my last night in gwangju. i’m sitting on the warm floor, drinking hot water mixed with honey i received as a gift last chusok. this friend’s brother-in-law retired and began keeping bees after working many years as a salaryman. she told me it’s chestnut honey, good for health, and would i please take a teaspoon every morning to keep well? of course i said i would, and of course i didn’t. she also brought pears that day, and hard sesame squares, and homemade dduk that had hardened slightly. i finished the last of the honey tonight, scraping the crystalized, heavier stuff from the bottom with a chopstick. it was delicious.

one bag is packed, another has a thin layer of stuff at the bottom i know i won’t be needing for some time, and the third is completely empty. all my shoes are in black plastic bags. i’m trying to decide whether or not leave the towels behind. this afternoon i realized that by tomorrow night the only keys in my possession will be the ones to the closet at the manhattan mini-storage on south street. i can’t remember if i have any towels in that closet.

i said goodbye to a lot of people today, and have been saying goodbye all week. i’ve been to two wakes and one wedding this month, and a friend found out today that her father has stomach cancer. another will most likely need to have his gallbladder removed, as the cysts continue to grow. another friend got a job at a research institute in seoul. another continues to live in a tiny studio with her sister, both of them waiting to figure out what happens next. i’m not quite sure what to write here, only that it feels important to mark this date in some way. i can’t remember the last time i was so acutely aware of such a definitive end to a period of my life; a very strange feeling, this. i’m not quite sure how to say goodbye, or what that even means, exactly. but i do know this: over these turbulent eighteen months i have loved and been loved in mysterious and unexpected ways by people i would have never met if i had not exited my life when i did. i will miss this place and its people.

tonight i chose to have my final dinner in gwangju at the tiny restaurant i wrote about back in september 2006, ten days or so after first arriving here. i remember how amazed i was at the deliciousness, the quality, the quantity, the koreanness of it all. i remember where i sat, how i tried not to notice people noticing me, the only person eating alone. i remember going in another time and seeing the four ajumahs settle into a mr. dooly’s bulgogi pizza, pickles and kimchee on the side. i remember listening in on their plans for who was going to cook what for the upcoming holiday. they’ve since put up new wallpaper but haven’t changed the misspelled sign. we ordered one each of the three-item menu; i favor the kimchee chigae over the fish now, but still couldn’t finish a whole bowl of rice. i wonder, if by some chance i come back to gwangju and back to the chonnam area, if this restaurant and those ajumahs will still be here. sometimes i doubt it, other times i think they’ll be there for sure, whether two or ten years pass. i guess i’ll just have to wait and see if either or both of these ifs come to be.

goodbye, gwangju. thank you.