I've definitely returned to hagwon work – I put in 11 hours yesterday. It's going to be a long week.
But then, as people know, I have workaholic tendencies, given the right motivational structures. The public school job was structured in such a way that workaholism was essentially irrelevant if not downright impossible, and all those idle hours took a weird kind of toll on my psyche, maybe. I seem to seek out and/or prefer the psychic toll exacted by working too much over that correlated with working too little. Is this virtue? I actually don't think so. It's escapism and reality-avoidance, mostly. Just like those years in Burbank, the 80 hour weeks. The year in Long Beach / Newport Beach took it a step too far, and the 100 hour workweek was unsustainable.
OK, this is rambling and not going anywhere and vaguely self-hating. Whatever.
Well, I already knew about trolleyology, but I didn’t know that was what it was called. Recently, I ran across it again. Trolleyology is the philosophical practice of setting up hypothetical ethical conundrums involving out-of-control trolleys racing down tracks about to kill oddly helpless innocent bystanders. Just as an example, from my recent re-encounter with them (linked above):
A runaway trolley is coming down the track. It is headed towards five people who cannot get out of its way. A passerby realizes that if he pushes a nearby fat man onto the tracks his bulk will stop the trolley before it hits the five, though the fat man himself will be killed.
The question being: is it right or wrong to sacrifice the fat man to save the five? There’s another conundrum here, far too complicated and full of philosophers’ inside jokes. The picture (above right) shows the Green Line trolley at 43rd Street along Baltimore Avenue, half a block from my apartment where I lived in West Philadelphia in 1995, when I was starting graduate school. Not shown in the picture: five helpless innocents just out view to the left, down the hill, tied to the tracks – just another day in West Philly, after all.
I’m struggling with the fact that I’m actually enjoying work more, now that I’m teaching 35 class-hours a week. It’s because I derive positive energy out of being in the classroom with the kids, whereas I generally find sitting in the staff room dinking around with prep work (or trying to write textbooks) depressing and dull. But there’s a burnout aspect out of pushing this hard, too – it’s fulfilling but not sustainable, maybe. I don’t know.
I’m doing OK – I’m doing almost nothing aside from working, lately. I’ve set aside my two main hobbies: fiction and/or poetry writing, and trying to study Korean. I haven’t been jogging every evening like I was before this hard push at work, too. Good habits die so easily, don’t they? I had barely got the thing off the ground, and all it took was a few nights of “oh-I’m-too-tired.” Well.
What I’m listening to right now.
The Fray – Cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless.” I like the video a lot too – talk about awesome animation capturing teen nerd-angst.
…only to find that Hongong Elementary had become surrounded by a primeval forest.
I wandered up and down somewhat familiar halls, but each time I looked outside there were only trees and ferns and streams and the peering eyes of barely-seen animals. There were very few students – it was summer vacation. I saw one girl, a 2nd-grader who I recognized, but she was too busy talking on her cellphone to even notice me.
I then saw the principal. I bowed to him appropriately, but he didn't recognize me. I went to the cafeteria, and only teachers were there. It was dark inside, because the windows were all covered by thick, lush, green vegetation. The vegetable garden on the west side of the cafeteria was shadowed by immense, ancient, gnarled trees, but the field to the north had been replaced by a face of rock, strewn with wet moss and miniature waterfalls and tiny purple flowers.
I saw fellow-foreign-teacher Moyer, and another group of foreigners who were ignoring him and who I didn't recognize. I went over to speak to them, and one woman said she thought she knew who I was. I said to her that she looked familiar, too. I sat down to eat the standard Hongnong cafeteria lunch – some kind of soup, rice, not-so-good kimchi, one or two other banchan. But there was canned iced coffee, too.
Suddenly I was uninterested in eating – I felt compelled to leave. I made my way to the main entrance of the school and walked outside. I had to walk across a log across a stream where the soccer field should be. At the log bridge, I ran into Mr Lee and Mr Choi, but I was in too much of a hurry to stop and speak to them. They called after me. I went up a steep mountain path, and suddenly I came to a parking lot paved in discarded plastic containers. And suddenly I was at Mad River beach, which is west of Arcata. It felt unnaturally warm, though, and there were still too many trees around. And then I was running, barefoot, alternating on redwood forest trails and the narrow one-lane, perfectly straight Arcata bottomland roads. The old asphalt of the road felt rough and real under my feet. It was raining. And there were Koreans looking at me curiously – why is that man running barefoot? I felt like a wild monkey in a wildlife park. I felt free and afraid.
I woke up and had rice and kimchi for breakfast – I stir it together with some seasoned salty seaweed and a dollop of bibimbap sauce and a bit of cooked egg that I'm trying to eat before it goes bad, as kind of poor-man's bibimbap. But I had canned iced coffee, too. The summer morning sun is glaring in my window.
I’m working hard, nowadays. I’m working one-and-a-half jobs – mine and half of Grace’s while she’s on vacation in Canada. I have 7 classes almost every day, so out of the 8 period day, I have one prep period. So. I’m staying very busy. I started coming to work one hour earlier, since I need more prep time.
And it stopped raining on Sunday. That’s the first time it stopped raining since sometime in June, maybe. So it got hot. Ah, the busy times of hagwon during school vacations.
What I’m listening to right now.
화요비, “반쪽” [Hwayobi – ban-jjok = “Half”].
Korean R&B, I somehow ended up with this song on my frequent play list. I like it.
Labré el aire, y en cárcel de sonido eché a volar el corazón sediento; triste jilguero, al parecer contento, que canta entre palabras oprimido.
Tejí la estrofa cual si fuere un nido; incubé mi dolor, le di alimento, y al trocarse un alado pensamiento, emprendió un largo vuelo hacia el olvido.
Así libra el dolor quien lo embellece. En la magia verbal de hechicería la tristeza hecha verso no parece;
siempre el vuelo semeja una alegría; ¡y es el rosal una ascensión de espina en tránsito a la rosa en que termina!
– Pedro Prado, en No más que una rosa, 1946.
Llevo cerca de mi corazón una ilusión de que sea un escritor, pero la verdad es que no escribo, sino sólo leo. Ayer, en frente de una clase, dije que escribo novelas y poesías – pero ¿cuando fue la última vez que esribía más que en este blog?
TRÁNSITO DE LA ESPINA A LA ROSA
Labré el aire, y en cárcel de sonido eché a volar el corazón sediento; triste jilguero, al parecer contento, que canta entre palabras oprimido.
Tejí la estrofa cual si fuere un nido; incubé mi dolor, le di alimento, y al trocarse un alado pensamiento, emprendió un largo vuelo hacia el olvido.
Así libra el dolor quien lo embellece. En la magia verbal de hechicería la tristeza hecha verso no parece;
siempre el vuelo semeja una alegría; ¡y es el rosal una ascensión de espina en tránsito a la rosa en que termina!
Last Friday evening, in the “TP2” class. Everyone was in a joking mood.
Brandon said, “Did you know Cindy has a strange body.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, imagining something bad. But then the girl demonstrated strange, double-jointed limbs.
“She can put her arms behind her back strange too,” the girl next to her said. Cindy tried to demonstrate, but the constraints of her sitting position didn’t permit her a full range of motion. Still, I was impressed.
“Like an octopus,” somebody said.
“오징어 [ojingeo = squid],” I said. Somebody laughed. “She could be a new superhero,” I added. I’ve been thinking about superheroes, and this seemed clever. “Ojingeogirl,” I suggested. Dried squid are a universal snack food, with the same level of iconicity as hotdogs in American culture, maybe.
Cindy seemed impressed by this idea, and several other students began to riff on it. Then Luis said, “How about Gulbiboy, too? Who is Gulbiboy?”
I pointed to Brandon. I’d been telling the students short stories about my life in Yeonggwang, earlier, and they were charmed by my accounts of “Gulbi-land” – the preponderance of gulbi shops selling the (in)famous Yeonggwang gulbi (a sort of dried croaker fish).
I pretended to have a string of dried gulbi, which I lifted. All Koreans know what dried gulbi look like, because the strings of fish are given as gifts on holidays. I mimed extracting one of the 20 cm long fish from the string, and pretended to throw it like a shuriken (Japanese “ninja” throwing star) at Luis. “Thwack,” I emphasized. The students were all in convulsions of laughter at this point.
“Oh no, Gulbiboy!” complained Luis.
Later on, Brandon tapped me on the shoulder, in the lobby. “I am Gulbiboy!” he whispered, triumphantly. Brandon is very tall, but his face reminds me a great deal of my nephew’s, perhaps if it were aged a few years further into early adolescence. I feel a certain connection with him for that reason, maybe.
“Go rescue Ojingeogirl, then,” I suggested, pointing toward Cindy, standing out by the elevator. He made a pleased face, before he thought it through, and thought better of this.
Here’s why I sometimes have a really hard time working with opinionated 14-year-olds who have very limited English:
Student: Teacher!
Me: What?
Student: My school 원어민 [native English-speaking teacher] is handsome but you are not.
Me: I see…
Student: You have small head but big 배 [tummy]
Me: It’s very sad…
Student: Why are you 통통 [fat]?
Me: I don’t know… I used to be fatter, you know. I dieted a lot.
Student: 와아아 [wow].
This student is not, otherwise, habitually insolent or impolite. In fact, I like the student a lot. And I know from previous experience that comments, negative or positive, regarding another person’s appearance, are much more freely thrown about in Korean society than in Western culture: long-time readers might remember the time the restaurant owner (a total stranger) in Busan greeted me with “You’ve got a bit a paunch” [in Korean]?
So what do I make of this? Should I take the time, yet again, to explain that this sort of talk will get a person smacked in the US? – Because I’ve explained it before, I’m sure. Does it even matter?
Regardless, it can take a strong ego to survive this kind of thing, can’t it?
Sigh.
Later, I had a more pleasant (but equally culturally interesting) conversation with my boss.
Boss: You [Westerners] like to argue.
Me: Koreans like to argue, too, I think.
Boss: Koreans like to fight.
Me: Fight… argue. Yes.
Boss: No. Argue is rational. Koreans just like to fight.
Me: Hmm. Yes, I could see that.
Boss: You know I’m right.
Point taken.
Tomorrow, my coworker Grace goes on her month-long special vacation home to Canada. That means my schedule is getting massively augmented. I’ll have 30-something classes, for the next month or so. I’m not even really dreading it, though I feel a little overwhelmed by mastering the content of the classes, I don’t feel particularly overwhelmed by the extra time I’ll be putting in – I’m really in a sort of “wanting to forget my dull, unaccomplished life” mood, lately. So I’ll throw myself into my work. I’ll dedicate myself to hearing the unintended insults of a hundred teenagers.
For someone who doesn’t own a television, I sure seem to be watching a lot of TV lately.
I have been watching a Korean rom-com drama called 아직도 결혼하고 싶은 여자 [the woman who still wants to get married]. It’s better than that last one I watched (내조의 여왕), but I’ve kind of reached a lull of interest in that show.
So then I started watching episodes of the American series called Heroes (from 2006~10), which I remember catching a few early episodes from back when I was still in the U.S. It’s definitely got a lot of plot twists and turns. And the strange thing is that I’m also currently trying to work my way through Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore, which has some almost eerie match-ups with the series in terms of themes or atmospherics. They’re both, ultimately and essentially, magic-realist oeuvres – one low-brow, the other high-brow.
And then I also started a Chilean historical/vampire drama called Conde Vrolok, which seems quite atrocious, but it managed to hook me in somehow. And it’s funny, but the streaming (and free) video from Chile is much higher quality than the streaming (paid) video from the U.S. affiliate of Korea’s MBC. Go figure.
I suppose I like that I’m essentially watching 3 series in parallel, in 3 different languages. It feels very language-geeky.
I started keeping track of how much I’m running, exactly, starting last Friday. So in one week, I ran 21.6 km. My pace is kind of slow – but it’s all jogging, not walking. If you add in my walking (commute to work six days a week and running errands – I walk everywhere), you could probably say I cover an equivalent distance in walking, too. And that would make about 42 km, which is a marathon. I was somewhat inspired in this project by following – on facebook – the manic walking exploits of two of my cousins, Jori and Trevor, who each covered something over 250 miles last month in a sort of competition between them, posting their distances each day. I won’t get close to that. Not yet, anyway.
I’m glad I’m exercising more. I wish I could feel like it was improving my health, but so far I have lost no weight, and I don’t really even feel much healthier. I will have to be patient. What I’m listening to right now. [Update 2017-02-28: Video embed has been removed due to “link rot.” The song with new video embed has been included here.] Bob Dylan with Johnny Cash – Girl from the North Country. The song makes me think of fall in Minnesota, and camping trips to Hibbing and weekends in Duluth.
It’s not that I don’t like classical music. I was raised on a steady diet of Dvorak, it seems like, alongside the Grateful Dead and Cat Stevens and the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack and other eclectica. But in my day-to-day life, I don’t listen much to classical music, to be honest.
I think part of the reason for that is that it has never worked well for me as “background music.” Unlike most other genres, it’s very difficult for me to listen to classical music and do other things at the same time – whether it be jogging or studying or surfing the internet. Perhaps my ad hoc musical education, mostly a gift from my bestfriend Bob, was a little bit too thorough, and I find myself listening too carefully to classical compositions.
I don’t think that’s it, entirely. I have always struggled more with the rhythm aspect of all music than with, say, melody or counterpoint. I find that the lack of overt rhythms in classical music (unlike such as are provided by the backing drums or synthesized beats of almost all other genres) almost makes me uncomfortable, at times. It’s almost as if I have to work harder to “follow” what’s going on in music without explicit rhythms. I know that sounds strange – and it’s hard for me to explain.
OK, whatever. Returning to my initial point, away from my digression: I do, in fact, listen to and enjoy classical music, occasionally. And I love hearing live performances of it.
One of my favorite pieces, by far, is Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number 2. It’s one of those pieces that I will find running through my head sometimes, unexpectedly. Perhaps that just confirms that I’m a hopeless romantic sap, deep down inside. The picture, at left, is borrowed from the wikithing. It shows Rachmaninoff with a redwood tree in 1919.
What I’m listening to right now.
This youtube, above, is my favorite part – the first movement – apparently from a 1929 recording (!) in which Rachmaninoff himself played the piano with the Philadelphia Philharmonic. I also like the third movement, though, for which I found a different recording. I often find snippets of these two movements running through my brain.
If I were a Korean middle school student, I'd be grumpy, too. But I think one reason I don't really enjoy teaching middle school students is because unlike with elementary age children, I don't really know how to deal with adolescent grumpiness. With the younger ones, I can be a clown, I can regress myself, and more times than not, I can pull the kids out past their grumpiness and we can move on. But with the older kids, I just get drawn into it. Older kids are more stubborn in their anger. I had a hard day today.
I don't really have much more to say. I ran 5 km tonight, when I got home from work. Unlike most people, exercise never puts me in a good mood, and I question whether it really serves to lessen my depressive tendencies, for that matter. My time in the military, when I exercised daily and was in the best physical condition of my entire life, was – as some who know me well will recall – also one of the most depressed periods in my life. Still, there were many factors contributing to that. What I mean by this is only that I challenge the commonplace that holds that regular exercise is a legitimate way to combat depression. But I do need to be healthier, and lose some weight, so I'm pursuing building this habit, regardless of how grumpy it seems to be making me.
What I'm listening to right now.
Sarah Jarosz – Long Journey:
I have just begun A long journey that will run The length and width of summer time And the cool fall air will guide me home Yea the cool fall air will blow me home
You'll be miles away I want to go, but I wanna stay The music beggin' me to go But your love can guide me home Yea your love can guide me home
Stary nights and summer sun I think you just might be the one With this mountain pass keep runnin' on And I wonder if your love and guide me home Oh yea I wonder if your love can guide me home
For those not reading between the lines, I've been kind of down, lately. One part is just the feeling that I'm in a holding pattern at work, and the stuff where I can take initiative, like my textbook project, aren't going that well. But the main thing that has me down is exactly the thing I predicted I would like least about my return to Ilsan. My Korean feels like it's atrophying.
The reason is quite simple. My Korean made progress, in Yeonggwang, because I was constantly around people whose English was so bad that my Korean skills, limited as they were, were competitive in the "communication marketplace," as it were. Here in Ilsan, both my coworkers and my students, for the most part, have much higher level English skills, on average, and so my Korean ability becomes essentially worthless in the communication game – because I'm both socially shy and a little bit lazy, at some level, I don't have the willpower to force communication into the less comfortable, more difficult mode that sticking to Korean requires. Hongnong was so good for me, because I was constantly being called upon to communicate with people who utterly lacked English skills – it thus overcame both my shyness and my laziness.
So I stick to English, and then beat myself up for doing so. And I don't have the gumption to sign up for a class, either – I've been put off by the commute time required, and knowing that work is about to get a lot more demanding, once the testing period ends and I have to jump into the full-fledged summer session.
Am I regretting, now, my decision to come back to Ilsan? Not at all. I love that I have a comfortable and reliable "home life." That's important to me, and was missing in Hongnong. My stress level is, over all, much lower. And I'm rebuilding the good health and lifestyle habits that I allowed to atrophy in Yeonggwang – my daily exercise, my better eating habits (although so far I can't seem to shake the extra kilos that Yeonggwang blessed me with). So, much as I predicted, the move back here is a mixed bag – advantages and disadvantages. It's just that lately I'm really feeling the biggest disadvantage – the lower level of motivational support for my commitment to keep learning Korean.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that I and others are one.”
This is #67 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
… 65. 모든 생명은 소통과 교감이 이루어진다는 것을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that all life is achieved through communication and sympathy.” 66. 모든 생명은 우주의 이치 속에서 살아간다는 것을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that all life is living within the principles of the universe.”
67. 나와 남이 하나임을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
I would read this sixty-seventh affirmation as: “I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that I and others are one.”
I have no idea if I got that right or not. It seems right, it fits with Buddhist themes, but I really had to guess at the first three words “나와 남이 하나임” as not even the dictionary was being exceptionally helpful.
I’ve been really depressed about my Korean-learning project, lately. I overhear things, and just don’t understand what’s going on. This morning was a typical example: there was one of those “building announcements” over my apartment’s intercom, and I understood “this is an announcement” and “so, telling you this one more time,” but I didn’t get any actual useful information out of the announcement. I’ve clearly lost the gumption I had to sign up for a morning language class – too overwhelmed by the commute required.
I’ve been playing around with trying to figure out how to calculate the distances of my evening jogging. I have just been guesstimating up to this point, but today I found an app connected to google maps called mapmywalk.com that works fine for South Korea. So I used it. It turns out that the route I was thinking of as 5 km was actually a little under 4 (so much for guesstimating, right?). I worked out a slightly different route that was a little over 5, and tonight, I ran it. And here it is. I like map-apps.
[UPDATE 2024-04-27: The embed link here rotted, I happened to notice. And I have no idea how I could reproduce / recover the cool map that was shown. Thank you, internet!]
Meanwhile. I’m feeling a bit grumpy about work, today. The “write me a textbook” project is going badly, and I felt like a kind of boring, crappy teacher today for the classes I had. Sigh. Not every day is good, right?
What I’m listening to right now.
The National, “Conversation 16.”
This song has awesome lyrics. Check’em out.
I think the kids are in trouble
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Give them ice for their fevers
You’re the only thing I ever want anymore
We live on coffee and flowers
Try not to wonder what the weather will be
I figured out what we’re missing
I tell you miserable things after you are asleep
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Everything means everything
It’s a Hollywood summer
You’ll never believe the shitty thoughts I think
Meet our friends out for dinner
When I said what I said, I didn’t mean anything
We belong in a movie
Try to hold it together ’til our friends are gone
We should swim in a fountain
Do not want to disappoint anyone
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
I’m a confident liar
Have my head in the oven so you know where I’ll be
I’ll try to be more romantic
I want to believe in everything you believe
I was less than amazing
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Fall asleep in your branches
You’re the only thing I ever want anymore
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
I'm not sure how I'm feeling about work. On the one hand, it's mostly pretty unstressful. On the other hand, I'm not having as much interaction with kids as I did at Hongnong nor even at LBridge: because Karma combines "test prep" with regular English curriculum, during this midterms cycle the kids get pulled out for special test prep courses, which is great if the stress of giving classes gets to me, but it is annoying if hanging out with kids in class is the highlight of my work day. At least at Hongnong, although I often had no classes to teach, I still got to interact with kids around the school and at lunch, etc. There's no deskwarming at Karma, though. Mostly I'm filling my time with curriculum development work – I'm writing a textbook, supposedly (which is really hard, actually), and doing iBT (TOEFL) prep tutoring with a really smart 9th grader.
I really meant to enroll in a Korean language course for the mornings, but I've been unable to summon the gumption. It's not the idea of 12 hours a week of language class that's putting me off (that's what most of the courses I've looked at offer), it's the additional 12 hours a week of commuting time that it would entail – none of the courses are closer than Hongdae or Jongno, both of which would involve more-than-an-hour-each-way commutes. I hate commuting.
I've been looking into trying to find a tutor who I could pay for one-on-one classes, out here in Ilsan. But I'm kind of picky about who I'm willing to pay as a tutor – most Koreans don't know squat about their own language, from a linguistics standpoint, and I find it very frustrating trying to learn from them. Unpaid hanging-out style efforts at conversation is fine – I can approach it like a field linguist doing research. That's what many of my Korean friends are for.
But if I'm going to pay someone, I want them to know their language's phonological inventory (and know how it differs from that of English, for example), and I'd appreciate if they could recognize the difference between an auxialiary verb and an example of verb seriality, etc., and have them subsequently be able to try to explain these things to me – you know, like actually teach me.
I suppose my complaint about the people I've paid to teach me Korean, in the past, is the flipside of the same, utterly legitimate complaint lodged against so many of the English speakers hired to teach English in Korea – the fact that they can't tell a modal verb or English prosodic vowel reduction from a hole in their posterior means that Korean students aren't really getting much bang for their won, in teaching terms.
What I'm listening to right now.
I jogged my 5km route last night, dodging drizzle and rain drops. I listened to this track on my mp3. I'm becoming incredibly annoyed with the fact that I've gotten back to a 4 or 5 night-a-week jogging habit, and I'm still not losing weight.
This morning, I'm listening to it again. It's raining hard against my windows, and the sky is the thick gray that makes it feel like the sun didn't quite finish rising.
It's been raining a lot – yesterday there was a respite, but aside from that it's been raining almost continuously for approaching a week now. Yey summer in Korea.
The lyrics.
Pour Me Another (Another Poor Me) From the album "You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having"
V:1 And all she wanted was a little bit of solid, Feels like love, it doesnt matter what you call it, Heal those cuts, or hide em underneath the polish, Break another promise, And take me as a hostage, Hold your job down, And let the zombies crowd around, Thankin mommys god, but its a cops town, Keep it safe for me, While I chase a fantasy, Swerving through the galaxy, Searching for a family, Happily surrounded by planets and stars, She was stuck uptown, you was landed on mars, Its all fucked up now, caught your hand in the jar, Another small step back, for that man at the bar, Spill a little bit of blood on the street, For love that goes to those who know, That they drink too much, And hold your own glass, Up to the heavens, Take the little time to try and count the seconds, It goes
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:2 Drink it all away, numb it down to the none, Stay awake tonight and wait for the sun, You say you hate your life, you aint the only one, Let your frustration out the gate and watch the pony run, One double for the hunger and the struggle, Two for the fool tryna pull apart the puzzle, Three now I smile while I wait for your rebuttal, By the forth shot, Im just another child in a bubble, Tryna play with the passion and the placement, Just to see what these people let him get away with, Still tryna climb a mountain for you, Hammer in my hand, still pounding on a screw, She no listen, so he dont speak no more, Nobodys winning, cause neither is keeping score, Dont wanna think no more, just let me drink some more, Pour me another, cause I can still see the floor,
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:3 Live life tipsy, stiff if it dont fit right with me, Kiss my whiskey; lift my lips press to my angel, Swallow it and leave her empty bottle on the table, Let the past fall, Making faces at that clock on the back wall, Countdown to last call, Ask all of these people that make sounds, How long does it take for the pace to break down? Another lonely little trophy, If only I can walk a straight line, Id make it home free, And everybody in this bar thinks that they know me, And my story, Like poor me, I could count the days till you come back, Or I could follow them sunrays down to the train tracks, I can stumble drunk, over hope and love, Or I can just keep drinking till I sober up
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
Bottles, pints, shots, cans, Couches, and floors, and drunk best friends, Models, and whores, and tattooed hands, Cities, and secrets, and cats, and vans, Good times, laughter, bad decisions, Strippers, and actors, and average musicians, Mornings after, and walks of shame, This bartender knows me by my real name
Eleven years ago, this week, Michelle committed suicide. We were separated, but we hadn’t really figured out if we were divorcing or not. It was a hard time, obviously. I’d spent nearly two years away, first in Alaska and then in L.A. where my dad was, while Michelle and Jeffrey were still living in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Our last phone conversation included the words, “Are we getting divorced?” to which the other of us answered, “I don’t know.” She also uttered the phrase, “There’s a better place for me than here.” I kind of knew where her mind was. But what could I do?
This piano piece by David Lanz was never really one of my favorites, but Michelle was deeply sentimental about it. She once told me, eerily, as we sat cuddled on the sofa in better times, “I hope I die to this music.” I could be misremembering, but I think this was, indeed, what she may have died to – it was in the CD player in the bedroom where she took her fatal collection of pills. This is hard information to dwell on. So I call this piece “Michelle’s Suicide Music.”
For a person who doesn’t believe in ghosts, I’ve accommodated Michelle’s ghost with a great deal of faithfulness and peculiar ritual behavior. Once I dreamed that she (her ghost) was stuck at the Incheon Airport, having come looking for me. One day shortly after that, I took the bus out there to show her where I was. And in the fall of 2009, when I had the chance to pass through Philly, I stopped by Quakertown, where she died, to see if her ghost was there.
Sometimes I feel as if she’s looking over my shoulder. I don’t feel she’s angry. More just tagging along, curious to see what I’m doing with myself. Other times I feel as if she has found her “better place” and still others, that she’s this seething knot of sadness and regret. I’m sure mostly these are all my own projections onto what was once her.
Picture: circa Christmas, 1994, visiting my father’s house where he used to live in Temple City (next door to the house he grew up in, in fact). Jeffrey was, perhaps, bored, but Michelle was really happy during those times – we’d exchanged our “secret vows” the preceding month, when I’d returned from my 6 months in Chile.
True summer in Korea means rain. These broad fronts of humid, hot, overcast weather with lots of rain swarm up from the south and then just linger over the peninsula. It’s as if the tropics come to visit for a few months each year. For someone who grew up on the Northern California coast, this is backwards in more than one way – rain is supposed to come from the northwest, and in winter, and be cold. But rain is rain is rain. I still like it.
Our current bout of it started two days ago. Yesterday’s and today’s satellite pictures are almost identical.
I swear, it’s utter coincidence. Otherwise, you’d think I was developing a minor obsession. Yesterday, I mentioned Ke$ha in this here blog thingy, in the context of pretentious marxist philosophers and her possibly-related war against pretension.
Meanwhile, I had set my mind to watch episode 20 of season 21 of the Simpsons. Why, specifically, that episode? Because I had heard that it’s the episode in which Lisa Simpson joins a debate team, and that seemed relevant to my work on designing a debate curriculum for my work. My students love the Simpsons almost universally, and so the idea of showing a “Simpsons Debate” struck me as a fun way to approach the subject.
Lo, and behold, look what the episode’s couch gag was: the Springfieldites reprising Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” With the added benefit of being less NSFW.
Well, I managed to run across a novel problem, for this new Background Noise “feature” of mine: I couldn’t find a youtube for the particular music track I was listening to. So, being the resourceful type, I made one. I can’t find the lyrics for this song online, either. I might try to transcribe it at some point, I think it’s pretty interesting for Nuyorican Rap.
The pictures I added to the video are lame – I was in a hurry, and I just slapped in a few pics I found via the goog. The last picture is something I found that’s not even in NYC, it’s in Chile, but it seemed like a good picture to put on at the end.
To change the subject a little bit, but still on the topic of Nueva York, I was thinking some more about my entry the other day about “all the world’s people in one city” – questions of density. Here’s the fascinating thing. Paris was the densest city mentioned in that graphic I posted at that last entry.
But I thought to myself, surely there are places more dense than Paris. And of course, listening to Spagga & friend, this evening, I thought: Of course! Manhattan!
I ran the numbers. If all the people in the world lived in a city of Manhattan’s density they would fit in an area almost exactly the same size as… get this… South Korea. Interesting, huh? Can you imagine this entire mountainous little republic covered in high rises? It’s pretty easy to do – they’ve made a heckuva start on it already.
A boy who I will not name wrote the following "essay." Note that he's at the lowest level here at the hagwon – he's not an advanced English speaker, and this essay in fact was showing a lot of initiative and innovative language use relative to his normal level.
For my next shrek party I have a die an I'm are zombie. I eat a shrek delicious stomach. Good! Ghost appear on my 가스레인지 [gas range] and die an die and die an die and die and die an die an die an die an I like die I like die I want a die I want a die I want a suicide I want a suicide I'm sad. An bye-bye.
I realize 5th graders often have rather morbid senses of humor, but this seemed pretty intense. He smiled as he read it for me, if that's any consolation. I remember writing such morbid things at that age, not that I was necessarily developmentally on an particularly even keel, either. I normally didn't give such writings to my teachers though.
I’m contemplating the density question, vis-a-vis issues of per capita environmental impact. I ran across an interesting graphic the other day.
Here’s what I starting thinking about, in seeing this. The “Paris” version, above, is the densest – so imagine the world’s population living in that space. That would be one messed up ecosystem, there on the Mississippi delta. The impact would be, essentially, total. But think of this: the rest of the world would be empty of people. Maybe there would be some agriculture – this sort of graphic doesn’t say how putting everyone in one city would see how their resource needs were taken care of, how they would be fed, etc. But let’s imagine a best-case scenario, with all the people living in this giant megalopolis in the Mississippi delta, and then a bunch of sustainable automated farms and mines feeding it. Hmm… kind of science-fictiony. And I don’t want to try too hard here. My only thought … my main point… is that this mega-city’s impact would be huge, but the rest of the planet would have much, much lower impact. That seems to lead to the ability to imagine the Earth much more sustainably carrying its current population. QED Density is a good idea.
I went out to do my little jog around the lake. I like doing it at night when I get home, after work – jogging in the dark suits my personality quite well – it’s less hot at night, and I don’t feel like people are watching me. Ilsan’s Lake Park is well lit and has lots of paths and trails.
I took this really cool picture of the amazing, full, bright, shiny moon hanging and reflecting over the Lake, with part of the Ilsan skyline. My little digital camera did pretty well, I think.
In keeping with my apparent theme for the week: random languages that I studied long in the past. Above – the opening of the most interesting of the four Gospels (in my opinion), John. As found in my mother’s old Greek New Testament, which I acquired in January when visiting her, when she showed me a box of books she was getting rid of.
My ability to read Greek is very poor (maybe slightly better than my ability to read, say, Welsh – see previous blog post – mostly due to the more accessible plethora of cognates). I did take a semester (or two? I don’t remember) of Ancient Greek in college. But the translation of this phrase is nevertheless quite easy because it’s such a commonly known phrase: “In the beginning was the word…” – see? You can complete it yourself.
Shall I attempt to read this book? Probably not. But Greek (and especially ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, “the common dialect” [koine] such as found in the New Testament) is pretty high on the list of languages that interest me. The Bible makes a great text to revisit when learning a language, because it is so meticulously translated into each language. I saw a trilingual edition in a bookstore a while back: Greek, English, Korean. I should have bought it. Then I could mess with koine guiltlessly, having the Korean staring me en face.
I’ve been in a weird state of mind, lately. I keep revisiting random poetry and random languages I studied in times long past. I guess I’m trying to live up to the “unrepentant language-geek” part of my blog’s header (see above [UPDATE: Obsolete information – no longer in header. Still true, though.]).
So… I was mucking around at wikisource.org (a place where public domain texts can often be found). I began browsing Medieval Welsh poetry. I took a course on Medieval Welsh in 1988. I loved it – despite (or because of) it being one of the most intense academic undertakings I’ve ever tried. I remember struggling to translate bardic love poetry, as well as, most memorably, the legend of Pwyll and Rhiannon from the Red Book of Hergest. I remember Pwyll blindly chasing Rhiannon down into Annwn (the Otherworld) vividly.
When I found a four-line poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, I decided to “figure it out.” I won’t go so far as to say I “translated” it – I got the gist of it by using google translate, but also had to surf to some Old Welsh dictionaries, because google translate is based on the modern Welsh language, and the program doesn’t know what to do with the obsolete vocabulary and grammatical forms of 15th century Welsh. I have no idea how accurate my little translation might be – I was unable to find any “official” translation online.
Goddaith a roir mewn eithin,
Gwanwyn cras, mewn gwynnon crin,
Anodd fydd ei ddiffoddi
Ac un dyn a’i hennyn hi.
There’s a wildfire among the gorse,
Parched by Spring, withered kindling,
It will be difficult to put out
and [to think] a lone man caused it.
[Picture at right: Welsh Summer Landscape Painting]
I actually find the tone of the poem strikingly “modern” in its sensibility – but perhaps that’s a reader’s projection.
The negative aspect of this “mucking about” with other languages: I’m still trying to reignite my former passion for learning Korean. My heart hasn’t been in it. I’m plateaued.
A parting thought:
“I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction.” – J.R.R. Tolkien said this. But it’s precisely true for me, too – I could have said exactly the same. But I didn’t quite end up so creatively productive as Mr Tolkien.
Horas de pesadumbre y de tristeza paso en mi soledad. Pero Cervantes es buen amigo. Endulza mis instantes ásperos, y reposa mi cabeza. Él es la vida y la naturaleza, regala un yelmo de oros y diamantes a mis sueños errantes. Es para mí: suspira, ríe y reza. Cristiano y amoroso y caballero parla como un arroyo cristalino. ¡Así le admiro y quiero, viendo cómo el destino hace que regocije al mundo entero la tristeza inmortal de ser divino!
– Rubén Darío
No me acompaña el genio Cervantes de tal modo como a Darío, precisamente. Pero sí me acompaña – siempre está presente en la mente. Me brinda un cierta perspectiva sobre el mundo que me rodea: un distanciamiento medio-posmoderno, digamos… o barroco. Es igual.
Me ha introducido una melancolía este fin de semana pasado. Pasará, seguro. Mientras tanto… viendo dramas coreanas, y leyendo poesías al azar.
My brother posted a link to this video in facebookland. It’s worth repeating.
Who doesn’t remember the Sesame Street Martians with love in their hearts?
I think these aliens were my single most favorite things about Sesame Street. Their telephone routine is as clear as a bell in my mind, 40 years later (well, I’ve probably seen it since then a few times).
This little dubstep remix is appealing for its combination of that kind of nostalgia and modern trends in music. Very cool.
IamPumpking, “The Yip Yip Martians Discover Dubstep.”
I suppose I had to have a bad day, eventually. I felt discouraged. I will say that today, then, was the official ending of my "new job honeymoon" at Karma Academy. My frustration was on two fronts, one general and one specific, which are basically linked. Neither of them is novel in the least – I can almost guarantee I've ranted similarly before, probably on more than one occasion.
First, the general: I'm struggling more and more with a feeling of unclear or vague expectations, vis-a-vis what sort of teaching I should be doing, what I should be working on, what I might be doing right or wrong, etc. Koreans almost never tell you "how you're doing" – until there's some crisis or some problem. I've been feeling guilty, too, because of the inevitable double standard that emerges whenever you have "native speaker" and local Korean teachers working side-by-side – we are inevitably, because of our different proficiencies and distinct market values, held to different levels of expectation. This always makes me feel like I'm exploiting some kind of peculiar affirmative action program, inappropriately.
So the second thing is that today, there was not a major crisis, but a minor complaint from a parent that then got blown out of proportion in my mind. Hagwon parents are so hard to please, of course. One parent complains of not enough homework, and another complains of too much. How can one respond? Often what happens is that you give lots of homework, and there's a kind behind-the-scenes understanding that not all the kids are being held to the same standard, as driven by parental expectations or requirements. The conversation goes: "Oh, that kid … his mom doesn't want him doing so much homework, so don't worry if he doesn't pass the quiz, just let it go." This grates against my egalitarian impulses, on one level, and on another, despite being sympathetic to it, I end up deeply annoyed with how it gets implemented on the day-to-day: no one ever tells ME these things until some parent gets mad because I never got told, before, about the special case that their kid represents. In the longest run, of course, in the hagwon biz, one must never forget who the paying customers are – it's the parents. And for each parent that is pleased that their kid is coming home and saying "hagwon was fun today," there's another that takes that exact same report from her or his kid as a strong indicator that someone at the hagwon isn't doing his or her job. So it boils down to this: happy hagwon students don't necessarily mean happy hagwon customers. As a teacher, you're always walking a tightrope: which kids are supposed to be happy, and which are supposed to be miserable? Don't lose track – it's critical to the success of the business.
I came home feeling increasingly grumpy, and went on my 3km jog, feeling fat and old and slovenly and inept at my career. The humidity is high, the night felt hardly chilly at all. Now I'm eating an ascetic dinner of rice and kimchi, and drinking cold corn-tassel tea. I'm churning mostly fruitless "if I ran the hagwon" fantasies in my head.
I have compared life in rural Jeollanam Province to Kentucky. Or some other rural and reputedly under-developed part of the US, since, in fact, Kentucky doesn't really meet the archetype, anymore, as well as Mississippi, or, more suprisingly, Nebraska (which I read somewhere now is the part of the US with the highest incidence of rural poverty).
But I took advantage of the Kentucky archetype, which has become a part of the American dialect in that it's possible to use the suffix -tucky to indicate a place wracked by the social problems of rural poverty. Many people refer to parts of Southern California's "Inland Empire" as Fontucky, for example – a portmanteau of the city name of Fontana with that suffix, -tucky. And I once heard my own birth county referred to as Humtucky (combining Humboldt and -tucky) – as well as the quite common phrase Kentucky-by-the-Sea.
So I coined the term Hantucky to refer to Yeonggwang County, combining the prefix "Han-" which simply means "Korean," in Korean, with that -tucky suffix. I was pleased. I like coining terms.
The other day, I was walking along the broad, clean, tree-lined boulevard in Ilsan. I passed an automated bicycle-rental post, where a woman was using her credit card to check out a bike. Two very polite bicycle-mounted policemen rang their bells and rode past. A man with long hair in a pony-tail and a rainbow-colored umbrella walked past, talking into his iPhone. And there was the Russian immigrant woman I overheard speaking Korean with her blue-eyed daughter, that I saw last week. And the two Turkish or Middle Eastern dudes in suits rushing toward the subway. There're organic-only food stores, and posters in front of schools talking about environmental issues. I even saw a Volvo.
Prosperous. Liberal. High-density yet leafy-green and littered with parks. Even slightly multi-ethnic (well, that's a stretch, but all things being relative, in Korea).
So I had a sudden insight. If Yeonggwang County is Hantucky, then Ilsan might just well be Hanneapolis (<- Minneapolis).
Saturday, in my PN2 class, that's the phrase Boyun used, to describe me: "Teacher. You are… cool. But, um, strange, yes." I felt quite pleased – that's pretty good, to get from a rebellious and mildly obnoxious 8th grade girl, who is notorious at Karma Academy for wearing too much eye liner and for having a foul mouth (in two languages, no less).
Working Saturdays is going to take some getting used to. I've managed to reach almost 4 years in Korea without regularly doing this thing that most Koreans view as utterly inevitable. So I might as well get used to it. I never do anything with my weekends, anyway, right? But I do seem to make use of the "down time" in a sort non-productive, recuperative way.
Fortunately, today (Monday) is Korean Memorial Day. So I get a holiday. And a two-day weekend, after all. What will I do with this holiday? I might try cleaning my apartment – I feel like I'm living out of boxes… it's a little bit college-dorm-room-esque.
I went to Costco, yesterday. Anytime I feel the slightest bit homesick for life in America, I can go to Costco. It's an instant cure. And a good way to find relatively inexpensive, "real" cheese (as opposed to plasticky Korean stuff, which, although I love it dearly, I sometimes grow tired of). This time, I found some actual Swiss cheese from actual Switzerland. I also found granola. Wow. I might eat that.
