Month: April 2017

Caveat: No me importa lo pasado

Background Noise

What I'm listening to right now.

José José, "Desesperado."

Letra.

Vuelve
Por favor como estés
Como sea que a nadie le importa
Aunque te hallas manchado de todo para mí es igual

No me importa lo que seas
No me importa si has cambiado
No me importa si eres otra
No me importa si has pecado
Vuelve te lo ruego por que estoy…

Desesperado
Decidido a aceptar lo que seas,
tú has ganado
Ya lo ves que sin ti soy un hombre acabado
Sin ganas de vivir

Desesperado
Necesito tu cuerpo caliente a mi lado
Para darme esa fuerza que solo tú me has dado
Ten piedad de mí

Vuelve
Aunque vengas de Dios sabe donde aquí esta tú casa
Aunque te hallan tocado mil manos para mí es igual

No me importa lo que digan
No me importa lo que has dado
No me importa si estas limpia
No me importa lo pasado
Vuelve te lo imploro porque estoy…

Desesperado
Decidido a aceptar lo que sea, tú has ganado
Ya lo ves que sin ti soy un hombre acabado
Sin ganas de vivir

Desesperado
Necesito tú cuerpo caliente a mi lado
Para darme esa fuerza que solo tú me has dado
Ten piedad de mí

Desesperado
Decidido a aceptar lo que sea, tú has ganado
Ya lo ves que sin ti soy un hombre acabado
Sin ganas de vivir

Desesperado
Necesito tú cuerpo caliente a mi lado
Para darme esa fuerza que solo tú me has dado
Ten piedad de mí

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: 贈金川寺主

Not My Poetry / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

贈金川寺主

白雲溪畔刱仁祠
三十年來此住持
笑指門前一條路
纔離山下有千岐

– 崔致遠

Modern Korean Translation

증 금천사 주

흰 구름 시냇가에 절을 지으니
서른 해 내리 이 주지로세
웃으며 가리키노니 문앞의 한 줄기 길이
조금 곧 산 아래를 떠나면 천 가닥이 되네

– 최치원 (신라 시인)

English Translation

Presented to the Abbot of Keumcheon Temple

By the White Cloud Stream you built a temple
where for thirty years you’ve been the abbot.
Smiling, you point to the single trail outside the gate.
At the foot of the mountain, it branches out to a thousand paths.

– Choi Chiwon (Silla/Tang poet, 857 – 924?)
– English translation by Christina Han and Wing S. Chu

Note that the Chinese is the original language of composition – all poetry and literature in Silla-Era Korea was written in Classical Chinese (similar to the way poetry and literature in Europe during a parallel era was mostly written in Latin).
I found the poem in the book Solitary Cloud: Poetry of Ch’oe Ch’iwŏn, by Christina Han and Wing S. Chu. The text of the poem is only in the Chinese characters in the book, along with the English translation. I really wanted to include the Chinese text here, but I am incapable of typing Chinese characters unless I know their Korean pronunciation, and I only actually know about 20 such hanja, so… I wasn’t sure how to figure this out.
I tried a little trick, which was successful: I took a photo of the Chinese text with my phone, I went to one of those free OCR (Optical Character Recognition) websites and uploaded my photo, and presto, a somewhat faulty capture of the Chinese text. I took that text, in turn, and googled it, to find the correct text of the poem (verified against the book’s text), where I also found the modern Korean translation – for which there was no attribution.
[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: The Mysterious Case of Flight XYZ

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I had a very strange dream in the pre-dawn hour. 

I was traveling by airplane. Maybe LAX to MSP or something like that. 

It was strange, because all the passengers looked like they'd been drawn directly from my facebook feed – all relatives and friends and long-lost acquaintances. And everyone was staring at their smartphones. 

Then the captain announced that we had a problem. We would have to make an emergency landing. Oddly, everyone was pretty calm. The airplane spiraled down in a wide loop, and I saw snow-covered mountains – the Rockies? We landed almost as smoothly as at an airport, but on a blustery, snow-covered alpine meadow. People got off the plane, but it didn't seem like anything was wrong with it. And everyone had cellphone reception, so people were announcing the landing on facebook and other sites, and people were watching news of our own emergency landing. 

But there was some delay in getting us rescued. There was only one helicopter arriving, to ferry out the 100s of passengers. So it would come and go, taking out only a half dozen at a time. A lot of us would have to stay the night. We camped out in the airplane, but it was quite cold. I felt sooo cold.

On the news in the middle of the night, that everyone was looking at on their cellphones, a scandal was erupting. It turned out the same pilot had made an almost identical emergency landing, in the same location, some years ago. How could that be? Especially since there was nothing obviously wrong with the plane. All the passengers and crew realized the pilot and copilot had disappeared. That was just too weird. On the next helicopter ferry arrival, some police arrived, with police dogs, who began looking for the pilot and copilot. 

I was just too cold. I didn't care about the pilot and copilot, I wanted to get out of there.

I woke up, and I had kicked my covers off. I sleep with the window open, and the building's heat had been turned off April 1 – the room was cold, it was chilly outside. So at least that's where the cold came from. The rest is just plain weird. The dream was far too coherent, in some ways. Almost like a movie or novel. It could be one.

I don't know where all the material came from – I haven't been watching any TV lately, so there's no airplane thriller movies enrolled in my dream-queue. I haven't looked at facebook in months, so I don't know how that happened either. It was just strange. What does it mean?

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: People Forget About Luck

Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

This cartoon is philosophically interesting.

picture

The "hover text" (a feature of XKCD cartoons), says, "They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING."

Somehow, this quite seems like it could easily be attributed to certain prominent politicians.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: magnificently meaningless

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Not My Poetry

Time keeps doing that time thing.

What I'm listening to right now.

The Magnetic Fields, "Meaningless."

Lyrics.

Meaningless?
You mean it's all been meaningless?
Every whisper and caress?
Yes, yes, yes, it was totally meaningless

Meaningless
Like when two fireflies fluoresce
Just like everything I guess
Less less yes, it was utterly meaningless

Even less a little glimpse of nothingness
Sucking meaning from the rest of this mess
Yes, yes, yes, it was thoroughly meaningless

And if some dim bulb should say
We were in love in some way
Kick all his teeth in for me and if you feel
Like keeping on kicking, feel free

Meaningless
Who dare say it wasn't meaningless?
Shout from the rooftops and address the press
Ha ha ha, it was totally meaningless

Meaningless
Meaning less than a game of chess
Just like your mother said and mother knows best
I knew it all the time but now I confess

Yes, yes, yes, how deliciously meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, effervescently meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, it was beautifully meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, it was profoundly meaningless

Yes, yes, yes, definitively meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, comprehensively meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, magnificently meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, how incredibly meaningless?

Yes, yes, yes, unprecedentedly meaningless
Yes, yes, yes, how mind-blowingly meaningless?
Yes, yes, yes, how unbelievably meaningless?
Yes, yes, yes, how infinitely meaningless?

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Art and the Maintenance of Motorcycle Zen

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs2 Comments

Someday, I want to create a story or novella with the title, "Art and the Maintenance of Motorcycle Zen." It would be a kind of sincerely felt, but also maybe vaguely comedic tribute, to Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that I was jotting down a few snippets that might pertain to such a story.

I am reminded of this today because I have heard that Pirsig has died. I have to say that Pirsig's book, and even some of his other activities, have had multilayered influences on my life.

I first read his book as a high school senior, I think. And it was a required text in my "freshman seminar," my first year at college. The book is easily in my personal list of "10 most influential books in my life." It might be the most influential book.

Some of this influence and importance derives from the very weird parallels between the book and my life. And it's an eerie set of parallels, because I read (and re-read) the book before many of those parallels occurred (ECT? check. Zen? check. Philosophical road tripping? check.). So the question naturally arises: did I, perhaps, subconsciously "follow" the book?

Certainly there is one very significant instance, where I think the book might have had a conscious influence. The main character, like Pirsig, is from Minneapolis. And perhaps this raised my awareness about that part of the world sufficiently that it made it possible for me to imagine going there – which is what I did for college. Not many California kids would move to Minnesota, sight-unseen, and so I think the book's presentation of the midwestern landscape embedded it higher up in my awareness, such that I might consider it. I guess it's difficult to say for sure – I remember tracing the route of his motorcycle journey in a road atlas, during my first reading. A line, drawn from Minneapolis to the west coast, that, incidentally passed through my home town on the Pacific, which is actually mentioned in the book (although not as a destination – just in a "passing through" way). That line was effectively reversed when I went to college less than a year later.

The other impact Pirsig had on my life came much later, and was indirect, I suppose - essentially unrelated to the book. He was one of the founders of the Minnesota Zen Center. When I moved back to Minneapolis in 2006 (the year before deciding to come to Korea), I attended the Zen Center a dozen times or so. Its location on Lake Calhoun was within walking distance of where I was living, and since I was working to transform my life and habits, I was walking or jogging past it daily - going around that lake was one of my new habits.

So Robert Pirsig is gone.

But, in the Buddhist spirit, I shall interpretatively paraphrase my friend Curt: "Death is nothing."

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: 띵가띵가놀지마

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

My students taught me this phrase the other day. I always learn the best Korean from my students.
Actually, they taught me the positive version: 띵가띵가놀은다 [tting.ka.tting.ka.nol.eun.da], which seems to mean, roughly, “goof off”, ” “play around”, or, as I pointed out, “dink around” as in to work completely unproductively. I wonder at the sound symbolism, because of that. Anyway, the term joins my long list of phenomimes and psychomimes. The term is not in the standard online Korean dictionaries, but I noticed that the googletranslate gets it right.
The negative phrase, 띵가띵가놀지마 [tting.ka.tting.ka.nol.ji.ma], I managed to use quite successfully, later in the same class. The kids were duly impressed. Lisa had been playing around with my collection of whiteboard markers, and not really paying attention. She gets easily distracted – a bit of a space cadet. So I said that: “띵가띵가놀지마!” She looked up, surprised.
Annie, who keeps trying to be my Korean coach, raised a thumb in broad approval. “Oh, nice, teacher. Good Korean!”
picture[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Verde viento. Verdes ramas.

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Not My Poetry

Romance Sonámbulo

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas la están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.

Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendra? ¿Y por dónde…?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
Verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.

—Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo per su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los puertos de Cabra.
—Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
—Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
—Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
—Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas;
¡dejadme subir!, dejadme,
hasta las verdes barandas.
Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.
Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.
Dejando un rastro de sangre.
Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.
Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.
Mil panderos de cristal
herían la madrugada.
Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.
Los dos compadres subieron.
El largo viento dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.
¡Compadre! ¿Donde está, díme?
¿Donde está tu niña amarga?
¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuántas veces te esperara,
cara fresca, negro pelo,
en esta verde baranda!

Sobre el rostro del aljibe
se mecía la gitana.
Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Un carámbano de luna
la sostiene sobre el agua.
La noche se puso íntima
como una pequeña plaza.
Guardias civiles borrachos
en la puerta golpeaban.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar.
Y el caballo en la montaña.

– Federico García Lorca (poeta español 1898-1936)

Sin duda, este poema es mi favorito de todos los poemas en cualquier idioma. Me parece una falta el hecho de que nunca lo he publicado, antes, aquí en el blog. Pues, ahora lo publico. El tema trata de la guerra civil española.

[daily log: walking, 7km] 

Caveat: Quatrains #66-71

A Daily Poem / Ballad / Book 1 / My Poetry & Fiction / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

(Poem #262 on new numbering scheme)

"Philosophical zombie" is
a concept you may know.
I'd like to now propose a twist
to how those stories go.
Most typically these zombies are
like strange automata.
They act like people, react too -
but it is just data.
So nothing's felt and nothing's hoped;
there is no inner spark.
These zombies might seem like humans,
but their sad minds are dark.
Now here's the change I'd like to make:
let's add a soul inside,
but not connected to the flesh -
it will only reside.
Like those sad paralytics who
stare helpless and afraid,
this second mind lacks any link,
must wait for any aid.
So here's the first, with agency,
the second with the why,
together they must walk the earth,
as we do, you and I.

– six quatrains in ballad meter – an essay on phenomenology in six stanzas.

Caveat: 非夢似夢

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)One Comment

I learned this four-character idiom from a coworker, and recognizing it as such, looked it up later.

非夢似夢
비몽사몽
bi.mong.sa.mong
false-dream-like-dream
"Half asleep half awake."

It's actually much easier and transparent than most of these types of expressions that I've attempted. It's a great phrase to know, too. Especially given the way I sometimes feel like I'm working my way through a dream.

There was a thunderstorm this morning. Nice, the hard rain scrubbing the air.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

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