LALATOWN LIFE

My dog, Bongu, was mad at me.

He had been mad at me since last night.

This morning, he came to me only because breakfast was too delicious for his instincts to resist. He ate, then promptly turned his back on me again.

I asked him if he wanted to go outside for his morning pee.

Nothing.

Just his butt facing me.

So I sat down and had a conversation with my dog.

“Are you mad because you scratched the door yesterday while I was sitting on the porch, and I didn’t open it for you?”

He kept his butt toward me and turned his head just enough to look back.

Apparently, yes.

So first, I apologized.

Yesterday had been a strangely difficult day.

It began with our morning walk.

I ran into a neighbor I sometimes see on the trail. I know her, and I know her dog, a golden retriever. We don’t really know each other beyond that. Maybe we cross paths three or five times a year.

Bongu immediately became completely obsessed with smelling her dog, because Bongu has no concept of dignity.

Then the two dogs ran around together. I threw Bongu’s ball, the golden retriever charged after it, and eventually all of us were looking for the ball.

It was fun.

And somewhere during that ordinary morning walk, I told my neighbor,

“I’m leaving. I’m ending thirty years of my life here.”

I said it because this might have been the last time I ever saw her.

She told me that she had once ended an eighteen-year marriage. She could have stayed where she was, but she chose not to.

Looking back, she said, leaving was one of the best decisions she had made.

We talked for a while about practical things. Life things.

And that was how my day started.

Later, I was organizing my drawings to make acrylic and wooden objects for Lala Town. Uploading files, fixing things, putting things into shopping carts.

I got hungry.

I heated a pan to cook some bok choy and shaved beef, and somehow badly burned the inside of my wrist.

Cold water. Purple skin. Ointment.

Then I went back to drawing.

I didn’t think much of it.

I am surprisingly good at telling myself that something doesn’t hurt very much.

But sometime later, for no reason I could explain, my chest suddenly felt like it was going to burst.

So I texted my Korean friend who lives down the mountain.

Are you off today?

She was.

We decided to go for a walk.

It was so spontaneous that I didn’t even bring water.

In summer.

Very smart.

I didn’t change my clothes either. I was wearing the same clothes from Bongu’s morning walk, complete with muddy paw prints on my shoulder from carrying him, pants with baggy knees, and a hat pulled over my head.

And I left.

We walked.

Little by little, whatever had been exploding inside my chest became quieter.

Eventually we sat next to each other and looked toward the mountains.

Then the magpies came.

Magpies have always been lucky birds for me. Somehow, after I see one, good news tends to follow.

There were seven.

My friend said,

“Maybe they’re a family.”

I said,

“Why are you making them a family? Maybe they don’t want to be a family.”

And then we sat there giggling over this completely ridiculous conversation.

Afterward, she invited me to her house.

Her husband had apparently disappeared somewhere to give us the house to ourselves. The place was spotless.

I thought, Good grief. So many people are tired because of my life.

But I was grateful.

She heated up a Korean steamed bun for me.

After walking maybe a mile and a half or two miles with no water, wearing my muddy dog clothes, that little steamed bun may have been the most delicious thing I had ever eaten.

I don’t even normally eat them.

Later I came home.

I ate dinner. I fed Bongu. I fed Jjangu.

Thunder came. Rain came.

Bongu kept wanting to go in and out, in and out, in and out.

Eventually I decided I was staying on the porch.

And once—just once—I didn’t open the door for my dog.

That is why Bongu was furious with me this morning.

But last night, looking at the burn on my wrist, I started remembering things.

Not because I felt sorry for myself.

Just memories.

Sitting beside my mother in an emergency room during the pandemic for nearly twenty hours, on a little round stool with no back support, because she had cancer and a fever and if we left, we couldn’t simply come back.

I was exhausted.

My mother was frightened and uncomfortable and wanted me to hold her hand.

So I held it.

And I told myself,

You’re okay.

You can do this.

I’m okay.

Even when my body was telling me otherwise.

I became very good at being okay.

Yesterday, for perhaps the first time, I said:

I’m not okay today.

And then I left the house.

No plan.

No water bottle.

No proper clothes.

Just a text to a friend and a walk toward the mountains.

I am not a spontaneous person.

I haven’t given myself much permission to be spontaneous in my life.

But yesterday I was.

I spontaneously went for a walk.

I spontaneously ate a steamed bun.

I spontaneously laughed about seven magpies who may or may not wish to be related to one another.

And I spontaneously refused to open the door after my dog had gone in and out approximately one hundred times.

Nothing fell apart.

Yesterday I also missed my father terribly.

My sister had met one of our cousins, and somehow stories about people who are no longer here had come up. She told me something about my dad.

And I simply missed him.

A lot.

So.

Did Bongu forgive me?

Yes.

I’m sitting on the porch now.

Bongu is back in his usual place, lying underneath my chair.

Tonight, when I eat my beef soup, I think I’ll give him a few extra pieces of meat.

Things happen here.

Sometimes we are not okay.

Sometimes seven magpies arrive.

Sometimes a steamed bun tastes like the best thing in the world.

And sometimes forgiveness costs a few extra pieces of beef.

Welcome to my little narrow-minded world.