After my radiation, which ran late due to a previous patient, I went and bought a cake and delivered it to the 10th floor east ward nurses, because I’d forgotten to yesterday. I try to go visit my old ward every week, as long as I’m on campus at the cancer center. Showing gratitude, I guess.
I took this picture of the panorama of Bukhansan, looking out the lobby window by the elevators. Much clearer than during the monsoon, when I was inpatient.
Seeing the mountains so close and so clear made me think about my brother: Andrew and Hollye went to Bukhansan to go hiking yesterday, and they camped there. Camping in Bukhansan is illegal, as far as I can figure out – it’s a National Park – yes – but it’s too close to the city to be the sort that allows camping, and nothing on any website says anything about allowing camping.
I’m not sure what to make of that. On the one hand, I definitely envy Andrew his easy anarchism – my anarchism is strong in certain theoretical respects, but vary rarely so bold in practice. In fact, on the other hand, I often worry about these things too much, and knowing he intended to try this, it was easy for me to lie awake and imagine getting some telephone call from the Korean Police in the middle of the night. In my day-to-day life and imagination, I make a big deal of “rule of law” and wish there was more respect of rules, not less.
Ultimately, it’s a difficult-to-resolve conceptual tension, for me, between a libertarian anarchism grounded in political theory and philosophy, and a belief that the social contract (a la Rousseau?) requires that we follow the rules that exist in a society, otherwise we are doomed to social fragmentation and broken polities (viz. USA, or even more so, Mexico).
I feel like I’m turning into a grumpy old man, ranting on about these things: “Those kids, what are they thinking!?” There’s always been that dynamic between Andrew and me, he being so much younger and of such a more “free-spirited” bent than I.
What I’m listening to right now.
Nerve.Filter, “Sea.Lab.” Nerve.Filter is a side project of one of the leads of the group Assemblage 23.
[daily log: walking , 3 km]
