(Poem #243 on new numbering scheme)
Some pines that lurk along the path might make a plan to lift off Earth like dandelion seeds, but then the wind will shift.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Month: March 2017
Caveat: 내 마음에도 눈이 내리리라
눈 오는 지도(地圖)
順伊(순이)가 떠난다는 아침에 말 못할 마음으로 함박눈이 나려, 슬픈 것처럼 窓(창) 밖에 아득히 깔린 地圖(지도) 위에 덮인다.
房방 안을 돌아다보아야 아무도 없다. 壁(벽)과 天井(천정)이 하얗다.
房(방) 안에까지 눈이 나리는 것일까. 정말 너는 잃어버린 歷史(역사)처럼 홀홀이 가는 것이냐, 떠나기 前(전)에 일러둘 말이 있던 것을 편지를 써서도 네가 가는 곳을 몰라 어느 거리, 어느 마을, 어느 지붕 밑, 너는 내 마음 속에만 남아 있는 것이냐.
네 쪼그만 발자욱을 눈이 자꾸 나려 덮여 따라갈 수도 없다.
눈이 녹으면 남은 발자욱 자리마다 꽃이 피리니 꽃 사이로 발자욱을 찾아 나서면 一年(일 년) 열두 달 하냥 내 마음에도 눈이 내리리라.
-윤동주 (한국의 시인, 1917~1945)
The Snowing Map
In the morning that Soon-ee left,
With my heart unable to speak,
Large snowflakes fell
Sadly outside the window
Covering the map
Spread out in the distance.
I return to the room, looking,
But there is nothing there at all.
The wall and the ceiling, white.
Will it snow inside the room?
Will you fly from me like history lost?
Even though you wrote me a letter
With your last words here,
I don’t know where you’re going,
Which street, which village, which house?
Are you to remain only in my heart?
The falling snow covers
Your small footsteps, again and again,
That I can’t even follow.
If the snow melts,
Flowers will bloom in each
Of your footprints, but if
I can find even just one between
The blossoms,
Snow will fall in my heart,
For a year, twelve months,
– Yun Dong-ju (Korean poet, 1917-1945)
(Translation by Yelun Qin)
Yun Dong-ju grew up in Manchuria, in a Korean community, under the Japanese colonial regime. He died in prison in Fukuoka, Japan, having been convicted of advocating Korean independence.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #45
(Poem #242 on new numbering scheme)
In melancholy, time goes slow. It's like a rocket ship: in freefall, after stage three drops... a parabolic trip.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: 나무 잘 오르는 놈 떨어지고 헤엄 잘 치는 놈 빠져 죽는다
I learned this aphorism from my book of aphorisms.
나무 잘 오르는 놈 떨어지고 헤엄 잘 치는 놈 빠져 죽는다
na.mu jal o.reu.neun nom tteol.eo.ji.go he.eom jal chi.neun nom ppa.jyeo juk.neun.da
tree well climb-PRESPART guy fall-CONJ swimming well swim-PRESPART guy drown-INF die-PRES
The good tree-climber falls and the good swimmer drowns and dies.
I think actually this has the same meaning as that quote I offered by Randall Munroe a few posts back; essentially, even experts can make mistakes.
Perhaps this offers some solace to those of us who make mistakes – we might nevertheless be experts.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #44
(Poem #241 on new numbering scheme)
I had a dream in which I was about to be chased down. The trees raced past; I could not stop; I fled the dancing clown.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: and I say that, and I say that
I guess the Emo Emperor Tangerine is a thing. There not just one but multiple videos made that use "emo" style wailing to interpret the President's utterances, both in tweet and spoken form.
Tremendous!
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #43
(Poem #240 on new numbering scheme)
The teachers bring doughnuts to work which makes me feel real sad. You see, I used to like such things... now, eating them is bad.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: On how to pass the time
Some of my students have learned of my "hobby" of writing poetry. Hence the following exchange.
Setting: Advanced 8th Grade Speaking class.
Teacher: "Are you ready?"
Student: "Please give five more minutes to prepare the answer."
Teacher: "I'm tired of waiting… it's boring when you guys take so long getting ready to answer the question."
Student: "Just do some work. Or write a poem or something."
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #42
(Poem #239 on new numbering scheme)
A typical Korean rain will smell just like sea's needs; but spring we sometimes taste a storm that reeks of desert's weeds.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Califerne
Many people don't realize that the name of my birth state has a rather unusual etymology. California was named by Spanish explorers after a fictional place, which is named in a novel they were familiar with, Las sergas de Esplandián, by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. Montalvo, in turn, made up the name, probably under the influence of La Chanson de Roland, from a few centuries earlier, where we can read,
Morz est mis nies, ki tant me fist cunquere
Encuntre mei revelerunt li Seisne,
E Hungre e Bugre e tante gent averse,
Romain, Puillain et tuit icil de Palerne
E cil d'Affrike e cil de Califerne;
I suppose these medieval and renaissance authors were trying to evoke the "enemy" of Christiandom, i.e. the Caliphate. Thus California has the same "conceptual etymology" as ISIS, via a very different path.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #41
(Poem #238 on new numbering scheme)
I waited for a poem to come, but nothing ever came. I wracked my brain and tapped my hands, but what I wrote was lame.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: 노동자연대 and other activities
Yesterday after working in the morning, I took the subway into Seoul and met my friend Peter. We hung out for a few hours.
There were a lot of protests going on in downtown Seoul. Along Jong-no (the ancient, main east-west drag in downtown Seoul), we saw these protesters and a very disproportionate number of police.
I guess some are protesting about the president’s impeachment. Others are protesting the endemic corruption that the president’s impeachment seems to represent. There will be elections in about 6 weeks, so some people are protesting just because it seems like a good time to protest. It’s part of Korean culture, to a certain extent.
The group above is “leftish” – the red banner with yellow letters, on the right, reads 노동자연대 [nodongjayeondae], which means “Workers’ Solidarity.”
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Quatrain #40
(Poem #237 on new numbering scheme)
I wonder why the monkeys fly But fly they do each day. My students throw them through the air they like to laugh and play.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km]
Caveat: Quatrain #39
(Poem #236 on new numbering scheme)
"My ego trumps my neighbor's needs," the patriot believes, sincere, perhaps (in fact, malign) but to those ends, deceives.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Unverisimilitudinous
I'm a little bit burned-out feeling, at the moment. So I don't have much to offer.
Meanwhile, here is a rather intriguing if not entirely verisimilitudinous alligator drawn by a student.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #38
(Poem #235 on new numbering scheme)
Korea has these feral chairs: they rest beside the roads; they wait, unloved, unsat upon; they bear no human loads.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Post-5000
This is my blog's 5000th post.
Do you feel the excitement? It's palpable. Or something.
To celebrate, here is a new video from wacky robot-dancer Genki Sudo and his group, World Order.
What I'm listening to right now.
World Order, "Singularity."
I couldn't find lyrics to this – my Japanese-language googling skill is too poor.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #37
(Poem #234 on new numbering scheme)
The ocean's arms can grasp the mind; recursively ingrain small chunks of memory and dreams into the seething brain.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: On Expertise
"Certified skydiving instructors know way more about safely falling from planes than I do, and are way more likely to die that way." – Randall Munroe, author of the comic xkcd. This quote is the "hovertext" accompanying this cartoon.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #36
(Poem #233 on new numbering scheme)
A certain magic she had learned allowed her some success: some spirit of the rainbow, first... a copper green headdress.
– a quatrain in ballad meter, about a character within a certain mythologized history I’m creating for a city called Quelepa (aka Comala).
Caveat: Consistently Inconsistent
I had a rather bad day yesterday.
I do fine when the kids are behaving well, but I have some issues with consistency when they behave badly. I vacillate between two approaches. One is a kind of laissez-faire approach where I try to show kindness and broad tolerance for minor infractions of classroom rules (e.g. speaking out of turn, having "off channel" conversations with friends, getting up and moving about). The other is to be fairly rigid about it, and "exile" students (ask them to leave the classroom and go sit at the front desk for a time out) who misbehave repeatedly.
My dreaded, worst situation, however, are those times when I ask students to leave the classroom, and they simply refuse. They sit like a stone and do nothing. That turns into a showdown, which always leaves me with an awkward situation. Do I forcibly remove the child, so as to be consistently applying my "exile" rule? Or do I back down and try to take a different approach, which makes me inconsistent and where I worry the kids take the lesson that I can be "out-waited"?
It's a horrible situation, that simply seems to have no good solution. And I'm not consistent in how I deal with it, either. So I just feel like a really crappy, inconsistent teacher when these situations arise.
And then after dealing with it, in whatever way I did, I feel guilty that I did the wrong thing, afterward.
It's depressing.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #35
(Poem #232 on new numbering scheme)
You know that spring has now arrived: the air, it makes you cry; Korean spring's a lousy time; the grayish, yellow sky.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: misteriosos espacios que separan / la vigilia del sueño
RIMA LXXI
No dormía: vagaba en ese limbo
en que cambian de forma los objetos,
misteriosos espacios que separan
la vigilia del sueño.
Las ideas que en ronda silenciosa
daban vueltas en torno a mi cerebro,
poco a poco en su danza se movían
con un compás más lento.
De la luz que entra al alma por los ojos
los párpados velaban el reflejo;
mas otra luz el mundo de visiones
alumbraba por dentro.
En este punto resonó en mi oído
un rumor semejante al que en el templo
vaga confuso al terminar los fieles
con un Amén sus rezos.
Y oí como una voz delgada y triste
que por mi nombre me llamó a lo lejos,
¡y sentí olor de cirios apagados,
de humedad y de incienso!
Entró la noche y del olvido en brazos
caí cual piedra en su profundo seno.
Dormí y al despertar exclamé: —¡Alguno
que yo quería ha muerto!
– Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (poeta español, 1836-1870)
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #34
(Poem #231 on new numbering scheme)
The clouds patrol the sky, adrift Then aliens arrive who scoop the clouds up like some bugs, because they want them live.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Quatrain #33
(Poem #230 on new numbering scheme)
He lies awake, and counting sheep... those sheep are saying stuff: They're telling him about the fact that anger's not enough.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Re-up? You’re outta your mind
Captain Jack
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that rifle in my hand
I'm gonna be a shootin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that knife in my hand
I'm gonna be a cuttin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that grenade in my hand
I'm gonna be a killin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that bottle in my hand
I'm gonna be a drinkin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
Hey, hey Captain Jack
Meet me down by the railroad track
With that book in my hand
I'm gonna be a studyin' man
A studyin' man
A drinkin' man
A killin' man
A cuttin' man
A shootin' man
The best I can
For Uncle Sam
– a US Army Marching Cadence
The original "Captain Jack" was a Modoc Indian, Kintpuash, who is the only person to have killed a US Army General officer during battle – although the Army later executed him for "war crimes," I don't think it's so clear that he was employing tactics any dirtier than the US soldiers were.
So in the marching cadence, the soldiers' plan to meet Captain Jack down by the railroad tracks strikes me as an ambivalent situation. Like many US military cadences, there is an anti-military subtext hovering below the surface.
I remember decades ago, in some social group or another (I don't really recall exactly which, but I was young), "Captain Jack" was a kind of facetious answer to any "who" question, e.g.
Q: "Who did you see there?"
A: "Captain Jack."
"Captain Jack" is also, apparently, an old slang term for heroin or other narcotics – which lends yet another angle of meaning to the popularity of this cadence especially during the Vietnam era.
A different version of the cadence is heard in this youtube.
Note not just the variation in specific types of "A __-in' man", but the addition of the lines "Re-up? You're crazy! / Re-up? You're outta your mind!"
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #32
(Poem #229 on new numbering scheme)
Ponder the foolishness of faith in light of so much pain, and yet decide to still believe... inspired by the rain.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Intro to Set Theory
Let S be the set of all things that we don't know enough about to sort into sets…
How large is S? Presumably infinite, but what type, among the types of infinity?
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #31
(Poem #228 on new numbering scheme)
The animals were gathered there discussing their sad fate. They knew they were illusions all and conjured up too late.
– a quatrain in ballad meter. The picture was a whimsical creation of a few boring moments at work. I had been interviewing new prospective students, earlier, and I often have the students draw an animal (“follow instructions in English” / “Describe a picture in English”). These animals are mine, but inspired by first-grade student-drawn animals.
Caveat: 청기와 장수
I found this idiom in my book of aphorisms.
청기와 장수
cheong.gi.wa jang.su
blue-tile dealer
“Blue tile merchant”
This is a reference to some old Korean tale, I guess, wherein some guy made excellent blue tiles but refused to share the secret of his technique, so when he died no one knew how to make such great blue tiles. It means someone who keeps a trade secret or has some secret talent. Anyway, blue tile roofs are a very traditional high-quality style in Korea, up to and including the famous blue tile roof on the Presidential Palace, which gives the palace its name, called 청와대 [cheongwadae] – in English “Blue House.” At right is a picture of a temple in Suwon that I took in 2010, showing a blue tile roof.
I think this has more negative connotations than the English phrase, “A person of hidden talent.” In Western culture, I think this phrase is generally meant in a kind of admiration, or anyway saying that the person merits more admiration than we are currently giving. In the Korean, the semantics of the phrase seem to be focused instead on the person’s selfishness in the refusal to share knowledge or ability with the community.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrain #30
(Poem #227 on new numbering scheme)
Each Wednesday is speaking class but how is this a thing? The students sit and sometimes smile. They don't say anything.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: A very clever Brexit
A very clever Brexit that would leave everyone happy.
Recently Nicola Sturgeon announced that Scotland would re-vote on the matter of Scotland's independence, given the Brexit context that had not existed during prior vote, in 2014. The motivating factor is that the citizens of Scotland overwhelmingly wish to stay in the EU. I was reading in the comments section on a certain brilliant blog (slatestarcodex) that there is a problem here: the EU might not want to easily welcome a newly independent Scotland as a member – because certain countries, most notably Spain, don't want to encourage their own separatist regions (e.g. Catalonia). Thus a country like Spain might essentially block an independent Scotland's effort to join the EU.
So then this one commenter on that blog reports a very clever solution, which is attributed (without specificity) to Alex Salmond. If Westminster is amenable to a "friendly divorce", then there is a simple legal solution for a Scotland wishing to remain in the EU, and and "Rest-of-the-UK" wishing to exit. The solution not only solves Scotland's problem but also allows Westminster to avoid negotiating with the EU per Article 50.
This solution is, frankly, brilliant. England, Wales, and North Ireland can secede from the UK. The remaining "Rump UK" in this case is Scotland, which thus remains in the EU. England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are at that point de jure independent countries which Spain (among others) would, of course, not want to allow into the EU anyway (on principle, right?). So they're out, and they're out only on the terms of their secession from the UK – essentially an "internal matter" and EU terms don't need to be negotiated. Then they can reunite at their own convenience, the day after their secession from the UK. Then everyone can just "coincidentally" rename their countries, and the problem is solved.
Corporations do things like this all the time. I once worked at a corporation that underwent a "reverse merger," which seems conceptually similar in some ways. So why can't countries?
[daily log: walking, 7km]
Caveat: Quatrains #27-29
(Poem #226 on new numbering scheme)
It is some kind of giant house - in Mexico, I guess. In hills, a purple sun hangs low. We all wear battle dress. I bear a weapon in my hand. We seek some evil man. The air, it reeks of burning wood and peaches from a can I'm walking down long corridors. I'm searching for my team. A slowly ticking clock goes *snap* I woke up from the dream.
– three quatrains in ballad meter.