“It’s all perfect

But there’s something out of place.”

– I Missed You (Joshua Radin)

Suppose you have been asked, quite by chance, how you manage a parting word for, say, a friend or colleague, a sister or lover. The typical answer would be waving them off with a goodbye, won't it? But you see in my opinion, doing so would have betrayed the meaning of the word. In that manner you did not really mean it, and if I may be frank, you only wished them a good time in that temporary period that they shall be away from you.

What I’d like to say is, goodbyes are meant for permanent separations. Those reserved, by my personal thought, for loved ones who would have gone ahead to the other side. There, because no one could know if death allows re-acquaintance, is a perfectly valid ground for use of the word. There is a supposition that never shall you meet again. It gives finality to things, a closure if you will.

I sit on an otherwise unoccupied bench in a less populated train station and wonder. The book I’ve planned to read is open on my lap. It’s 9:30, and it might have been questionable that there are very few present in a transport post on a Wednesday morning. The times have not changed, because as far as I am aware it is still a weekday and would directly translate to it being a workday. No, the lack of commuters is attributed to the fact that I am in remote Seoul.

Away. On vacation. In others’ perspectives, missing.

The purpose of my being here at the moment is less of taking the ride in actuality but more of waiting. Or just watching. Greater learning, after all, stems from observation.

You will understand now why I dare hang about. It's new for me – that when I sit back and let the world, the time, pass without my chasing it. Jolly good feeling if I may say so. Of course I would have to eventually get back to the former matter of things. But since sooner isn’t really better, I bide my time.

The train arrives and amidst the frenzy, I come to a sense of how people part. Lingering touches and hushed w