Christ. Just fucking Christ. Jennifer walked the aisles up and down, up and down, looking for the toothpaste her brother wanted. Why the fuck? She thought half thoughts as she paced, peering up and down the rows, from top to bottom. Why the fuck isn't there a toothpaste aisle? Where the -- Oh. Okay. Here it is, she thought, of course. And there's only 30 some odd different kinds. What the hell? 

She grabs the toothpaste and heads toward the cashier. Head pounding, she makes her way home. Ever since she got her driver's license, it seems like she's always the one who's called on for last minute errands. As her mom says, it's payback time. Whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. As if she ever asked to be born in the first place.

She brushes her ink black hair behind her ears and dons her shades. She peels out of the parking lot, avoiding potholes as she weaves her way through to the street. The streets can't contain her, she ends up flying rather than driving home. 

Parks on the street, bursts into the house, drops the keys in the wooden bowl by the sink, and runs upstairs. Her room. Her space. Dark, quiet and serene. Sparse. With the lights out, it's not obvious that the color scheme is a bit gaudy for a teenage girl with such a spartan aesthetic. But the pinks, yellows and lime greens are unmistakable in the daylight. She gives a nod to the huge poster of the Dear Leader over her bed and sits at her desk to start her homework.

Jennifer has loved the dear leader since she learned about him last year. At first, she was curious. 

//this is just really hard to explain - I am going to try, but this part is going to suck//

Jennifer is a girl who feels like she's been fed a line of shit since she was born. He family is happy and secure, definitely, but there has always been a tense under pinning to everything. She knows that paying for shelter and food - let alone any extras, has always been hard for her mom and dad. The stress of not knowing if they can make monthly payments has caused stress throughout her life - not that she knew what the stress was about at first, and not hat her parents even fought. But there was always this tension, this tightness in the air, especailly at certain times of the noth, and expecially at certain times of the year, that made her uncomfortable and very wary of asking for anything.

She was aware of the fact, too, that she was well off. That she lived a privledged life. Once she saw how others lived - what it meant to be first nations, for example, she felt betrayed. In a typical teenaged utopian moment, she decided there must be a better way.

When she learned of the story of the American defectors to North Korea, her eyes were opened. She learned how cruel and wrong it was to worship stuff - vast amounts of stuff - at the expense of a kind and gentle society that takes care of its members. There is no child abuse in North Korea. No discrimination. Everyone smiles in the streets, and everyone helps out to make their homeland a place veryone can feel safe, secure and loved. If it weren't for the cruel sanctions countries like the United States put in place, North Korea would be even better than it is. It is because of the deep, uncaring crulety of the United States, for example, that the famine happened. they try to say that it is the Dear leaders fault, but Jennifer knows better -- absolutely. It is because of countries like the United States, Canada, and most wester cnountries for htat matter, who want the whole world westernized -- who love the fact that South Korea has turned its society on its end, where teenaged parents play video games instead of feeding their babies so that the babies die - where girls are led into prostitution, where drugs are injested daily by young people who are at a loss as to what to do wtih their lives because they have no culture, no base - no idea what it means anymore to be Korean. They are taken over by the Americans, who forcefully occupy their land and require them to forego their innate Koreanness 

And don't even get her started with Japan. Or any other Asian country. And it is the same all over the world, really. Westernization. 

You don't need 30 kinds of toothpaste at every shop. You need an identity. You need to know why you are here. You need to know who you are and why it matters. 

In British Columbia, it was all vague and flaccid. She could be anything she wanted to be. No sense of history or culture beyond this vague feeling of needing to think that anything was okay, as long as no one was offended. She hated the hippie dippy anything goes culture. She couldn't stand the idea that there was nowhere to tether herself, her sense of place, her sense of who she was in the world. Everything was okay.

And when everything was okay, nothing was okay. It was fine if she wanted to crop her hair. Dye it orange? Sure, why not? Piercings? Go for it! Her mom even drove her to the mall to get them done. IT wasn't even that she was concious of any of this until she became aware of the utopian ideal that The Dear Leader set up after the war. She had always just felt this kind of vague uneasieness

She had always been drawn to reading about cultures where rules and patterns were known - where it was done this way because it had always been done this way. Where people ate a certain thing for breakfast, for example, because that was what their grandparents had eaten -- and who got married to a certain person, or in a certain place, because that was just simply what their family did.

The comforting sensation she felt when she read about places like Switzerland or Mali or Iceland or, really, anywhere where there was a sense of place and time that was known and understood just made her pulse slow down and her tension melt away. 

When she first learned about North Korea, of course, it was in a bad light - it was all the propaganda that is fed to every westerner. She learned about the "repressive regime" and the "lack of freedom" 

Well, now she knew a bit more. she knew, for example, how addicted to materialism everyone in the west is - how addicted to everything -- and how destructive that is to the family. 

OF course, her family seemed intact and happy, but it was all and illusion. They were all addicted to their things - to the next hit - to the next thing they could buy that would give them a bit of pleasure. 

North Koreans found pleasure in community, in being with each other. They didn't need material crap -- plastic cheap goods made by slave abouring children.

North Korean children stayed with their families and lived simple peaceful lives - never wanting or needing love and community. North Korean children sing each day on their way to school and are taken care of by the entire community .Child abuse is unknown in North Korea.

Teachers care for each little child in a way that makes them feel safe and loved. And really, that is what makes us human. Not stuff. Not the new car, the raise at work, the new clothes.

Now, in Harmony, she had literally no idea. There was an odd cohesion in the cookie cutter homes and neat, tidy streets. There was a cohesion in the sameness of the haircuts - short for boys and long for girls. There was a strict, this is the way it is feel to Harmony that felt comforting to her. But at the end of the day, there was a sense that these rules, these ways to live - were kind of imposed upon everyone so that they felt like there was a purpose. In North Korea, that purpose was thousands of years old. It was so stable. So sure. So right.

The Dear Leader looked down on her as she did her homework and she felt like all was right at least somewhere in the world.

Kids today. John shakes his head as he chops the celery - chop chop chop - the staccato beat keeps time to his racing thoughts. What next? Right. onion. Chop. The onion splays in half. Little chop. The dry root comes clean. He peels off the skin, plops it back on the cutting board, then chop chop chop - slivers of onion fall neatly in place next to the celery.

The smell reminds him (how?) of his wife, Jane. Of how much he misses her. Of how long it has been since they were all together. He's been alone for how long now? Only a month? Seems like so much longer. Cliche. She's gone with the kids now to live with her sister in a small northern California town for the summer. She said she needed to bond with family.

What the hell is he, if not family? But whatever. Now he's cooking for one all summer and he'll never get used to it. He's sauteing the vegetables now; he's added kale, shiitakes  and  carrots. The rice is almost ready. Why in the world did she dye her hair so damn dark, he wonders? She's always got some damn thing going on, he thinks, smiling in spite of his irritation. Such a pretty girl. She doesn't need to even try and she's just pretty. And likeable.

But there you go. Teenagers. They've always got to have something going on. She must just need attention. It must be hard for her to suddenly be in a small town in a new state - hell, a new country - without her friends. He stops, tastes the sauted veggies, and smells his cooking. 

That's utterly ridiculous. What friends? Her only friends are her thoughts. That's another worry he has. Jennifer seriously has no friends anymore. It's not like she's being bullied, or ostracised or something. No, it has been more like she just seriously hasn't wanted anything to do with anyone but her younger brother for about 6 months now. Weird. His kids are weird. 

He dished himself some food and sits at the table, alone. Weird - what the hell? How could they be normal with the family they've been raised in? He smiles wryly. He never really thought about it much until the kids got a bit older and it dawned on him that if anyone were to blame for the weirdness of the kids, it would have to be their parents.

John and Kate had been together forever - since they were young teenagers. They met at summer art camp when they were 14 years old and started immediately, as soon as they got home to their respective small towns (on opposite ends of the country) sending each other letters. Next summer, they both begged to be allowed to go back to the same camp, and both sets of parents (now grandparents) acquiesced and they were reunited both in art and in love.

Of course, they had dated other people. They had gone to different universities and done their separate things. He had really thought that she was too different for him for anything more than a summer love - and a young summer love at that. But as he grew and dated other girls, then women, he realized that she was different. And different in a good way.

They had art in common, true, but was that enough to base a life on? They were from opposite ends of the country after all, and beyond a love of art and hanging out by the pond during summer camp, did they have anything in common? 

It turned out that they did. And what they had in common was a tenacity, a fighting spirit and a love of laughter that had held them together for all these years. It was a risk they took. Beyond being from different places geographically, they were also quite different in their culture. John was socially conservative, but financially liberal. Kate was exactly the opposite. She was open minded about most social issues, feeling like it was not her place to decide for anyone else how they should live their lives. But financially, she was straightlaced and disciplined. She held the idea that it was a sign of weakness to spend money on things that depreciated. Aside from giving things to small children, her belief system held that one should be austere and disciplined with most spending.

And that, that difference, was the one that made things difficult for them. It was the source of the stress, the conflict, the underlying tension that everyone felt, all the time, underneath everything. All the happy moments, all the closeness they felt as a family, under it all was a tension that was born from the fact that they shared vastly different cultures.

But they came together after university, both having dated more suitable people along the way, and neither of them having found anyone who felt as right as they did when they were together. John and Kate married soon after university and had never looked back.

It had lasted this long, he thought - and, four kids later, there was no practical way to end things, even if they had wanted to. Dividing up a family of 6 seemed too complicated to even try to figure out, and what with the complications of simply trying to feed and clothe a family of 6, there was no way either of them had the strength of mind or will to try to break it up.

Not that they wanted to. But still. It made him think that he should look up statistics on divorce for larger families. He's thinking that they must be much lower. There's just no time to think about breaking up when all your time, money and energy goes to keeping the basics on the table.

How had his thoughts gone this route, anyway? He missed them like crazy.  He turned off the stove, slid the food onto two plates, set them both on the small table in the corner of the kitchen, and called Janet.

Her real, given name is Jennifer. Jennifer Kate. But for three years now, she has taken the name Kim Jin. No one dares call her Jennifer anymore, but at the same time, it's things like this that definitely separate a girl from the pack, and no one could say they feel especially close to her anymore. There's a distance, let's say, between her and her family. Between her and her peers. 

And that is just fine with her. 

About three years ago, Jennifer-Kim turned 14. And on her 14th birthday, she went shopping with some girlfriends. They insisted. She thought it sounded fun. So they were driven by one of the moms out of their small town to the large mall in the nearby suburb. A place that Jennifer-Kim had never really thought much of before.

That day, at that mall, it all hit her - the meaninglessness of western life, the meaninglessness of her friendships. The hold that all this stuff had on them, had on her. 

Jennifer-Kim's family is a simple, straightforward group of people. Practical, but not especially great at making money. Not foolish, but perhaps their souls would be better served in a place that appreciated good service, loving hearts and generous spirits. Capitalism, you could say, was not their friend. They never had a ton of money, and after bills were paid and food was purchased, there wasn't ever a whole lot left over for extras, like new clothes or shoes. The kids never seemed to mind. 

But there was pity just around every corner, and in the looks they got from other kids at school, and somehow especially from the teachers. Teachers, not really friends of capitalism themselves - or at least, it was always fairly obvious that Capitalism was not their friend, seemed especially pitiful toward the Johnsons. 

September came and with it the new year. She had spent the summer learning about her new found love, North Korea, and came to school with her hair dyed black, wearing conservative clothes and knowing things were never going to be the same.

She arrived at the school, walked into the red brick building and turned right to walk down the hall to her classroom. The halls of the hundred year old school clattered and sang with the students chattering about their summers and endlessly flirting. Someone tossed a can of Coke her direction and she almost caught it, before it splashed to the ground, exploding in a single stream toward the bright blue lockers. The stream of students parted, laughing, as she picked up the can and turned in the direction it had come from. 

Stan stood there, head down, feet dancing a slow winding dance on the linoleum as his shoulders sank forward and down.

Ah, Stan, it's all right - don't worry about it. It'll get cleaned up right away - no harm done. Hey - I didn't get any on me at all! Look! Look up, Stan. Christ, it's fine. Nothing happened, okay? 

Now she was a little irritated. First, wasting pop. Wasting something when there were people in other places who knew the value of a can of pop. Who - well who maybe had never even had a can of pop in their lives before. And Stan had felt so cavalier that he could just throw it at her? But he was so well intentioned. So sweet at heart. He had never hurt anyone, ever. He was given a special grace at school due to this rare quality. No one wanted to get too close to him, since it was almost ethereal how good he was - he literally had been seen saving a fly who had been found drowning in the flooded bathroom sink. But at the same time, he wasn't messed with, either. He was given space, and left mainly alone. Which was mostly fine with him. Except when it came to Jennifer. For Jennifer, he threw cans of coke, saved a seat in the cafeteria, and waited after school to walk home with her. And not because he was in love with her, as most people thought. No, he was definitely gay and he knew it. No, he just simply liked her - a lot. He liked her staunch not niceness. He liked that she stood for stuff - even when she just made that stuff up seemingly out of thin air. He liked her confidence, even in the face of opposition and complete irrationality. He simply liked her energy.

And she liked him. She knew that he was gay. Perhaps it wasn't obvious to most of their classmates. They were all so focused on their own angst that really listening to Stan was out of the question. And aside from the fact that he wasn't trying to hide anything, he didn't seem stereotypically "gay" In fact, he could tell his peers, if they had asked, that the boy they were tormenting was, in fact, not gay. He was simply a bit artistic. But not gay. 

In any case, Jennifer Kim was glad to see Stan and was willing to forgive the wasted Coke, because she knew that Stan would understand her new found obsession. Well, he may not understand it, but he'd listen impartially. And that mattered to her. A lot.