How to define Korea?? A definition.

   

How to define Korea?

Maybe the lingering winters which are hanging on the plethora of mountains, so that the bus rides from increasingly abandoned rural areas will treat you to long moments in between such great forces.  

Perhaps then, the elderly define this country, reminiscing in the mountains as they do; even if only for their contrast.  They still keep to those mountains, the singular pillars which resist the constricting wrap of westernization.  They swarm here with infamous if consumeristicly colored spandex for hiking, where they, like only the smallest of animals, yet evade extinction.  It is here they make their pledge to remain unfazed, at the tops of mountains, drinking rice liquor and wine in their collectivist  circles...  And they still clear their throats emphatically, as if the rest of the world hadn't forgotten the use of beliefs sometimes incoherent for the luster of knowledge which is always cold and time-riddled in its' correctness.  "Yes, fools!" -We who know things would say, to climb a mountain and guzzle shared liqour at a peak, but then most of my culture past a certain age, would remain unseen on weekends,  in accordance with an indivualistic culture which forgets it's past in the midst of the favors of youth and change.

Experience then separates two worlds; east by west, not by some geographical platitude, but as a pervasive virtual consumption where technology has integrated what the west could not pass on in purer forms.  Here, Starcraft tournaments and Japanese hyper-definitions lend technology its' own eastern cultural sense.   
 -Yes, the youth do their best, balancing along the edges of change, embracing western culture for its' order saving logic while pushing through its' global glop of hyper-competitive economics.  Yet they still look to their elders, who are resistant to things all-encompassing, and communicate Confucian residues; respect, and emotion-so livid in diligence.

This is a definition of Korea.

A culture self-evident in its' paradoxical culture, of different yet remaining times, in a global world which in consumed with change.  I then applaud Korea, who still holds its' simple truths so dearly.

On First Love.

Chapter 1

Imagine….Your at a restaurant, an intrigue in form sits across from you. 

They are someone who you do not yet know, but who you will know-very well so.  They aren't touching their food, nor are their utensils being utilized, rather they are looking about, but not in the way you know people to look at things.  Ever so often something catches their eye, wait…no - they’re not looking at it intently; indeed, yes, they are somehow looking beyond it.  You pour over what they seemed to be engaged with…of course…but, either what exist for them simply doesn't exist for you, or your lack comprehension, perception,... or some such thing.  That it is, yes, one of those duly noted phenomenon which has confounded the human race as whole, fascinated philosophers in particular, and been crudely traced upon by those oh so very scientific.  Yes-yes, there have always been those things available to a very few throughout history in such wavering and meticulous ways. It is an arduous magic that exists within our world.  It is access.

You are, in fact, a very perceptive person, though not particularly intelligent.  As usual, you’ve taken note of everyone else in the restaurant, and come to at least one vague conclusion on how they are distantly connecting to the world around them, or in contrast, more proficiently experiencing those relations that exist within the persons and environments around them. Put another way, you observe how they are interacting with their world, their steaks are tantalizing and sardonic if savory; their salads are delightful, tenuous, and compromisingly delicious; their wine free, artfully tasteful, and increasingly individualizing; the pictures and peoples adorning their booth are interesting in their own objective ways or differing in limiting subjective ways.

Why, now that you think about it, most of the people aren’t looking around at all.  They are, and rightfully so, a self whose perceptions are inextricably linked to themselves, from within to without.  When they see you looking at them, it usually seems that they see only what they themselves imagine why or how you are seeing them as, or you as is meaningful to them, rather than you - yourself.

Back to the intrigue.  What is it they know of beyond, that the others do not.  Imagine so,…. you’ve know them along time now.  You are quite close to them.  Deeming teeming food less so, yourself you have.  You are a bit more like them, or maybe just less interested in yourself, but more importantly, you now know what is they have found beyond yet you can’t experience it yourself.  That is OK.  It is beauty they are comprehending in the world around them though you yourself are limited to finding your intrigue beautiful.  You are in love.  Beauty, which you thought so elusive and complex is simple and apparent to them. Someone who sees beauty itself where you see only loosely clipped ideas, you are drawn to them; you drawl. Eventually, You Stop.

This is the story of my first love.  Of their love of poetry. And of my own  disillusion.  Chapter 2 is quite different; putting it together now.

Postcards from Italy: Reflections from an Andong GEPIK weekend.

City lights reflected through this curtained bus; with unknown cities passing - dazzling in their briefness, through tunnels, and across bridges, stops at those strange island rest stops complete with mentos crane vending machines, king size burgers, and squid rings. Orderly lines there, those stops, the beats of wakefulness in these dreamlike weekend adventures which will break up the weekly incessant repetitions of life.

 -This is a definition of magical bus rides, crowded in-between mountains, which are particular to Korea. And were we Korean, there would be soju and snacks passed up and down these bus isles, followed by karaoke made so voracious with its’ microphones. But we are not; we are foreigners, and perhaps from hence comes my bewitchment.

 She, our Korean guide, asks us to sing the national anthems of our countries. We are, all of us, representations of different countries-different times, languages, and words. South Africa, Scotland, Singapore, and England the closest seated among me. And so these people bring their countries with them; we are a bus in-between places, yet filled with intermittent and intermingling countries. We coast in a foreign land. Korea is our common language. We are happy.

 Upon arrival, I am name-tagged stranger in a sea of 120 foreigners.  I make a friend then wander around alone for a bit. I make another. Friends are available here like postcards in a souvenir shop. Spin the spindle and pick some bright beautiful picture. Every person an image of some faraway idea all so conveniently placed.  Here is my postcard.  Here is my friendship.  -We are, none of us greedy, among postcards from Italy.


There is a lesson to be learned here I feel; though elusive in nature.



Anyhow, Some things we do:

We shoot bows and arrows
We Participate in traditional Korean wedding reenacment
We Eat in palace like settings
We Visit a museum, a musical
We Pound out rice cakes with large wooden hammers
We visit a traditional village.
We Pound out rice cakes with large wooden hammers.

With large wooden hammers.

On Dangerous Robots and Humanely Sight.

When I wake up in the morning, it as though my right eye is sealed. Like a spring, slowly releasing it’s stress, my eyelid gradually gives way to normalcy. It is the remnant of an injury. I wouldn't go into details. Suffice to say it came from actions so vividly foolish. The reckless love of youth perhaps. A gifted surgeon with deft hands and pins and needles breathed structure back into the right side of face – a fractured skull, an eye socket crushed along the upper ridge, and an eye unwilling to see. A modern hero he, - he that came and went unannounced to me. He found me in a rolling hospital bed; he a vague memory in a rolling transition between differing paces. Whisked away, saving survivors a job of his, he moved by the minutes of a quick-ticking clock. I never was, or often am, thankful for him and his talents - his ambitions - except for in a transient now; in the reflective state I’m on in an odd morning, from an odd month, within an odd year. Life is like that yes? A sea of wish-washed memories. Incoherent dreams and realities, from which we can and do wish a coherent whole.

 Continuing on, in the city, I was, a week ago. A man from Sri-Lanka came upon us, he had been watching us as we had slowly wound our way through town. He had surgical scars and an ominous mis-fitted state about him. Eventually, he engaged us in conversation. We were fearful. Why was this man following and attempting to collect us within his conversations? There was only one among us with the sincerity and courage to engage him back. So the man from Sri-Lanka, he began to speak of a film he was making, said he was a film student. He said humans were becoming robotized. He pointed to the people around us, emphasizing that they would never look around, or at least, ‘really’ look around, nor deviate from their hurried paths. He said he would make a pleasing film about such a sobering story. A trick to draw the robotically emotional in he mused. He spoke to us, we who were so lazily and haphazardly lounging upon a large boulder in a stream that runs through the city of Uijongbu. I imagine we seemed quite apart, much like the boulders that parted those flows – humans trafficked and water flowed. Slipping along I was, unintentionally breaking several social norms as is likely with myself. Spotting us there, he was imbued, drawn to us in a world he perceived as mechanized and pernicious. A bit of hope I think we were to him, some idealized image of American Hollywoodified helpful heroes.

 Odd I had thought, that he wanted to take a picture with us. I gave little credence or thought to his robotical theories. Strange though, maybe it did make a great bit of sense upon my current reflections. This, another sort of misplaced memory, which surfaced on me this morning as I put pen to paper.

 Lastly, I was brought to a verge yesterday; made a cradle for tears. A one-legged man crutched through the subway system. A very unattractive man, with a jutting chin and dispersive and disruptive facial hair sprouting his chin and cheeks pale and spiny. His demeanor was malnourished, his eyes clouded and sunken, his teeth ajar. Quite literally, he placed his story upon our laps. It was typed on strips of paper in Korean symbols. He did not bother with me – a foreigner.

 If you haven’t spent time in Korea, you may not be familiar with this kind of concept so permit me to go on a bit. Though sometimes rare to encounter, beggars adorn the Korean subways here and there. They all have their nuances – their knacks. There is one, an older woman, crone-like and dangerous looking in an ironically odd way for such an elderly soul. She hobbles the train carts with a box of gum. Her will is of iron steel, and her approach is forceful. She places a pack of gum in your lap to be sold at a measly price. You must return the gum to her lest you give up a coin which is often ideologically vexing in price. Every now and again though, she catches a scent grown possible from her increased senses of survival, and will hound a person with her expressively distasteful attentions until a battle of wills is done, and she is up a coin or you without a pack of a gum. Me and my great friend would often speak of her. I have never witnessed someone so intent on survival; a rare continuance of an entity in a increasingly forgetful and hostile world...at least to herself.

She is gone now. And I suspect only I think of her positively, if anyone thinks of her at all; her a memory misplaced and misuseful. Nonexistent. No family to speak of, I wonder if, in finality, she curled up in some cutting corner and passed away, her iron will concluded, her body left to disrupt some robotic path.

 And also, the blind ones. Their are many blind one’s as well, with rackety speakers playing forlorn music. Outdated; it is static and unwelcome in those it reaches. The speakers they often wear as literal necklaces hanging round their necks, or perhaps, as a figurative penitence. I have heard many theories of them, scam artist some say. And I wonder, for many of them, who actually knows? Blind, nearly blind, or full of sight; and if they do see, is it some troubled perspective? Do they congregate in some saddened place and reveal their visions and scammed coins or retire to some odd but imaginable place to soju and a bowl of rice.

 And rarer more, are the horrific ones. Horrid, but they don’t last so long. Some condition they have, as your mind squeams to organize them into some category of understanding, something with a name, a concept you can comprehend. What is wrong with this person? You don’t know. And that is true horror, something that traces the outer limits of the mind. They have swinging gaits and lazy reproachful eyes. They canter or stumble, pulling and twisting from cart to cart, tossed doll-like now and again as the subway rockets against some intermittent disturbance along its' endless tracks. A severe stroke they once had perhaps? A person cringes as that undesirable thing loses its’ gait and brushes against them.

Give me a toothbrush for the psyche.. For the passenger who had been so keen to ignore this things existence, yet now is fully aware, and amid the most unpleasant of encounters.

 But like I said, those, they don’t last long. Those, I do no image what becomes of them; I haven’t seen one in quite awhile. But the one-legged man - back to him. End this story, on a different note I am. An elderly man sits beside me, and he sees the one-legged man as clearly as I. The one-legged man crumples himself, in focusing his entire will on recovering his strips of paper which have been so unceremoniously discarded from laps to ground. His face, their feet, my eyes. But, an elderly man sits beside me. He has that rare glimmer in his eye. A few aging men carry it with them. An amusement to counter even the direst perspectives of life. They are not troubled by the coming of death, and they still see new things – even through their own wealth of memories. The crinkle of merriment I call it. He is reading the one-legged man’s story unlike many others. He gives him his money, his attentions, and his words. The one-legged man bows though his frown remains. He chatters unintelligible for a time, and for a few moments it seems like he is awakening from some mechanical presence - fitful but present. And for a moment now I think of myself as that man from Sri-Lanka. At least I did; now I feel foolish for mentioning such a thing. A foreigner watching a foreign play in it’s robotic way. And for once, my story being a circle. Full, eyes open, for the film thats going round.

Japan-Part 1 (an account of 2 and half days of a 7 day experience))

“FREEZE!” “THERE WILL BE AN EARTHQUAKE IN 32 SECONDS!” Raghu spouts suddenly….

Day 2, and we are in the 105 yen store, a more enchanting and faithful version of the U.S. dollar store, and more importantly, Raghu says, the cheapest place in Japan.
…Now, you may be reluctant to believe that Raghu knows there will be an earthquake in 32 seconds. However, if you tune into a couple additional facts it will become somewhat more believable. 1. Japan has 105 active volcanoes, and is above subducting plates within the volcanic zone ‘the pacific ring of fire.’ (earthquakes are more common than most realize) 2. Many parts of Southeast Asia are host to some of the most innovative technologies, and most everyone is armed with a smart phones that will do anything from, analyzing a babies cries and divulging whether they wish for food or sleep, to predicting earthquakes in a timely fashion, to augmenting reality itself (literally).

After consulting his smart phone earthquake application me and Raghu both plant our feet and await the instability of the ground beneath our feet (it is to be a minor earthquake he says). At this point, I am quite eager as I have never before felt the sensation of an earthquake. I am not disheartened, as 30-something seconds later, my body shakes in accordance with the yen dollar store floor, and as I glance outside, the innumerable parking lot bicycles undergo the same significant trembles. I’m pretty much elated at experiencing such a new sensation, but as I turn to recount with my other companion Sean, he and the store attendant are idly concluding their transaction. “Did you feel that??” I say. “Feel what?” says Sean.


Surely, I think,… Japan is going to be fun.



Day 1


Tokyo, ..families puppy shopping at 1 a.m., and the taxi drivers are giving me candy.... Across the street Nigerians aggressively hustle for prostitution clubs, and the pedestrians moving along are more varied and stylistic than I have ever before encountered. This is a land complete with Tommy Lee Jones coffee machines, liquor vending face recognition machines, sink-toilets, risqué anime, and bicycle parking lots. Japan, it seems, is a self-contained universe lacking a solid acknowledgment of the temporal passage of time. The foreigners here carry themselves with a certain since of pride, which often revolves around an endearing embrace of the lovely and alien Japanese culture, or a pride which borders arrogance-soundly resenting cross-cultural ignorance.




-Here, a short introduction of my companions is in order…

I sleep little the night I arrive in Japan, nor the night I arrive which give my initial perceptions of Japan a lucid and comical edge. Nevertheless, I arrive candidly for my stay with Raghu Rao, a computer engineer within Yokohama. Raghu is one of those good friends which you can also count as an equally good person. He has temporarily left his home behind in India, and endures occasional instances of racism and ill luck with a cheer few can manage. We spend a couple nights talking in depth, and he makes India come life to for me, telling me of what India is truly like; we compare our culturally destined fates of arranged marriages and marriages for love, and muse over what we've truly come to desire as we travel across a vastly differing world-....and what we would be wise to garner instead. He is an excelling host...and his homemade Indian dishes rival my first experiences of Japan's famed food dishes.


I travel here with my Korean friend, Sean, and exceedingly atypical Korean with a surprising penchant for truth, who incredibly enough, is as nearly as easy-going as I am when it comes to traveling.

Very foolishly, we arrive 10 minutes before the gates close as the plan is to depart for Japan, 6 minutes of which, Sean spends shaving in bathroom while the flight attendant gently urges me to get on the plane before it’s too late. We are a good traveling match.

We take an express train to Yokohoma, and the first thing we notice is that the sky has an incredible and alluring paint to it; it looms much closer than usual, bright and clear. Also, there are hints of the great bamboos and trees that the media suggest of in stereotypical tones, and clusters of houses picturesquely resistant to the domination of massive apartment complexes I’ve grown so use to in neighboring Korea.





We take the elevator up to one of tallest building in Japan, and catch a sunset view of Mount Fuji. Next we attend a meetup event, 35,000 yen all you can eat and drink, where we make some Japanese friends who will show us Japan later in the week. Alcohol is flowing freely, and the natives and foreigners alike are socializing full force. At this point, I can say my eyes are wide open, and mind reeling a bit, as I am undergoing significant culture shock. On the surface, the culture is not much different from Korea, but incredibly vast differences lie under a subtle sheet. To me, this is a new world and a new people, and I lose most of my ability to draw parallels between the cultures I have experienced in the past; or for that matter, any parallels at all. The Japanese people are wonderfully kind and warm-hearted, and the Japanese landscape exotic and beautiful, but I can’t escape a since of mixed-feelings, and my own incongruity with this novel place.


Another/different day


It is a weekday, Raghu is at work, and we are on our way to the worlds biggest ferris wheel when a red bull car pulls over and two cute Japanese women hop out. They quickly open the trunk, and Sean jumps in.


(Just kidding) Rather, they heft to large slings out of the trunk and two lines quickly form, with the two red bull sling boasting ladies as their destination. When we reach the girls, they give us a free red bull, and an explanation of the new sugar free red bull. I point to her bag and ask, “Isn’t that heavy?” To which she replies over a period 0f 60 seconds, and in broken English, “The red bull it gives me wings, so you see, the bag is not heavy. Please finish your red bull here and now, so that we may collect the empty can” She accompanies this by flapping her hands, and giving a cute smile. To all this I can only respond with a subsequent smile, and a reluctant chugging of my newly acquired energy drink. Next, I find out how much Sean doesn’t like heights as he ducks down in the middle of our rotating chamber in the sky.

An Ode to Traveling.

An Ode to Traveling.

Dear Sarah Shu,

Where lies America?

Can it be carried in the hearts of rogues, such as myself, tentatively exploring a world which has become much more global?

…If America has become the mixing pot, do the ones who have left it behind carry a new recipe, or perhaps, …do we possess some of the original substance and heart, or , ….- are we just menial splatters of a culture moving and mixed too fast?

If America was formed by foreigners fleeing that which they thought wrong and those seeking the promise of unbridled opportunity-than- have I found my voice at last?…,-here-,… have I been saying as much without realizing it….is it time, at last, to choose my words and actions so carefully?

What I mean to say is,
That is,
Is,
Was I escaping something, …or is it that I had something to say?


Isn’t is a question every traveler must answer if they are to continue their path?

It’s January.


For the city, the snow becomes an ugly interminable gray, but here, it remains pure and comely. It testifies who has trodden. As I head to my apartment there is yet one set of footprints; and as in snow one is often tempted, I make notice of my snow prints, of the future of the past, and of stepping back into the present. One becomes
hopeful one’s path has become a little clearer.

Future sick.

Incidentally, where is the elevator taking me? How many floors does it go up? And, can I come back down?