9K: done

I survived a 9K walk this evening. It straddled Friday and Saturday, going from 11:06 p.m. to 1:43 a.m., with about 12 minutes, total, spent either resting or stopping to take photos. About 2 hours and 25 minutes of actual walking, then—a tiny bit over 3.7 kph, which is pitiful. Is this my new normal? We'll see how things go when the weather gets cooler.

photo taken before switching to "pro" mode; notice the moon's diffuse glow

but increase the shutter speed and the ISO...

I don't remember how I did this one, but I removed the yellowish tinge somehow.

Down by the Tan Creek. No more mysterious sacks of dirt or concrete crumbles or whatever that was.

This one was in "pro" mode, but it was a failure.

I sweated a ton, but at 26ºC (about 78ºF), the night was barely tolerable. Making it out to the Han River was a relief; walking back felt a bit easier. I wondered the entire time whether some cardiac incident might arise. There were subtle, shall we say, precursors; I could feel them in the background. I also remember going on walks of this length before my heart attack last year. Right now, the goal is to stay alive until my heart scan in early January, so I don't want to push myself. If I have a heart attack now, especially while on a path, I likely won't be anywhere near other people, so I imagine I'll be found only after my body has had a chance to cool down. Question, then: do I keep walking these lonely routes at these lonely hours, or do I start walking in noisier, more public places at noisier, more public times to increase my chances of being found by people quickly? I don't like that choice at all, and it rubs my introversion the wrong way. For now, at least, my attitude is a shrug: I'm doing what I love doing, and if I die, I die. When I'm dead, I'm certainly not going to care what becomes of my body, but I do feel sorry for the people who have to take care of the aftermath.

When we'd met for dinner sometime ago, Charles called these speculations "morbid," but it's more about pragmatic realities than about gloom and doom or self-pity. I'm pretty reconciled to the idea that I'm going to cark it sooner rather than later, that I'm on borrowed time. I do feel some frustration: my situation doesn't feel entirely just, given the people I know who are seemingly in worse shape than I am yet who seem to have (or claim to have) great blood pressure, normal blood sugar, and no diabetes. All I can do is be envious of their genes (assuming they're not lying). I was dealt a suck-ass hand in more ways than one. But as they say, you play the hand you're dealt, and besides, I can't simply blame my genes for a long series of poor dietary decisions made over the years. That's character, not genes. I've always been one to indulge, and I never cultivated a conscience when it came to eating. That's on me.

But it's not as though I've given up. There's still life to be lived. I'm still looking forward to surviving 2025. I still hope to hit 60 and do the Camino with my buddy Mike and with a good bit of Spanish knowledge under my belt. But I've got to be realistic: borrowed time means I could go at any moment, and really, it's no big deal. I won't leave behind a family; I have a few Korean relatives with whom I'm in contact only once or twice a year; I have a few friends in Korea whom I rarely meet; I've got my brothers and my buddy Mike in the States, plus some relatives on my aunt's side in Texas, not to mention relatives I never talk to in California. My passing will be quiet and small: the pebble that plops into the lake, making barely any ripples. And that's fine. A life is the sum of one's choices, and I'm happy with most of the choices I've made, especially with the choice to walk the Four Rivers for the first time in 2017. That changed my life and my perspective on Korea.

Do I have regrets? While I'd love to be the guy who boasts that he has absolutely no regrets, I'd be a liar if I did that. I regret quite a few things, usually involving not having the courage or the moral fiber to do or to say what was right, or times when I was needlessly hurtful to people close to me, or times when there were things I could have said or done but failed to do. As the prayer goes in "The Thirteenth Warrior":

For all we ought to have thought
but have not thought
For all we ought to have said
but have not said
For all we ought to have done
but have not done
I pray thee, God, for forgiveness

—Ibn Fadlan, "The Thirteenth Warrior"

Despite its interesting premise (it's based on a Crichton novel), it's a silly movie, but that prayer touched me deeply, and Antonio Banderas delivered it well right before the story's climactic battle. It summed up every imperfect life, but as Zen Buddhists will tell you, imperfection is precisely where perfection is found. I can take some solace in that.