DATELINE: Bloomington, Indiana, USA

According to the 2000 Census there are 1,008 Korean people in Bloomington, though the Indiana University student body likely swells those numbers off of the books. In any event, I’m now convinced that all of them know Mama’s Restaurant: “Korean Cuisine,” downstairs from the yoga place and caddy corner to the Sherman-Williams paint store.

The first time I visited Mama’s Restaurant the eating population was by my amateur calculation 100% Korean, your correspondent excepted. It is a fine omen for the first-time diner when the joint’s exact target audience occupies every table four deep, like walking into a Texas steakhouse full of dusty ranch hands or a Burger King full of bejeweled royalty.

I was quickly seated in front of a first-generation HDTV the size of a Toyota Tacoma and resting on a karaoke stage. A soccer game was on with the sound muted. It took me a few minutes of staring to realize that it was not a live broadcast, but a recording of a World Cup from the past. Upon further staring it became clear that it was a recap of the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, a beloved time, I would learn, for Koreans.

Over kimchi and bulgogi I watched highlights from various rounds of play, full of penalty shots and near misses and celebration. Without sound the game was as a visual collage, freed from Sportscenter’s drowning flood of data and wit and star-swipes and teasers. The soundless flow of the game was mesmerizing without explanation or specific context, with the calming effect of an artificial waterfall or songs of the whales.

This is why I like soccer, b/c of the fluid ebb and flow, the tidal momentum sways that are only detectable in the abstract until the wave crests and thumps into the back of the net.

I went to Mama’s recently for lunch, and the TV was off for the first time. I guess someone got tired of the endless loop, and I wouldn’t begrudge the perpetually pleasant staff their sanity for the sake of my serendipitous lunch accompaniment.

At first, I missed the loop, as a recent vacationer misses the sound of the ocean. But soon I became aware of the conversations around me. I don’t speak Korean, so I didn’t understand them per say, but in their rhythm and sway there was another kind of calm, the subtle symphony of international voices that mingle and flow, rising and falling, like water.

Ted Walker lives and works in Bloomington. He has a site about baseball, which can be found here.