Caveat: License to Drive

I had let my driver's license expire during my long stay in Korea. Given my health issues with the cancer thing, making it back to Minnesota to renew a license wasn't high on the list. 

In theory, it's possible for me to get a Korean driver's license. But that's really just theory, until I can take the driving skills test in the Korean language. I just don't think my Korean is that good.

The alternative to get a Korean license is to hand over my valid US license – they'll make a trade of it, basically. So that left me with a need to renew my US license.

I went to the Minnesota DMV (not called "DMV" in Minnesota – that's my Californese talking) and stood in line for a few hours and took a written test and paid some money and got my license renewed. This is useful not just for traveling in the US, but for traveling anywhere. 

In fact I had been feeling a lot of stress and worry about whether this would work out. There was a lot of uncertainty because the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's available online documentation was essentially useless. I felt very happy that it went smoothly.

I also visited my storage unit and my "home branch" of my bank in Uptown. 

Then I gave Curt and Mr Jin a bit of a tour of my old haunts around the University of Minnesota, and I felt nostalgic. We rewarded their patience with American cuisine by buying some 순두부 (Tofu soup) at a Korean hole-in-the-wall in Stadium Village (near the University).

[daily log: walking, 4km]

Caveat: Among Quakers

As many of you know, by birth I am a Quaker (or half a Quaker, or maybe three quarters of one). I was not raised as an active Quaker, however – both due to my parents having fairly secular attitudes as well as because in my small childhood town in rural northern California, there was no local meetinghouse.
I was probably mostly aware of my Quaker heritage during the many visits to Southern California, where my paternal grandparents were. I remember attending meeting for worship a few times with my grandmother in the late 70s and early 80s.
One of the oldest and most influential meetings on the west coast is the Orange Grove Meeting in Pasadena. My father was born into that meeting, and my grandfather was active there even while also being part of the Temple City meeting which was adjunct to his farm-cum-school in Temple City.
My own strong association with Orange Grove was indirect, arising out of my employment by the Mexico City Meeting in 1986-87. Mexico City Friends and Orange Grove Friends were (and continue to be) tightly connected through historical, financial and spiritual ties. In fact, my uncle Allen (my father’s older brother) had worked for/with the Mexico City Meeting in the late 1950s.
Mexico City is the only time I was an official member of a meeting. The only other time I was a regular attender of a meeting was also in the context of working for a Quaker institution, when I was teaching high school Spanish and Social Studies at Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown, New Jersey. That was in 1996-97.
I did attend Orange Grove Meeting itself a few times in the early 2000s, but by then I was pretty sure I wasn’t a very good Quaker. I think I have a largely Quaker value system, but I have come to feel that being a typical “values but no doctrine” Quaker has too much of a whiff of hypocrisy for me to be comfortable in that role. The idea of a “church” where lip service is paid to a bible which is not really taken seriously (or even much read) can work fine for many people, but not for me. As I’ve written before, I appreciate Buddhism – at least the variety I have interacted with in Korea – because its adherents explicitly make clear that there is no need to believe anything, unlike Quakers who tend to sweep such discrepancies under the rug. As a committed antitranscendentalist (i.e. no miracles, no magic, period), that is the only kind of religion where I could possibly fit in.
Setting aside such digressions, I attended Quaker Meeting this morning at Orange Grove Friends Meeting. This is because my father has become an attender since he has taken on the role of on-site caretaker there (a role curiously similar to what my role had been at the Mexico City Meeting).
I have enough background with it to feel comfortable – even somewhat nostalgic. Curt and Mr Jin came too, and I’m sure it was several layers of culture shock for them, being not only alien religiously but populated almost exclusively by that weird, heterogeneous tribe of hippieish, dogmatically tolerant, political radicals such as commonly inhabit Quaker meetings. No amount of exposure to heterodox American culture as consumed outside the US could possibly prepare one for this type of American.
Their cultural discomfort afterward was strongly ameliorated by a very pleasant Korean-American Quaker lady named Kwang-hui, whose company I enjoyed and who served as a nice liaison between Koreanism and Quakerism. I was particularly pleased to find that her spoken Korean was much easier to comprehend for me than most varieties. I think that it is often the case that Koreans resident abroad adopt a somewhat simplified variety of Korean, with reduced usage of the many complex verbal periphrases and less “수능 [suneung]” vocabulary (what we would call “SAT vocab” in English, meaning “high-falutin” educated words, typically of Chinese etymology in Korean).
After the meeting we went to an allegedly Mexican restaurant across the street. North Pasadena in recent decades has evolved into largely hispanic neighborhood, so although the place was undeniably Mexican culturally, the cuisine is what I would term “LA generic fast food” – mostly burgers, sandwiches, tacos and burritos, with a few vegetarian entries as a nod to Pasadena’s vaguely upscale, granola-liberal character.
Despite that, being a family-run business meant the barbacoa tacos were pretty authentic, at least to Californio standards. I had one of those, and then a fish taco. These latter only exist where gringos do, when speaking of Mexico proper, but in Southern California they come close to being truly authentic local cuisine. Of course for the Koreans along, it was more immersion in the aspect of my own country that I love and miss most – its sheer perverse diversity. And that was the point. I am working hard to expose Curt and Jin to as much different stuff as possible given the narrow timeframe.
Overall, a nice morning. Then we drove down to the airport and here I am, writing this offline while sardined into another aluminum ovoid tube somewhere over Utah. I will post it once I am online again.
Tomorrow, I will go to Minnesota DMV and then the infamous storage unit. I not sure I will actually undertake the project to move and consolidate my stuff – it feels very overwhelming and frankly I’d rather be a tour guide to my friends.
[daily log: walking, ~2km]

Caveat: Retracings and Gratitude

I lie in bed during a magical hour that happens only once a year in america. That hour is the hour that appears as daylight savings time is ended. That hour retraces the hour between 2 and 3 am (I think), thus passing twice. It is an artifact, just like all hours, but unlike other hours, its artificiality stands outside of rationality, and instead reflects a sheer cultural obstinacy, I suppose. In Korea they don't have this kind of hour, because they don't do daylight savings time. If they did, it would be an occasion for drinking, perhaps – I mean, more drinking than usual.

I am wide awake because I happen to have just arrived in the US and suffer unspeakably from my typical jetlag.

Insomniac, I have been surfing forgotten fragments of my own past, which our modern era allows so seamlessly that it can be done lying in bed holding a glowing rectangle of glass and plastic and silicon.

I discovered a number of old emails, exchanged with my friends during the aftermath of my surgery 3 years ago – friends who I am now about to see again for the first time since that surgery, notably Bob (with Sarah) and Mark (with Amy). Do they have any idea how much their moral support, embroidered across the world's fabric via fragile threads of internet emails, meant to me? I am so sentimentally pleased to finally be able to see them, and to be able to thank them, and to be able to apologize for the inconstancy of my friendship.

This traveling is hard, and the manifold uncertainties that swarm my mind in these contemplative moments, my eyes wide open in the predawn dark, can begin to overwhelm. It helps me to remember the point: I travel now not to explore (exploring seems such a minor need, anymore) but to retrace and reaffirm old bonds – bonds which have permitted me to survive into my present moment.

Caveat: Pasadenaland

I am in my "patria" (in the etymological sense of "land of my father"): Pasadena. I am staying at my father's house, which is new since the last time I saw him four years ago. He's pretty settled into it, though.

I'm pretty jetlagged, so I won't spend a lot of time blogging. 

Addendum: Picture from eating dinner at one of my dad's "regular" spots, Coco's in Pasadena on Lake Avenue. These are familiar haunts to me.

picture

..

[daily log: walking, ~4km (mostly in the airports)]

Caveat: Nonnet #99 “Sufficient enumeration”

(Poem #117 on new numbering scheme)

Ninety-nine nonnets are sufficient
to show the possibilities
of the short poetic form.
Anyway, it's Fall now.
I have made enough
and I believe
I should stop.
I will
stop.

This is my last nonnet. I will not be posting daily poetry while I travel in the US over the next two weeks, but hopefully can renew the habit, with a new genre, upon my return to Korea.

[This is an automated, pre-scheduled blog post – I expect I’m somewhere over the Pacific, right now.]

picture[daily log: sitting, 9657km]

Caveat: falling out of ilsan

The last view of the Hugok neighborhood, hours before departure (and incidentally confirming that I still know how to post to my blog from my phone).

picture

Caveat: Scattered

I'm just feeling really scattered and disorganized as the last days pass before I depart on my trip to the US. As I've commented before, I feel like since my cancer experience, my personality has fundamentally changed – traveling, in general, is not fun for me anymore – which no doubt seems shocking to those who have known me for a long time.

The idea of travel, now, feels like a giant potentiality made up of mostly complications, stress and discomfort. I do genuinely look forward to seeing old friends, family, and places, but I also feel extremely stressed, and I feel none of that "open ended" excitement or "flow" that used to be the main emotions around anticipated travel. I have become a kind of half-time hermit not just in lifestyle but perhaps in spirit as well.

I have a lot of work things to get done before leaving on Saturday – most notably, I have syllabuses to create for all my classes, so the substitute can know what to do. Also, grades and student comments need to be entered for October.

picture[daily log: walking, 7.5km]

Caveat: the kingdom of takedowns of popularizing books on linguistics that get it wrong

I recently read a review of a book (The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe) I was already uninterested in, based on other mentions of it on various linguistics-oriented blogs. The book has received a huge amount of attention in the mainstream media as one of those books on "linguistics for non-linguists," and apparently contains an attack on Chomsky's approach to linguistic universals, and challenges the importance of his contributions. It also, incidentally, attacks Darwin. So there's that.

I'm no huge fan of Chomsky, but it's not his theoretical work that has annoyed me so much over the years, but rather his "armchair anarchism," and the seeming hypocritical disconnect between his anti-authoritarian politics and his somewhat dogmatic (i.e. authoritarianish) and unquestionably totalizing approach to his field of specialization (syntax). How does a self-avowed anarchist not see the irony in dogmatically propagating a theory with the a Foucauldian title like "government and binding"?

Nevertheless, and setting aside his academic dogmatism, Chomsky's insights to the field of syntax were revolutionary, and even if they are increasingly being called into question by other linguists, he deserves his reputation. His work has been foundational.

Therefore the review is right on target. It rightly defends Chomsky's intellectual legacy, which regardless of the weaknesses of his forays outside of syntax, should be secure.

picture[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: giving witch-doctors a bad name

As the evolving scandal around President Park Geun-hye and her "spiritual advisor" Choi Soon-sil continues to dominate the media, I have ambivalent feelings.

On the one hand, this reminds me a little bit of the potential scandal that never really took root around Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrologers. Imagine if it had turned out that there was documented evidence that Nancy's astrologers had been writing policy speeches for Ronald Reagan (and maybe this was true, but there was never any "smoking gun"), and that said astrologers had made billions of dollars through extortion and influence peddling to business leaders. 

On the other hand, there is an element of "moral panic" about this scandal that is quite distasteful to me. My concern lies at the intersection between certain very conservative social forces in Korean society (linked to both Evangelical Christianity and traditional, Joseon-Era Neoconfucianism) and the long-standing cultural habit of condemning and persecuting the ancient shamanistic practices which are the substrate of Korean culture. These practices go under the rubric of "Muism" and have been persecuted and suppressed for at least 1500 years, since Buddhism became the state religion in the Three Kingdoms Era. Yet they remain quite strong, and they have always been connected to a kind of Korean "counterculture" that seems have an almost hippie-pagan flavor (in the sense familiar to westerners) yet is also deeply traditional. It helps to imagine Korean hillbillies.

I despise that this scandal is serving to reinforce the "superstition against superstition" that especially Evangelicals use to condemn nonbelievers. Yet the behavior of the President and her friend, in this context, has been self-evidently reprehensible. This is the sort of thing that could serve to increase the Christian right's stranglehold on South Korea's polity, if carefully spun.  

As I've said before, there are positive ways that Christianity's weird, unprecedented takeover of South Korea during the last 50 years has enabled the culture to leapfrog out of its most xenophobic and caste-driven tendencies that were its premodern heritage, but I have always seen Muism and Buddhism, as well as Korea's many vibrant, unconventional syncretistic cults, such as they remain, as important counterweights to the excessive "holier-than-thou" moralizing and intolerance emanating from the mostly American-influenced, Pentecostal churches. 

Actually, I find the odd links between one of those bizarre cults, 영세교 ([yeongsegyo], called "Church of Eternity" in English) and the Park dynasty (father dictator and daughter current president) fascinating. They might lend some insight into the Parks' odd relationship with the Korean establishment. That "church," founded by a former Buddhist monk, seems to be equal parts Christianity, Buddhism, and Muism. The daughter of the founder is the one at the center of the current scandal.

picture[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

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