Just to be clear, my student didn't draw this. I did. I had asked my student to draw something alongside a lesson we were doing, but she was not understanding. As I tend to do in such cases, I simply did it myself, showing her how to do it – then she knew what to do and did it too.
But I rather liked the drawing, in its simplistic way. Especially when I added the weird robot dog and the skeleton underfoot.
주말동안은 제가 이 귀여운 고양이를 그렸습니다.
또한 많은 이상한꿈을 꾸었습니다. 그렇지만 고양이의 주제로 꿈이 아니었다.
I long ago lost any interest whatsoever in writing or editing for wikipedia. There was a time, in the early aughts, when I was making a concerted effort to author bits in wikipedia. Mostly, I wrote and edited articles related to Mexican and US geography.
I gave up – mostly because I so frequently found my efforts rejected or altered beyond recognition by the wikipowers-that-be. Perhaps it was laziness on my part, or a certain vanity, but I didn’t feel I could meet the requirements. So I quit.
But I still spend an inordinate amount of my online time with the vast wikithing, and I feel grateful to the many people who have stuck with content-creation, there, surpassing my own level of commitment and patience. I have even supported the wikimedia foundation with donations. I say this, proudly, while still acknowledging its faults.
The wikithing most definitely has faults.
Sometimes, if I stumble across an article with an egregious or blatent mistake or bias, I will “watch” it. I won’t edit it – as I said, I don’t do that anymore – but I will watch it, curious to see when someone gets around to noticing it.
About a month ago, I stumbled across this weird little stub about something called a Squeakinge Lisard. It struck me as a kind of hoax – either an outright fiction or some kind of clever, indirect effort at book promotion (via a link to a “source” which was a novel by some guy – but it turns out the link is dead, so in that case, um, not working so well as a book promotion).
I decided to draw a Squeakinge Lisard (shown at right).
I rather like this phrase, Squeakinge Lisard (especially with the archaic spelling). I would like to propose the phrase Squeakinge Lisard as a generic name for bits of information found in wikipedia that are not, in fact, true, but that have somehow managed to evade the editorial police for an unexpectedly long period of time.
I actually find the idea of bits of absurdist fiction embedded in encyclopedias to be a charming and appealing notion (e.g. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, by Borges). But I am shocked that the wikithingers have let this Squeakinge Lisard survive so long, unedited and unobserved.
I once had a quixotic fantasy of starting my own wikithing, from the bottom up, with a single requirement: that all the content be untrue. There are people who are making various efforts at this kind of thing: there’s uncyclopedia in the Onionesque satire category and there’s sorolpedia in the completely fictional orbistertiesque category. I wish them the best of luck.
Meanwhile, how long will it take for the Jimmywalesites to do something about their Squeaking Lisard infestation? Let’s watch together, and see…
What I’m listening to right now.
A Tribe Called Quest, “Award Tour.”
Lyrics.
[Chorus – Dove from De La Soul:]
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
New York, NJ, NC, VA
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
Oaktown, LA, San Fran, St. John
[Q-Tip:]
People give your ears so I be sublime
It’s enjoyable to know you and your concubines
Niggas, take off your coats, ladies act like gems
Sit down, Indian style, as we recite these hymns
See, lyrically I’m Mario Andretti on the MOMO
Ludicrously speedy, or infectious with the slow-mo
Heard me in the eighties, J.B.’s on “The Promo”
In my never-ending quest to get the paper on the caper
But now, let me take it to the Queens side
I’m taking it to Brooklyn side
All the residential Questers who invade the air
Hold up a second son, cause we almost there
You can be a black man and lose all your soul
You can be white and groove but don’t crap the roll
See my shit is universal if you got knowledge of dolo
Or delf or self, see there’s no one else
Who can drop it on the angle, acute at that
So, do that, do that, do that, that, that (come on)
Do that, do that, do that, that, that (OK)
Do that, do that, do that, that, that
I’m bugging out but let me get back cause I’m wetting niggas
So run and tell the others cause we are the brothers
I learned how to build mics in my workshop class
So give me this award, and let’s not make it the last
[Dove:]
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
Chinatown, Spokane, London, Tokyo
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
Houston, Delaware, DC, Dallas
[Phife Dawg:]
Back in ’89 I simply slid in the place
Buddy, buddy, buddy all up in your face
A lot of kids was busting rhymes but they had no taste
Some said Quest was wack, but now is that the case?
I have a quest to have a mic in my hand
Without that, it’s like Kryptonite and Superman
So Shaheed come in with the sugar cuts
Phife Dawg’s my name, but on stage, call me Dynomutt
When was the last time you heard the Phife sloppy
Lyrics anonymous, you’ll never hear me copy
Top notch baby, never coming less
Sky’s the limit, you gots to believe up in Quest
Sit back, relax, get up out the path
If not that, here’s a dancefloor, come move that ass
Non-believers, you can check the stats
I roll with Shaheed and the brother Abstract
Niggas know the time when Quest is in the jam
I never let a statue tell me how nice I am
Coming with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees
Living mad phat like an oversized mampi
The wackest crews try to diss, it makes me laugh
When my track record’s longer than a DC-20 aircraft
So, next time that you think you want somethin’ here
Make something def or take that garbage to St. Elsewhere
[Dove:]
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
SC, Maryland, New Orleans, Motown
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
Chinatown, Spokane, London, Tokyo
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
Houston, Delaware, DC, Dallas
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man
Going each and every place with the mic in their hand
New York, NJ, NC, VA
Seven times out of ten we listen to our music at night, thus spawned the title of this program
The word maraud means to loot
In this case, we maraud for ears
My drawing, followed by Jack Foley’s poem:
The Skeleton’s Defense of Carnality
Truly I have lost weight, I have lost weight,
grown lean in love’s defense,
in love’s defense grown grave.
It was concupiscence that brought me to the state:
all bone and a bit of skin
to keep the bone within.
Flesh is no heavy burden for one possessed of little
and accustomed to its loss.
I lean to love, which leaves me lean, till lean turn into lack.
A wanton bone, I sing my song
and travel where the bone is blown
and extricate true love from lust
as any man of wisdom must.
Then wherefore should I rage
against this pilgrimage
from gravel unto gravel?
Circuitous I travel
from love to lack / and lack to lack,
from lean to lack
and back.
– Jack Foley (American poet, b. 1940)
The other day in my little-ones class, we were drawing our current story – a derivation of Disney/Pixar's "Brave". I posted about this [broken link! FIXME] last week. But in going through my notes for that class last night I ran across this picture of the character Merida, that I drew (I do a lot of drawing in that class, both to show the kids what to do, as well as to entertain them). Considering it was a sketch done in two or three minutes, I was pretty happy with this drawing of Merida working.
I drew this cartoon when I woke up.
Why? Because who doesn't sometimes need a 2-minute llama?
Get thee to a llamasery. Eheh.
This picture at left is “Pronunciation Guy.” I have a few visual “mascots” that I use in teaching. The alligator is the most well-known, both in his toy version and his artistically rendered version. But “Pronunciation Guy” was created with his large mouth, seen from the side, for a specific reason. Sometimes I apply my knowledge of articulatory phonetics to try to help students sort out some of the mysteries of English pronunciation. Mostly L vs R, but also things like labiodental fricatives or schwas. I’m careful not to get too carried away, but Pronunciation Guy can be handy, because I can move his tongue and lips around in different drawings.
Work is so absorbing these days, I do very little else. A coworker asked me what I do in the mornings (since hagwon work is afternoon and evening work). I shrugged, and made something up, because lately, it seems like I just wake up and putter around and suddenly several hours have passed and I have to head off to work. I’m puzzled at my failure to use my own time effectively. More than puzzled – I’m distressed.
What I’m listening to right now.
The Black Keys, “Psychotic Girl.”
Last night (or this morning) I had a strange dream.
It was a dream where I was drawing pictures – which makes some sense, as I’ve been doing a lot of drawing, lately. I so vividly remember this dream that I made an effort to reproduce, after waking up, one of the pictures I was drawing inside the dream. Of course, pictures and images that seem profound or amazing inside a dream rarely seem that way on the outside, and my artistic talent seemed higher inside the dream, too. But at right is a sketch of the image I was drawing – a sort of “world tree” where there were many things in a large, top-heavy tree, including houses and smaller trees growing out of the top of it.
The dream got weird (don’t dreams always get weird?). A child came into the room. Well, maybe a young adolescent, about 12 years old. He wasn’t Korean (that’s odd, remember, because all my students are Koreans). I looked at him carefully, and my heart jumped – this child was me. Me, at age 12. Me said, “You’re late for class.” His tone was judgmental.
I rushed, following the me doppelganger down the halls of KarmaPlus to the appropriate class room. It was my beloved advanced debate students, mostly 13 or 14 or 15 (in Western counting). And the me doppelganger sat down among them, apparently a welcome member of the class. One of the Korean students said to me (the teacher, not the doppelganger), “Oh, we’ve missed you so much.”
“Was I gone a long time?” I asked. There was an odd, long silence.
The me doppelganger nodded, sagely.
Ellen (who has graduated from middle school and is no longer, in fact, a student in the debate class) stood up and made a little speech, in a mix of Korean and German (huh, German? where’d that come from?), on behalf of the other students. I understood most of it, much to my own surprise – of course, it was dream-Korean and dream-German, so that really means nothing. Then she sat back down and held out a small, neatly wrapped present. The me doppelganger jumped up and grabbed the gift, and ran from the room, laughing.
I looked down at my notes for the class, feeling crestfallen… robbed. My notes were nothing but the world-tree picture I’d been drawing earlier.
That’s the dream. I awoke to a square of very deeply blue morning sky outside my window, which was rimmed by hard rime on the inside.
I spent some of the day doing various things. I made a rather more ambitious drawing than usual – I spent several hours on it rather than just my five or ten minutes. It’s called “Coming Apart” – I used an ink pen and pastels.
What I’m listening to right now.
Crystal Ark, “Paradise.”
El dibujo de semana. La temática del lagarto sigue obsesionandome como siempre. Pero al fin y al cabo es una obsesión sumamente intencionada, así no tan obsesionante.
This is something I drew: “Gazing.”
Here’s the illustration of the week. It’s an illustration of nothing in particular, except flights of fancy.
Such as it is, l’artwork du jour.
It’s supposed to be a zombie, but I can’t draw zombies, so it’s just a person with green hair.
Well, but there’s this doodle-du-jour.
As mentioned before, I’m trying to draw something every day.
Last night we had a sort of less-formal-than-usual 회식 (hoesik = work-related meal/meeting event).
I genuinely like my coworkers, but even when it’s clear they like and respect me, too, I never feel like I can settle into my “real self” at these kinds of things. It’s complicated – everything about me is so “constructed” – so “intentional.” Who am I, really? It’s hard even to decide what kind of person I’m trying to be, much less to be that person consistently while drinking alcohol. I feel like I stick with that “quiet observer of my fellow humanity” role, but it no doubt disconcerts people: my failure to speak too much, my failure to become raucous or candid. And inside, I’m just a little bit lonely, and a little bit confused, and frustrated with my many shortcomings, and second-guessing each utterance, as I always have. As I always have.
I got home late. Or early. 4 am. I tried to sleep. I woke up. I drew something, as if it had come to me in a dream, but without that actually having been the case. I slept some more.
During five minutes this Sunday morning I drew a picture.
I titled it “Walking home in the rain along Gangseonno.”
What I’m listening to right now.
Los garles, “Palomita errante.”
The Saturday morning cartoon – I drew this a few minutes ago for some hard-to-understand reason.
My students taught me a phrase: “이빵꾸똥꾸야!” They said it means you hate something – the thing you’re talking to – a kind of vocative “I hate you.”
But a little bit of looking around the internet adds some information. It’s “little-kid” talk, originated in a TV show from a few years ago. And roughly, its more literal meaning might be “you farty butt.”
Great thing to know how to say.
I drew some comic characters today.
What I’m listening to right now.
Icon of Coil, “Love As Blood (Implant Remix).”
[UPDATE 2020-03-21: link rot repair]
I drew these characters for a student.
Just random drawing. For some reason, the title of this is “Not Really There.”
The teacher asked, “What do you think of the Korean hagwon system?”
The student answered, “Suck!”
“Suck? That’s not really a sentence,” the teacher pointed out, ever the stickler for ‘answers in full sentences.’
“It sucks!” the student offered, as a revision on her first answer.
In other news, the doodle at left is the sum total of my notes from the staff meeting on Tuesday.
Dang if I’m not utterly blown-over-infatuated with this track, at the moment.
I basically have been listening to it all day. More than that, I’ve been reading the lyrics, too – like I would study a new, compelling poem. This is rap/hip-hop at the level of lyric poetry – in my opinion, of course: musical tastes are entirely subjective. But even if you don’t like the track, read the poetry. It’s good. That good, in my opinion: half cinema-noir, half lucid gnostic fantasy, a kind of philosophical dreamscape littered with the detritus of too much living.
What I’m listening to right now.
Doomtree, “Beacon.”
Doomtree is from Minneapolis. There’s an official video that goes with the song, but I don’t actually like the video, so I found a non-official recording with just the album cover for the youtube, above. I would urge you NOT to watch the official video, until after you’ve listened a few times, and read the lyrics, and formed your own opinion about what the song is about – the video cheapens the narrative. It doesn’t fit. I’m very glad I didn’t watch the video the first time I heard the track.
Lyrics.
[Dessa]
I took it for a kiss, but it couldn’t have been, could it?
I see now what it is, we were just biting the same bullet
You called it in the air
it landed it on its edge
when the crowd gathers around
you turn tail
I turn heads
Shavin down the puzzle piece
tryna make a clean fit
Take what is lovely
leave before the rain hits
It’s a heartbreaker for starters, as you age not too much changes
practice doesn’t make perfect, just makes the game more dangerous[Stef]
Start repo
negative sleep nauseous
barf party for sure
intelligent creep stalking awkward
Flush flustered rush for doors
advance fire-plan
handy with the way out
routes explored
Cover catching up
careful with your care
We don’t go there, naw
We keep locks and keys steadily swallowed
never be followed, none of em dare
Channel up your anger leave it here
kindly disappear
Mind your mannerisms
I can’t be flattered back
The patterns the concern
lessons prolly turned to fact
By now you’d surely drown yourself
before you’d help me with this sail
I’m the wind
crossed fingers for the win
Up to ten til they hammer in the very last nail
Challenging like every last stalemate
Deal… with it
No mission ends
Precision lack of friends
Happily recommend nothing to no one, ever[Cecil]
I know, I know
I know, wake up, wake up
But I don’t go there, go there
She knows the way home
I know, I know
I know, wake up, wake up
But I don’t go there, go there
She knows the way home[Cecil]
You know your way home?
You gonna be all right?
Yeah, but I had faith that you’d see the light
and ride with me or kiss me goodbye
Now you got me feeding kites into the night sky
Covered them with nightlights – like, did you see the beacon?
I swear I let those kites fly around all weekend, no?
Well someone must have cut the lines or something, no?
Or maybe something, oh, you weren’t looking
…Ok Plan B just panic
run up the stairs and shut the door to the attic and don’t come up for air
until you’re torn from her fabric completely…
and just like magic, you’re all in one piece again
But, I’m nothing like I used to be…
elusive and reclusive
Now I’m just both times a hundred… exclusively
Truthfully, I was blind to the deep end
until that piece of us went and died that weekend[Cecil]
I know, I know
I know, wake up, wake up
But I don’t go there, go there
She knows the way home
I know, I know
I know, wake up, wake up
But I don’t go there, go there
She knows the way home[Sims]
Then it flashed forward, but I asked for it
Rip out the doubt, I’m way too south
I gulped it up, I laid back
peeling off the layers
the mantra saying “fear can’t stay here – self, see you later”
Fire chakra dissolve to ether
I have to meet her, I know she knows the way
I’ll have to die twice, no novocaine
See the Eye of Horace, I am Osiris
I meet the devil, it ain’t the first time
He kills me quick like I am nothing
Scream St. Peter, I need you now cousin
I see the owls coming, they float me safe
I learn their grace, they help me heal
under stars, peeling off my skin to rid my scars
it’s the first time I am reborn, but I am not me
No identity, and I am finally free< /span>
I am my brother, I am my father
I am the sun, I am the water
I am an ion, I am everything
I am the vapor, a cloud of smoke
I am a cheap laugh, but I get the joke
I am a brief flash, the abstract
I’ve been feeling more creative, lately.
Firstly, I made a rather creative dinner tonight, that came out quite deliciously: a tricolor rotini pasta alfredo with brocolli and cranberry and nutmeg. An unusual combination that I was quite pleased with.
Secondly, I’m trying to draw something every day. I’ve been messing with my pastels. Today, in about 10 minutes, I did the below self-portrait, while listening to this song. So now, every time I see this picture, I will think of this song.
During yesterday’s staff meeting, I listened carefully. Really, I should take my dictionary to the meeting – as it was, I didn’t take very useful notes. In fact, here are the notes I took during the meeting. All of them.
The agenda for the meeting looked like this.
You can see why I have no idea what’s going on. Although I can generally make out the topic-headers and try to pick out things I might need to ask about later, as pertaining specifically to me.
Really, this weekly experience builds my empathy for my students, who sit stone-faced and politely incomprehending, as I prattle on in class.
Curt likes to put little sayings and aphorisms on his meeting agendas. The one on this one says,
내가 원하는 사람이 되기 위해서는…
당신이 되고 싶은 사람이 되기 위해서는
하고 싶지 않은 일을 해야 하고,
듣고 싶지 않은 말을 해야 하고,
만나고 싶지 않은 사람을 만나야 한다.
워치 않은 일을 하지 않고
진정 원하는 일을 하는 사람은 없다.
우리는 누구나 당장 하고 싶지 않은 일,
어려운 일보다는
편하고 쉬운 것은 찾게 됩니다.
그러나 당장 하고 싶은 일,
편한 일부터 찾아하는 사람은
자기가 되고 싶었던 원래 모습과
가장 멀리 있는 자기 모습을
발견하게 욀 가능성이 그만큼 높아집니다.
– 조정민, ‘사람이 선물이다’에서
I may have made some typos in transcribing it. I wanted to try to translate it, but I haven’t, yet. Maybe sometime. I tried googling a translation (as opposed to googletranslating, which is utterly bad) and failed – so if you want a translation effort, you can plug it into googletranslate but don’t trust the result. The author, 조정민 [jo-jeong-min = maybe Cho, Jungmin] wasn’t even particularly googlable – I think (but I’m not sure) he’s a preacher or pastor. I can’t sort out the search results on Korean websites very well.
It was supposed to be “Rabbits eating vegetables.” But the latter word wasn’t familiar to my low level elementary students, whereas they all knew the word “basketball.” So when we recited the little dialog in chapter 9, that’s how it came out.
I tried to explain that rabbits don’t eat basketballs, but rather, vegetables. And I drew a picture on the blackboard, to explain why. I don’t have that picture – a student who found it disturbing erased it too quickly. But I have a reproduction that I drew just now – see picture at right.
Issitoq is an Inuit deity of surveillance and stern warnings. He is a giant eye that makes sure you don’t break the rules, like some kind of proto-Foucauldian panopticon-creature.
I was thinking about Issitoq as I drifted to sleep, the night before last. And so I had a short but vivid dream about Issitoq. It wasn’t really scary, but it was eerie. He was zooming down out of a stormy, sunsetty sky over a strangely colorful but desolate plain, like some kind of disneyfied Sauron.
I drew this picture yesterday, based on that dream.
On the bus, today, …
… I saw fields green with the young spring barley.
… I saw a man kneeling beside the tollway next to his SUV, which had a flat tire.
… I saw a banner with a Japanese flag and the words (in English): “Don’t give up, Japan.”
… I saw a motel designed to look like a Russian Orthodox Church.
… I saw a single broad patch of snow on a hillside of brown grass, near Gongju.
… I saw a shed on fire, in a field, with a great billowing cloud of white smoke.
… I heard “Aguas de março” sung by Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim, on my mp3 player.
… I saw a cow sleeping in some dirt.
… I saw a reproduction of a watercolor painting of Paris’ St.-Germain Square on the wall over a urinal at a tollway rest area.
… I heard grumpy old people with thick Jeolla accents pronouncing Yeonggwang as Yeom-gang.
… I saw a tall young man with tight jeans and shiny purple combat boots yelling into a cellphone and dropping his iced coffee onto the pavement.
… I heard Talking Heads’ “Found a Job” on my mp3 player.
… I saw brick farm houses with solar panels on their flat roofs.
… I read 50 pages of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.
… I saw many, many pine trees dancing under the sky, their roots sunk in the red-gold earth, looking like ink-drawings.
… I heard The Cure’s cover of David Bowie’s “Young Americans” on my mp3 player.
… I saw tiny villages packed up into narrow valleys, limned with leafless trees, where all the houses had blue tile roofs.
… I saw an angry-looking euro-dude with Miami Vice sunglasses, spitting onto the sidewalk like a Korean.
… I saw a giant statue of a squirrel.
… I ate something vaguely resembling tater-tots, with a spicy sauce.
… I saw a bridge over the tollway that had trees planted on it.
… I saw hundreds of plastic greenhouses, filled with hothouse vegetables growing, looking like large worms swimming in formation through the still wintery fields.
… I heard Juanes’ “Fijate bien” on my mp3 player.
… I saw families having picnics at the graves of their ancestors at random locations on hillsides alongside the tollway, and there were many children hopping happily, too.
… I saw a crow perched on the sign that indicated the Yeonggwang County line. I was almost home.
[this poem is a “back-post” added 2011-04-24, copied from my paper journal. I added the embedded youbube videos because the poem needed a sound-track. A scan of a picture from the paper journal page added 2013-06-14.]
I’ve been having a lot of computer problems, lately. But I think I should lay off ranting about it here.
I’ve been having a lot of vivid, weird dreams, lately, too. But I hesitate to write about those, sometimes. Nobody wants to read all the time about someone else’s dreams.
I’ve been having a rather vague, inconclusive experience with my teaching efforts, lately. I’m not sure what I could say about it. The first grade feels out-of-control-but-situation-normal. The third grade may be improving with my new, changed direction; and sixth grade remains excellent, although I’m groping for ways to keep it interesting. The “JET” test-prep class is boring. But I expected that. Boring subject can easily lead to boring class.
I haven’t been communicating much with friends or family, lately. Sorry about that. I’ve been in one of my periodic eremitic states.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a little blue. (Picture is my own artwork, done in 1992.)
Driving through the fields south and east of Hongnong, coming into work each morning by carpool or bus, feels like passing through a Van Gogh painting that's been animated, but in very slow motion. The colors are brilliant, and each morning things have subtly changed. Three weeks ago, the fields were almost all barley, and vibrantly green. Then over one weekend, the barley fields all turned to stunning yellow-gold and the sun turned summery. And then field by field, over the last two weeks, the barley has been cut, rendering each field in turn a more pale yellow-white, stubbly color, and then the fields are burned, which renders things brown-black. And then the fields are plowed, and the earthy is a muddy, dark color, and then the fields are flooded, turning them into silver mirrors of the skies. Baby rice plants are laid down by Rube-Goldberg-looking rice-planting contraptions, in neat rows of green shoots across the mirrory fields. The rice plants begin to grow, earnestly, and within days the fields are green-silver, and deeply textured. Finally, the paddies are drained, revealing the slick, red-brown Korean soil, with the rice plants standing in neat rows, preparing to absorb the summer heat and rains.
Each field follows its own rhythm, slightly different from its neighbors, so at any moment there's a whole palette of colors patchworked into squares and triangles across the rolling countryside: Green -> gold -> pale yellow -> black-brown -> silver -> silver-green -> red-brown with green. And so it goes.
Sé que no soy ningún artista de veras. Pero a veces prefiero intentar grabar algún imagen en lugar de escribir palabras vacías y siempre iguales.
Sometimes when I go to put something in my blog, I open my little black notebook… and whatever’s there on the pages doesn’t translate to blogland very well. Early today is a good example. So, just to be different, I decided to take a picture of the notebook’s pages, instead. Here it is.
And here is where I was sitting – looking out a cafe window at a Gangnam street. Note the fresh snow (a few cm) melting in the bright morning sun.
A couple books that I read long ago, that have been on my mind for some reason.
When the Legends Die by Hal Borland: described as a “young adult classic,” but it’s a just plain good novel, in my opinion. We’re reading a couple of stories about the American West in my Violet 2 class, recently, and whenever I think of the American West, I think of this book. It’s definitely in my top 100 books. It’s not really a western, although that’s probably the closest genre. It’s a very spare book, with a strong, unreachable but sympathetic character. Alienation. Perhaps most striking: it’s got loneliness without the pain that goes with it. Loneliness as refuge. As salvation, even. That’s a loneliness I understand, sometimes.
The Chosen (part of the unfinished “The Stone Dance of the Chameleon” trilogy) by Ricardo Pinto: a weird novel. The sort of thing a secret love-child of JRR Tolkien and William S Burroughs might produce, if he were raised in the Guatemalan jungle. But well-written, and very complex. Amazing characters, descriptions, a very alien universe, but peopled by multi-dimensional humans. I was thinking of this because I read somewhere recently that Pinto (from Scotland – can’t you tell by his name?) is finally planning on completing his trilogy. I’ll need to get the book.
The Friday attitude barometer, episode 3:
* Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it: 0
* Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only): 1
* Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only): 0
* Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles: 0
* Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”: 1
* Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till I make it” approach I’m fond of): 0
* Days I was late to work this week: 2
* Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early: 45
Current Soundtrack (as-I-write-this):
I was telling a few of my students about some tongue-twisters today, and they particularly liked the one about woodchucks. But then they surprised me by teaching me a Korean tongue-twister, that I actually was able to understand with a minimal amount of parsing:
“내가 그린 기린 그림은 잘 그린 기린 그림이고 니가 그린 기린 그림은 잘 못 그린 기린 그림이다.”
Since it’s a tongue-twister, for the full effect, here is a transliteration: “Naega geurin girin geurimeun chal girin geurim-igo, niga geurin girin geurimeun chal mot girin geurim-ida.”
And, for your reading pleasure, here is a rough translation: “My picture of a giraffe is a good picture, [but] your picture of a giraffe is not a good picture.”
However, there is the additional confusion that 그린 could be a Konglish rendering of “green,” which makes me think of green giraffes.
I really, really like this phrase. I think it’ll be my motto for the month! Boy is it hard to say, though.
