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.
Having applied for another job last week, I’m now once again in that really difficult position of waiting for the next thing to happen. This is not something I do well. Yesterday, for that and whatever other reason, I felt very gloomy and sad.
I took a long walk, and I was thinking a lot about Welsh mythology: specifically, that business with Rhiannon on her horse, luring Pwyll to the underworld. Why does that particular story always haunt me? Aside from the fact that it was only text I ever got to the actual point of reading (with dictionary obsessively in hand), in Welsh. Maybe it’s the parallelism of living “dictionary in hand” as I am now (with Korean), that made me think of that.
I had awoken from a really unpleasant dream, yesterday morning, which had a symbolism that was pretty transparent. I dreamed that…
…I found a suitcase in my room (since I’m effectively living out of my suitcases, currently, it’s not that strange) and when I opened it, it was full of Michelle’s clothes. And further, there was blood all over the clothing. I pulled the bloody dresses and skirts and shirts out onto the floor and just stared at it, inside the dream.
So: I see that I’m dealing with my old baggage; I’m digging out my dirty laundry. With symbolism as easy as that, who needs Jung?
Friday, I had gone out to Ilsan to pick up reference letters that my former bosses Curt and Sun had written for me. Sun’s letter was surprisingly glowing – it was good for my ego. Curt was a bit lazy, and said, “what do you want me to write?” and I felt strange, like he was asking me to compose my own reference letter. But now I have two good reference letters.
Before picking up the reference letters on Friday, I had had lunch with my friend Peter. He and I found this pretty nice restaurant on the second level of WesternDom (the big mall between Jeongbalsan and Madu stations) where I had some 해신칼국수 (seafood with homemade noodles) that was delicious.
Someone complained to me, a while back, that I don’t put many pictures of myself in my blog. I’m not good at that, that’s true. So, here is a picture that Peter took of me, getting ready to eat a very small, whole, slightly purple octopus that I found in my soup. Note that I dressed up in a tie on Friday because I wanted to be “prepared” in case I got a call-back from this job I’m trying to get. Plus, sometimes I do that, because feeling professional helps me feel more self-confident.
Korea has a lot of history. And contemporary Korea loves exploring, studying and re-enacting their history. Just take a look at the sorts of dramas popular on TV, for example – there’re always several historical dramas running. Those aren’t the sort I enjoy, mostly because the language is stilted and harder to understand (which makes sense, since they’re trying to capture the more formal Korean of centuries past). Also, I don’t always think those sorts of dramas are particularly faithful to the historical “facts.” But anyway…
Yesterday I went with some of my Suwon friends to see some re-enactors at the Hwaseong palace. These were guys with swords and pikes and other things, doing martial arts displays of various kinds. Half choreography, half hapkido / geondo (= japanese kendo), etc. Here are some pictures.
In the first two, the guy was using a big pikelike-thing to hack up some bundles of straw. The last picture is me with some re-enactors, along with two kids I’ve gotten to know, who are the Chinese tea-maker’s children: a brother and sister named Dong-jun and Dong-hui (it’s very common for siblings to share a syllable that way, in their name).
Modern Korean pop architecture is fun to look at sometimes. I think any country where there is a strong capitalist, advertising-driven culture, you will find architecture that is kitschy, often tasteless, over-the-top, etc. Some of the more interesting buildings tend to be the ubiquitous “wedding halls” as well as churches. Here are some pictures I’ve taken recently.
I know that’s a strange title to a blog post, but I couldn’t resist. I was taking a long walk the other day, and saw Suwon’s “World Cup Stadium” out on the east side of town. There’s a park around the stadium, and in the park, there are soccer-ball-themed public restrooms. I just had to make use of the facilities, just to be able to say I’d done it.
Here are pictures – you can see the boy-girl icon on the giant soccer ball, that tells you there are public restrooms inside.
Here’s a view of the stadium from a pedestrian overpass.
Below is a picture of the northeast gate of the Suwon city walls – where they’ve punched a hole under the wall for (or reconstructed it over) a major street.
Yesterday I was invited by the owner of the guesthouse where I’m staying to accompany him to his older sister’s 환갑 [hwan-gap]. This is a special ceremony/event that accompanies one’s 60th birthday party, which is considered quite significant. It really wasn’t that different from a 돌 [dol = child’s first birthday party, one of which I attended last year], nor was it different from a wedding or catered business party, for that matter. But it was interesting to once again be an observer at another Korean social function – not really a fly-on-the-wall, as I’m too conspicuous for that, but I don’t think anyone’s behavior is that different because I’m there, either.
I felt proud of the fact that it seemed my Korean was improving, in small ways. Still, sometimes I hate to write about feelings of improvement, not just for fear of “jinxing” my progress, but also because it makes it sound like I’m out there in the world having actual conversations, when in fact, I’m still stuttering along with occasional good sentences, a few chunks and phrases now and then, but mostly just incomprehending smiling, and barely understanding the things said around me.
Later that day, I joined an “English class” that the owner here coordinates for occasional Sundays, where some neighborhood children (the building’s owner’s son [building owner is distinct from guesthouse owner], for example) showed up and I pestered them about their likes and dislikes in English. One boy, Jun, was quite good, especially at his ability to listen to what I said and synthesize it in succinct Korean for his less-comprehending peers.
After that, Mr Choi (the guesthouse owner), took me to a traditional Chinese tea-maker’s establishment (I have no idea what better term to use for this guy’s profession). The man was some acquaintance of his who lives and runs his business a few blocks away from the guesthouse. This was a fascinating experience, and the people – the tea-makerand his wife – were quite kind. They struck me as a sort of wonderful syncretism of the very traditional Korean, mixed in with some loopy western counter-culture. They had a computer playing mp3 tracks of western music, and a wine-cabinet on one wall with all these European wines, but he was sitting at a traditional-looking tea table and doing all these elaborate things making tea, talking about 30-year fermentations and the fact that evidently (based on my face?) I needed something for my kidneys. And there was a lot of beautiful traditional pottery and furniture around.
Last year around this time, I went to see my student Zina in a musical production. I blogged about it. This year, I had the opportunity to go again, even though she’s not now my student anymore.
This time, I had my video camera with me. Here are some clips from the musical. I’m still working on figuring out the plot (I bought the CD and the words are in the extended program, so I can spend as much time as I want deciphering it), but the basic idea is that some kids who live in a futuristic “ecologically sustainable” village get bored and decide to go to visit the big, dirty, polluted, future-city, and have some interesting and scary experiences. It was pretty cute, although I liked the plot of last year’s production better (nothing is better than the idea of mosquitoes bringing lawsuits!).
Note that although the kids are lip-syncing during the performance, I’m pretty certain it’s their own voices, that were pre-recorded so as to raise the production value a little bit – Zina’s voice defintely sounds like Zina’s voice to me.
I went on a “templestay” tour to Geumsansa over the weekend. Here are some pictures.
Here is the main entrance to the provincial park that hosts the temple, down by the parking lot:
This is a turtle statue near the entrance to the temple complex:
Here is a view of the main stupa (left, over a 1000 years old, though repeatedly rebuilt) and big old main temple (right, 400 years old, currently being restored due to arson by some right-wing Christian group):
Architectural detail on the structure housing the old drum, bell, and gong:
A cool painting on the side of a side-building:
The entranceway to a small temple dedicated to Chijang Boddhisattva (I think), with the statues visible inside (this is where I did my 108 prostrations, see farther down):
A view of the main temple courtyard looking back toward the entrance building (a modern building but in the traditional style), and the gong structure off to the right:
The ancient stupa that is the core of the temple site (i.e. the oldest part, dating in one form or another to at least the 500’s AD):
A cool statue I saw (well-armed, indeed):
The men’s dorm where I slept Saturday night (bathrooms are around back – this is a modern building built to look traditional, but women’s dorm out of sight to the right is quite old and traditional, with a fire-burning ondol heating system) :
Walking from the dorm area across the stream to the side gate into the main temple courtyard:
A waterfall that I found while wandering around a ways up the stream beyond the dorm area:
These beads below represent my 108 bows (or prostrations) to the Chijang Boddhisattva. I really did this – it was quite tiring, and yet an old woman came into the temple, about the time I was working on bow number 50 or so, and she did 108 of her own, and finished and had left when I had gotten to my own number 70! I will keep these beads as a souvenir, because each one represents a bow that I actually did:
This is the charismatic monk who led the templestay guests around and led us in meditation, etc. He was very friendly, positive, and interesting (despite having an incoherent interpreter):
I have had such terrible experiences with being a “commuter,” in the past, that I had some apprehension about how I’d organized my life, temporarily, around the long commute into Gangnam each day from Suwon, where I’m staying.
But it’s turning out that I actually really like it. I’m sure part of it is that there’s a giant difference between a commute that involves getting in a car and driving for an hour, generally in terrible traffic, and getting into a bus or train and riding for an hour – even if it’s riding standing up. Driving requires concentration and singe-mindedness, whereas riding, one can daydream, doze, read, study….
Some of the worst periods of my life were when I had a driving commute: the hour and fifteen minutes from northwest Philly to Cherry Hill, when I was teaching H.S. in the late 90’s, was truly horrendous, and the hour from Long Beach to Newport Beach in 2005-2006 was almost as bad. Yet I recall actually liking the hour-long commute into West Philly in 1996 when I was in grad school – because I had the option of taking the train in that case, I suspect, and I often did.
Anyway, the commute now, on the bus, is cool. I always assume it will take over an hour, but some mornings, if the timing is right at the bus stop and the traffic on the expressway isn’t terrible, it can be over in 50 minutes. It’s always nice to get a seat – standing on a bus for an hour is pretty uncomfortable, but not unbearable. I can lean on the side of a seat or against a rail or something, listen to my mp3 player, and doze. It’s very cool as the bus plunges through the 3 tunnels through the mountains separating Suwon from Seoul – the last tunnel must be about 2 km long, and as we pop out of that tunnel right into the heart of Seocho-gu with its high-rises and right-angled streets, it feels like arriving in Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel or something.
I love the feeling when I get off the bus at Gangnam-yeok and walk toward the subway entrance. I go into the subway station and through it but I don’t get on the subway – it’s just a convenient way to get across the main Gangnam intersection at Teheran-no (yes, the main east-west street in Gangnam is named after the Iranian capital – it’s kind of as if Park Avenue in NYC was called Teheran Street). Everyone is busily going to work or school or wherever they’re going, and Gangnam has a very different feel than later in the day when people are strolling around shopping or on dates or beginning a long evening of nightclubbing.
The picture shows the pre-dawn light as I arrive at my bus stop at about 7 AM, with that weird Suwon First Church in the distance down an alleyway. Keep in mind that it was about -10 C (15 F) and windy. It’s not an idyllic, gentle dawn.
I went to class yesterday. And then studied for like 4 hours. Solid. Then I decided to go on one of my random wanderings-around. I ended up “downtown” (the old part of Seoul), and it seemed very cosmopolitan and crowded. There’s this one high-rise at Jonggak that I’ve always thought looks really cool:
After that, I went back to Suwon on an oddly-uncrowded #1 subway train, and walked back to my guesthouse. I studied for another 3 hours. 한국말을 힘들어요.
My friend Peter came down from Ilsan today and we took a long walk around Suwon, which is where I’m staying for now – just be somewhere interesting and different, if not terribly well-located vis-a-vis the Seoul metropolitan area.
Suwon has old city walls around about 80% of it’s old-city perimeter, but it’s otherwise a rather stark, industrial city. Together the old fortress elements combined with its proletarian character make it seem vaguely European.
Peter and I walked a full circle along the top of the wall. Here is a view of the weird, gothic-industrial church to be found just southeast of the old city wall.
Here is a picture of a bird.
Here is a picture of Buddha, perched against the mountainside in the western part of the walled-in old city.
Bernardo O’Higgins was a Chilean patriot of Irish descent, who lived during the time of the war for Chile’s independence from Spain, in the 1820’s. He worked with other famous South Americans such as Argentina’s San Martin and Colombia’s Bolivar.
But in the 1990’s, I used the name Bernardo O’Higgins as the name of a character in one of the stories I used to make up and tell to my stepson, Jeffrey. These were imaginary stories involving talking animals in science-fictiony plots. The main character was a dog named Gilgamesh. I can’t remember what animal Bernardo O’Higgins was in my stories, but when we bought our third cat in 1994, that became her name. Despite the fact that Bernardo is a male name, the cat was a girl, but still her name was Bernardo O’Higgins.
Over the years, her name was typically shortened to Bernie, and she became, definitively and specifically my cat. When Michelle died in 2000, Bernie came to live with me in Los Angeles, and she followed me to my various residences out here, in Burbank, North Hollywood, Highland Park and Long Beach. Finally, she came with me to Minnesota, her birth-home, when I moved back there in 2006.
But I couldn’t take her to Korea. So she ended up at my dad’s house here in Highland Park. Here she is lazing in the gentle Southern California January sunshine.
Here is a random view from dad’s front porch. Not very wintery, here.
And here is Bernie, having moved into my open suitcase this evening, while my dad and I went out to dinner. I guess she wishes I would take her with me back to Korea?
I went out to lunch at a Korean restaurant in a strip mall along highway 13 in Eagan, with a bunch of friends: Bob and Sarah and Henry, and Mark and Amy and Charlie and Martin, and Tayo (Bob’s nephew) was along too.
Our expectations were low. And… I’ve not eaten Korean since coming back from Korea. Surprising? A little, maybe, but I figure I’ll be getting plenty of Korean soon enough, when I go back. Still, we decided to try it out — it’s basically across the highway from where my storage unit is, so it’s conveniently located.
It turned out to be very good. Authentic feeling, and excellent food. I highly recommend Hoban Restaurant to anyone living in or passing through Minnesota and craving a “real” Korean dining experience. I had some kimchi dolsotbap which was excellent.
With Bob and Mark both there, it’s been a bit of an “1808 Portland” reunion — 1808 Portland Avenue in St Paul is the duplex house that Bob, Mark and I shared as housemates (along with some others) back in the 1980’s, at the time I was attending the University of Minnesota. I drove by that place the other day, and took a picture, for old-time’s sake — I have such fond memories of my time living there (over 2 years, I think):
After driving from Denver to L.A. over the weekend, I left my truck there (where I’m selling it to my dad) and flew back to Minneapolis, to take care of the last-minute things that I need to do before returning to Korea. Landing in Minneapolis, getting my rental car and driving out into the bright sunshine: 23 F (-5 C), piles of dirty snow… I really do love it here. Of my many homes, this is my “truest” home, I suppose.
There is a cute cat that lives at Doug and Jodi’s, named Boots. He’s very social and friendly. Here he is, lurking in the Christmas tree.
So I saw my 3 nephews and niece today, all together. There was a lot of playing. It snowed all day.
Here are James and Jamison having a snowball fight.
Here is Sarah making snow angels.
I stayed with my friends Bob, Sarah and Henry last night. They got about a foot of snow over the last 24 hours. Here are some pictures I took of the snow, this morning.
My truck:
Henry and the snowman:
My snow dog that I made:
Visité con me amiga Asima hoy, en Filadelfia. Siendo puertorriqueña, ella es suele usar la palabra “chévere,” que es un argot caribeño para decir “cool.” En este foto se ven unas máscaras “vejigantes” que me intriguían…
Ésta es la casa donde vivía durante mi primer año en la Universidad de Pennsylvania, en la 43rd con Baltimore.
I stopped and had dinner with my friend Basil last night, in Morgantown, where he’s enrolled in a graduate program in TESOL. It was weird seeing someone from my “life in Korea” while driving around the US, but he’s a very cool guy and in some ways he was my best friend during my time in Korea.
Today, I stopped in Quakertown. It was snowing hard, and eastern Pennsylvania is very beautiful. But there are personal ghosts of a difficult past, resident in the names of highways and towns, in the vistas of rivers and in the office parks alongside freeways. I’m trying to make peace with some of these ghosts, and the ghost of ghosts is Michelle’s ghost. I went to the house where she took her own life, in June of 2000. I wasn’t there — we were already separated, although divorce wasn’t something we were talking about seriously, at that point. But we’d been talking on the phone about once a week, all that spring and early summer. So I knew “where she was at” and I knew things weren’t going well. When I got the call from her mom that she had died, I had already bought the airplane ticket to Philadelphia — I had intuited something terrible was happening, perhaps.
I flew out, and it was chaotic, nightmarish. I spent long hours in that house in Quakertown, where I’d never actually lived, since she and Jeffrey had moved in there after I’d gone to Los Angeles to stay with my father. All my “stuff” was there, along with hers. I had to sort it all out, without offending the debt-lawyers who wanted to liquidate assets.
So, today I visited that house in Quakertown. I sometimes have had a strong feeling that Michelle’s ghost is following me around in the world. But other times, I’ve thought that if she has a ghost, it’s more likely tied down at that house. Stranded.
I parked my truck and got out and walked around. I talked to Michelle’s ghost, telling her that I wanted to come visit, to tell her how Jeffrey was doing, what I’d been doing. I opened the passenger door to my truck, and I invited her to join me in my travels. I don’t know that she came along. I don’t know that she was there. I’m not really a believer in ghosts, but I do believe in powerful psychological symbolisms. I guess.
Here is a picture of the house in Quakertown.
I win! I win!
Well… not really. But I was productive.
I downgraded my storage unit to a smaller size, today. And moved all my stuff into the smaller unit. I counted 117 round trips, walking between the two units, about 100 yards apart, carrying all my stuff. And that’s not counting the trips my friends Mark and Amy and Martin and Charlie made when they came to help toward the end of the day.
But I got everything moved, on schedule, and everything fit. I have 50 boxes of books, 20 boxes of old notes and files, 30 boxes of who-knows-what-kind-of-junk, a refrigerator, a couch, bookshelves, tables, many plastic bins of clothing, etc. A lot of stuff.
Now I feel very tired. I think tomorrow I will start driving East.
Here is a picture of about 50 boxes of books, arrayed in spaced piles 4 high, in preparation for the journey on a 2-wheeled dolly over to the new, smaller storage unit:
Speaking of silence… when written in all caps, if you invert the name “ZION”, you get “NOIZ”. Cool. Huh huh.
So regular life is an upside-down canyon of red rock?
I know there are some ways that I am quite strange. One thing that happens, when I’m traveling alone, is that I will go off on long walks for no good reason, or as an alternative to some much more convenient means of transportation. So this morning, I walked from my hotel on the Las Vegas Strip to the airport, even though a taxi would have probably been less than 8 dollars.
Las Vegas doesn’t really interest me much. It’s not that I don’t like kitch — I love it. And it’s pure americana, in some respects. But it’s very hard for me to find stuff to DO in Las Vegas: I don’t gamble, I despise dining out alone, and going to shows or movies alone can be kind of depressing too. I guess all of this could be summarized by stating that Las Vegas might be a fun town, WITH someone, but it’s stunningly dull for someone who’s alone.
I went on a long walk along the strip last night, looking at lights and signs and people-watching. And I slept a lot, in my pyramid-shaped hotel that I got for an incredibly low rate (because they expect you to spend your money gambling and watching the shows, of course). And I got up this morning and strapped on my luggages and walked to the airport.
Here is a last look at Zion, taken yesterday upon departure:
“입을 다스리는 글” is a title to a proverb (or prayer) that was on a piece of cloth that I gave as a gift to my friends Juli and Keith in Oregon.
I have been feeling somewhat embarrassed because I had not conveyed to them very accurately the true meaning of the saying. Here is an updated and hopefully correct translation for all the world to see (and thanks to my friend Jinhee for her help translating). My friends Juli and Keith may not want to have it on their wall given the new meaning, or they may decide they like it. I spent some time thinking deeply about it today, and decided I like it, after all.
입을 다스리는 글
말해야 할 때 말하고 말해서는 안될 때 말하지 말라 말해야 할 때 참묵해도 안되고 말해서는 안될 말해서도 안되고 입아, 입아 그렇게만 하여라
A note on controlling one’s tongue.
One should speak when necessary, and not speak when one should not. One shouldn’t stay silent when one should be speaking, and one should not speak what one should not say. O tongue, my tongue, I pray you do just that.
I think silence is very important. That’s my vaguely quaker upbringing, shining through, perhaps.
We went hiking this morning up into a “slot canyon” in the eastern part of Zion National Park this morning. There were six of us, walking and tromping and scrambling and climbing and tossing rocks into pools to make fording them possible, and talking. Lots of talking. Finally, we were relaxing on the face of rock above the canyon, and Jay wanted to have a prayer. And I butted in and said, how about a Quaker-meeting minute-of-silence. This was approved, and at last, we were seated, gazing at the sky and rock and trees, and it was silent for about 5 or so minutes. It was very beautiful.
So keeping one’s mouth shut can be nice. There are definitely times for that.
Here are some pictures from this morning.
[this is a “back-post” written 2009-11-30]
We drove up to Bryce canyon today. We saw lots of things, including many rocks and trees and a blizzard. Above, you see the clouds carrying a lot of snow, rolling in over a stunning landscape. Below, that’s me standing in the snow, a few hours later as we prepared to leave.
More later.
[this is a “back-post” written 2009-11-29]
[added pictures 2009-12-03:]
It was a few days early, but I was feeling very thankful last night. I had dinner with Jeffrey, his parents Randy and Barb and their daughters (his half-sisters). What’s my relation to them? It’s complicated: Jeffrey is my stepson, by my marriage to Michelle. So Randy was Michelle’s first husband, before she and I got married, and Barb is his second wife. And although we’re as different as people can be, we have a certain family-like relationship, that came about in the wake of Michelle’s death.
I feel very thankful that after Michelle died, Randy and Barb stepped up so completely to provide a healthy and relatively stress-free home for Jeffrey, as that was a very hard time for him. Of course, when Michelle and I were together, she had very little positive to say about Randy and Barb, and their relationship as “exes,” with arguments over things like visitation for Jeffrey, etc., were fraught. This is typical of such relationships, of course. The fact that when Michelle died, everyone involved (barring, perhaps, Michelle’s parents) were able to set aside those earlier acrimonies and do what was “right” for Jeffrey has always struck me as a minor miracle of human interaction. And as such, I’m very thankful.
We met for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Maple Grove that the girls (Jeffrey’s sisters, Ashley and Tiffany) like. I best recall them as around 3 or 4 years old, but now they’re 10 and 11. After dinner, we made a little parade driving in the rain and fog back up to Albertville, where they live currently, and spent some time just hanging out. The girls, especially Tiffany, asked me, spontaneously, to write their names in Korean. This was the first time I’d interacted with American kids who seemed genuinely interested in Korean culture, and as an unrepentant language geek, I was pleased to try to sound out their names and write them in the Korean alphabet, Hangeul.
The girls were fascinated, and soon had me writing the names of everyone in the room, then their friends and teachers, on scraps of paper. Tiffany’s face lit up as she suddenly realized the phonetic principles behind the Hangeul writing system, and with no timidity, she began trying to “guess” how to write various names she could think of. I was stunned and amazed – you always hear Koreans (and rarely, Westerners) talking about the simplicity of the Korean writing system, but watching a midwestern 10 year old grasp all its essential principles in under 30 minutes in a casual exchange was amazing.
Finally, I taught them a few simple phrase, such as 고맙습니다 (go-map-seum-ni-da = thank you), and Tiffany did a perfect-looking Korean-style bow and uttered it repeatedly. The whole experience felt like a charming reversal of my normal role and job in Korea, but it was additionally pleasing because Americans normally are so uninterested in foreign languages and cultures, yet here was this unassuming midwestern kid, with whom I have a “relative-type” connection (how else to explain it?) showing true interest and excitement for Korean.
Well, anyway, that was my Tuesday evening out on the prairie in the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis.
Here’s a picture of the clan – Randy, Barb, Jeffrey, Ashley, Tiffany:
Here’s a picture of Tiffany, and you can see quite clearly she’s writing her teacher’s name, Miller, sounded out in Korean letters (밀러):
When I was in fifth and sixth grades, I attended that alternative, art-oriented, “hippie” school called Centering School (see blog from 2009-02-02). It was a great place. There was a student named Tammy, who fascinated me from the first time I met her. She was two grades behind me, but that didn’t seem to matter much at such a small, non-hierarchical place. I could somehow sense that Tammy didn’t necessarily come from a perfect home-life (her mom, in her red Volkswagen Beetle always seems kind of “scary” to my young eyes, to be honest, and I knew her dad died in Vietnam). I think knowing about some of the difficult and complicated and fractured home-lives of some of my peers at Centering School was the first time I had the thought: my family may be weird and crazy, but it’s maybe not as messed-up as some others.
Anyway, despite her background… despite the occasional flashes of sadness… she was an amazing, intrinsically happy person. Infectiously cheerful. For no apparent reason. And so, because that was mysterious to me, and unfathomable, I decided that Tammy was magical. That was all I could figure out.
But when I graduated sixth grade, and plunged into the trauma of the public middle school in Arcata, I mostly lost touch with the former friends and playmates and denizens of Centering School. But I never forgot about Tammy. In fact, there were times, when I was struggling to make myself feel happier about life, when I was feeling down, or alone, or overwhelmed, sometimes her name and goofy smile would come to me, and I would think: well, SHE can be happy; why can’t I?
Still, I couldn’t ever really successfully articulate Tammy’s magic. It was just strange and impossible and yet something to aspire to. Until I was teaching at LBridge in Ilsan, Korea. I had a student named Jenny (see blog from 2009-02-12), who seemed like a reincarnation of Tammy. I even remember thinking that about her. And then one day, Jenny, who was fond of writing little “stationary aphorisms” in English on the corners of her assignment papers, wrote the following: “I am happy because that is the most important thing.”
It was like a weird epiphany, when I realized this wasn’t a syntactical mistake, it wasn’t a logic mistake, but rather, that it was simply true and obvious. And it was like, in that instant, that all those years of cognitive behavioral therapy, all those years of puzzling over Tammy’s magic or the mystery of human happiness, congealed into a moment of insight.
It was around the same time that I reconnected with Tammy, after over 30 years. Such is the magic of facebook and the internet. And last night, I stayed with Tammy and her husband and two daughters.
Life is never perfect. Happiness is sometimes elusive, even for Tammy, in her updated, adult form. She’s been through a lot, too. At least as complicated and traumatic as my own life, if not more so. I suspect she’s not always “simply happy.” But she still has that weird ability to look on the bright side of things. She jokingly said, “I can cut off my arm, and see all the blood and feel the pain, and think to myself, ‘well, but I’ve still got my other arm! things aren’t really all that bad.'” That’s Tammy’s magic. And Jenny’s wisdom, which finally allowed me to understand it.
Tammy in 1976, exactly as I remember her:
Jenny in 2009:
The Red River Valley is the about the flatest place that I know of. Parts of California (like around Sacramento) are just as flat, but the mountains are always visible in the distance. Likewise, I remember southern Louisiana being very flat, but the plethora of canals and small bodies of water, on the one hand, and the trees and dikes, on the hand, make it seem less flat somehow.
The Agassiz plain of northwestern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and south central Manitoba is just plain ol’ flat. And to me, it’s spectacularly beautiful in a weird, expansive, desolate sort of way. More beautiful than the rugged Pacific coast or the mountains or desert. But very hard to capture on film.
When I take long road trips, I often return to my youthful fantasies of becoming a truck driver. I used to imagine “finishing my PhD” and then, rather than going off into academia, instead going out and becoming a truck driver. I liked to imagine hanging the little degree in its frame like professors and professionals do in their offices, but hanging it up in the little sleeper cabin attached to my big rig. Really! I thought like this, sometimes, right through college. As much as I’ve always enjoyed road-tripping, truck driving always seemed like something that would make a good career for me.
Well, I never finished the PhD. And I never became a truck driver, unless you want to count some months as a primary tow truck driver for my support battalion on Korea in 1991, and some cross-Korea convoys we participated in during weeks-long field exercises, from Geumchon north of Seoul over to Wonju and down to Daegu. Yes, I was one of those US GI trucks cruising on the Korean backroads dodging “kimchi wagons,” way back when.
But driving across the country as I have been, I return sometimes to those truck driver fantasies. That’s a job that, if all else fell apart, I could manage, I’m certain.
Drive, drive, drive.
Montana is a very long state, to drive through. I think I-90 is about 700 miles.
It’s especially long under wintery highway conditions. Toward the end of my day, in the early evening dark, I was going 25-35 mph through blowing snow over very icy interstate eastward from Bozeman.
I saw overturned trucks, jackknifed trailers, cars in ditches. So I stayed slow. And as much as I generally find driving about as close to a meditative state as I can attain, driving through that can be kind of stressful. I’m tired.
Here are two pictures from earlier in the day.
A freeway rest area:
A stop at a “ranch exit” (i.e. there’s no town at the freeway exit) around sunset:
Juli and Keith’s neighbors have a bunch of animals, including a llama, a very friendly horse, some cows and chickens. I went on a walk earlier today and visited them. Here’re llama and horse, saying hello.
After doing so much, traveling, keeping so busy… I kind of came to a stop, today. Resting at Juli & Keith’s house here on the Oregon hillside, kind of having a lazy day. I did however make a small, important step. I sent off the email confirming my intention to return to Korea today. So that kind of represents a commitment.
Here’s a picture from Patrick’s Point, a few miles north of Arcata, taken in late afternoon on Tuesday:
Arcata is a small town. I took about 5 long walks through and around the town during my 3 day visit there. Yesterday afternoon, I walked down to where my middle school was, in SunnyBrae. Then I walked up Shirley Blvd (a very steep winding hill) to Fickle Hill Road and back down to the house. I went into Redwood Park (which is the name of Arcata’s city park, about 2 blocks up the hill from the house where I grew up). Here is a picture from a path inside the park:
“A deep and sincere heart has no unreachable place.” I had bought a small textile wall hanging with the Korean phrase on it, at a “temple shop” near a Buddhist temple in Seoul. I had that one, and several others. I presented this one to my friends Peggy and Latif who live in my former home in Arcata. They are generous and kind, and the saying suits them very well.
Here is the “A Street House,” where I lived my first 18 years (with a few short periods away from it, in Eureka, Oklahoma City, summers in Washington or Idaho or Boston, etc.):
This is the same house, from a slightly different angle, in 1965 (with my dad’s Model A Ford parked in front):
Here is the back yard, looking from the Kitchen window. That’s the “pump house” that functions as a kind of detached, outdoor bedroom. It was my bedroom during my high school years:
This is the same old pumphouse, in 1967:
This is Peggy’s smiling buddha, under the cherry tree that was just a tiny sapling when I was a kid.
