(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.