Doe Ma Bep

This night, or rather this morning, I woke with a creaking side, as I often do when I indulge. Regular, unwavering consumption of seaweed and Kimchi was interupted at dinner for the exception of a very expensive, not so tasty pizza. As I have come to see the pattern, eating wheat, leads to an aching body on account of my allergies, or strangeness, or what have you. This morning whe I woke, at 5 am, I couldn't merely take an ibuprofen and go back to sleep. Something was weighing heavy on my mind. Three syllables: Doe Ma Bep. I rose from my warm slumber and sat mystified from the haunting word, on a plasticy mock-leather tan-yellow sofa, that looked like James winter coat. It crinkled with the filth of crusted "Nidge" (Andrew, the previous tenant), far beneath the cleanable surface. I dared to reach into its crack and pull out a particularily noisy, guilty piece of discarded paper. On it, I wrote with a dying dry erase board marker "Doe Ma Bep" in Korean letters. In Canada I kept a pet Salamander, which the day before last had perished, presumably, by the mysterious "wasting disease". Perhaps this was the cause for those three little burps being on my brain at such an irregular hour. At that time, this time, in the quiet night, I also considered the announced discovery of salamanders here in South Korea prior to my arrival. I have long admired and respected this creature for its adabtability. Whether drought or flood, it could flourish, and without scales or fur, only a thin membrane of toxic skin, its wrap endured many climates, avoided many predators, and has prevailed longer than most species, long extinct in our world. Perhaps its adaptability even rivaled what respect my imagination had given it, after all here it was 1000 legues away from its previously known native homes. How did it get here? Has it always been? Where else might it be discovered - in the gurgling belly of the world? On this quest for answers I could not find, my stomach churned and moaned like a cat in heat that once lived here (it also woke me up at night to contemplate my dreams). Who is to say something must travel by ordinary means, that is to say, in all likely hood, the amphibian in question didn't walk here on its stubby legs. And if it dematerialized, and then materialized, who is to say it happened in that order, should we entertain an idea so far out of our regular acceptance. Maybe my pet salamander in Canada, now spent, traveled far in advance of my knowledge here to this country to meet me. Maybe it was in my dreams in the first week of my arrival to say "You are not alone, and thanks for the tasty worms that I've gorged on for many years, sensually tweezered into my mouth". It may be unlikely, but not impossible that this ancient creature came before me to test the Korean shore, to also say "despite the chemical plants, and somewhat inhospitably poisoned environment, we can live here, we can thrive, we can adapt, it's safe, safe enough for us that change". At the same time maybe it isn't safe enough for "The Gare", or Gary, the American 53 year old, X-boxer-mathametician. Having been jogged in the head by fists and differentials too many times to stand the change in geography, he has seemed to have vanished. Did he too put the materialization wagon before the dematerialization horse, like the "Doe Ma Bep", the salamander?