"Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue… Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What I'm listening to right now.
Humberto Pernett, "Cumbia galáctica."
Here's a scary technology – some Japanese company is developing a device that can be pointed at someone, gun-like, and stop that person from talking. Here's a discussion of it, at Language Log.
Walking home I stopped by my bank's ATM to take out some cash, and it occured to me that I hadn't updated my bankbook in a long time. I don't receive mailed bank statements for my Korean bank account(s), and I don't have online banking configured, although I reckon if I tried, I could get either of those things set up. I just never bothered to. So if I need to get a list of transactions, Korean ATM's have a function where you insert your savings/check-card passbook into the machine and it prints updated transactions into the passbook. I stuck my passbook into the machine and it printed 5 months' worth of transactions. There weren't any surprises – the only reason I'm mentioning this is because it was really surprising to me that I'd not done so in so long – time has really been flying by quite fast since I came back to Ilsan from my sojourn in Yeonggwang.
What I'm listening to right now.
Morphine, "The Night."
What I’m listening to right now.
The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist.”
This song was on the radio in 2001, I think. I associate it with living in Burbank, California, and driving on the 134 toward Pasadena to visit my dad. I imagined going to visit a frontier psychiatrist, who would help me in some difficult-to-define but appropriately frontiery way. The video is pretty entertaining, in and of itself – I can honestly say I never saw it before this current moment.
I made a Tomato & Yogurt Curry from a pre-mix (“seasonings only”) package, earlier. This is quite adventurous, since the directions on the package are entirely and solely in Korean (see right).
So it was a cross between a Korean Language lesson and a cooking class. I wonder if this has potential as a means of motivating me to study Korean better. I kept confirming my understanding of instructions and vocabulary with a dictionary and/or googletranslate, worrying I wasn’t making it right. But the basics: veggies and potatoes (I left out the meat called for in the recipe), boil in the first packet of mix, add the second packet, then the third, serve over rice. Here it is.
Dot dot dot. Life, it turns out, goes on.
What I’m listening to right now.
The Monkees, “Porpoise Song,” 1968.
I used to watch The Monkees TV show in rerun syndication after school when I was maybe 10 years old. I was only able to watch TV indiscriminately in those few hours when I was a latchkey kid – mom still at work, I would sit at home watching whatever was on. The selection was poor. We got 3 channels, if I recall, in Humboldt County at that time. So I just watched whatever was on. I saw the entire run of the old Batman series, which was my favorite. I saw many episodes of the Brady Bunch (not bad) and The Monkees (I abhorred it – I thought then that it was a sort of pandering cultural fluff – but I watched it anyway).
I was thinking about it today because I heard on NPR that Davy Jones, of The Monkees, has died.
Here’s a music video from one of those Monkees episodes.
The Monkees, “Gonna Buy Me a Dog.”
Yesterday after work I took the subway in to Itaewon to meet my friend Basil, who’d recently returned from a holiday in Turkey. We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant there, of course. I like hearing Basil speaking Arabic with people in Seoul. It feels very international.
We stopped at the food store there that sells things like coriander powder and split peas and lentils, and I stocked up. We wandered around the neighborhood because Basil was looking for the hotel where he wanted to stay – I guess he’d been there before but forgot where it was. There are a lot of interesting halal grocers and restaurants and things on the side streets to the south east of Itaewon station. I said… “it’s like visiting New York.” Then, as an afterthought, looking at the uninspiring architecture, I said, “Or maybe Newark, New Jersey.”
I came home last night and made some soup and have had a very lazy Sunday today.
Here’s a picture of dusk from the hill in Itaewon, looking toward Yongsan.
What I’m listening to right now.
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, “Down From Dover,” 1972.
Originally written and performed by Dolly Parton. And riddle me this – why does Lee Hazlewood have the same singing voice as Mr Snuffleupagus?
I was in one of my random internet-surfing modes that I sometimes get into, and ended up watching the video below. I sometimes consider that India is a country near the top of my list of countries that I would consider “moving to next” if I give up on this “South Korean project.” The natural scenery in the video (Ooty, Tamil Nadu state in South India) reminds me, vaguely, of some train trips I took in southern/eastern Mexico in the 1980s, or, also, the tropical setting that is my mother’s home in the Atherton Tablelands of Far North Queensland, Australia.
The video is interesting in part because it was apparently a low-budget, no-special-effects undertaking – those people dancing on the train are really just people dancing on a moving train (picture at right). The song, like most Indian hits, is Bollywood in origin, but according the wikithing article about the song, its lyrics come from a Sufi folk tradition. Which perhaps incidentally explains why I ended up discovering the video due to an article somewhere about Urdu, not Hindi (Urdu [Pakistan] and Hindi [India] are dialects of essentially the same language, often mutually comprehensible). But the video and song are clearly Hindi, although the setting of the video is South India (Tamil Nadu) which is neither Hindi nor Urdu, culturally.
Well, I’m kind of rambling. If I went to India, the South and Northeast are the parts that most interest me.
As a digression… I once came rather close to taking a month-long trip to Kerala (in the South), when I was still considering myself a computer professional. The story was that I’d worked out that, in net financial terms, it would cost me the same to fly to India and enroll in an Indian computer certification program as it would to stay in the US and get a much higher-priced but precisely identical (content-equivalent) certification. So I was going to go to Kerala and become a Microsoft Certfied Database Administrator, or something in that vein.
I never went to India. But I still think about it. My current status as an EFL teacher doesn’t really “work” for India – India has plenty of EFL, of course (it’s an official language, still, even), but it’s so large and so “self contained” in EFL terms that they’re mostly uninterested, as far as I can tell, in foreign native English speakers (especially American-accented ones) – there seems to be no market for my type of work, there. So if I went, I guess it would just be as some kind of long-term tourist. Or else something like the above, where I was trying to break back into computer work.
What I’m listening to right now.
Malaika Arora and King Khan, “Chaiyya Chaiyya.”
I like the somewhat obscure, almost mysteriously ominous ending of the video – perhaps a reference to the movie from which the song is taken, or some other pop-culture reference that is lost on me.
We had an end-of-school-year "level test" today, since the new Korean school year starts at the beginning of March. I asked an advanced student named Jaehwan how the test was – did he find it difficult. He answered, laconically: "It was not boring."
I like kids with a sense of humor – although I'm not even sure he meant it that way. Though I sort of suspect so.
What I'm listening to right now.
Brian Eno, "Ali Click Trance Mix."
Do you like creepy rock videos about aliens doing strange stuff with reality? Or something?
What I’m listening to right now.
Tool, “Parabola.”
[UPDATE 2014-01-06: the youtube link was broken. I replaced it.]
[UPDATE 2024-05-03: the youtube link was broken again. I replaced it again.]
I made lentil chili. I ate some.
I’ve been reading Milton’s Paradise Lost. Hard slogging. Can you believe, I never read it before? It was always a hole in my literary foundations.
What I’m listening to right now.
Absurd Minds, “Deception.”
I tend to avoid thinking about Middle Eastern politics. It’s mostly depressing – the same way that I find Mexican politics so discouraging, maybe. But I was listening to some news reports, and then saw the video below and was feeling a twinge of optimism. Just because it makes things seem more “human,” maybe. Regardless, it set me to contemplating studying Arabic again – I studied اللغة العربية for a semester in 1996, during my time in graduate school. I’ve always thought it’s a beautiful language. Arabic was a major historical influence on Spanish, which is what I was majoring in for grad school – mabye on par with the influence of Norwegian on English, perhaps. I’ve forgotten most of it now. I can’t remember how to type it, for example – I cheated and used google translate to make that smattering of it in my title.
Anytime I contemplate studying some other language, though, I immediately realize the interest is largely being driven my feelings of despair vis-a-vis learning the Korean Language. So here I go, grumping about it again.
What I’m listening to right now.
West Elbalad (Egyptian group), “Voice of Freedom.” It’s a pretty good song, anyway.
I was walking to work today, and feeling stressed. And a pair of tracks from Apoptygma Berzerk came through my mp3 player, and I had an epiphanic moment.
Those Apoptygma Berzerk tunes were part of my "crisis soundtrack" during the difficult fall of 2008, when I was working at LBridge and hating my decision to be in Korea, hating my job, just generally really stressing out. And during that time, I made some decisions about how I would organize my life and prioritize things and indentify what was important, which I began slowly to implement. Today, I realized I'd mostly carried through with those "promises to myself" – not in terms of goals so much as in the manner in which I would live my life.
The fact is, my job is very nearly the least stressful job I've ever had. Not because it's inherently unstressful, but because I've made it that way.
"But why is it, then," I asked myself, "that I'm feeling so stressed lately?"
The job has nothing to do with my stress. And unlike in Yeonggwang last year, the auxiliaries of the job – housing, location, social context – those things aren't stressing me, either. Those things are much more stable here in Ilsan, and most definitely much more under my control. I would hazard to guess that if I had to look at things carefully, my job is actually a net stress reducer. The kids (except for certain ones who must remain unnamed, here) wash away my stress and make me feel happy.
So, then. Where is this stress coming from? I can know, easily enough (and what a Konglishy turn of phrase that is, yet it comes so naturally to me, now). That was my breakthrough, today.
I'm making this stress for myself. It's about those personal goals, personal self-perceptions, and how those aren't working out for me.
I have set goals such as "learn Korean," that I can't seem to do. I feel unhealthy, and rather than work harder or make behavioral changes to get healthier, I stress out over how I'm unhealthy. I even beat myself up for not meditating. As if… as if getting angry over not meditating would bring me closer to inner peace, right?
I've got all of these stressors in my life, but they're not from my job, for the most part. They're traps of my own devising.
This is only a breakthrough in the sense that I thought it all through from start to end today, with a high degree of clarity (not to mention a dose or two of ironic self-honesty). I've not been unaware of these things. And… to announce here that I've "figured it out" is only another invitation to stress out later when it doesn't lead to some improved lifestyle change, I suppose. But This Here Blog Thingy (the runner-up title for Caveatdumptruck – jus' sayin') is nothing if not a place where I can unlaconically overshare my personal mental hygiene activities. So there.
What I'm listening to right now.
Apoptygma Berzerk, "In This Together."
As is generally the case, I was letting my mp3 files cycle on shuffle on my computer, providing an utterly randomized soundtrack to my rather-dull-yet-lucid life.
Sometimes I hear things I don't even know I own. Often, actually – I'm a compulsive downloader and collector of music, and I will download things on impulse and drop them into the infinite music folder of my soul, and forget I've done it.
This morning, suddenly a version of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down" came around. Sort of a metal/gothic remake. I used to live in a Depeche Mode-only mode, and I still get thrown into a very dark, nostalgic mood when I hear anything by them. But this remake, by a German group called Farmer Boys, was excellent, since it wasn't so nostalgia-inducing in that way, while still capturing the awesomeness of the original song. I listened to it about 5 times.
What I'm listening to right now.
Farmer Boys, "Never Let Me Down." The video is cheesy and dumb, though.
For reference, here's the DM original.
Depeche Mode, "Never Let Me Down." Perhaps it deserves mention that this song is very likely about heroin addiction – a topic that has a particular strong, strange, and deeply personal resonance for me, but not for precisely the obvious reason you would assume. Perhaps someday in the future (or past) I will explain. Here are the lyrics, which would make this observation more clear.
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he's taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I'm taking a ride
With my best friendWe're flying high
We're watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back down
On the groundI'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
Promises me I'm as safe as houses
As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers
I hope he never lets me down againNever let me down
See the stars they're shining bright
Everything's alright tonight
I made curried broccoli, using some Thai green curry paste and spices and onions and coconut milk.
Después, lo comí.
What I’m listening to right now.
Pastilla, “Colores.”
Letra.
Ya es muy tarde
No es tan tarde
Espera un poco
Espera un ratito
Dame tu mano
Nada importa
Etamos solos
Yetás mojada.
(coro)
Cuando todo es de color
El azul es el mejor
Cuando quieras descubrir
Y tu piel quieras abrir
Cuando todo te va mal
Piensa solo en mi voz
Toma una navaja
Y córtate las venas.
Por la mañana
Abres los ojos…
Y te levantas
Te tomas un baño
Llama un taxi
Hacia el estudio
Todos te esperan
Yestan enojados
(coro).
I’ve been in a dark mood lately. Ever since last week when I realized even some of my students agreed that my progress in learning Korean was unacceptable. Walking home in freezing rain or sleet or whatever it was, the air was smelling dirty or dusty – I wonder if we’re getting sand from China and Mongolia?
Grumble.
What I’m listening to right now.
Glen Campbell, “Wichita Lineman.”
I finally ran across some beets during my most recent visit to the Orangemart supermarket across the street. Grace had told me that they had them, but I had never managed to see them until this time. Maybe it’s a kind of sometimes thing.
I love beets. And beets make me think of borshch (or borsht or borscht, Борщ). So I made borshch. I didn’t follow a recipe. I’d been reading a while back about a way of making it where you oven-roast the beets and potatoes first, to carmelize them slightly and give them a stronger flavor. I don’t have an oven – I don’t even have a microwave – but I was trying to think of ways to achieve a similar carmelizing effect.
Here’s the recipe I made up as I went, with occasional illustrations.
I peeled and cut up one large beet into thin bite-sized slices. I did the same to one carrot and two smallish potatoes. This seemed about right for one “batch” which I imagine will be three servings for me.
I sliced two small white onions and added a few cloves of crushed garlic to a pot and began to fry them in about a tablespoon of canola oil (I have a several-years’ supply of canola oil, as several bottles came embedded in my Seollal gift-set from my boss this year). I added the chopped beets, carrots and potatoes, and some spices. I used ground bay leaf, thyme, oregano, dill seed, a dash of salt, black pepper, a squirt of lemon juice, a teaspoon of brown sugar (to bring out that carmelized beet and onion flavor, right?).
Then, I “stir fried” it all on a low flame. I didn’t add any additional liquid. I figured when it started to burn, I would add the liquid, but I wanted to try to get the carmelizing effect. And much to my surprise, it didn’t start to burn, for almost 30 minutes. The onions and beets and the lemon juice seemed to provide enough liquid to prevent the stuff from sticking to the pan. I stirred it a lot.
The stuff cooked down a lot. It bubbled and smelled delicious.
Finally there was some crusting on the bottom of the pot, so I added a half cup of red wine (which I keep for cooking and use when recipes call for vinegar). Then I added a cup of tomato juice – which is a great instant, convenient vegan substitute for any recipe that calls for broth or soup stock. This bubbled up and boiled I periodically added some additional water, for another 30 minutes.
The recipe is purely vegan up to this point.
I broke that rule because I put a pat of butter on it and sprinkled some dried thyme, for serving it. I didn’t have any sour cream or yogurt on hand, which is what you’re supposed to put on borshch.
Borshch always makes me think of Doukhobors. Doukhobors are like slavic Quakers (and there’s an important link to Tolstoy). I like Doukhobors. If I had to be a Christian, I would have to be a Doukhobor, maybe. The name means “Spirit Wrestlers.”
The personal connection, for me, was in the summer of 1989 when I made a road trip with my brother and father in the moonwagon (my dad’s 1949 Chevy suburban) from Minnesota to the Kootenays region of British Columbia. My father had spent some time during his childhood there, in a Quaker semi-utopianist intentional community named Argenta, that was linked to the one his parents had founded in Southern California. There are a lot Doukhobors in that part of Canada, and we visited someone who served us some home-made Doukhobor borshch, which is one the most delicious meals I have ever eaten in my life, perhaps in part the context, but truly good food, too. Ever since, I keep trying to reproduce that experience, which is why I so frequently obsess on borshch-making.
And as a stunning non-sequitur, I offer: what I’m listening to right now.
Mexican Institute of Sound, “Yo digo baila.”
Y además:
Mexican Institute of Sound, “El micrófono.”
Que chango tan chistoso, ´nel video.
Mejitecno. Jeje.
There is really nothing quite like sitting in a cozy apartment on a frigid February day, in Northwest South Korea, eating homemade borscht and listening to Mexican techno.
And spirit wrestling.
By Minnesota standards, an inch or two isn’t much snow, but by Seoul standards it’s pretty signifcant. It snowed today while I was at work. It was beautiful walking home, the ground crunching, the air clean-smelling and cold.
Here’s a view from a classroom window at work.
I felt good about work today.
What I’m listening to right now.
Cat Stevens, “Sad Lisa.”
This is something that recalls my adolescence.
Music and experience become intertwined. This is the principle of one´s life having a "soundtrack."
22 years ago, on a late January day, I finished reading the last chapter of Gabriel García Márquez´s Cien años de soledad. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was bleak and white and snowy outside. I was listening to Peter Gabriel´s So album, and the song "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the last paragraphs of the novel. As a consequence, whenever I hear that song, even these many, many years later, I am thrust back into the dissolution of the world at the end of that novel, despite the fact that the song and novel bear only a distant thematic relation – perhaps something on the axis of dreaming and perception and subjectivity.
What I´m listening to right now.
Peter Gabriel´s "Mercy Street," in point of fact, is dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton, and treats some aspects of her biography. Here are the lyrics.
looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real
all of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness comes
nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
nowhere in the suburbs
in the cold light of day
there in the midst of it so alive and alone
words support like bone
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your inside out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms
pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
tugging at the darkness, word upon word
confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest – he's the doctor
he can handle the shocks
dreaming of the tenderness – the tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary's lips
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your insides out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
looking for mercy
in your daddy's arms
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea.
Today is 설날 (Lunar New Year, inappropriately called “Chinese New Year” in the West).
So… “may your lunar year be as wonderful and exciting and productive as the solar one you started a few weeks ago!” I guess it all depends on the moon, right?
I just can’t wait for the Mayan New Year. It’s supposed to be extra special, this year. Hehehe. Um. Just kidding.
I’m having a kind of boring day off. I’m so burned out on traveling places, lately. I’m just a dull homebody. It seems so cold and desolate outside, on the holiday. Like I woke up inside a dream, this morning.
I made some pasta and have been watching movies and listening to music.
What I’m listening to right now.
oOoOO, “Burnout Eyes.” What a great name for a band. What a great name for a band.
This is reminiscence (which is to say, I don’t mean a trip up to North Korea, a half-hour drive from here).
Lately, for some reason, I keep thinking of camping trips to northern Minnesota. It was an old, old tradition among my certain circle of friends, and camping trips to northern Minnesota and Upper Michigan were also a significant aspect of Michelle’s and my relationship.
In a related vein, I ran across a very old and somewhat embarrassing picture of me, possibly from the late 1980’s or early 90’s, standing in a campfire somewhere close to Hibbing, I would guess. It’s pretty funny – I reckon I was trying to stomp out the embers and was caught candidly. Dig the long hair.
Why do I post these things? Let’s just call it the spirit of full disclosure…
So, sometimes when we drove to Hibbing or Duluth or the UP, we’d stop and camp at Banning State Park, which is just off I-35, pert’ near Sandstone, along the kettle river.
What I’m listening to right now (nice segue, huh?).
Pert Near Sandstone, “Save Me.”
This might be called Minnesota bluegrass. An interesting genre.
A few days ago, I overheard the phrase 깐죽 at work, in the context of the English word “smart ass.” Ever since, I’ve been trying to puzzle out if there’s something equivalent, there, but the more I try to figure it out, the more I don’t think they’re really the same thing. You can imagine, though, why having a Korean phrase for “smart ass” might be useful to a teacher of elementary age Koreans with limited English ability.
There is nothing in the online Korean-English dictionaries for 깐죽 or its verbal derivatives (as reported to me by coworkers: 깐죽거리다, 깐죽대다). The Korean-Korean dictionaries didn’t seem very useful (or maybe I didn’t understand them well enough). Naver.com, for example, says, “쓸데없는 소리를 밉살스럽고 짓궂게 들러붙어 계속 지껄이다.” This is, in itself, hard to take apart, and it took some time pooking around google translate (plus the dictionary and some grammatical knowledge, because google translate is, by itself, useless for Korean-to-English) to even get the gist of it, which is something like, “To chatter on uselessly and harassingly in a vulgar manner.”
While I can see why someone would draw the link between a phrase meaning that, and the English “smart ass,” they’re still not really the same, as it neglects the “smart” part of it – the fact that a smart-ass doesn’t just chatter uselessly, but that the smart-ass has an aspect of “too smart for his/her own good.”
One translation I found encouraging was in the lyric of a song called 청춘고백 by Outsider (image, right), translated here. The translation offered for 깐죽거리던 is “snarky” – which is closer to “smart-ass,” definitely.
Conclusions? None, really.
“깐죽” seems to be related to the idea of talking too much, and/or out of turn, and/or vulgarly, but I don’t see much to suggest it implies speaking in “smart-ass” way specifically. So it only means smart-ass in the more broad meaning of the latter term.
What I’m listening to right now – the song I mentioned.
Outsider (아웃사이더 [a-ut-sa-i-deo]), “청춘고백.”
This is Korean rap/r&b. Awesome.
빈 수레가 요란하다
empty cart-SUBJ is-loud
An empty cart is loud.
“He who speaks most knows least,” roughly.
Maybe I should shut up.
What I’m listening to right now.
Washed Out, “Amor Fati.”
What I’m listening to right now.
Cake, “Motorcade of Generosity.” I guess it’s a little bit wild to have this song shuffle around entirely randomly on my mp3 player (from my 6000+ collection of songs that I rotate randomly on and off of the mp3 player). To have the song intoning “I bombed Korea” while walking to work in Korea. Well, you know. Weird.
It’s about the Korean War, obviously. Cake is a pretty cool musical group, too.
Here are the lyrics.
I bombed Korea every night.
My engine sang into the salty sky.
I didn’t know if I would live or die.
I bombed Korea every night.I bombed Korea every night.
I bombed Korea every night.
Red flowers bursting down below us.
Those people didn’t even know us.
We didn’t know if we would live or die.
We didn’t know if it was wrong or right.
I bombed Korea every night.And so I sit here at this bar.
I’m not a hero.
I’m not a movie star.
I’ve got my beer.
I’ve got my stories to tell,
But they won’t tell you what it’s like in hell.Red flowers bursting down below us.
Those people didn’t even know us.
We didn’t know if we would live or die.
We didn’t know if it was wrong or right.
We didn’t know if we would live or die.
I bombed Korea every night.
If you own an electronic gadget made in China, I think you should listen to this recent episode of “This American Life.”
[UPDATE 2012-03-17 It turns out this radio show has some scandal associated with it. Given that, I probably should retract my recommendation to listen to it. Most of the commentary below stands, however.]
Normally, I don’t have a lot of patience for Ira Glass’s brand of vaguely sanctimonious hipsterism, but this show hit home for me. It’s somewhat directed at Apple, which is a mark in its favor in my anti-apple worldview… but I’m well aware that Apple Corp is far from the only – or anywhere close to the worst – offenders in the realm of worker exploitation in China. I would, in fact, wager that my cheapo Jooyontech desktop was made in China without anything even resembling a passing nod to workers’ rights such as Apple presumably tries for (apparently without much success, but still, at least they pay lip service to it, right?).
Despite everything said in the above-mentioned program (which I will reiterate, I hope you listen to), I still don’t think Paul Krugman is wrong in his quote at the end – this is just another country (albeit, in China’s case, a historically unprecedentedly huge country) working its way up the “value chain” in the process of modernizing and industrializing. The US, Europe, Japan, South Korea – all these countries passed through phases where things like child labor and complete union illegalization were nearly universal, and perhaps, as a good marxist, I should accept that this is just a sort of “mode of production” that every country must pass through.
All the same, it’s sobering and depressing to think that it is somehow inevitable, even sitting in a country such as South Korea that is only now beginning to emerge from the far end of this agonizing socio-economic process.
OK. Nothing to add to that. Just listen to the show. Think about it, the next time you play with your iPad or log onto the internet on your cheap, convenient computer, or whatever.
Here’s a question: “What is stuff for?”
Meanwhile, what I’m listening to right now.
Metric, “Sick Muse.”
When I was 17 and 18, the coolest musical groups in the world were Talking Heads and David Bowie. I was a weird kid, right?
I heard on the radio that David Bowie is turning 65 today. He’s kind of retired, apparently.
What I’m listening to right now.
David Bowie, “Ziggy Stardust.” Lyrics:
Oh
Oooh yeah
AhZiggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,
and the spiders from Mars. He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy’s bandnow Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, aww he could lick ’em by smiling
He could leave ’em to hang
‘came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls
With just the beer light to guide us,
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?Oh
Ooh ohZiggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo
The kid was just crass, he was the nazz
With God given ass
aww He took it all too far but boy could he play guitarMaking love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.Oh yeah
Ooooooo
Ziggy playyyyed guitaarrrrrr
Today is perihelion. I hope you have a good day, so close to the sun.
It seemed very cold outside. That’s because perihelion has nothing much to do with climate.
My little ones (first graders) where so hyper today. I came out of the class, and went back into the staff room, and I said, “It’s like teaching popcorn.” Unfortunately, it was a metaphor that had to be explained, which seemed to lessen its effectiveness substantially.
What I’m listening to right now.
Madness, “Blue Skinned Beast.”
Walking home from work, the night air sparkled with a sprinkling of snow, the air cold and clean-tasting. Work is hard these days. I’m trying hard to improve my teaching, and there’s a lot of pressure and discomfort at work because we’ve been losing students, too. This is partly just because hagwon business is cyclical, and parents always pull their kids out of hagwon in January, when public schools are in vacation and parents find other things to do with their kids. I can never understand how Korean managers – ever relatively good ones such as my current boss – seem to take these cycle-driven losses of enrollment so personally, and assume there’s some mistake being made by teachers as opposed to just being the vagaries of the market.
Well, anyway. So work is hard, these days. I have a tight, dense schedule, too. But I felt OK about it, today, walking home in the dark in the cold in the snow in my dreams.
I found this really interesting image online at a site called love all this – it’s supposedly Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolutions.
I really, really like the resolution that goes: “19. Keep hoping machine running.” It appears he doodled a picture of it, too. I like the idea of a “hoping machine.” I’m doing some repairs on mine, currently.
What I’m listening to right now.
Neutral Milk Hotel, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”
I was quite amazed today in my RN1 class when my student Taeu said he'd done his homework. He'd indeed done most of it. I made a big show of congratulating him. "Wow," I said. "That's the first time in six months that you did your homework."
He got a hurt look on his face. "Teacher," he complained. "Second."
What I'm listening to right now.
Absurd Minds, "The Question."
I’m not really very well-informed on this, but I’ve formed an opinion anyway. North Korea remains more-or-less stable for two reasons: 1) the state leverages traditional Korean communitarianism to get buy-in from groups that would otherwise resist (mostly the “bureaucratic class” and/or the low and mid-ranking military); 2) the economy is much more pre-industrial (i.e. feudal) than people have been thinking – many (if not an outright majority of) North Koreans are existing in an essentially pre-industrial society based on subsistence agriculture.
I have formed these opinions partly just through reflection – I read articles about NK often, but I can’t really point to specific articles that caused me to develop the above view. If I run across something specific in the future, I’ll try to remember to add them to this post or some future related one.
The below graph (from Brad Plumer at Wapo’s Wonkblog) is an interesting summary (and never forget that before about 1960, North Korea was more industrialized than the South – a legacy of Japan’s colonial industrialization policies for the peninsula and the fact that the North had at least some coal).
Mientras tanto… what I’m listening to right now.
Dënver, “Olas gigantes.”
This is a Chilean music group. I think the diaeresis (or “umlaut”) on the “e” is just a playful bit of typography, as opposed to symbolizing anything, although there are some native languages of Chile that use the double-dotted diacritic on certain vowels to indicate laxness or centralization in their orthographical systems, and the word “dënver” has a certain Mapudunguny look to it (I studied the native language Mapudungun at Univ. Austral de Chile in 1994) – but Mapudungun itself doesn’t use “ë”. I don’t know if the group’s name has something to do with the American city of Denver, either.
Letra
Dijiste vamos a nadar,
nunca he visto olas tan gigantes,
dijiste qué nos va a pasar.
Y que todo va en bracear,
y hacías con los brazos
de manera circular.
Entonces nos lanzamos a nadar
y las olas explotaban
como si nos odiaran,
y nos golpeaban sin piedad,
y yo braceaba y braceaba,
no servía de nada, daba igual.
Es que yo en ti confiaba más,
yo sólo seguía sin más
tu físico espectacular.
Así que simplemente me dejé llevar
y ahí vi como pasabas,
toda doblada tu espalda
y no vi más.
Proyecto Uno es un grupo musical estilo merengue-house – consta de dominicanos de Nueva York. Lo encontré en el contexto de vivir en Filadelfia en los 90. Aquella ciudad, con su gran población caribeña, tiene su propia cultura latina, distinta a la cultura mexicanizada de la gran parte de los EEUU. En general, resulta en que las radiodifusoras de la costa atlántica de los EEUU tienen un índole distinto de lo de las de la pacífica o del interior del país.
What I’m listening to right now.
Proyecto Uno, “Te dejaron flat.” La letra (encontrado en internet… he intendado algunas correcciones pero sigue una transcripción imperfecta):
Te dejaron flat
Primera noche, recibí una llamada, aha
Fue mi exnovia, sorpresa en mi cara, aha
Ella me llamó pa decirme, negrito me haces falta, aha
Yo la quiero sacar a bailar pero yo no tengo plata, a.
So whats up baby, echa pa acá y yo cocino, aha
Es una mentira, sin embargo es mi estilo, aha
Ella dijo sí, en una hora estoy ahí, aha
Me quedé esperando hasta que me dormí (you tell me)
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, bajo ya
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Segunda noche, ella me llamó pa tras, aha
Pero como Robelto Durán, yo dije no más, aha
Ella lloró y me dijo discúlpame por favor, aha
Si vienes a casa te demostraré amor, aha.
Me tardé pero arranqué y yo llegué, aha
Pa la casa de la chama, le toque y timbré, aha
Ella contestó con una cara asustada, aha
Dijo que su novio vino sin decirle nada (damn!)
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh te dejaron flat
Uh, ya tú sae, hey
Eo, eo, eeo, eeo, eieio, eieio
Eo, eo, eeo, eeo, eiooo, eiooo
Sigue
Think you gonna play me out this time? (this time)
Think you gonna leave me stinkin?
Think you gonna hurt me?
Think I had what you been drinkin?
Hey mami no te cruces porque no soy tu jueguito
No me llames por teléfono si tú no quieres dar
Con mala fama y yo te lo confirmo
No quiero problema, tú así conmigo
No vale la pena, ay negra, ay negra
Por qué me trata así, no me digas que me quieres
Si yo sé que tú no tienes tiempo para mí (you tell me)
Mami menéalo, mami menea, nea
Mami menéalo, mami menea, nea
Dale pa bajo baby, dale pa bajo así
Dale pa bajo baby (pick it up, pick it up, pick it up)
… con Proyecto… Uno!
Y la gente dice
Uh, ya tú sae, oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he, plantao
Say word, (word…) oh, te dejaron flat
Uh, embarcao, he… (break it down)
Así, así, así, así, así, así
Así, así, así
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
Que lo que, que lo que sube
2011, that is. Ending.
2011 went by really fast for me. That was after 2010, which was one of the longest, most stretched-out years of my life. The difference? There was a lot of instability and uncertainty in my life, in 2010. Whereas 2011 went pretty smoothly… mostly according to plan.
2010 started with me NOT getting a job in Korea. I lived in a hostel and took language classes for two months, before finding a job. Then the job turned out to have… well, let’s call them complications. Most notably, the Hongnong Elementary School had a tendency to make me move from apartment to apartment, and not ever tell me what was coming next, work-wise. Much worse than hagwon experiences I’ve had. OK. So that was 2010.
2011, in contrast, was easy. Predicatable. I finished the Hongnong contract, came back to Ilsan to work for Karma, and suddenly… it’s 8 months later. Life, it seems, goes on.
Interestingly, this happens to be the 1900th post to this here blog thingy. How ’bout them apples?
Walking home from work, late afternoon, the sun hung low in the sky and was like a pat of butter in mashed potatoes. I tried to capture this with my camera. Below picture was taken about a block north of my apartment building, along Gangseonno [강선로].
Um.
Happy New Year. 새해복 많이 받으세요~~. ¡Feliz año nuevo!
What I’m listening to right now.
Phaeleh, “In the Twilight.”
One of my coworkers brought take-out cafe mochas (from one of the Starbucks clones that abound in South Korea) and distributed them to all of us, today, in the staff room. I like cafe mocha, but I haven’t had one in a long, long time. They are addictive and unhealthy.
The taste and smell was weirdly evocative – I thought of studying late at night at Espresso Royale in Dinkytown (Southeast Minneapolis) in the 1980’s, or at the now disappeared Bucks County Coffee joint on Locust Street at 40th just west of the U Penn campus in the 1990’s. I thought, in short, of studying.
I wondered if I would someday return to school.
Why are smells and tastes so evocative? And sounds…
What I’m listening to right now.
Bob Dylan, “Hurricane.”
El poseedor
No recuerdo…
(Ya no viene el cavador
que cavaba en el venero)No recuerdo…
(Sobre la mina han caído
mil siglos de suelos nuevos)No recuerdo…
(El mundo se acabará.
No volverá mi secreto)– Juan Ramón Jiménez
Yo recuerdo demasiado…. Pero al final – de repente – no se recordará.
Lo que escucho en este momento.
UNKLE, “In a State.”
Which state?
I took the photo, at top, in 1983: Kneeland, California. I scanned it in 2007. It’s not edited in any way, except the vast sky has ended up slightly cropped.
Happy Xmas.
I wrote some poetry. I’m not going to post it. Deal with it.
I pan-roasted an almost-perfect yellow bell-pepper (which Koreans call 파프리카 [paprika], after the German) and made a “from-scratch” vegan vegetable/marinara sauce, which I served over rice for my xmas dinner. I ate it with a cup of red wine – an 8 dollar bottle of Chilean shiraz that was on sale at the supermarket across the street in the basement of the 태영프라자. It was good.
What I’m listening to right now.
Glen Campbell, “Gentle on My Mind.” Haha. Country music. I don’t listen to much of it, but I always liked this rendition by Glen Campbell.
The lyrics.
Gentle on My Mind
It’s knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch
And it’s knowing I’m not shackled by forgotten words and bonds
And the ink stains that have dried upon some line
That keeps you in the backroads by the rivers of my mem’ry
That keeps you ever gentle on my mindIt’s not clinging to the rocks and ivy planted on their columns now that bind me
Or something that somebody said because they thought we fit together walking
It’s just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgiving
When I walk along some railroad track and find
That you’re moving on the backroads by the rivers of my mem’ry
And for hours you’re just gentle on my mindThough the wheat fields and the clotheslines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us
And some other woman’s crying to her mother cause she turned and I was gone
I still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face
And the summer sun might burn me till I’m blind
But not to where I cannot see you walking on the backroads
By the rivers flowing gentle on my mindI dip my cup of of soup back from a gurgling, crackling cauldron in some train yard
My beard a roughened coal pile and a dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands round a tin can I pretend to hold you to my breast and find
That you’re wavin’ from the backroads by the rivers of my mem’ry
Ever smiling, ever gentle on my mind
