Caveat: Whiteboard Drawings

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

With the start of November, I've been starting a new habit in some elementary classes. When I write their names on the board (which is a long-standing habit of mine, as I have found that keeping track of how students are doing "publicly" is a great motivator and encourages students to pay attention), I now accompany their names with a "character." This is mostly for entertainment value, but sometimes we have little conversations about them too. I have big plans for these characters, eventually, but for now they're just in a sort of beta. But they're cute and fun to draw, and it doesn't really take that long – I do it when the kids are doing a vocab quiz or digging out their homework at the beginning of class.

2013-11-18 19.23.14 2013-11-21 18.08.36

 

 

 

 

2013-11-22 19.20.30

2013-11-22 20.46.42[daily log: walking, 5 km]

 

Caveat: 대가리 잡다가 꽁지를 잡았다

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.
대가리       잡다가         꽁지를          잡았다.
dae·ga·ri  jap·da·ga     kkong·ji·reul  jap·ass·da
head       seize-TRANSF  tail-OBJ       seize-PAST
Seizing for the head and instead catching the tail.
According to the book, this means something like “big ambition, small success.”
I feel like this could be a title for my autobiography.

Caveat: Time Is Powerful

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Kids / My Photos / The Wonders of Work

The topic is hair.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I had a lot of CC classes with the elementary kids. We play pop songs and the kids try to understand the lyrics and sing along – there's software that's pretty well designed to support this. Of course, the hardware resources (laptops and projectors) at the hagwon are always half-broken and still make this kind of technology-oriented class a challenge for us. But, well… it works out.

Mostly the pop songs are pretty recent: Adele or Katy Perry or whatever. But sometimes it seems like these really old ones appear. I was confronted with trying to present the Bee Gees "How Deep Is Your Love" to a group of 4th and 5th graders.

Students screamed and wailed in horrified protest. It was qualified immediately as "Old!"

Also, "느끼!" [neukki = greasy, sleazy, cheesy].

And finally, "Teacher! Too much hair!"

Indeed.

What I'm listening to right now.

Bee Gees, "How Deep Is Your Love."

Speaking of too much hair, I got a similar comment from a middle school student who goes by Pablo last week, when I happened to show him a very, very old photo of me that my brother had sent to me in my little care package.

Here is the picture.

Scan0001 - 복사본 (2)

I'm pretty sure that is me and my brother near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis in the early 90's – I'm almost positive that's when it was.

Pablo gazed at the picture, and said, "Is that you?" Then he said, "Wow. Teacher, you had so much hair!"

"Yes," I agreed.

And then Pablo said, reflectively, looking me up and down now, "Time is powerful."

Indeed.

[daily log: walking 5 km]

Caveat: Mo Tzu Quixote

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I haven't been sleeping well. I sleep for an hour or two, then wake up. My mouth gets dry, my bladder seems small. I try to go back to sleep and mostly I succeed, but last night I was awake for about an hour. I was reading my Chinese philosophy book, about the guy called Mo Tzu, who came between Confucius and Mencius who are the two I already knew about, in around 400 BC. According to the book I'm reading, on the one hand he was focused on "universal love" and on the other, he was a committed authoritarian and believer in spirits.

I went to sleep and dreamed I met Mo Tzu, except he was dressed like Don Quixote and was wandering around ancient China. I think this happened because the author I'm reading referred to Mo Tzu's social class as "knights errant" – essentially mercenaries who went around renting their services to sovereigns.

Mo Tzu Quixote was accompanied by a cartoon-character Sancho Panza sidekick, and was reading to a crowd of Chinese peasants from the King James Bible. Where did that come from? The peasants were enthralled but then some wise man came with some soldiers and told the crowd to disperse.

I was sitting under a tree having given up trying to follow Mo Tzu. There was a line of ants walking, and I followed it, only to realize they were marching in a circle around the base of the tree. I collapsed in annoyance and disgust. The sun was setting, and it was cold.

I woke up again, feeling cold, my mouth dry as flour. 4 am.

Caveat: invaluable treasure

Buddhism & Zen / Not My Poetry

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
– Ikkyu (Japanese Buddhist monk and poet, 1394-1481)

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: And the Panda Says…

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

A while ago I [broken link! FIXME] posted about the fad song circulating online by Ylvis, "What Does the Fox Say?" It's a funny and entertaining song.

Now the parodies and imitations have begun. This is a China-bashing parody out of Taiwan. Also funny, in a different way.

Related to the "Fox" song, I also ran across this meme-image.

Foxfeel_1378847_10150378519614945_1957180222_n

Caveat: Linguistic Shortcomings

Banalities & Journaling / Cancer / The Wonders of Work

Today was a pretty bad day.

I went to work early. There was a two-hour meeting about new curriculum. This type of meeting is frustrating for me, because a great deal is being said that I have no doubt I'm interested in, but because it's Korean I often only get the gist of something, or it takes me too long to realize what's being said for me to be able to provide timely input to a conversation. Mostly decisions get made and I am merely witness to the process, which is better than not being included, but still more frustrating than a strongly opinionated individual such as myself might prefer.

Then I had some classes to teach. I have a lot of classes to teach, these days – I'm back to full-time. I teach 26 per week, I think.

Each day, I struggle to stay positive and focused and provide effective teaching. Yet my tongue and mouth have a limited ability to remain coherent after hours of talking. I'm often just plain physically tired feeling, too.

It doesn't help that I'm constantly hungry, yet I avoid eating because it's painful. Today I threw away part of my lunch (some rice twice-cooked with water – homemade juk) because it was taking me too long to eat and I needed to get ready for work. So I was so hungry my back and gut ached, but I wasn't willing to do anything about it. Just work through it.

I thought after two months after the end of radiation, I'd be beyond still eating like an infant and feeling pain with each bite.

There was a hweh-shik (회식 = work dinner) after work and everyone was pressuring me to go, and I just said no, no, no: a) it's not fun for me to watch other people eat and drink; b) I'm exhausted; c) I'm not feeling celebratory after an 11 hour day.

Sigh.

I do better in moments of crisis. My whole summer was crisis. This isn't crisis, this is just life – with the added discomfort of a messed-up mouth and tongue. I'm sick of it: it's just a long never-ending battle with my shortcomings (linguistic in several senses of the word) and discomfort.

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: 仁

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Fungyulan-booksMy current book-in-progress-in-which-I’m-actually-making-progress is an introductory book on Chinese philosophy by Fung Yu-Lan. I’ve never really tackled Chinese philosophy before – it’s a major lacuna in my philosophical education, which is more extensive in Western, Native American and Indian (i.e. South Asian) philosophical traditions.
Obviously, an introduction to Chinese philosophy starts, more or less, with Confucius. The core principal is apparently called “jen” (via Wade-Giles, used by Fung). The book doesn’t provide characters, which I’m actually interested in knowing, so I did a little bit of research, to tie things together. I also tried to find out the Korean readings of the characters in question, as that interests me too.
I will try to summarize pages 42-44 in Fung’s book in my own words:
The key principal of all of Confucius’ thought is human-heartedness, or jen (仁, pinyin [ren], Korean 인 glossed as 어질다 [benevolent, virtuous] in a hanja dictionary). Jen is in turn divided into a “positive” and “negative” aspect, each of which is a sort of corollary of Westerndom’s “Golden Rule”: conscientiousness toward others or loyalty, chung (忠, pinyin [zhong], Korean 충 glossed as 충성 [loyalty]), which really means “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and altruism or reciprocity, shu (恕, pinyin [shu]?, Korean 서 glossed as 용서 [pardon, mercy]), which really means “Don’t do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” Then one of Confucius’ students, Tseng Tzu, summarizes: “Our master’s teaching consists of the principle of chung and shu, and that is all” (Analects, VII).

Caveat: Angels have gone

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

As I walked to work, today, it started to snow. It didn't stick at all – the ground was too warm, still, I think – but it was a good effort at snow.

Ever since plunging into my new, returned-to-full-time schedule I've been feeling exhausted. I guess I knew that would happen, and at one level, I welcome it. But it's making it hard to keep up with other things – like, for example, thinking of something creative to put in this here blog thingy.

So I'll leave it at that.

What I'm listening to right now.

David Bowie, "5:15."

Lyrics:

5:15
I'm changing trains
This little town
Let me down
This foreign rain
Brings me down

5:15
Train overdue
Angels have gone
No ticket
I'm jumping tracks
I'm changing towns
We never talk anymore
Forever I will adore you

5:15
All of my life
Angels have gone
I'm changing trains
Angels like them
Thin on the ground
All of my life
All legs and wings
Strange sandy eyes

5:15
Train overdue
Angels have gone
We never talk anymore
Forever I will adore you
Cold station
All of my life
Forever I'm out here forever

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: Rubber Duckies Making Landfall

Found Online

I was surfing a site called Twisted Sifter and found this map. According to the caption, it shows "Map of Where 29,000 Rubber Duckies Made Landfall After Falling off a Cargo Ship in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean."

Where-rubber-ducks-made-landfall-after-being-dumped-in-pacific-ocean

This is need-to-know information. Or interesting, anyway.

Caveat: With Demons

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

I ran across a different version of this quote, but decided I liked my own version better.

Sometimes I wrestle with my demons. Sometimes, we just hold hands and sit together in silence.

What I'm listening to right now.

Covenant, "Bullet."

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

Caveat: 등잔 밑이 어둡다

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

Yesterday the two TEPS반 refugee boys (by which I mean a cohort that once had 10 students is reduced to only two) were reduced further to just Jaehwan. Hyeonguk, the other student, had disappeared, and we couldn’t find him. The front-desk-lady didn’t know where he was. He’d simply disappeared.
So Jaehwan and I had class alone, the two of us. I always feel weird trying to conduct a “normal” class with only one student sitting in front of me. I feel like both of our time could be better used in some other way, at that point. But anyway…
2013-11-16 13.10.55We worked our way through the questions, and shared some joking remarks about how when Hyeonguk showed up, he’d have a lot of homework piled up (since the rule I have for this class is that the dictation homework is waived for questions with correct on-the-spot answers in class, and since he wasn’t around, obviously none of the homework was waived).
I speculated that Hyeonguk may have been abducted by aliens. I had to explain this by drawing a picture (at right), since Jaehwan was unfamiliar with the pop-culture-referencing idiom “abducted by aliens.”
Then about 20 minutes in, Curt reported in to say that Hyeonguk had been located – in the next-door classroom, where he’d decided to “audit” without telling anyone. I’m fine with that – these things happen.
Jaehwan and I shared a laugh about it, since we’d really had no idea where he’d gone. He knows I study Korean aphorisms, sometimes, so he took the opportunity to tell me one relevant to the situation.
등잔        밑이        어둡다
deung·jan  mit·i      eo·dup·da
lamp       base-SUBJ  be-dark
It’s dark at the base of the lamp.
2013-11-16 13.01.03 The English expression might be, “right under one’s nose.” I wrote it on the board, to be able to remember it.

Caveat: Expansion. Contraction. Silence.

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Cancer / My Photos

picture
There was something expansive in my illness. It forced me to open out into the world and confront things head on. Guilt and self-recrimination evaporated – there was no time for it. I took on the world, drew it into myself, embraced it.
This last month has felt like a sort of contraction – a narrowing, a closing-in upon myself. And there has been a resumption of guilt and self-recrimination.
It all seems to run like a stop-motion movie of a flower growing, opening, then wilting and dying and falling away. Cancer flower.

Seasons for the wrong reasons: spring becomes fall, through a summer of desperation.
Yet from a standpoint of my simple physicality, doesn’t it seem like the effect should be opposite? Shouldn’t I have plunged into a temporary field of decrescence only to rise out and emerge whole again afterward?
The psychology of this thing has me puzzled.
I have indeed been in a very strange mental place, this afternoon. I’ve been listening to classical music continuously. I guess what’s called “contemporary classical”: John Tavener, Arvo Pärt. Bobmusic, I have called it in the past. When is the last time I did that? Many, many years.
What I’m listening to right now.

Arvo Pärt, “Silentium.”

picture[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: Realistic Expectations

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

In my Saturday special speaking class, my middle schoolers were answering the question, "What will you be doing in five years?"

One girl described how she was going to be in university, majoring in math and science, and would have a handsome boyfriend. Another girl said she would be starting a business and making a lot of money. The typical broad ambitions of early teenagers.

But then Jenny said, "I will be in university. Probably, I will drink a lot of alcohol."

Keeping it real.

Caveat: 35-year-old Blog

Found Online / Internet & Blogging

Some guy is posting his journal entries from the 1970s when he was a kid. That seems like something I would do… if I had had a coherent journal when I was a kid. I mostly just drew things on loose-leaf paper. I still have all those drawings – or most of them – but they are undated and disorganized and in boxes in Eagan right now.

Retro_html_m58fe173a

 

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: 십년이면 산천도 변한다

한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

This is an aphorism from my book of aphorisms.
 
십년이면            산천도               변한다
sip·nyeon·i·myeon san·cheon·do        byeon·han·da
ten-years-be-IF   mountain-stream-TOO change-PRES
If ten years pass, even the mountains and streams change.
With time, everything changes.
I took this picture in September of 2010 at Mudeung Mountain (무등산) near Gwangju.
P1050390

Caveat: ideology:anxiety::malice:stupidity

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

There is a famous aphorism in English that goes:

Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity.

The phrase applies a sort of Occam's Razor to the problem of bad behavior in people.

Recently, having run across several accounts of "racism" in Korea, I wondered if there might be a sort of corollary to this aphorism that applies specifically to those sorts of bad behavior. Of course, as foreigners in Korea, we often suffer strange or disturbing slights and mistreatments. One frequent thing that I have experienced myself is to be ignored by taxi drivers.

My thought, though, is that rather than assume that's racism at work, why not assume it's not that different from the reason store clerks say nothing to you, or why my students sit and stare at me when I say hello: it's fear or anxiety over fraught language interaction.

Obviously, there is still generalization and stereotyping going on – after all, it might be one of those foreigners who speaks Korean well that the taxi driver drove past.

But social language anxiety is very powerful. Consider my own bizarre telephone anxiety as a case-in-point. I am not that indrawn of a person, yet I am terrified to answer my phone in this country. Unless it's a number of someone I've already added to my contact list (and therefore their name shows when they call) I simply don't answer my phone, for fear of having to interact in Korean. This is true, despite the fact that I have in the past successfully interacted on the phone in Korean, when it was absolutely necessary.

Might it not be the case that many of these taxi drivers and store clerks who slight foreigners are simply engaging in similar language-anxiety driven behavior? I think so. Koreans are typically very self-conscious about their poor English skills, because their society has spent several generations, now, pounding into their heads that they should have such skills.

Well, anyway, I guess I could develop this further and more precisely, but mostly, I wanted to invent a new corollary to the aphorism at the start of this blog-post. It goes:

Never attribute to ideology (e.g. "racism") that which is more easily explained by social anxiety.

It really can be easily represented by one of those SAT-style vocabulary analogies:

ideology:anxiety::malice:stupidity

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: Dreaming Drawing Monsters

Banalities & Journaling / My Drawings & Paintings

2013-11-14 09.15.18I slept longer than I have in a long time – I woke up about two hours later than my usual time. That's a sign that I was tired yesterday.

I was having strange dreams about drawing monsters. Cartoon monsters. Not much plot. Just drawing cartoon monsters.

Some dream. I tried to draw one of the cute monsters I'd been dreamdrawing immediately when I woke up (see right). Success: marginal.

Caveat: Package Received

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

When I arrived at work today, I saw that I had received a care package from my brother. It is, by far the most eccentric (and therefore best) care package I've ever received.

It included finger puppets (from his girlfriend Hollye), which will be perfect for my lower grades roleplay classes. It included various random packages of unusual flavors of tea and coffee. It included what appears to be a late 1800's edition of Longfellow's poetry (it's undated, like many books from the pre-modern era). It contained some hand-burned CDs of music (some of which were damaged, making me think maybe my brother found them on the floor of the garage or somewhere like that). It contained a robot magnet. And it contained a panic button – literally: a button that looked detached from some device, with the word "PANIC" inscribed on it. Oh, and it had some iodine supplements – which I'd asked for, having been unable to find them in Korea, and theorizing that iodine might be part of what might help my post-cancer resistance to further cancer go well.

2013-11-13 22.21.49

My brother knows me well.

Work was intense today. I had 6 classes, all in a row. And every single one of them was "new" – not the kids, but the curriculum spots were all inherited from other teachers, as we got new schedules this week and I have finally become truly "full time" again. With every class being new, I was hardly well-prepared. But I knew the kids, anyway, and considering everything, it went pretty smoothly. It's the most intense, full teaching day I've had since before my hospitalization.

Walking home, my mp3 shuffle seemed fixated on playing only sad and depressing songs. But I didn't fast forward through them, I just listened. Not really feeling that sad or depressed at the moment. Just tired.

What I'm listening to right now.

Gossamer, "Memoir."

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Hay que saltar del corazón al mundo

Not My Poetry

Contacto externo

Mis ojos de plaza pública
Mis ojos de silencio y de desierto
El dulce tumulto interno
La soledad que se despierta
Cuando el perfume se separa de las flores y emprende el viaje
Y el río del alma largo largo
Que no dice más ni tiempo ni espacio

Un día vendrá ha venido ya
La selva forma una sustancia prodigiosa
La luna tose
El mar desciende de su coche
Un jour viendra est déjà venu
Y Yo no digo más ni primavera ni invierno

Hay que saltar del corazón al mundo
Hay que construir un poco de infinito para el hombre

– Vicente Huidobro (poeta chileno, 1893-1948)

Caveat: Those Uzbek Girls

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

I was talking with the TEPS반 boys – there's only two right now – about what different countries are famous for. I don't remember the details of the conversation, but the meaning of this is e.g. Australia is famous for kangaroos or Egypt is famous for pyramids. These are advanced, ninth-grade boys. We were just killing time, it wasn't a lesson.

"What else can countries be famous for?" I asked something like this, speculating.

"Girls," one boy said.

Of course! These are ninth-grade boys, right? "What country is famous for girls?" I asked, genuinely curious what the answer would be.

"Uzbekistan," he said, as if it was a well-known fact.

"Really? Uzbekistan is famous for girls?"

"Oh, yes. They are perfect."

"How do you know this?" I pondered.

"It's just known."

[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]

Caveat: 보기 좋은 떡이 먹기에도 좋다

한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

My friend sent me this aphorism in a text message. He was using it to make a sort innuendo about dating between men and women.
보기      좋은           떡이          먹기에도          좋다
bo·gi    joh·eun       tteok·i       meok·gi·e·do    joh·da
look-GER be-good-PPART ricecake-SUBJ eat-GER-ABL-TOO be-good-PRES
Good-looking rice cakes are good to eat too.

SV400044It’s pretty much self-explanatory.
Picture at right shows a web-found image of a vast variety of sweet and savory rice cakes (떡 [tteok]).
To be honest, I don’t like many of these things, but there are certain types I find quite delicious – mostly the plainer varieties found in soups or tteokbokki.

Caveat: Teach a Language

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics

For many years, we've been hearing reports about the idea that bilingualism (and tri- and multi-lingualism) can give cognitive benefits and stave off mental decline and even prevent or postpone Alzheimers.

One weakness in the data has been that this research has mostly been done in countries where most bilinguals happen, coincidentally, to belong to immigrant populations (e.g. the US, Australia, Western Europe) -  so there's always been a lingering doubt as to whether the brain benefits were being delivered as a result of bilingualism or were possibly linked to some other aspect of the immigrant experience / environment.

Now a major study out of India has narrowed the apparent benefits more specifically to multilingualism – see this post at Language Log for details.

Give a life-long gift to a child today – teach her or him a language.

What I'm listening to right now.

MC 900 Ft Jesus, "If I Only Had a Brain."

Lyrics

Suppose I accidentally got my shit together
Would I get a medal?
Or a pat on the back and a little feather
I could stick in my cap or pin it to my shirt
Go out in the yard and poke it in the dirt
Or leave it in the woods where it couldn't be found
If it fell over, would it make a sound?
And if it did, would it be the sound that you like?
Or should I do it over until I get it right?

You say everything I know is wrong
So do me a favor, and play along for a minute
As the rusty gears turn
Don't be alarmed if you smell something burning upstairs
It's a little BB rolling around in a box car
See us together

Maybe it wouldn't be hard to explain
If I only had a brain

[chorus]
Somewhere on a higher mental plain
(Somewhere On A Higher mental plain)
I might learn to come in from the rain
(I might learn to come in from the rain)
If I had a clue would I still be here with you?
(If I had a clue would I still be here with you?)
Gee whiz, if I only had a brain
(Gee Whiz, If I only had a brain)

Who's that?
Oh, my little friend cupid
Wearing a shirt that says I'm with stupid
Always nearby wherever I go
He's looking out for me, don't you know

Mr. excitement, never in a rut
Johnny on the spot with an arrow in the butt
Ouch! I guess your love is true
Now, if I could only get a clue

[chorus]
Had a brain
Had a brain
Had a brain
Had a brain

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Branco e Preto

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Cancer

Stuff.

Life keeps happening. I noticed I'm still losing hair. I didn't lose much from the top of my head during radiation (unlike my beard which disappeared almost entirely – but that just makes shaving easier), but I've been aware that the rate of loss overall seems to have accelerated. I keep finding grey and white hair: Oh… that's mine, isn't it? Well, used to be…. goodbye.

What I'm listening to right now.

Elis Regina, "Retrato em Branco e Preto."

letra:

Já conheço os passos dessa estrada
Sei que não vai dar em nada
Seus segredos sei de cor
Já conheço as pedras do caminho,
E sei também que ali sozinho,
Eu vou ficar tanto pior
E o que é que eu posso contra o encanto,
Desse amor que eu nego tanto
Evito tanto e que, no entanto,
Volta sempre a enfeitiçar
Com seus mesmos tristes, velhos fatos,
Que num álbum de retratos
Eu teimo em colecionar

Lá vou eu de novo como um tolo,
Procurar o desconsolo,
Que cansei de conhecer
Novos dias tristes, noites claras,
Versos, cartas, minha cara
Ainda volto a lhe escrever
Pra lhe dizer que isso é pecado,
Eu trago o peito tão marcado
De lembranças do passado e você sabe a razão
Vou colecionar mais um soneto,
Outro retrato em branco e preto
A maltratar meu coração

Caveat: On Revision

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Quotable

Here is an interesting quote on the process of revision.

Over and over again, we are told about the importance of polishing, of revising, of tearing up, and rewriting. I got the bewildered notion that, far from being expected to type it right the first time, as Heinlein had advised me, I was expected to type it all wrong and get it right only by the thirty-second time, if at all.

I went home immersed in gloom and the very next time I wrote a story, I tried to tear it up. I couldn’t make myself do it. So I went over to see all the terrible things I had done, in order to revise them. To my chagrin, everything sounded great to me. (My own writing always sounds great to me.) Eventually, after wasting hours and hours–to say nothing of suffering spiritual agony—I gave it up. My stories would have to be written the way they always were—and still are.

What is it I am saying, then? That it is wrong to revise? No, of course not—anymore than it is wrong not to revise.
– Isaac Asimov

I was forced to revise my Sunday walk, as once I was outside I came to the stark realization that it had become cold. It was 1°C. I guess it's time to break out the winter clothes.

What I'm listening to right now.

John Newman, "Love Me Again." The video is rather depressing (spoiler), if you watch all the way through.

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

Caveat: Dissolute Turtle

My Drawings & Paintings

I have been working on this for a lot longer than appearances would suggest. I'm happy with it compositionally but frustrated with it from a technical standpoint – I'm not very comfortable with watercolor as a medium.

2013-11-10 09.22.15

Dissolute Turtle (ink and watercolor).

Caveat: the aim and the end

Not My Poetry / Quotable

Being But Men

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And, after the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder, that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.
– Dylan Thomas

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Chicken? Egg? Solved!

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

In my TOEFL2반 class, I decided to switch things up a bit.

I teach them "Speaking" – which in TOEFL / iBT prep, means getting them to give 45-second or one-minute speeches in response to sample test questions, mostly. It's all about practice, practice, practice. So a normal class involves me getting each of them to answer 2 or 3 questions. We have a routine: I ask the question and randomly choose a student; I hand them my smartphone, which has a countdown timer on the screen, set for e.g. 45 seconds; then I hold my video camera on them – not because I'm going to do anything at all with the result, but merely because it creates an amazing level of "pressure" and focus. And they talk.

Last night, I decided let them ask me questions, instead, following essentially the same routine. I handed the camera to one of the students, sat down at a desk facing them and put my timer down in front of me. They would ask a question, I would have 15 seconds to cogitate on a response, and then I would talk for 45 seconds, with the camera on. Most of the questions they asked were the same typical "made up" iBT Independent Speaking questions (types 1 and 2) that we see in our textbooks. But at the end they threw me a few strange ones, just to see what I'd do. I ran with it, of course.

The final question of the evening was: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Here is my answer.

I'm not sure I was able to explain it adequately in my alloted 45 seconds, but I think I held my own. When asked to give my response a score on the 4 point iBT speaking scale, my students gave me a 2.9. This seems about right, in my opinion – even native speakers can only do so well on test like the TOEFL, and I always tell my students that a perfect score on the iBT Speaking section is as much about luck on the questions as it is about ability, because even native speakers can easily blow a question or two, ending up tongue-tied or devoid of clear ideas for a response, given the short time-frame.

 

Caveat: 소리 없는 고양이 쥐 잡는다

한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

TOM & JERRY 9This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.
소리    없는              고양이      쥐    잡는다.
so·ri  eops·neun         go·yang·i jwi   jap·neun·da
noise  not-have-PRESPART cat       mouse catch-PRES
The quiet cat catches the mouse.
A quiet person is more successful than a noisy person.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Cheap Flights to Auckland

Found Online / Internet & Blogging

Anyone who has a blog has had the experience of "spam" comments showing up in the comments section. I recently ran across a piece of spam commentary that seemed almost like poetry. It's not often that spam speaks to one so personally as this passage seems to do.

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable. Cheap Flights to Auckland

I always wonder about the origin of texts like this – computer generation? non-native-speaker authorship? some kind of burroughsian cut-up of wikipedia?

Caveat: PTSD?

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Cancer

My acquaintance Kelli (a former coworker from circa 1988) suggested, based on her own experience, that there is possibly a component of the cancer treatment process that leads to PTSD. I've been mulling it over, and it makes sense. That explains the slightly affect-less, semi-shell-shocked feeling I've been having so much of, lately.

I hesitate to use the term, though – both because it seems broadly over-used as part of our culture, and also because I'm not sure how I feel about it as a "diagnosis" at all. I'm not much of one for the DSM, when you get down to it. It's a lot of labels.

Partly, though, my feeling is it's just being back in the grind of work. I had been intending to plunge back into a kind of self-curative workaholism after the worst was over, and so… that's where I'm going. It's taxing, though – physically because I'm not in the best shape, and emotionally, because, well… work.

What I'm listening to right now.

Peter Murphy, "Cuts You Up."

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

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