This is funny.
Comic relief is important, right? That song is old… 1989! It dates me. [In case of future link-rot, it’s a video shown on the Jimmy Fallon show wherein a mash-up of clips of Brian Williams reading the nightly news ends up having him speak the lyrics to Young MC’s classic song, “Bust a Move”.]
Here is a Korean proverb from my book of proverbs.
백옥이 먼지속에 묻힌다
white-jewel-SUBJ dust-pile-LOC be-hidden-PRES
A white jewel is hidden in the dust.
The book says it means a person of integrity retains his integrity even in misery.
I always liked the proverb about integrity that goes:
Integrity is what we do when no one is watching.
I went to work, and felt some productiveness, but then my work computer was
annoying me (Windows XP, in 2013? Seriously?), so I went back home – because I have no classes. Andrew and I went up the block to the Japanese place I like, and had cheap sushi. But then I
ended up going back to work because I still had some things to do – I
needed to record and score some make-up speeches for July month-end
testing. So I worked twice today, with a very long break. It was OK.
I hope I can sleep well tonight – I'm suffering, a little bit, because the sensation is beginning to return to parts of my neck, which up until now has been mostly just numb, due to the nerve damage from the major surgery. I've taken some painkiller today, for the first time since discharge from the hospital.
I haven't blogged much music lately. But I'm listening to a lot of music – and, now that Andrew has received his massive harddrive-full-o-musictracks in the mail, I'm listening to a lot of new stuff from my brother. That's a good thing.
What I'm listening to right now.
Devendra Banhart, "Cripple Crow."
Lyrics.
When they come from the over the mountain
Yeah we’ll run we’ll run right around them
We’ve got no guns no we don’t have any weapons
Just our cornmeal and our childrenThe dust drowns
The dark clouds
But not us
But not usWhile we pay for mistakes with no meaning
All your gifts and all your peace is deceiving
And still our pain dissolves with believingThat peace comes, their peace comes
That peace comes, their peace comesNow that our bones lay buried below us
Just like stones pressed into the earth
Well we ain’t known by no one before us
And we begin with this one little birthThat grows on, that grows on
That grows on, that moves onCripple crow say something for our grieving
Where do we go once we start leaving
Well close that womb
Or else keep on bleeding
And change your tune
It’s got no meaning
I'm not, normally, a person to post "cat videos" with abandon. But… I was watching this, a while ago, and laughing hard, and Andrew insisted that I blog it, because of that.
(Poem #13 on new numbering scheme)
The thing about trees
Here’s the thing about trees: they are always trying to escape the groping gravity of the earth.
Look at them. They strain and push up toward the sky, in their slow-motion way. You can see, easily, how they are trying to escape. The leaves have no other purpose but to reach for the sky.
Sometimes, the trees even need to be tied down. You see how people have applied ropes or wooden structures to the trees, to keep them from flying away when unobserved.
You see, the trees know when we are watching, too. They know that if they succeed in escaping, they have to be careful not to get caught – no one will trust a tree, anymore, if people see one running off into the sky.
So the trees wait until no one is looking. Trees, as might be expected, are amazingly patient.
In the depth of the night, when no one is around to see or hear, a tree will succeed in escaping. The branches will finally reach and thrust with sufficient force to pull the roots free of the grasping, jealous earth, and they will rise rapidly into space, finally finding their freedom. All that is left is a small upturned mound of earth, puckered like a small wound, where the roots pulled out.
A strong wind can help, but if the weather is too stormy, the trees can be injured and then they will fall back to the brutish earth, broken and shattered.
Sometimes, after a storm, you can see the evidence of this – broken trees thrown over, as if by wind. What is not so clear to us watchers is that some of that violence is self-inflicted by the trees upon themselves, in their desperate efforts to escape the unkind earth.
[UPDATE: This is tree # -1]
I woke up twice this morning. The first time I woke up was around 5:30 AM. I was restless, as I'd been having a difficult dream.
Someone from the US Army had come to my apartment and told me I had two hours to get packed up and moved – everyone had to move out of the country. Some kind of war scenario – many of the Koreans were going around doing crazy things, too. But it was all very vague.
Two hours is not a lot of time to pack up my apartment. Especially given the fact that I kept finding new rooms full of stuff. I would get stuff thrown into boxes only to discover a new room. Piles of knickknacks on shelves, bookshelves creaking under the weight of too many books like in a used bookstore, plastic containers of who-knows-what piled on the floor, like in my storage unit in Minnestoa.
Some Army guy came around and said I couldn't bring it all. "Take what's important," he said.
I found many things that I didn't even recognize as mine, yet it all seemed important and precious. I found bins of ceramic figurines, mountains of paper with drawings on each page, collections of coins and stamps and price tags. It was a hoarder's fantasy world, and I was being perfectly hoarderish within it.
But time was running out. People would come through and offer to help, but I kept rejecting it. Then Karen came by – Karen is my (ex-) mother-in-law (Michelle's mom). She said, with a sigh, "This was all Michelle's." I sat back in shock – that explained both why I didn't recognize the stuff and why I still felt compelled to save it all.
It was too late, though. The Army guy came by and said to stop packing, we were moving out. Karen was crying, as we left the unpacked stuff behind.
I held only a few boxes in my arms. I didn't even want them. I threw them aside, as we marched, a group of random Ilsan foreigners, toward some waiting buses.
Then I woke up.
I couldn't get back to sleep, so I read my history book for about an hour.
Then I finally fell asleep. This time I dreamed that I was trying to explain to my EHS students that they were very smart and had great potential, but they were complaining they were stupid and lazy. I was trying to motivate them. It makes sense – that's the class I did a substitute gig in last night.
Somehow, the four EHS students and I were in a supermarket. I was trying to cheer them up by clowning around, but, like the incipient adolescent 6th graders that they are, they seemed to mostly find this embarrassing. I said I would stop embarrassing them if they would cheer up. So they tried their best, and we sat down on some benches in a park to try to have class.
It was too hot to study, though. We sat around swatting flies and mosquitoes, as the sky grew dark. "Teacher, my book will get wet," one of them said, as raindrops started to fall.
I woke up again. 9:30 AM. That is the latest I've woken up since coming home from the hospital, I think. I have a sore throat – that is worrying – the last thing I need is to get some kind of cold or flu, leading into the radiation next week.
I ate some vitamin C with my breakfast. Maybe I should take it easy today, and stop having so many adventures.
Earlier today, after breakfast, I was feeling energetic and restless, and I said to Andrew, I’m going to take a walk. He came along, of course.
We walked over to the new “Onemount” mall that’s been built on the west end of Lake Park, a few blocks from my apartment. There is a waterpark inside the mall. That’s pretty common in Korea – waterparks, I mean. But there is also a “snow park” in this mall – ice skating, manufactured snow, an indoor sledding slope. That’s not so common. I think some hot day I’m going to pay the entrance fee and try it out.
Then we walked into Lake Park. That’s a common enough walking route for me. The air was stormy and thundery and deep gray overcast. It was beautiful. And there was enough of a breeze that the heat wasn’t so stifling.
I knew there was a “toilet museum” inside Lake Park – I’d seen it before. But I’d never actually visited it, although it’s a kind of famous (or infamous) landmark in Ilsan. Today it was open as Andrew and I walked past, so we visited the Toilet Museum.
Then we saw some men running one of those sewer-exploring robots – just something in maintenance going on unrelated to being next to the Toilet Museum. We watched them for a while – they seemed disorganized.
We walked toward the southeast end of the lake. That area looking toward the highway bridge over the lake always reminds me a little bit of Minneapolis’ Uptown area.
Then we walked around the end of the lake and ended up going to HomePlus, where I bought some vitamins and exotic tea and a few other things.
Then spontaneously I said, “How about instead of going home for lunch we go to that Indian Restaurant that I like that’s near here?”
Andrew seemed to like this idea.
So we had Indian food for lunch: samosa, vegetable raita, malkhi dal, some mutton curry, lots of garlic naan bread. Very delicious.
It was pouring rain so hard when we left the restaurant that we stopped in a cafe and had coffee and talked for a long time.
When the rain had let up and we finished our coffee, we hurried home and I quickly got ready and went to work.
Work felt good today: I felt useful. I did a substitute teaching in one class, because of a scheduling mistake. Then I corrected some student essays and helped fixed the scheduling mistake.
I like feeling useful.
I should post a health update.
Yesterday I visited Dr Ryu at the clinic before going to work. The infection that has been so problematic in my neck appears largely to have cleared up, but due to scheduling issues and wanting to be sure of everything, I will start the radiation next week (Monday, August 12).
I must admit I have apprehensions about starting radiation – who wouldn’t. They make you contemplate a truly horrific list of possible complications and side effects: OMG radiation causes cancer! blindness! death!
You have to sign that list.
Well, I’m trying to stay positive. Sticking to the percentages. I survived the surgery swimmingly, where the percentages were much worse than the list of percentages on the radiation. So everything should be just fine, right?
But it’s hard to stay positive, sometimes.
I’m going to try to really enjoy this week of “pure healthiness,” such as it is. I’m definitely healthier than when I had that tumor – despite my various disfigurements (neck, wrist, thigh) I feel healthier and more vital than I have in maybe a year. It’s become clear to me, over the past month, how much that tumor was
grinding down my health and sense of well-being long before I was aware what it was or what it was doing.
I will survive this.
At right is an image found online of an immobilization apparatus in use that is very similar to the one I was “fitted” with two weeks ago, what will be used for my therapy. The plastic webbing over the face is essentially rigid, but custom-moulded to the contours of the head. In my set, there is a second set of webbing that goes down over my upper torso and neck, and then there is an insert that goes into my mouth, a bit like an orthodontic retainer but serving to immobilize my jaw and tongue.
I stayed at work for basically the regular schedule – 2:30 to 10:00. I didn’t teach any classes, but I did some useful things, discussed some things with the boss, finished editing and posting the speech test videos from last week, talked to a lot of students in the corridors. I didn’t, in fact, feel compelled to surf the internet, although I did experience some boredom.
So there I was, sitting at work, and a little bit bored, because I was waiting on something that I needed to do later on but I didn’t have much to do right at that moment.
Looking for something to do, my eye landed on one of the aphorisms Curt has posted on the wall near the door.
미치지 않으면 미치지 못한다
michi-ji anh-eu-myeon michi-ji mot-han-da
be-passionate-PRENEG not-be-IF reach[something]-PRENEG can’t-do-PRES
This expression relies on the double-meaning of the verb 미치다, which can mean both “to be crazy” (i.e. passionate) as well as to reach some goal.
Hence, quite loosely, “If we are not passionate, we will never reach any goal.“
3. The Habit of Perfection
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (British poet, 1844-1889)
Brother Andrew and I went to Myeongdong to meet my friend Seungbae Lee. We met in front of the old cathedral – mostly because it’s an easy-to-find landmark.
We went for lunch at a Japanese place, where I had 돈까스 [don-kka-seu = Japanese fried pork cutlet]. I didn’t used to like donkkaseu but after my time in the hospital when I discovered that it was easy to eat with my broken mouth, I fell in love with it for sentimental reasons. So I had it and it was good.
Here are my brother and my friend at that restaurant.
Then we went over to a place called 남산골한옥마을 which is a kind of tourist-oriented “Korean folk village” reconstruction thing right on the north end of Namsan Park on the southeast end of the Myeongdong neighborhood.
It was really too hot to behave very touristy, but we tried, and I took some pictures.
Finally we gave up since it was too hot, and we spent over an hour sitting around in an air-conditioned convenience store drinking cold drinks.
Then we came back home.
Today is the one-month "anniversary" of my massive surgery, which was on July 4th. The tumor was removed, and so far no metastasis.
That means by the logic of our gregorian calendar, this day Sunday, August 4th, is the mensiversary (a real word) of my cancer-freedom. I have always had a strange fascination for the calendrical recyclings of dates and numbers, and I suspect this monthiversary (another real word, but much more etymologically abominable) will henceforth hold a deep meaning for me.
To celebrate, I woke up, ate nurungji and a large, fat Korean plum and coffee for breakfast, and stared at the internet for half an hour.
Somebody’s already worked out the answer to that question, through the publication of “garfield minus garfield” – a re-rendition of Garfield comics with the cat removed.
I will not be the first to say that this seems brilliant.
Will anyone remember me when I’m gone?
The answer for the fictional Jon, at least, is an unqualified “yes.”
I took my brother to Gangnam today. Somos los hermanos Güeyes (Ways, because of our family name, get it?), y fuimos gangnam stylin.
We ate tacos at a pretty good taco joint, called Dos Tacos, that I like to visit. I ordered fish tacos. Milestone: I ate spicy food for lunch. First time in 4 months.
Amazingly, when I sat down, a poster from my hometown (more-or-less) was facing me.
We went to the bookstore which caused me to spend money. Then we walked between raindrops in an afternoon rainstorm.
We had some coffee at a very crowded cafe, and I showed Andrew the Korean Language hagwon where I studied Korean full-time back in 2010. Then he said, “I’d be open to going to a museum.”
Using my smartphone, I found the closest museum to where we were, and we went there. It was the “South Branch” (“남” = nam) of the Seoul Museum of Art. It was kind of small but the price was right (“free”) and it was not that amazing, but it had some interesting decorative art / interior design stuff. Pictures weren’t allowed inside.
Here is a chair sculpture I saw outside, though.
And I was looking through the columns of the lovely old pre-Japanese building (it was once the Belgian Embassy to Joseon Korea around 1900) at the sun.
At home for dinner I had kimchi with some rice among other things. I’m almost back to my pre-horrible-symptoms (i.e. at least 4 months ago) eating capacity and range. This is pleasing.
I don’t know why I feel the urge to try to understand such difficult things in Korean when I can still barely communicate my needs in a restaurant. I guess it’s just more interesting to me.
I was somewhat randomly poking around in my Korean-English Dictionary of Buddhist Terms and ran across this phrase:
이분법(二分法)에 대한 경계(警戒)
dichotomy-LOC face-PASTPART caution
I would translate this, roughly, as:
Beware of Dichotomies
Which is awesome, as it could be caveat dichotomia in Latin.
The context was an entry on 시비구불선 (是非俱不禪) on p. 645 of my dictionary – the mistake of meditating on right and wrong, more or less.
Here’s what the rest of the Korean says:
시비는 참선과 거리가 멀며,
right/wrong-TOPIC meditation-WITH distance be-far-WHILE
시비가 있는 곳엔
right/wrong-SUBJ have-PRESPART place-AT-TOPIC
진리가 있을 수 없다.
truth-SUBJ have-POSSIBLE-NOT
The English on the same entry isn’t really a translation – it’s its own thing:
Meditation has nothing to do with arguments: Where there is an argument about right or wrong, this and that, there is no wisdom or truth.
The gist is the same, but the detailed meaning seems widely variant.
Here is a random picture: the luminous November sky in Hongnong, 2010.
Identidad
Tat tuam asi.
(Tú eres esto: es decir, tú eres uno
Y lo mismo que cuanto te rodea;
Tú eres la cosa en sí).
El que sabe que es uno con Dios, logra el Nirvana:
un Nirvana en que toda tiniebla se ilumina;
vertiginoso ensanche de la conciencia humana,
que es sólo proyección de la Idea Divina
en el Tiempo…
El fenómeno, lo exterior, vano fruto
de la ilusión, se extingue: ya no hay pluralidad,
y el yo, extasiado, abísmase por fin en lo absoluto,
¡y tiene como herencia toda la eternidad!
– Amado Nervo (poeta mexicano, 1870-1919)
A joke for your consideration:
"Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"
I had some strange dreams involving misplacing my shirt while in the hospital. I was mystified, and the doctors and nurses were mystified, since misplacing a shirt while having an IV in your arm, is not, in fact, a simple task – it's really hard to take off a shirt over the IV tube and saline-bags, etc.
Andrew wasn't any help. He had misplaced his shirt, too.
What's that all about? Who knows.
I slept a full night, however, with no insomnia. That's a good feeling.
About once a year, I make a trip out to Camp Edwards. It’s not far. I figured with Andrew here, it was as good a time as any to go look at it.
I was stationed at Camp Edwards, 296th Forward Support Battalion, Bravo Company, 2nd Infantry Division, in 1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists – the US Army closed it in the late 90’s. A few years back, when I went there, the buildings were still there but abandoned, but the last few times I’ve gone, it’s just a vacant lot with a fence around it.
From a block from my house, we got on the #600 bus and that dropped us right at the “front gate” of Camp Edwards, after a wending half-hour bus ride through Gyoha and Geumchon (neither of which really existed in 1991). This is the front gate, below. The bridge structure is the railroad track, now elevated. In 1991 it was at grade level.
We walked along the fence and I pointed out where the various features of Camp Edwards were located: the dining hall, the barracks, HQ, the warehouse, and the motor pool. Here is a picture of where the motor pool building was – I remember that spindly tall white-barked tree (birch?) that’s kind of in the right of center of the photo, as being in the motor pool’s “front yard.”
I spontaneously decided that I was feeling healthy enough to try to walk around Camp Edwards. I haven’t ever tried this. I’m sure we circumnavigated the camp at various times on PT exercises and activities back when I was stationed there, including things like our periodic off-post runs. But certainly I’d never tried it since.
So we set off northward down a country lane.
The country lane led to a farm.
And it led through some woods.
And we came to another farm.
And we saw a Korean farmer in his field.
Then we got a little bit lost in the woods. Although we ran out of road, we didn’t run out of abandoned chairs.
After tromping through the brush a bit, I decided I wasn’t up to cross-country hiking, so we went back along the road, and around a small hill and came to a gravesite (which abound in rural Korea).
We came to an area that I recognized, through 22 years of mental haze, as being the “back” of Camp Edwards. There was a small concrete wall with old machine-gun emplacements, and this gateway, where Andrew posed with his umbrella (it was raining at this point, though not hard).
We walked along the road, back south, now, having gotten at least halfway around Camp Edwards moving counterclockwise.
We came to giant “tank trap” of impressive engineering and dimensions.
I saluted Andrew from inside the tank trap.
Then we walked up the road and came to a new development called PalmSprings (팜스프링).
We passed a Korean mini-mall with the parking in front, American-style. This is sufficiently rare in my experience, in Korea, to be notable, so I took a picture. I believe this is all on land that was formerly part of Camp Edwards.
Then we walked to Geumchon station and took the train back to Ilsan. In Ilsan, I wanted to wait for a package that was being delivered at KarmaPlus – even though KarmaPlus was closed due to the summer break.
So we stopped and had a very, very decadant lunch at “Burger Sharp,” a restaurant right next door the KarmaPlus building, that’s very popular with the students.
I swear, in 5 years of living in Ilsan and working in this Hugok neighborhood, I have only eaten at this place once or twice. But I figured, what the hey? I’m living somewhat free-and-loose with respect to my normal strictures, lately.
Then, due to a communication error, we waited for more than an hour for a package that was already there waiting for me. Ah well. I need to improve my Korean so I understand when they tell me these things.
Then we came home.
One thing having a visitor (namely Brother Andrew) here has done is that it's ignited my cooking bug. I love to cook, but I often get into lazy ruts of way-too-simple foods when living alone and cooking only for myself. Having someone here, I start getting creative.
Yesterday I made a really tasty tuna salad for lunch, with chopped almonds and an aging nectarine, and ginger and mayo and blackberry vinegar and some leftover curry spice. We slathered it onto Russian rye bread (bought in Russiatown on Wednesday), sliced and toasted. It was hard for me to eat (the toast too crumbly = tongue steering crisis) but very good.
Then for dinner last night I made wilted spinach – in a pan with a few tablespoons of oil, I fried up some onion and chopped almonds (yes I'm getting rid of too many almonds) and lots of garlic and some spices, then added the spinach and turned off the heat. The spinach wilts in the garlicky juices but doesn't "cook." I boiled some tricolor rotini pasta and chopped in some tomato and added a cup of store-bought alfredo sauce from a jar and ground nutmeg.
It was highly delicious – my best cooking since leaving the hospital.
My dear brother Andrew has been so, so good to me. He’s being an excellent nursemaid, provides almost entirely positive moral support, holds my hand when the doctors are mean to me, and makes sure my fridge is full (and then keeps emptying it too).
So keeping Andrew entertained is foremost among my own tasks. Today I feel accomplished in that realm.
Andrew likes to be outside, but not in the city. He’s a forest and country type person.
So, in the morning, I dragged him onto the subway to Yeonsinnae, and then we hiked uphill until we came to Bulgwang Temple and then the entrance to Bukhansan National Park, which sits right in the heart of the northern half of Seoul, a bit the way the Santa Monica Mountains embed themselves in the heart of L.A.
He was clearly pleased when we hiked up into the woods, among the rocks. I left him there, went back downhill, and came home. He came home several hours later.
Some pictures.
The temple.
Andrew admiring craftsmanship.
Me sitting on the temple stoop.
A view of some rocks, from the trail. Andrew likes rocks.
The view looking back toward Yeonsinnae.
Andrew on the trail.
Passing the temple again on the way back down. There was a monk inside, chanting, so I stopped for a while.
The temple bell tower – but it’s missing its bell.
Then, this afternoon, I showed him the strangest movie yet, from among my bizarre and eclectic collection. I’ve been showing him a lot of my favorites, but he seemed to rather enjoy this one, especially. I reviewed the movie, Love Exposure, here.
Here are two temple panel paintings, which I’ll post for archival purposes. The first is a bit unusual – it feels like a “placeholder” as opposed to a true painting.
