are forced to listen to it against their will. Pity them.

And why, you may ask, am I writing this very pointless blog post about a current favorite song (among other somewhat disjointed topics)? Well, I answer confidently, apart from the fact that I truly enjoy pointlessness, it's because it relates well to what I got to do on Saturday. Most people know how much I love the water. I was, after all, once both a swimmer and a water polo player. And I continue to prefer activities that place me on, in, or near the water (oh, that was just a nice little cache of prepositions, wasn't it?). I now live in Haeundae, the quintessential beach area of Korea. Not that Korea is known for its beaches, but I'm doing what I can. Lastly, my mom and stepdad, true cottagers from Michigan, live directly on the lake (meaning Lake Michigan, of course). Yes, I am from a waterlogged history.

Pierre, continuing to demonstrate his brilliantly inspired status (he knows, he knows), suggested that we go to Songjeong beach on Saturday to go windsurfing. Now, with all the varied aquatic activities in which I have participated, this is one that has always been neglected (along with surfing, but that is especially because I have long lived in areas that lack the proper waves). Despite the prediction of rain all day, we settled on the plans.

As it turns out, the Korean weather forecasters have proved to be nearly as adept at correctly predicting the weather as our dearly beloved Michigan weather forecasters; we had a beautiful, sunshiny day. You couldn't tell by any change in the pallid color of my skin, but I swear that we did. So Pierre, Saeyeon, Richard, Mennow (a friend of a friend of Richard's. He is from Holland... look, mom, a real Dutch person!) and I headed over to grab our equipment that purportedly keeps you above the surface. After donning our wet suits, we all somewhat resembled a rag tag team of superheroes (spandex and rubber, you get the idea). I am of yet unsure about our specific super human powers. Possibly they remain latent.

The instructor took us to our boards, telling us that we needed to be back in three hours. After that, no training at all, they boys helped us heave our boards into the water and off we were to go. The boys did... Saeyeon and I had a bit more trouble. Please let me emphasize that for both of us it was our first time doing it. Still, I think the boys were returning from reaching the shores of Japan by the time I first was able to even stand up with my sail. Loser!

Actually, Richard did take the time to explain it all to me, but I got all confused with words like "head wind" and "perpendicular sail." No, I really have no idea what he even said. It's that great British accent; it sounds so mellifluous, but you have to remember to actually listen to the words that they're saying. Darn it.

I did manage to eventually drift over to the cove with intermittent moments of sailing. Five feet and fall! Two feet and tip! Head dive after nose dive. Almost literally swallowed in the sea (ah! So there's the connection!). I got so fed up with going absolutely nowhere that I ended up swimming my board back to its point of origin. Interestingly, that was much faster than trying to sail it. I figure that they give you a three hour rental because it takes about 30 minutes to get away from shore (um... if you suck, like me) and then 2 hours and 30 minutes to try to get back to shore. Hence why I swam. I think I also swam it because I knew that was something I was good at, something I could do.

When I got back, I found Saeyeon already there, taking a "break." "Yeah... me too," I agreed, "...a 'break.'" Need I say that we didn't go out again? We did it for two hours and I think that is pretty good. We spent the rest of the time bemoaning the lack of decent conditions for sailing. "It wasn't us, it was (insert excuse here)." (Excuses: lack of wind, first time windsurfing, wrong type of board, constricting super hero wetsuit, etc.) We all ended the day with warm showers (ahh...) and huddled around a plastic picnic table near a snack shop, finishing the last of the day's gimbap. I had a lot of fun. But I always do with these guys.

Perhaps next time I go, I'll attempt to master the ancient Chinese martial art of Wu Xia, which supposedly enables the doer to use the water's surface to jump or fly. This may be easier.