Ripeness Is All
Mudfest
I’m standing in a long line to get blasted in the face with mud. When I get to the front of the line I stand perfectly still and close my eyes to allow two small Korean boys to slam bucket loads of mud directly at my head as hard as they can. Afterwards, I get into a longer line where people are waiting to gain admittance into a giant inflatable swimming pool filled with mud where drunken degenerates are tackling one another and generally attempting to inflict as much pain as is legally appropriate. People who have no interest or patience to wait in line for this kind of abuse are gathered around smaller pools of mud where they are given brushes with which they liberally apply the stuff themselves. Someone is being held down by a mean and formidable mob of inebriated mud-thugs who are mashing handfuls of it into his or her hair.
It’s all a part of the most ridiculous, absurd and utterly magnificent thing to which I’ve ever been a party. Mudfest is a festival that happens once a year in an otherwise quieter seaside town on the western coast of South Korea called Boryeong. I’ve heard mutterings of “beneficial properties” and “therapeutic effects” but I think mainly it’s an excuse for foreigners to get stupid. In any other situation you would avoid these circumstances at all costs. If you were provided the same opportunity, propositioned in the same manner, anywhere else in the world, on any other day you would have the person arrested. You would do well to steer clear of the wild-looking intoxicated Asian wielding a bucket of mud and meaning to sling it at your eyes. But here, you wait in line. They whip so much mud at you that you’re breathing it. It’s in your lungs, up your nostrils, down your throat, and under your balls. An hour in the ocean and you’re still finding a swath behind your ears. They have to tell you to move on or you’d stay there and ask for more. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. I can’t explain it, but it’s true. No, sir, you must move along. Find another attraction or get back to the end of the line. Do you think all this mud is for you, sir? There are lots of people here today and they are all hoping to get blasted in the face with this mud. Do you think this mud grows on trees? Okay, step right up. I’ve got fresh, wet filth and I’m willing to smash it right into your face with as much force as I can muster, if you’ll only step right this way. No, sir. Not you again. You’ve already been blasted in the face once with this disgusting garbage. I asked you nicely, now please, get to the back of the line, and then I will again gladly smack you as hard as I can in the lips with this heaping bucket of muck.
My roommate, Bill, and I find a minbak in which to sleep which is really just a room in the home of some Korean family with more space than they need. They provide us with blankets and pillows and a broken television. In the morning I realize we have an extra person in the room with us. I don’t recognize her but she seems cozy enough with Bill. She’s Korean and looks as if she might be thirty-years-old, or she might be fifty. She shows no sign of leaving, so I do. I walk down the boardwalk and overdose on shellfish and sunshine. Later, when I meet Bill he’s still accompanied by his mystery-aged consort.
“She was much better-looking last night,” he assures me. “I remember thinking how impressed you’d be by the native I pulled.”
I take this as cue that she doesn’t understand much English and say, “I’m impressed that anyone would look at that mouth and carelessly put their tongue in it. Her teeth are wrecked.” She now realizes that she is the subject of our conversation and flashes me a crooked, brown smile. She waves. I smile and wave back.
We spend the rest of the day enjoying our dying weekend, burning on the beach, devising convoluted schemes to lose Bill’s newly acquired barnacle, trying desperately to guess her exact age.
“She’s got wrinkles, dude. That puts her older than thirty-five. And Korean women age better than American broads, so what’s that tell you?”
“Yeah, but she’s wearing braces. Women that old don’t wear braces.”
“I don’t think those are braces. I think she’s just in desperate need of a good brushing.”
Fortunately, Bill never succeeded in escaping her clutches. She was remarkably useful after realizing that we had missed our bus back home, and there were no more buses running. There’s nothing quite like standing in line for a ticket home only to be told, “No, there are no more tickets home. You can’t get there from here. No home for you.” In a reversal of roles, we begin following our newest, dearest friend all over Boryeong until six hours later she lands us on a train headed back home to Gwangju.
At the train station, I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that read in English: “Pain Is Temporary, Pride Is Forever,” and I thought: No, that’s temporary, too. That’s a fairly narrow viewpoint of forever, isn’t it? Pride lasts forever? How do you figure? Where does your pride go when you die? Do your children inherit your pride as well as your debt? Surely, sooner or later, someone in your lineage will neglect to bequeath your pride on down the line. You can’t expect it to be as important to them as it was to you, no matter how much pain it cost. I like to listen to men talk about their “legacy,” and what they “leave behind.” Let’s face it, at some point it becomes more convenient to forget you. Maybe someone will write a book about you; that will surely make it easier for us to remember how great you were. But, like pain, those are temporary, too. Pain is temporary? Life is temporary. Ripeness is all. Enjoy.
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