Category: My Photos

Yesterday I went to Seoul to see my friend Peter. We had some lunch, and then ended up deciding to try to go to a "Shamanism Museum" that Peter had told me about before, and which interests me. It wasn't that far – it would have been 3 stops on the subway, but we decided to walk, which was 2-3 km. We skirted the southwestern edge of Bukhansan, the big mountain and park area that rises north of central Seoul, paralleling the line 3 subway, which is the one that comes out to Ilsan, too. It's pretty familiar territory.

We found the museum without difficulty, but it was closed. It seems to keep limited hours, a few weekday mornings only. So. 

We talked a lot, anyway, and it was a nice enough walk, as the clouds loomed and the monsoon was about to start. The rain started last night.

Here is a picture of the museum – it's in a very posh neighborhood of rather new high rise apartments.

Here is a nice-looking gazebo amid some trees and greenery nearby. It's nothing old, but it's built in an old style and is quite pleasant.

Maybe I'll try to go back, sometime, when it's open. Then I'd have more to write about.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]  

I suppose it must be a translation of a typical Korean way of phrasing things: my students almost universally will offer "for some reasons" when preparing to give a list of more than one reason for something. It makes sense, but it sounds unidiomatic in English. Being around it so much, however, it has become part of my idiolect, like some other Koreanisms, like starting a sentence with "By the way…" or "And then…" when those phrases aren't quite pragmatically appropriate.

By the way, I had a very hard week, this past week, for some reasons.

First, there was a lot to be done at work. Because I had to prepare more detailed versions of my syllabuses for my Elementary classes. Also, we had a business dinner. Also, Friday morning, I got some weird upset stomach thing, so I'm wondering if it was a mild food poisoning or something, since it passed fairly quickly, and it was unpleasant while it lasted.

And then, the week is finally over.

Nowadays, I am recovering from it.

It was lightly snowing this morning, but it doesn't show in this picture among the Hugok redwoods (deciduous "dawn redwoods," metasequoia).

[daily log: walking, 7.5km]

On Saturday, I bought a new phone. It is a Samsung Galaxy S7. This is my first new phone in 5 years, and since that phone was a hand-me-down (gifted to me by my former coworker, Ken), it is the first phone I have bought since first arriving in Korea in 2007. Although in some ways, over the years, I have been an early adopter, with respect to phones I can definitely assert that I have always been quite behind the curve of modernity.

I was puzzled, momentarily, with how to post a picture of my new phone (since I don't own a separate camera, and since one of the main features I was interested in for my new phone was the camera). Then I realized I could use my old phone to take a picture of it. This is, therefore, officially the very last picture taken with my old phone. It's going on mothballs – although I have a vague idea I might mess with it as a low-performance linux box, if I want to mess with something like that.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

We went out to dinner, in Pasadena near my dad's house: my sister and her family, along with Andrew, Phil, Curt, Jin and me. There was too much food – more than we expected.

I feel extremely tired – more than it seems like I should, given what we did today. But I suppose it's more of a cumulative result of pushing so hard so far on this trip.

I had dinner at the airport with three korean ajeossis who went to high school together, two of whom are accompanying me on this trip back to the US. The third just happens to live very near the airport so he joined us.

As I was walking to work, just now, I looked up to see vast billowing clouds of black smoke over Gobong Hill. Sometimes I go walking over there. I wonder what is burning? It looked like a tire or petroleum fire. 

Right as I took this picture from a pedestrian bridge over Gobong-ro, a firetruck raced by , below. You can just barely make out its redness through yellow trees under the blue highway sign.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

I went into Seoul yesterday to bid farewell, once again, to my friend Peter.

Mostly it was just hanging out and watching him finish packing. A few of his other friends came by, too. I'm not sure my social skills are very good, anymore.

It was a cool, windy day, relative to the recent oppressive heat of August. A squall of rain crossed the city as we were leaving. The air was quite clear and the clouds were many stark shades of gray, like an abstract coloring book pattern in the sky.

Here is a picture of Peter, with a friend of his, and me, after going out in the street from his apartment (well, former apartment, now). In fact it is raining lightly in this picture, but it's hard to tell.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Like clockwork, the monsoon started yesterday, July 1st. It poured rain all day, nonstop. I got wet walking.

I  saw they were nevertheless using concrete pump cranes at the upcoming Mormon church: the Neojaredites trying to reach the sky. They have a ways to go.

This morning it was gray. I went to the store. 

[daily log: walking, 1km]

It's a tradition. Go to hospital. Snap a pic. Post to blog. Wait. Wait.
More later.

Update, a few hours later:

With respect to my diplostome, the doctor actually said, "very good." That is good news. It seems to finally be closing up as it is supposed to.

There was some less good news, too, though. After doing some x-rays to look around the rest of my jaw, the doctor identified another spot where there was likely some necrosis-exacerbated dental problems, around the root of an upper molar. The molar was a spot where I had a root canal long ago, and because of this, the doctor shook his head, depressingly. He explained there was little we could do. "Wait for it to start hurting, then take it out. Meanwhile, keep using it." It is another case where any effort to cure it would be worse than the problem, so the medical procedure boils down to "wait."

[daily log: walking, 11km]

I started writing about this several weeks ago, but dropped the ball.

30 years ago, in March, 1986, I started my job at the Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City. This was a transformative experience for me, in several ways.

The Casa de los Amigos is a kind of hybrid between a Quaker meetinghouse, a social services organization, and a hostel for travelers. It's all of those things. It has been all of those things for 70 or 80 years now – my uncle (my father's older brother) worked with projects affiliated with the Casa in the 1950s. I worked there in the 1980s. And the Casa still exists and is quite active. The "Amigos" of the name refers to the "Friends" i.e. Quakers AKA Society of Friends. The Mexico City meeting also maintains a tight connection with the Orange Grove Friends Meeeting of Pasadena, California, which was the community my grandparents were members of when my father was born, and of which, in a kind of biographical full circle, my father is now once again an active member, 76 years later.

That period was the time in my life when I came closest to adopting the Quakerism that was my "birthright." Ultimately, my year of working for the Quakers in Mexico City was a positive experience, but it also mostly convinced me that I could never be a "true" Quaker, because I was forced for the first time to face my fundamental atheism, and for me to have become a "social" Quaker (as is true of so many Quakers, who are active but who are not religious or spiritual) struck me as hypocritical. It would take more than a decade more before my reluctant acceptance of my own atheism gelled into a kind of "faith," but I suppose that year of attending Sunday meeting and interacting with Quakers was the beginning. My more recent flirtation with Buddhism is likely also ultimately enabled by that experience, too – it differs from my early attempt at Quakerism only in that Buddhism, unlike even the most unconventianal forms of Christianity such as Quakerism, neither presumes nor requires any doctrinal belief, and thus remains available to atheists such as myself.

Another seed that was planted in Mexico City was that that was my first experience as a teacher, and it was as an EFL teacher, at that. Which is my current career. 

That was also where I learned (truly learned) Spanish, which facilitated my later studies in linguistics and literature, and which enriched my "life of the mind" substantially. Even today, after 8 years resident in Korea, I still speak or read or write something in Spanish every day, if only a fragment here or there.

For all these reasons, my year at the Casa de los Amigos was formative, and transformative, and 30 years later, I remember my time there vividly and proudly. 

At right, above, is a picture I took of the front of the Casa when I visited there in 2007. Below is a view out the back window of the conference room, toward the hulking form of the Monumento de la Revolución a few blocks south, also taken in 2007.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Thursdays are slipping into a kind of routine of going to the hospital in the morning. Today, I went to get my stitches out, from my procedure last week. It was fairly perfunctory, but I ended up waiting a long time. That happens sometimes.

Lately, I have been fascinated by the winter shapes of trees. I tried to capture them as I walked home over the hill. Limited success.

[daily log: walking, 11km]

…absque explicatione ulteriore

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Last week, I wrote an elegy to the vacant lot I walk past every day. Today, I found out that the vacant lot is going to be taken over by Mormons. Here is a picture of the construction site (a bit blurry). It says it will be a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – in English and Korean and something Chinese off to the right side, which I find quite puzzling.

I sometimes have expressed that I feel a certain fascination for Mormonism – a kind of fatal attraction. It may be because I grew up in a house across the street from a fairly large Mormon Church. It may be because in middle school and high school, I had several close friends who were Mormon. One friend, Wade, used to evangelize me on a fairly regular basis, though he was always quite respectful and polite. The consequence is that my own emerging atheist “faith” came to be defined, in part, as the outcome of a dialogue with Mormonism. Even at that age (or because of it?), I took that dialogue quite seriously. I suppose I was somewhat attracted to social aspects of the Church, even if I found the cosmology absurd.
And then there’s my name, which has meant that when Mormons meet me, they assume I’m an apostate – because Jared is a very common Mormon name, whereas it is not so common in the broader culture. One of the proto-Mormon groups in the Book of Mormon is even called the “Jaredites.” I had a teacher in high school who was Mormon (there were a lot of Mormons in my hometown, although not a majority), who even asked me once why my parents didn’t send me to the Mormon Church. He just jumped to the conclusion on the basis of my name that I must be Mormon in background.
So the fact that they’re building a church a few blocks from my home in Ilsan feels weird to me. Like they’re following me around.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

More falling – walking home from work today, in the drizzle. Not Babylon, just leaves.

[daily log: walking, 6km]