What I’m listening to right now.
Tiny Cowboy (AKA Oasis), “Meatloaf.”
This song is embedded in an episode of the the almost Cervantine cartoon Phineas and Ferb. The group “Tiny Cowboy” seems to be a fictionalization of the real brit alt rock group Oasis.
The sophisticated and multi-layered writing on this Disney children’s cartoon, which [broken link! FIXME] I mentioned before, continues to amaze me as I occasionally sample episodes during my free time. Either that, or my senility is advancing too rapidly, and I’m perfectly content to just sit and watch cartoons.
A deconstruction of Star Wars:
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Category: Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)
Caveat: Why Are Jumping Cats Offensive to the Dead?
There’s a book I have, entitled Eerie Tales from Old Korea. It doesn’t have an author, but is “compiled by” Brother Anthony of Taizé, a quite well-known Catholic monk who teaches at the main Catholic University in Seoul (called Sogang University) and who is a prolific translator and populizer of Korean poetry and literature.
These tales in this compilation, however, are not his translations, but rather translated by various early Christian missionaries in Korea. I enjoy reading these stories.
Here is a short story that makes me wonder about cats. According to Brother Anthony, it appeared in a magazine called Korea Review, published 1902-1905, probably translated by the missionary Homer B. Hulbert. The story doesn’t really answer the question in my title – it merely raises it, and offers a kind of “first instance” folk-explanation.
About two centuries and a half ago, a boy, who later became the great scholar Sa Jae, went to bed one night after a hard day’s work on his Chinese. He had not been asleep long when he woke with a start. The moon was shining in at the window and dimly lighting the room. Something was moving just outside the door. He lay still and listened. The door swung of its own accord and a tall black object came gliding into the room and silently took its place in the corner. The boy mastered his fear and continued gazing into the darkness at his ominous visitor. He was a very strong-minded lad and after a while, seeing that the black ghost made no movement, he turned over and went to sleep.
The moment he awoke in the morning, he turned his eyes to the corner and there stood his visitor still. It was a great black coffin standing on end with the lid nailed on and evidently containing its intended occupant. The boy gazed at it a long while and at last a look of relief came over his face. He called in his servant and said, “Go down to the village and find out who has lost a corpse.”
Soon the servant came running back with the news that the whole village was in an uproar. A funeral had been in progressbut the watchers by the coffin had fallen asleep, and when they awoke coffin and corpse had disappeared. “Go and tell the chief mourner to come here.” When that excited individual appeared, the boy called him into the room and, pointing to the corner, said quietly, “What is that?” The hemp-clad mourner gazed in wonder and consternation. “That? That’s my father’s coffin. What have you been doing? You’ve stolen my father’s body and disgraced me forever.” The boy smiled and said, “How could I bring it here? It came of its own accord. I awoke in the night and saw it enter.”
The mourner was incredulous and angry. “Now I will tell you why it came here,” said the boy. “You have a cat in your house and it must be that it jumped over the coffin. This was such an offense to the dead that by some occult power, coffin, corpse, and all came here to be safe from further insult. If you don’t believe it, send for your cat and we will see.” The challenge was too direct to refuse, and a servant was sent for the cat. Meanwhile, the mourner tried to lay the coffin down on its side, but, with all his strength, he could not budge it an inch. The boy came up to it and gave it three stroke with his hand on the left side and a gentle push. The dead recognized the master hand, and the coffin was easily laid on its side.
When the cat arrived and was placed in the room, the coffin, of its own accord, rose on its end again, a position in which it was impossible for the cat to jump over it. The wondering mourner accepted the explanation, and that day the corpse was laid safely in the ground. But to this day, the watchers beside the dead are particularly careful to see that no cat enters the mortuary chamber lest it disturb the peace of the deceased.
[daily log: walking, some certain amount of distance]
Caveat: Spongewalter Whitepants
OK, I don't even particularly like that TV show, "Breaking Bad."
This parody, however, is pure genius. Maybe it's just that I do happen to like Spongebob. I'm weird, right?
I had a another really difficult day yesterday. The capper: I broke my video camera – which, if you watch my work blog, you know I use a great deal in my classroom, on a daily basis. I have to buy a new camera. I guess maybe this weekend.
I will go into Seoul today, to meet my stepmother who happens to be in Korea currently – she's been staying at Yongsan.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: he’s my nemesis. I have to show him everything
Yesterday, my students in my T2 middle-school class told me I needed to watch the cartoon called Phineas and Ferb, because of Perry the Platypus. “Teacher, you need to see that,” they said. “It’s important.”
In need of something mindless and escapist, I duly did so, and found it it pretty entertaining – it is pretty well-written for a children’s cartoon.
Perry the Platypus is a kind of James Bondesque superhero. There is an entertaining, vaguely central-European villain named Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
In one episode (season 1, episode 18), one of the evil villain’s colleagues asks, with respect to Perry the Platypus, “Does he have to come along?”
Doofenshmirtz answers, “Yes, of course, he’s my nemesis. I have to show him everything.”
I am feeling overwhelmed, even though it’s Sunday, because next week – instead of being the “calm after the storm” of our talent show last week – is going to be a hellish week with a doubled teaching schedule.
[daily log: 10 episodes]
Caveat: It is not my Mom’s intention, it is the hair’s
There was apparently a bit of a scandal lately, over a small book of children’s poetry that was published in Korea. It made it to the international press.
Some of the poetry was apparently quite violent. The publisher was compelled to withdraw the publication, and remove unsold volumes from vendors. I guess this ended up as a kind of Streisand effect (q.v.), and now everyone wants to see the book. I found some images online of some pages of the book, which I will reproduce below although I may take them down, as it might actually be a legally dubious move to show them.
I really like the poem about the mom’s hair – it is excellent.
The cannibal doll is more scary, and I can see why parents found the idea of giving voice to such morbid (and confucianly-disrepectful!) poetry disturbing. But as a teacher of elementary students, I feel I can assert that such morbid thinking is common in children, and probably developmentally “normal.”
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: The Semiotics of the Lego Movie
I had actually had some thoughts, in this vein, before running across this. But Mike Rugnetta says it eloquently and in depth. So I'll let him say it.
You see, the copyright-litigious LegoCorp has made a movie that is symbolically anti-copyright-regime.
As Rugnetta points out, the "piece-de-resistance" is cash.
Anyway, hattip to Laughing Squid, where I ran across this video.
[daily log: walking, 6.5 km]
Caveat: 바보선언
Last night, about 11 pm, I had the TV on, which is becoming a usual thing. Keep in mind that it’s just Korean broadcast channels (I don’t pay for cable), so my level of comprehension of the 99% Korean-language broadcasts is only low-to-medium, and therefore I kind of just keep it on as a background noise. It’s part of my philosophy that one way that my Korean will improve is with maximization of input.
Sometimes these old Korean movies come on, on the EBS network. The one that came on caught my attention, and I sat and watched it, rapt.
It was 바보선언. I guess it could be translated as “Declaration of an Idiot” or “Fool’s Declaration.” The internet translation I ran across was “Declaration of Idiot” but the lack of particle makes me think it’s not a well-thought-out translation. More online research found out about it, here (there’s not much about it anywhere in English).It was directed by Lee, Chang-ho.
The lack of subitles on the television was irrelevant, for once – the movie has almost no dialogue and what dialogue there is strikes me as more absurdist or atmospheric than relevant. Compositionally, with its many non-sequiturs and absurdities, the thing reminded me of something by Ionesco, such as La Cantatrice Chauve, but impressionistically one could say it is a kind of cross be Koyaanisquatsi and a Korean slapstick comedy “Gag Concert.” The show’s soundscape is remarkable, too, and its interesting that it captures the atmospheric of the early 1980s better than most American
movies I’ve seen of the era (keeping in mind that that is my era, having graduated high school in the year this movie came out), despite being filtered through Korean culture.
Further, the movie is quite subversive. It’s important to remember that in 1983, Korea was still a military dictatorship, during its twilight phase after the assassination of Park. As such, for example, the symbolism quite striking in the final scene, where the two “fools” are striping off their clothes and dancing wildly in front of the recognizable icon that is the National Assembly building, gesticulating at it wildly. That building was only 8 years old in 1983, and it must have symbolized an empty promise of democracy to South Koreans then entering their third decade of authoritarianism. How did this get past the censors?
Overall, it is a snapshot of the Korean id, circa 1983. Fascinating.
Oh, and guess what? It’s on youtube, with subtitles. You can watch it.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Inventing Modernity. Or Not.
I finally actually finished a book. I read Arthur Herman’s popularizing history about the Scots, entitled, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It.
Scottish history is a topic I haven’t actually read that much about – although I felt comfortable in my understanding of the broad outline of English History (and therefore British history post-Union), I never really spent any time studying Scotland, specifically – unlike Wales or Ireland. So I picked up the book in hopes of filling some of that in. In its purely historical aspect, I got a lot out of the book, including a much better understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and some of the historical events surrounding it (Knox, the Covenanters and the Scottish Reformation; Bonnie Prince Charlie; etc.).
In fact, my main complaint about this book is probably the same as one of the other recent history titles I made a brief review of some time back, which is: good book, bad title. The title’s thesis (i.e. the idea that Scots invented modernity) seems unproven (and unprovable). It occured to me in looking up the text online just now that the title might not even have been the author’s chosen title, but rather the work of some hyperbolizing editor.
In any event, if the title had been something more modest to the effect of the Scottish Enlightenment’s impact on modernity (Hume, Smith, et al.), and their disproportionate contribution to the Anglosphere’s modern global cultural dominance, I’d have been less preoccupied with trying to decide if Herman did an adequate job proving his main thesis. As it was, I kept hoping the next chapter would explain exactly how it was they invented modernity. I’d say inventing modernity was a collective endeavor, in which the Scots definitely played a suprisingly outsized role.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: 조약돌
I ran across this poem, in translation, by accident, while searching for something else. But I was deeply impressed by it. It may become a favorite.
A Pebble
On the path before my house
every day I meet a pebble
that once was kicked by my passing toe.
At first we just casually
brushed past each other, morning and night,
but gradually the stone began to address me
and furtively reach out a hand,
so that we grew close, like friends.
And now each morning the stone,
blooming inwardly with flowers of Grace,
gives me its blessing,
and even late at night
it waits watchfully to greet me.
Sometimes, flying as on angels’ wings
it visits me in my room
and explains to me the Mystery of Meeting,
reveals the immortal nature of Relationship.
So now, whenever I meet the stone,
I am so uncivilized and insecure
that I can only feel ashamed.
– Ku Sang (Korean poet, 1919-2004)
– Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
It took some creative googling and some time with a dictionary doing some ad hoc reverse-translation (reverse engineering poetry?) to find the original text, but I’m confident that this is it.
조약돌
집 앞 행길에서
그 어느 날 발부에 채운
조약돌 하나와 나날이 만난다
처음에 우리는 그저 심드렁하게
아침 저녁 서로 스쳐 지냈지만
둘은 차츰 나에게 말도 걸어오고
슬그머니 손도 내밀어
친구처럼 익숙해갔다
그리고 아침이면 돌은
안으로부터 은총의 꽃을 피워
나를 축복해주고
늦은 밤에도 졸지 않고
나의 安寧을 기다려 준다
떄로는 천사처럼 훌훌 날아서
내 방엘 찾아 들어와
만남의 신비를 타이르기도 하고
사귐의 불멸을 일깨워도 준다
나는 이제 그 돌을 만날 때마다
未開하고 불안스런 나의 現存이
부끄러울 뿐이다
– 구상 (시인 1919-2004)
I played around with understanding the translation in a few places, without really making an exhaustive study of it. I was impressed by the fact that one line in particular represents all kinds of Korean grammatical bugbears in one helping: “내 방엘 찾아 들어와” has doubled-up case particles (can a noun have two cases at once? yes, it can in Korean) and a three-member serial verb, yet it was surprisingly not that hard to figure out.
내 [nae = my]
방 [bang = room]
-엘 [el = locative particle -에 + accusative particle -ㄹ]
차 [cha = ‘look for’ verb stem]
-어 [eo = verb ending which I have always thought of as the ‘finite’ (conjugated) verb ending but which Martin mysteriously calls ‘infinitive’ and which I have no idea what it “officially” is called]
들 [deul = ‘go in; enter’ verb stem]
-어 [eo = ‘finite’ (conjugated) verb ending again]
와 = [wa = irregularly conjugated ‘come’]
So all together: “my room-IN-OBJ looks-for enters comes,” translated above “it visits me in my room.”
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Busytown 2.0
When I was a child I had an inordinate fondness for Richard Scarry books. They weren’t really stories at all – they were cartoonified reference books with only the barest hintings of plot. Although which would be cause and which effect is not clear, I have ever since enjoyed refence books more than seems appropriate.
I ran across a comic in the series TomTheDancingBug, which I reproduce below. It is in Scarry’s classic style, “updated for the 21st century.” Funny.
I never realized that Lowly Worm was an immigrant. But seeing here that he is, it makes perfect sense. I read once that Lowly was the “true protagonist” of all of the Busytown books. Now I see that he is possibly illegal. Suddenly I want to write a postmodern novel about him. This feeling will pass.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 hm]
Caveat: vaa kári xás vúra kun’íimti poofíipha pa’áama.
Something was striking about this story. When they had the "dog salmon," (what's also called chum salmon), they had immortality. When the salmon were gone, then death returned.
[1]
A woman and her sweetheart loved each other very much. But the woman's brothers disliked (the man). Finally they killed the man.
[2]
You see, (the couple) had hid for a long time in a cave. So when they buried him (there), then the woman went there. And she lay on top of the corpse. Finally she got sick, the corpse was swelling. And she said, "I'm sick, let me go out!"
[3]
Then when she slept, she dreamed about him. And he said, "Is it true that you grieve for me?" And he said, "If it is true, let me tell you what to do. You must go there where we used to stay, in the cave. You will see a grave there. And you will see two eyes float around. You mustn't be afraid of me. You mustn't run.
[4]
So she went there. And she saw that. And suddenly (a voice) spoke. And it said, "You must weave a burden basket. And you must make many dresses. When you finish, you will see a buzzard sit there on top of a rock. You must follow it. You see, that is the bird of the dead."
[5]
And so then she wove. And she said to a woman, "Let's go together!" She was her friend. So she too wove and made the dresses.
[6]
Then they finished. So they left. And they saw the buzzard. So they followed it. And they traveled, it was many days that they traveled. They were following the buzzard that way. And sometimes it was a brushy place where they traveled, their dresses got torn.
[7]
Finally they arrived, the country was beautiful and green. And someone rowed to meet them and landed them on the other shore. And they saw two old women there. And (the old woman) said, "Look, the one you are wandering around for is making a deerskin dance uphill. Why is it that you have come here? People with bones (i.e., live people) don't come here. Come on, let's hide you! Let them not see you!
[8]
So they hid them. So they stayed there for a little while. Then they were told, "Go back home!" And they were given dried salmon. There it was dog salmon. You see, they call dog salmon "dead-man's salmon." And they were told, "When a person dies, you must rub this on his lips. You see, he will come back to life."
[9]
So (the girls) went back home. They traveled back again that way. The buzzard brought them back. So when they returned to this world, they are the ones who did as it is done in the land of the dead.
[10]
Finally no person died, finally the people filled up the earth. Then when the salmon was all gone, they died.
– Mammie Oldfield, in William Bright's The Karok Language (1957), pp. 266-269, Text 58
Found at Kuruk online texts. I didn't presume to include the original, although I was tempted.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Lo pasa echao panza arriba mirando dar güelta el sol
383
Fabricaremos un toldo,
como lo hacen tantos otros,
con unos cueros de potro,
que sea sala y sea cocina.
¡Tal vez no falte una china
que se apiade de nosotros!
384
Allá no hay que trabajar,
vive uno como un señor;
de cuando en cuando un malón,
y si de él sale con vida,
lo pasa echao panza arriba
mirando dar güelta el sol
- Éstas son dos estrofas del poema muy largo "El Gaucho Martín Fierro" del poeta argentino José Hernández (1834-1886), que consta el poema que en cierto término ha definido a la nación y la cultura gauchescas. Es un castellano algo difícil de entender, porque incluye muchas representaciones fonéticas de la pronunciación rústico del gaucho platense. Hace mucho que me ocupo de la temática gauchesca, pero en algún momento fue algo que me atraía mucho, hasta que fue uno de varios posibles temas para mi tesis del doctorado, aunque no él que al fin seleccioné. Recientemente busqué y encontré los textos del poema gratis en línea, y he decidido descargarlo y leerlo de nuevo.
Caveat: Abstract?
I spent some time watching this video. I like it, and it's interesting, in a Koyaanasqatsi kind of way, but I'm not sure if "abstract" really is what it is? But if not abstract, what is it? It seems very concrete, in fact – it's all "really there" as is inevitable if you're making a film, right? The camera is capturing something real. Perhaps only the ritual is abstract…
Circle of Abstract Ritual from Jeff Frost on Vimeo.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: The Knight Gipa
There is a poem I ran across some time ago, called Changiparangga (찬기파랑가), which I liked but I didn't want to post it simply in translation – which is the form I encountered. I wanted to post the original.
But… the poem is 1300 years old. It was written by a Korean, but in Classical Chinese – as poems in that era were typically written. I know absolutely nothing about Classical Chinese, and I am not conversant in the discourses of Korean philology, either. So representing an "original" of this poem is a fraught proposition at best. Nevertheless, the text below seems to be the "original" (원문) in circulation. The "transcriptions" provided on Korean websites already are too opaque for me to make heads or tails of – they use obsolete Korean "jamo" characters to represent the Chinese sounds, and these aren't even unicode, but are instead gifs (picture files) that are being posted. I don't feel comfortable borrowing those when I don't even understand them. So there is no hangul transcription for this, and I couldn't find anything that looked like an "authoritative" modern Koreanization of the poem (which would be in the vein of a modernization of something like Beowulf in English literature).
The original:
찬기파랑가 – 讚耆婆郞歌
咽嗚爾處米
露曉邪隱月羅理
白雲音逐干浮去隱安支下
沙是八陵隱汀理也中
耆郞矣兒史是史藪邪
逸烏川理叱磧惡希
郞也持以支如賜烏隱
心未際叱肹逐內良齊
阿耶栢史叱枝次高支好
雪是毛冬乃乎尸花判也
The translation that I originally found appealing:
The moon that pushes her way
Through the thickets of clouds,
Is she not pursuing
The white clouds?
Knight Kip'a once stood by the water,
Reflecting his face in the Iro.
Henceforth I shall seek and gather
The depth of his mind among pebbles.
Knight, you are the towering pine
That scorns frost, ignores snow.
– Trans by Peter H. Lee
[daily log: walking, 5km]
Caveat: 오발탄
I went to see a movie today, entitled 오발탄 [obaltan = aimless bullet]. It is a very old movie, especially by the standards of Korean cinema, having been made in 1960, in the waning days of the autocratic Syngman Rhee (이승만) regime, when the Korean war was still a very fresh memory and when North Korea still had a higher per capita GDP than the South. Thus the atmospherics of the movie are very much about the feeling of pointlessness that prevailed with respect to the war in that period (while later treatments could trend more ideological, given the retrospective "necessity" to fight for a better future – later fulfilled by South Korea's arrival in the "first world").
This existential atmosphere of hopelessness is also clearly influenced by the existential charecter of post-WW2 European cinema, but the movie's director, 유현목 [Yu Hyeon-Mok], has masterfully "nativized" that latter genre's cinematic vocabulary such that the movie feels authentically Korean rather than at all derivative.
Superficially, the movie could be summarized in one sentence as "man with a bad toothache and a badly-behaved family struggles to survive while retaining a clear conscience, but gives up in the end." The badly-behaved family includes a mentally deranged mother (traumatized by the war), a prostitute sister, a bank-robber casanova brother, and a dissolute, very pregnant wife who will die in childbirth. The movie is based on a short story by 이범선 [Yi Beom-Seon], which I will try to find and read in tranaslation.
I told my friend Peter, who had suggested us going to the screening at the Seoul Film Society, that I thought the symbolism of the film was not that hard to decipher: while everyone obsesses over and struggles with the various family problems (aftermaths of the War), the real, unbearable problem is the man's toothache, which represents the endemic corruption of South Korea at that time. Unless this core problem is plucked out and solved, the baroque madness surrounding him continues, yet he resists doing it until the end, "sacrificing" so as to provide for family.
Frankly, the movie is pretty dark and depressing. The cinematography is hard to appreciate because of the poor quality of the surviving print that was digitized. Nevertheless I came away quite impressed by the montage. There are all these visual leitmotifs and echoes and almost humorous pauses and dwellings of the camera. The dialogue, which of course was partly ruined by poor subtitles, seemed full of these sort of "speaking in aphorisms" that seem to abound in Korean, and thr movie was in all ways equal to "art cinema" I have seen that was made in the west in the same period.
I liked the movie. I have not been doing much movie-watching lately.
Incidentally, after the movie there was a "discussion group," which was in English and not bad as far as such things go until the conversation got taken over by a mulling of Korea's persistent cultural resentment of Japan. Apropos of this, after we left the locale, Peter said a very quotable thing: "people's opinions about Japan are rarely rational or interesting to listen to."
[daily log: walking 4 km]
Caveat: The Platonic Ideal of Cuteness in the Liminal Chasm
Yesterday I was annoyed by the lack of internet at work.
Lately, you see, I've been making my blog-posts at work – either by coming in a little bit early or going home a little bit later. This is because I have almost completely ended my internet use at home – this is mostly as a means of self-discipline, because I find it improves my affect substantially. When I spend too much time online at home, I tend to feel like I've wasted my time and that I'm lacking in self-control, so by simply avoiding it, I feel better about my lifestyle and my choices. The consequence, however, is that I get my "internet fix" during breaks at work. It's more than sufficient, normally – but when the internet at work isn't working… well, it not only messes up my work routines, it discombobulates my fairly stable home routines, too.
Anyway, I came in early today and found the internet working again. So here I am.
I found this strange little essay online the other day. It's some of the best writting I've run across, recently, about popular culture. A bit unexpectedly, the topic is Sanrio and Japan's "Hello Kitty" empire. Euny Hong, at Quartz.com, writes,
Hello Kitty, you are not what you claim to be. Kitty, what’s your game? I have several plausible theories as to her true provenance (it is with great restraint that I avoid the possibility of interspecies mating):
Origin of Species: Hello Kitty is like Caesar from Planet of the Apes; a regular cat made highly intelligent and biped via an experimental Alzheimer’s drug.
The White family is in some kind of witness protection program. This would explain why a so-called British family is faffing about with apple pies, cookies, and pancakes. They might have to pass as English in their new identity as the “White family.”
The Whites are like a family from a Henry James novel, living in that liminal chasm between America and Europe. Just as they are living in the liminal chasm between human and cat. So much liminality for one family.
Sanrio is the world’s undisputed thought leader in “kawaii,” which is basically the Japanese word for “squee.” The Japanese, through some kind of cartoon phrenology and the design equivalent of genetic engineering (also known as “drawing”) arrived at an image that is the Platonic ideal of cuteness. And Hello Kitty is the brand ambassador for Sanrio. So it’s a bit shocking that it took the world so long to identify what she was. There’s more cult crit to be done here.
To paraphrase Nabokov: Hello, hello, hello Kitty. My sin, my soul.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Atrahasis
I'm reading a collection of Mesopotamian texts (in translation, obviously – my Sumerian was never that good). I'm reading the Sumerian "Great Flood" story, featuring Atrahasis.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Beer, Chicken Wings, Celts and Greeks
Last night we went out for a drink and some food (beer and chicken wings) – very western – at a place near La Festa near my apartment. It was just the "elementary team": Ken, Kay, Helen and I. There is going to be a major staff change at the hagwon, and it is going to be a difficult transition for the hagwon and for me, I expect. More work, at least in the medium term. I'll give details later when I can feel confident I'm not breaking any confidentiality issues.
This morning, I finished one of my history books that I bought a few weeks ago. It was The Birth of Classical Europe, by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann. It's a kind of summary of the classical period. The first half could be called "the rise of Greece" and the second half could be called "The rise of Rome." I was most interested in the peripheral cultures – the Cretans, Trojans, Phoenicians, Etruscans and Celts were the "runners up" in the classical Mediterranean sweepstakes. I was particularly interesting in the interesting fact that Massilia (modern Marseille in France) was a flourishing Greek city before Rome. I hadn't really thought about that. It was an interesting intersection of Greek and Celtic culture.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: California
I was born in California, and lived my first 18 years there (with a few minor interruptions, never more than a few months). Although I generally identify myself as a Minnesotan now (because of my university and post-university years there), I have also lived in California for some years during my adult life.
I have always had an interest in California's unique history, and when I was in the bookstore last Sunday, I bought another book (aside from the one about the Chicken, already mentioned yesterday on this blog) that made for quick reading. It was a used book about California's missions – a fragment of some journal by a French traveller who visited Monterey (at that time populated by probably less than 50 Spaniards and maybe a couple hundred Native Americans, but nevertheless the capital of California) in the 1780's. How a book of this eccentricity arrived on the shelf of a bookstore in Seoul, I have no idea. But I bought it. It's quite short, has a well-written and academic introduction (and many footnotes!), and offers an interesting perspective on the earliest Europeans in California. The title is Life in a California Mission: Monterey in 1786, by Jean François de La Pérouse.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Chicken, Duck, Weasel
I bought some books last weekend when I went into Seoul, but I wasn't that happy with my haul at first – I have been reading a lot of Korean history, and was hoping to find more of the same, but I found nothing in that category that appealed to me at all. So I had desultorially bought some other books based either on having heard something about them or because they struck me as possibly interesting in my browsing.
One book I picked up was the English translation of a novella by Korean Sun-mi Hwang (황선미), called The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (original 마당을 나온 암탉). I agree thoroughly with one of the reviews on the cover, by Adam Johnson: "a novel uniquely poised at the nexus of fable, philosophy, children's literature, and nature writing."
It's a pretty good book. It's less than 100 pages, and I read it in a long morning.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: More Korean War Reading
Having finished that Halberstam book I was working on, last week I started yet another Korean War book, which is also from the collection of books I acquired from my friend Peter when he was leaving the country "forever" last summer (I saw him on Saturday, so his "forever" hasn't worked out).
It's a book by a Korean War general named Paik Sun Yup (백선엽). After Halberstam book, it provides a very interesting and distinct perspective on the War, and I'm enjoying it more than the other book although I find myself speculating too much between the lines about his possible roles in the subsequent dictatorships in South Korea, given General Paik's noted anti-communism. Regardless, I read almost half of it on my low-tech Sunday, and I can recommend it.
According to the wikithing, the General is still alive – see picture below. It's hard to imagine how he must perceive the South Korea of today vis-a-vis his experiences.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Hell for Leather
I ran across the expression "hell for leather" in the Halberstam book I've been reading, and had to admit I'd never seen it before – I had to look it up.
It apparently means to do something doggedly or recklessly – the latter meaning seems to be under the influence of a different, unrelated expression, "hell bent." The most plausible etymology was that it refers to the effects that an arduous journey had, in the 19th century, on shoes (i.e. "leather"). To take a long, dogged, difficult trip was "hell for leather." Hence the primary meaning of doing something arduous in a dogged fashion. The phrase "hell bent," however, had influenced the meaning of the expression by the beginning of the 20th century, and I think the soldier Halberstam is citing as using the phrase means it more as "to do something recklessly and at great speed."
Having finished the book yesterday, I will say I'm not as disappointed in it as my friend Peter (who gave me the book, I believe, if not quite intentionally). I think ultimately with a modified title it would have been much less disappointing. Halberstam's title is "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War". I would only change the subtitle: "The Coldest Winter: How Douglas MacArthur's Mistakes in Korea Led to America's Disaster in Vietnam." That about sums up the book, and with that narrower title, one could be more comfortable with the book's many omissions.
[daily log: walking, km]
Caveat: War Reading
I spent the day with my computer in the off position. I have been trying to get back to reading more, as I know it improves my affect some.
I read about 300 pages of David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter, a history of the Korean war that seems focused on the bizarre and erratic personality of Douglas MacArthur – as is appropriate I suppose.
It ended up being riveting and novelestic reading.
[daily log: um. . . no]
Caveat: Orphan Black Found
When I was in the hospital last summer, my former coworker Grace gave me a bunch of tv shows to watch – mp4's and avi's on a thumb drive. One show that she gave me that I never watched last summer was a show called Orphan Black. 
Recently, I started watching the episodes and found myself getting into it. I downloaded the more recent episodes and this morning I caught up to the most recent episode available. Contrary to my initial impression that it was a mediocre Canadian production in the sci-fi/thriller genre category, the series is in fact extremely well-written and well-acted too. Since the show is about clones, many of the lead roles all belong to one actress, and she does a good job switching back and forth. I've become quite riveted by the series, and recommend it.
[daily log: walking, 2.5 km]
Caveat: watching the monad
The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.
Upborne and surrounded as we are by this all-creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the air, why should we be such hard pedants, and magnify a few forms? Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows them not, and genius, obeying its law, knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches. Genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same. She casts the same thought into troops of forms, as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. Through the bruteness and toughness of matter, a subtle spirit bends all things to its own will. The adamant streams into soft but precise form before it, and, whilst I look at it, its outline and texture are changed again. Nothing is so fleeting as form; yet never does it quite deny itself. In man we still trace the remains or hints of all that we esteem badges of servitude in the lower races; yet in him they enhance his nobleness and grace; as Io, in Aeschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the imagination; but how changed, when as Isis in Egypt she meets Osiris-Jove, a beautiful woman, with nothing of the metamorphosis left but the lunar horns as the splendid ornament of her brows!
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (American philosopher, 1803-1882), from his essay "History" (1841).
[daily log: walking, 3 km]
Caveat: The Circular Ruins
The dream that I awoke from this morning was that I was in some kind of Aztec or Mayan ruin, mostly a series of underground caverns. They had been occupied and modified by a vast population of industrious Koreans, however. Thus the underground passages resembled the concourses of the Seoul subway system, but with wall decorations and statues scattered about on a mesoamerican theme. I was looking for my students, but was unable to find them. I stuttered through various Korean-language conversations with random merchants and passers-by, saying I was looking for the kids from KarmaPlus hagwon, but no one had any idea what I was talking about. So I kept wandering. The passages went on and on, and everywhere there were busy people going about their lives in what seemed a subterranean Korean civilization among the Mayan ruins. It was quite strange but very vivid.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Gifigator
I decided to try something completely new yesterday: I made an 8 frame animation and then gifified it.
It took longer than its very amateurish appearance would suggest. The alligator is intended to be the infamous Kevin (or one of his many successors – Kevin II, Kevin III, Charles, Brian, etc.), and the well-known (among my students) mouse's name is Lunch.
Saturday night, a few hours after I got home from work, my friend Seungbae came out to Ilsan to visit me.
He may be returning to Mexico in February, and I hadn't seen him since he had gone off to Latin American last fall. I'm impressed with where he's been taking his career. Especially given how he's broken with Korean tradition and changed careers several times in his life – this career is a quite recent thing. My Spanish-speaking Korean friend is finally leveraging his Spanish abilities spectacularly. Anyway, he really is my best Korean friend – the person with whom I have the most in common. I was glad to see him although I've been pretty gloomy and antisocial lately.
He and his girlfriend (another way he's breaking with Korean tradition – divorced and dating again in his early 50's) and I went to dinner at the BonJuk across the street from my apartment and talked for a few hours. I was jealous of his bibimbap but ate my danhobakjuk fairly comfortably.
What I'm listening to right now.
Broken Bells, "Holding on for Life."
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: the last and greatest of human dreams
It's a few days late, but I just now ran across it.
Warning: if you are unfamiliar with Burroughs, be forewarned – you might want to reconsider listening to his "prayer" (which is not a musical track, either, by the way – this is poetry being read by the author).
Burroughs was a great American writer in my humble opinion – one of the greatest – but he was undeniably deeply profane and gallingly liberal (or perhaps more correctly he was a type of libertarian – he was pro-drug but also radically pro-gun, for example, and though he despised "lawmen" he didn't seem to have much of a problem with big government in principle).
His iconoclasm comes across plenty clearly in this short bit.
William S. Burroughs, "A Thanksgiving Prayer."
Text:
For John Dillinger, in hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day, November 28th, 1986.
Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.
For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.
Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the memories – all right let's see your arms!
You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
Burroughs, as a writer, was perhaps one of the single most influential in my life, though you wouldn't know that by looking at my lifestyle or my other tastes and interests. I am the junkie-that-never-was.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: The Watercolor Replicant
Blade Runner is a remarkable movie, and struck me as such the first time I saw it, which is was probably near when it first came out when I was still in high school.
Now, someone with far too much time on his hands has created a tribute to that movie: by painting a frame-by-frame recreation of about 30 minutes of the movie using watercolors, he's then run it together using stop-motion animation and matched it to the original soundtrack.
Although I really like this creation, and I really like Blade Runner, my question is this: why couldn't he have applied such prodigious talent to something original?
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]
Caveat: es enemigo amor de la mudanza
Mar sesgo, viento largo, estrella clara,
camino, aunque no usado, alegre y cierto,
al hermoso, al seguro, al capaz puerto
llevan la nave vuestra, única y rara.
En Scilas ni en Caribdis no repara,
ni en peligro que el mar tenga encubierto,
siguiendo su derrota al descubierto,
que limpia honestidad su curso para.
Con todo, si os faltare la esperanza
de llegar a este puerto, no por eso
gireis las velas, que será simpleza.
Que es enemigo amor de la mudanza,
y nunca tuvo próspero suceso
el que no se quilata en la firmeza.
– Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616).
El soneto aparece en su novela Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, en el cap. 9 de la primera parte, atribuido al personaje de Manuel de Sosa Coitiño, el llamado "enamorado portugués." Es fácil olvidar que el novelista Cervantes también escribió mucha poesía de calidad notable – porque siempre aparece en sus novelas y cuentos atribuida a sus personajes fictícios.
Caveat: What does the fox say?
Apparently this is a thing, right now.
It was circulating on the facebook this morning, when I looked inside. I'd heard a reference to it yesterday, somewhere, too, and wondered what it was about. Now I know.
What I'm listening to right now.
Ylvis, "The Fox."
My very first thought when I watched it was this: I have got to show this to my students – it's the perfect blend of ironic pop sensibilities and kindergarten English. I especially like the grandfather reading the storybook, in the video.
Lyrics:
Dog goes woof, cat goes meow.
Bird goes tweet, and mouse goes squeek.
Cow goes moo. Frog goes croak, and the elephant goes toot.
Ducks say quack and fish go blub, and the seal goes ow ow ow.
But there's one sound that no one knows…
WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Big blue eyes, pointy nose, chasing mice, and digging holes.
Tiny paws, up the hill, suddenly you're standing still.
Your fur is red, so beautiful, like an angel in disguise.
But if you meet a friendly horse,
will you communicate by mo-o-o-o-orse,
mo-o-o-o-orse, mo-o-o-o-orse?
How will you speak to that h-o-o-o-orse,
h-o-o-o-orse, h-o-o-o-orse?
WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
WHAT THE FOX SAY?
A-oo-oo-oo-ooo!
A-oo-oo-oo-ooo!
WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?!
The secret of the fox, ancient mystery.
Somewhere deep in the woods, I know you're hiding.
What is your sound? Will we ever know?
Will always be a mystery; what do you say?
You're my guardian angel hiding in the woods.
What is your sound?
Will we ever know?
I want to, I want to, I want to know!
Caveat: Basques
Since June, I haven’t finished a single book. I was beginning to wonder if I was losing the ability to finish reading books. As Wendy said, though, “You’ve had a few other things on your mind.”
So it was almost a shock today when I finished one of the 15 or so books I currently have in progress. I came home from work, took a kind of disturbed nap, and then I finished reading a book entitled The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky. I’ve always been fascinated by Basque culture, language and history, although it’s an interest I haven’t actively pursued.
Partly I was surprised to have finished the book because I actually found it rather disappointing. It promises a wider scope than it offers – it’s not a Basque history of the world so much as a fairly conventional, anecdote-driven history of the Basque people. Nor does it in fact spend much energy on the Basque diaspora, which is interesting in and of itself – my main first-hand exposure to Basque culture was in Mexico, for example.
As a history, however, it’s fairly well-executed. I think the anecdotal structure facilitated my ability to finally work my way through it, and my already strong familiarity with Spanish History meant that I had a lot of context of my own to fill in the ellipses.
Maybe someday I’ll get to go and explore Basqueland.
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]
Caveat: La cité des enfants perdus
Andrew was urging me to watch a movie that he thinks highly of, entitled La cité des enfants perdus (The City of Lost Children). So to celebrate (mourn?) his impending departure, tomorrow, we watched this evening. It was kind of a creepy movie, but quite surreal, as the blurb promised, and with some interesting stuff going on symbolically. Overall, I’d rank it at least as high as the movie 헨젤과 그레텔 (Hansel and Gretel [2007]).
In any event, it was a good distraction – as long as I don’t end up having a nightmare from it. Nah… I don’t generally have that problem.
Tomorrow, Andrew and Hollye fly back to L.A. I’ll be on my own for a few weeks. I’ll be alright.
[daily log: walking, 9 km]