How are you today?
I am fine thank you, and you?
Update, later: No news is good news, right? So I guess things are OK.
[daily log: walking, 11km]
Month: August 2016
Caveat: Nonnet #26
(Poem #51 on new numbering scheme)
I want to discuss these rice-eating rules, since, for me, rice is a problem. Pieces get lost in my mouth, dodging my broken tongue. Sometimes I will choke. Porridge can work. Starvation also works.
– This nonnet is a “response” to Jeong Ho-seung’s poem that I posted earlier today.
Caveat: 밥 먹는 법
One thing that happens every time my friend Peter leaves Korea is that I get a pile of books. I am his Asian book storage facility, because he knows I appreciate them.
One book he left with me is a book of poems entitled “A letter not sent” by Jeong Ho-seung (정호승). The book is bilingual, which I like, with translation by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang. Brother Anthony is a Catholic monk based in Seoul and prolific translator of Korean poetry – I’ve written about him before on this blog. Peter actually seems to know the man through their shared membership in the Royal Asiatic Society.
I particularly liked this poem (note that I copied the poem’s text from the book, so any strange typing mistakes, especially in the Korean where my typing skills are imprecise, are my own and not in the original).
밥 먹는 법
밥상 앞에
무릎을 꿇지 말 것
눈물로 만든 밥모다
모래로 만든 밥을 먼저 먹을 것
무엇보다도
전시된 밥은 먹지 말 것
먹더라도 혼자 먹을 것
아니면 차라리 굶을 것
굶어서 가벼워질 것
때때로
바람 부는 날이면
풀잎을 햇살에 비벼 먹을 것
그래도 배가 고프면
입을 없앨 것
– 정호승 (한국 시인 1950년-)
How to Eat
No kneeling
in front of the meal table;
the rice made of sand should be eaten
before the rice made of tears.
Above all else
rice on display should not be eaten;
if you must eat it, you should eat it alone;
otherwise you should fast;
by fasting you will grow lighter.
From time to time
on windy days,
you should mix grass with sunlight and eat that;
and should you still feel hungry
you should do away with your mouth.
– Jeong Ho-seung (Korean poet, b1950)
One comment on the title. The translation of the title, “How to Eat,” isn’t completely literal. Literally, it is “Rules for eating rice.” But “eat” and “eat rice” are essentially synonymous in Korean (in a way that can sometimes lead to confusion for Westerners).
I very much prefer the literal title, and I think the poem is playing with the semantic overlap between “eat” and “eat rice” which means the title should include “rice.”
I have written a nonnet as a kind of “response” to this poem. I will post it tonight as my daily nonnet.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #25
(Poem #50 on new numbering scheme)
Automobiles are a kind of theme that were roaring through my childhood. My father grew up with cars. My youngest memories thrum with the noises emerging from my father's Model A.
– a nonnet
Caveat: President Grump
Some years ago, I guess, the children's TV show Sesame Street presciently deconstructed the Trump phenomenon.
Interesting!
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #24
(Poem #49 on new numbering scheme)
Last night we got a refreshing rain. so my coworker turned to me and wanted to know what kind of idiom we use to express that breath of cool pleasure in English. "I don't know."
– a nonnet
Caveat: Breezy Farewell
I went into Seoul yesterday to bid farewell, once again, to my friend Peter.
Mostly it was just hanging out and watching him finish packing. A few of his other friends came by, too. I'm not sure my social skills are very good, anymore.
It was a cool, windy day, relative to the recent oppressive heat of August. A squall of rain crossed the city as we were leaving. The air was quite clear and the clouds were many stark shades of gray, like an abstract coloring book pattern in the sky.
Here is a picture of Peter, with a friend of his, and me, after going out in the street from his apartment (well, former apartment, now). In fact it is raining lightly in this picture, but it's hard to tell.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #23
(Poem #48 on new numbering scheme)
Some kids have a lot to say in class. Other students stare wordlessly. I want them to feel their worth, understand our topics, and become engaged. Mostly I fail. It is hard. They just sit.
– a nonnet
Caveat: I’ve said I don’t like to complain on this here blog thing but here let me complain some more
I've been feeling a lot of stress, lately. The work cycle is at that typical September peak, as kids start their Fall semester at school, we wrap up the summer special classes, and enrollment starts heading for that hagwon-biz Fall surge. I have month-end writing tests to score, student comments to write, and new student interviews.
Further, there has been a kind of rumbling of parental dissatisfaction with the current state of the curriculum in the youngest cohorts. That means lots of wasted time in incoherent discussions and meetings about curriculum, and the resulting decisions which, inevitably, will not be the ideas I advocated for.
Layered on that is the fact that September 1 is the annual contract renewal date, which always forces me to contemplate, once again, the occasionally Faustian nature of my current, complicated, and unsatisfying relationship with my job, my host country, and the Korean healthcare system. It is easy to begin to wonder if it's all worth it.
Additionally, I was "volunteered" for some extra work, at work – of the least favorite kind, which involves sitting and mucking with a computer trying to transcribe some simply atrocious English conversations: Bad, non-native speakers talking buzzword-filled English to the worst kind of consonant-glottalizing, modal-verb-abusing, corporatese-spewing Britishers with stunningly loud background noises and interruptions. I feel like my willingness to be helpful is being abused, and of course it's hard when the utility of the work at hand seems dubious at best.
I have a hospital appointment coming up, too. I always dread those – anticipating them is much worse than just being there dealing with it. Having moved past the worst of the jaw necrosis problem last Spring, I enjoyed a relatively hospital-free summer after the Big Anniversary Scan in July. So my "just deal with it" reflex is rusty.
All said and done, I feel unhappy.
I am going to Seoul today to bid farewell (version 3.0? 4.0?) to my friend Peter, who is once again returning to the US, this time to start graduate school.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: Nonnet #22
(Poem #47 on new numbering scheme)
Fall can't come all at once. Fall must sneak in, catch us unawares with a yellow leaf here and a northerly breeze there. I smelled autumn's covert rustlings today: percepts tasting of woodsmoke.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: All right
Did you hear about the guy that got the left side of his body cut off? He’s all right now.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #21
(Poem #46 on new numbering scheme)
That ineffable cobalt color was painting the glowering clouds. Conspiratorially, the air whispered its plans for inundation. Then I felt it on my cheek: one cool drop.
– a nonnet
Caveat: 強固無比
I learned this four character aphorism on my building’s elevator last night.
強固無比
강고무비
gang.go.mu.bi
strong-firm-no-compare
“Incomparable strength and steadiness.”
It can be made into a descriptive verb, too: 강고무비하다. The underlying meaning of this 고사성어 seemed more transparent than most – the dictionary definition given for the aphorism is simply: 비교할 수 없이 굳세고 단단함 (Incomparable firmness and strength).
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #20
(Poem #45 on new numbering scheme)
Joy is not easily correlated with other events. Instead, it arises, as if spontaneously, immanent to the warp and woof of quotidian experience.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: A Case Study in the Efficient Allocation of Limited Intellectual Resources by a Third Grade Elementary EFL Student
In my low-level TQ cohort, including second and third grade elementary students, we were practicing a very low-level "interview" format, starting with "What is your name?" Beforehand, I had given them formulaic "frames" where they could fill in their answers, and had helped them fill them in.
Teacher: "What is your favorite color?"
David: "I like yellow."
Teacher: "Why do you like yellow."
David: "I like it because chickens are yellow."
… later…
Teacher: "What is yoru favorite animal?"
David: "I like chickens."
Teacher: "Why do you like chickens?"
David: "I like it because chickens are yellow."
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #19 “Sum”
(Poem #44 on new numbering scheme)
Some days feel like things are going well. Some days start well but end badly. Some days I dread but end great. Some days are smooth like glass. Some days are bumpy. Some days give joy. Some days don't. Some days suck.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Talking Through Britain
I found these two videos rather fascinating – essentially, in both cases the presenters step through discussing various dialects of the British Isles while at the same time reproducing those accents quite well.
I have a difficult relationship with various English language dialects: on the one hand, I find them fascinating and I work hard to be able to tell them apart; on the other hand, I am utterly incapable of consistently reproducing them in a sustained manner, which is weird to me, because I'm actually somewhat able to do something similar with various Spanish dialects. Is it perhaps that my own mother-tongue – Northern California English – is too deeply embedded and thus I can't seem to override it, while with Spanish, since no single dialect is deeply embedded, I'm more able to shift around the dialect space? Or, more likely, perhaps I'm really not that good at doing it in Spanish either, but I'm sufficiently incompetent that I don't realize what I'm doing wrong.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #18 “Moss removal”
(Poem #43 on new numbering scheme)
Maybe I am becoming a plant. Every Sunday I cut my hair. In the weird fluorescent light, today, in the bathroom, I looked at the floor. Surprisingly, the clippings looked like moss.
– a nonnet
Caveat: umop apisdn
UPSIDE DOWN can be spelled upside down using right way up letters of the alphabet:
umop apisdn.
Note that this only works if you use a font with a "double-storey" "a" - which is to say, if you use a "single-storey" font like the notorious Comic Sans, or anything in italics, it doesn't quite work:
*umop apisdn.
*umop apisdn.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #17 “The breeze”
(Poem #42 on new numbering scheme)
Small ripples propagate across the brown, cream-colored surface of my morning's coffee, put there by the blowing wind exhaled by my electric fan which perches in my window, bird-like.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Enslaved on an alien planet
A few weeks ago I finished that book my friend Peter loaned me – Hendrick Hamel's Journal. Essentially, I read it in one sitting – it's not a long book. Peter guessed correctly that the parts I found most interesting were the appendices and footnotes. In general, however, it reads pretty well – it is a remarkable gateway to a truly alien world: a 17th century Dutchman stranded in an even more alien 17th century Korea. Yet I was impressed his remarkable equanimity and his refusal to categorically condemn his captors (indeed they made him a slave, which was the typical fate of foreigners landing in Korea in the period).
I recommend this book even to those without a specific interest in Korea. In some ways, the narrative most resembles those "stuck on an alien planet" tropes common to certain types of science fiction. That, in itself, makes it quite fascinating.
I have often joked that in my long-term residence in Korea, I have "emigrated" to one of those alien planets that so fascinated me when I was younger. This book captures the same idea. Korea of the present day is hardly alien at all, compared to the Korea of that era.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Caveat: Nonnet #16 “As worms will do”
(Poem #41 on new numbering scheme)
Perhaps the ground has dried out too much. The last rain was a while ago. So the worm started a trip across the vast sidewalk, its goal uncertain. The sun's so hot. It wriggles; going east.
– a nonnet
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Nonnet #15 “A bit of a tautology”
(Poem #40 on new numbering scheme)
Some say the world is a living thing; Or that it's a clockwork machine. But I don't see it that way. Instead, recursively, the world gives a proof of the theorem that says that we are here.
– a nonnet
Caveat: The Mountains of Lower Zhokzonzad and Other Interesting Locations
There is a twitter account that is a "bot" (an automated account that posts content according to a preset program rather than under human direction), called @unchartedatlas. It posts algorithmically-generated fantasy maps. All the objects (features, names, etc.) on the little maps it posts are randomly generated. Some of the maps are quite interesting.
Mountains of Lower Zhokzonzad
— Uncharted Atlas (@unchartedatlas)
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #14 “Lo que cantó la cigarra”
(Poem #39 on new numbering scheme)
Ví que amaneció nublado pero ya al mediodía se había convertido en día de calor. Una cigarra allá arriba me cantó, "Hola, pues."
– un noneto
[Update: My friend Bob suggested I translate this into English, but retaining the nonnet form. I took the challenge:]
I saw that the morning dawned cloudy but by the middle of the day the weather had changed so it had become a hot day. Then a cicada somewhere up there sang to me "Hello, there."
– a nonnet
Caveat: The hardest part of my job is going out to dinner with colleagues
Last night we had one of those post-work dinner meetings as is the Korean custom, called 회식 (which is one of the few words where I find the "official" romanization highly dubious as far as implied pronunciation: officially, [hoesik], but what you hear might be better written in English as "hwehshik").
It was unlike most hwehshik of this sort, however, in that it was spontaneous - meaning there was no advance notice. Curt even admitted this, trying to teach me a Korean word which means "spontaneous" but which, as so often occurs, failed to stick in my calcified brain.
I don't really deal well with unexpected demands on my time. I think in general, I can cope with unexpected occurrences – meaning when students do unexpected things in class, or there is a sudden schedule change at work. Indeed, some of my colleagues comment on my seeming equanimity in the face of these kinds of things. But these types of unexpected things occur within the boundaries of my normal working hours. On the other hand, after-work activities infringe on time I perceive as my own. As long as I know they're coming, I don't really have a problem with them – like a pre-work meeting or a morning parent-centered event that we all know is coming, I work them into the calculus of my "work time." But unannounced, I don't deal with them well.
Anyway, this is all to say, I had an unpleasant time, and it was unpleasant from the moment I knew it was happening, 5 minutes after coming out of my last class at 10pm. The after-work dinner is stressful for other reasons, too.
It involves eating. I don't enjoy eating, and I feel self-conscious of this fact, because the people around me make eating and the enjoyment of food such a focus of social interaction. I'm sure I've written before that I don't see this as a specifically Korean trait – it's a universal human characteristic. With my post-surgical, handicapped mouth, with my lack of taste, with my constant struggle to swallow things correctly without devolving into a fit of gagging or choking, eating is task that exists in my mind at about the same level as cleaning my toilet: not at all enjoyable and only to be done because it must.
Furthermore, of course, during these times everyone is babbling on in rapid Korean, and so my sense of shame and failure around my lack of mastery of the language impinges. At work, by nature of the work, I intereact with my students in English. That's my job, and there is no guilt in it. But for socializing in a country where I have lived so long, I feel a moral obligation (not to mention the practical necessity) to do so in Korean – so the fact that it still doesn't come easily feels like a moral failing. I'm letting the people around me down, and my fundamental incompetence is on display.
This morning I feel gloomy and discouraged, because of these things. Perhaps I should do like Grace, and simply refuse to participate – although clearly her reasons for boycotting the hwehshik are different from what mine would be.
In fact, I have always rather liked the concept, abstractly. It seems a strong and useful and important social custom, as a way to build a cohesive social unit out of a group of people who work together. But the way that it challenges me personally, I really doubt if it's useful for my overall mental equilibrium.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #13 “The commute home”
(Poem #38 on new numbering scheme)
Sometimes at day's end I'm exhausted. I finish work and I walk home. I feel like my mind is dust. I can't even daydream. I find some music. I move one foot... the other, heavy foot.
– a nonnet
Caveat: la palabra sin ecos
POEMA 8
Abeja blanca zumbas ebria de miel en mi alma
y te tuerces en lentas espirales de humo.
Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos,
el que lo perdió todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.
Última amarra, cruje en ti mi ansiedad última.
En mi tierra desierta eres la última rosa.
Ah silenciosa!
Cierra tus ojos profundos. Allí aletea la noche.
Ah desnuda tu cuerpo de estatua temerosa.
Tienes ojos profundos donde la noche alea.
Frescos brazos de flor y regazo de rosa.
Se parecen tus senos a los caracoles blancos.
Ha venido a dormirse en tu vientre una mariposa de sombra.
Ah silenciosa!
He aquí la soledad de donde estás ausente.
Llueve. El viento del mar caza errantes gaviotas.
El agua anda descalza por las calles mojadas.
De aquel árbol se quejan, como enfermos, las hojas.
Abeja blanca, ausente, aún zumbas en mi alma.
Revives en el tiempo, delgada y silenciosa.
Ah silenciosa!
– Pablo Neruda (poeta chilena, 1904-1973)
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #12 “Near Uijeongbu [의정부]”
(Poem #37 on new numbering scheme)
Looking out the window of the train, the stretch of elevated track lends a feeling of flying, as if in slow motion, across cityscapes which seem almost infinite... full of souls.
– a nonnet
Caveat: 6502
When I was in middle school, we had an Apple ][ computer. I messed around with programming – not very seriously, but I taught myself the rudiments of the MOS 6502 Assembler ("machine language"). The 6502 is perhaps one of the most famous CPUs in the history of personal computing, since not only was it the CPU in the first Apple computers, it was also the heart of early Nintendo and Atari game systems. Even today, there are "6502 fan clubs" and "retro computing hobbyists" focused on the platform.
Later, in college, I took a few computer science courses (enough to make a minor), including an assembly language programming class, at that point in time based on the platform of the Motorola 68000 (the CPU in the Macintoshes of the era). I'd had some chance to experience one of that chip's ancestors when in middle school, too, because my uncle had brought home a project he was working on involving a Motorola 6800.
That assembly language class was undoubtedly the most valuable computer science class I took, because if you can make something work in assembly language, you have a genuine understanding of how computers actually work, and this provides an excellent foundation for any future programming efforts. I have long believed that assembly programming should be a foundational course in high school curricula – for all students, at the same level as courses like math, physics or biology.
During the time I was taking that course (1988?), I dug out an already-at-that-time antiquated Apple ㅍ, and with some help from my friend Mark (who at that time was starting his career in embedded systems), I began writing a Lisp language interpreter for the Apple, using the 6502 Assembler directly, and using my battered, red-covered reference manual preserved from the middle school years (the picture at right was found using an online image search, but it looks exactly like my old copy).
I didn't really get much further than the rudiments of my interpreter – I think I got it to respond to some kind of "hello world" instruction, in the vein of
(DEFUN HELLO ()
"HELLO WORLD"
)
(HELLO)
I was unable to solve the "garbage collection" problem (memory management), and I never took the Operating Systems Design course that could have given me the understanding necessary to do that. But it was fun. Recently, remembering this activity, and aware that your average internet browser tab has much more abstract computing power than a 6502 chip, I was curious if there were 6502 emulators available.
Sure enough, there are. Many, many emulators – google is your friend, if you're interested.
Not only are there emulators, but someone has taken the time to construct a fully-functioning "virtual 6502" which is visual – meaning you can watch the signals step through the fully mapped processor as it executes its instructions. You could run Space Invaders on the emulator (if you could find a compiled code for it), and watch the processor step through the execuation of the classic game.
Given I am a nerdly geek, this was interesting to me.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #11 “Visa problems”
(Poem #36 on new numbering scheme)
I have been staying on this planet. The planet is sometimes called Earth. I just have a work visa. So, if I stop working I will have to leave. But departures are sometimes very sad.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Lego Plane Crash
I'm happy to see that other adults are even more adept at wasting time in creative ways than I am.
These guys crashed a legoplane into a legotown and filmed it in slow motion, because it looks cool.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Nonnet #10 “Not actually the territory”
(Poem #35 on new numbering scheme)
Most people see maps as simply tools, or at best, perhaps metaphors. What if a map is not real? What is it a map of? Imagination's distant spaces manifest and made art.
– a nonnet