The Soul and Seoul part II

My last four days in Seoul I've been trying to rapidly fulfill my entire Korea wish-list while also finding time for good-bye parties and packing. Yesterday, I visited the Coffee shop where First Shop of Coffee Prince was filmed. Monday, I'm visiting a Jim Jil Bang (public bathhouse—it feels a little Austenian to me, rather than just Korean). Tonight, I went to Namsan tower, a 246m tall observation tower on top of a mountain in Seoul.

The tower is set up with a circular disk observatory with paneled windows that allows one to walk around and see the city in every direction from above. When I first walked up to the edge of the window, I put my head against the cool glass and felt overwhelmed with sadness. I've always been susceptible to beautiful things, felt moved to tears when something lovely catches my eyes, and tonight I was especially vulnerable when my heart was already shrouded in the sorrow of saying farewell. Standing there, looking out at the city lights that spread beyond the horizon, I fumbled to find the words to describe the scene before me without using tired comparisons to stars or Christmas lights. Of course, to me the lights “glistened like tears” as my own eyes moistened, but even that description did nothing to capture the full glory of what I was seeing.

Before I went to Namsan tower I had told a friend that I wouldn't miss Korea the country so much as I would miss the people. I had said I could be happy anywhere, and that the thing that made a location special was the people you knew there. Tonight, I realized that it wasn't true. I thought about all the things about Korea that I love, like the street vendors selling bread shaped like goldfish, and the truckloads full of tangerines, the ridiculous fashions of high boots, sheer leggings and mini skirts that girls wear even in the dead of winter; I even love minute details like the sidewalks put together with pale green bricks. I once said that sometimes cities have their own personalities that you come to know gradually. If that is true, Seoul revealed a secret to me tonight. Looking at the city from above, I saw a loveliness beyond anything I could have imagined, and that loveliness from above made me long for the life below. No longer to I think I'll miss only my friends in Seoul, but know that I'll miss the city itself. For I saw the city stretched before me, an endless ocean of lights, each light like a life of the people below, eleven million lights flickering clear and sharp in the black night.