July 2006: Picasso and the Mud Festival (part of an overlong post)

I've split up this post, so that it's down to readable length. Originally it's from July 2006.

A few weeks ago -- I think the week before I went to the mud festival -- I went to a Picasso exhibit right around the corner from where I saw the soccer game.

Now this, this was fantastic. I know just enough art history, and art creation, to engage with Picasso in a way that I really enjoyed -- I wasn't all distracted saying things like "Well, Picasso's third major lover was very strong-willed, and that affected his lines in his paintings of female models during his blue period" (which is total bollocks -- I just made that up. I have no idea about the relationship between Picasso's biography and his art). But I DO know enough about art to make a few observations about how that man looked at the world, and how he presented his ways of seeing the world on canvas, so that we would start to look at the world in a similar way. THAT was amazing and fascinating. He has these paintings where it looks nothing like a crying woman . . . but it FEELS like a crying woman with every shape, colour, form, and angle. Your emotional reaction to the picture is exactly your emotional reaction to seeing a woman cry. He puts noses and eyes and shoulders in the wrong places, but he does it so that those features catch your eyes -- it's like he's saying, "I put these in the wrong place, or made them disproportionately large, or grotesquely misshapen, so that you'd know that I want you to pay attention to it." And then, once you looked at that misplaced shoulder, or leg, or finger, it would capture, exactly, the gesture of an arm, or an eye, even if it didn't have the "proper" form. A quote up on the wall of one of the display room (HUNDREDS of paintings and sketches and prints were on display) said something like, "I spend my whole life trying to learn to paint like a child." Every week in art class, I watch kids try to put the way they see the world onto paper, and some of them are starting to think in set patterns, but others still just play with shapes and colours as well as their hand-eye coordination allows them. Frankly, I wish I could create pictures as primally, and simply, as Ryan does, but everybody around him (except me) keeps telling him to "make the nose look like a nose. Make the car look like a car."

The other thing I loved about Picasso, truly loved, were the photos of him. He always had this fantastic look in his eye of a man totally participating in his life, eyes that could look carefully at something and love it, and see it, and see things in it, and even express it. He wore his genius lightly -- he didn't wear long black coats and dark hats and smoke cigarettes with long filters, and let the IDEA of who he was interfere with who he actually was -- there are pictures of him painting in his boxers, with a bottle of wine nearby and his belly hanging over his elastic waistband. Every picture made me think of a man who had the chance to do what he loved – create -- his whole life, who spent his whole life looking and trying to learn, and trying to find a purer, simpler way to think and live and then portray the world. I hope that when I'm an old man, I have eyes like that, too.

And in that vein, I will continue paying attention to my world, seeing and looking and trying to understand as much as I can without judging too much. Walking to work and hearing a cicada that must have grown up listening to John Coltrane's avant-garde phase. Smiling at the little boy and girl whose family works the bedding shop on the corner near my house who, if they see me or another caucasian, they'll stand in the middle of the street and just bellow "HELLOOOOOO" until they're right out of sight. And they really bellow, too. I'll continue sitting in coffee shops and shopping mall hallways and watching the people go by, and writing poetry and stories, and reading the same. Take care, everyone. Enjoy the pictures, and love your life, and find peace and joy in the meanings that fill your life, whatever they are.


In other news, I got a new laptop. This is the first bulk e-mail being written on my own computer, in my apartment. In fact, I'm in my pyjamas right now. It's a good little unit (the computer, not the pyjamas). It does everything I need it to do (the computer, not the pyjamas).

Last weekend I went to a mud festival in a village a little west of Seoul. Boy, that was fun! We smeared our bodies in healthy clay, played on a beach and in the sea all afternoon, and acted silly with thousands of other people, all smeared in clay and grinning goofily.

I played in the sea, throwing my body into these monstrous breakers as the tide came in. It was like being six years old again, riding my bike down a steep hill, or touching the tree branches above with my head as I jumped on a trampoline. The sea is awesome, and I hadn't played in big waves in such a long long time. It was really thrilling jumping into this thing SO MUCH bigger than I am, carrying so much power, and then being tossed around like an air mattress. Finally, exhausted and exhilirated, I walked home. . . the wrong way. I got properly lost, discovered an amusement park and then finally found my way home, too. The second day, it rained. I just took off my shirt and let the water fall on me -- better shirtless and wet than cold in a wet t-shirt, I say, and then I walked around and played anyway (as did most of the other people). Then, at the end of the day, just before my group reconvened to eat dinner and leave, I spend forty minutes in a mud sauna.

There was a bath house with special mud-enriched water (have I mentioned yet how healthy this mud was supposed to be? You could buy bars of mud soap!), and I soaked there, and showed a bunch of other western guys (first time sauna-ers) how to do a good salt rub. Then we went home. It was really fun.



Probably the high point of that day (other than singing "If I Only Had A Brain" with the silly Australian who approached me and started a conversation), was when a traditional Korean drumline, dressed up in full regalia, started playing, and immediately a dozen mud-caked westerners started a dancing circle. It was one of those spontaneous, surprising, just wonderful moments.

Traditional Korean Entertainment

It's the Seollal Festival right now -- the Lunar New Year (known in North America as Chinese New Year -- we wanted it to be called Korean New Year worldwide, but we got outvoted.)

And this means a few things:

1. Everybody travels to their ancestral home to honour the ancestors.
2. For anybody who STAYS in Seoul (because everybody's either heading for the countryside or taking advantage of the five day vacation, it's impossible to book tickets to travel), there are tons of festivals, cultural demonstrations and performances to see.
This is called Samulnori. It was popular with farmers coming in from the field. It's noisy and fun. The guy on the far left leads it, it's mostly improvisational, but the clip below gives you a feeling for how it gathers speed as the players go.
It's hugely thrilling to see in person -- wish you could experience it.





A good performance will go eight or ten minutes sometimes, changing tempos and gathering momentum, trading solos and getting noisier and noisier. It's like riding a galloping horse. By the end, all the drummers in our show were dripping with sweat, their heads were bobbing and hair flying everywhere. (Wet hair)

Here's a clip of Kim Duk Soo, a Sameulnori legend, as his performance (somewhat bigger than the usual combo size) reaches its climax. Imagine being there to see this live, close enough to see the whites of their eyes.




Some female dancers came out, and did some lovely fan dances (buchae-chum) that involved spinning and puffing their traditional hanbok out in all directions, just like little girls wearing new dresses.







This is called Pansori, the traditional storytelling form. It has been recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural treasure. These Pansori singers are extremely highly trained -- their voices are amazing, more impressive than opera, I think, because Opera is mostly concerned with getting the purest sound, but a good pansori singer MUST have that worn "I've climbed twelve mountain ranges to tell you this story" melancholy in it. It turns into a folk-song singalong midway, and the woman really lets her voice go in all its gritty glory.



A proper Pansori performance can take six hours -- that takes some stamina. A friend told me once that during their training, Pansori performers must practice their vocal exercises until they cough up blood, and there's a movie (Called Sopyanje) about a famous Pansori singer whose father blinded her so that she would experience the grief necessary to become a truly great Pansori singer. (I'm not sure if it's a true story, but it gives you an idea of what is required to be a great singer.)

One thing I love about Korea is that it's a peasant culture -- the best Korean foods are the simple soups and stews that farmers would eat when they came in from the fields. Samulnori (the drumming) was how those same farmers would let out their stress -- work all day in the rice field? Let's bang things together to feel better! Even in this, Pansori (sometimes called Korean Opera), it's not looking for the cleanest highest note (sorry, Sarah Brightman), but the deepest, saddest groan, that defines the best Pansori singers. This makes it very different from Chinese opera, which is so mannered, refined and exact, in a movie I saw about it (Farewell, My Concubine) there's an argument between a singer and an opera historian about whether he's supposed to take five, or six steps before he starts singing during a certain scene of a certain opera.


At the end of the show, the samulnori people came out again, and did this (Pangeut):



They've tied ribbons to sticks attached to their hats. They were flying all over the stage, and it was awesome, they had the whole crowd clapping along, shouting and hollering with joy.



By the way: here's a fantastic arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" with traditional Korean instruments. I especially enjoyed the solo: skip to six minutes in.



I don't know why Koreans love to do western pop songs and rock classics on their traditional instruments, but the song I've heard played more often than any other by traditional orchestra is "Let It Be". Too bad: the old folk songs have a stately strength that I really enjoy, but maybe they're worried young people can't enjoy the slow smouldering tempos, so they have to supply them with familiar, classic rock tunes. . . which doesn't actually make sense either, because if they're looking for a YOUNG NEW audience, they ought to be covering Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce.

Here's some of the stately stuff I like. The orchestra I saw was seven piece, with five different instruments, and it was more improvisational -- each player got a few bars of solo, and that kind of performance would have been a more common occurrence than a big-ass gala like this one.

Watch the clips; enjoy the culture where I live.

Bud, holy cow!

I just went to the Seoul Museum of Art, and saw Vincent Van Gogh. This guy...

you know the difference between looking at pictures of your friend, and actually sitting down and chatting -- you know the way NOBODY gets your vacation photos the way you do, just because bud, the food looks great in the picture, but they didn't get to eat it, and you did.

Well, dear readers, art is like that too. I didn't actually see Vincent VanGogh. He died. Quite a while ago, now. But if you think these pictures are impressive -- wow! You really gotta see them in person. The paint on the canvas, the little knots of colour, the texture that jumps out at you -- it's like the difference between a photo album and a person (which makes sense, but still didn't really click until I saw these in person).


This one was there. Girlfriendoseyo disagrees with me, but I think Van Gogh was overwhelmed by the sun. The sun seems so close here -- it strikes me even as being accusing. The sun almost totally dominates just about every painting where it appears in Van Gogh's work. The field is so mundane next to that glaring eye. You can barely even see the birds eating the sower's seeds -- they're totally irrelevant next to that sun.

I stared at this one for about three minutes without blinking. I don't know how, but Vincent got to me, like a fisher with his hook, he got a hold of something in me.


This next one wasn't in the exhibit, but you can see here, too, Van Gogh's feeling about the sky. I said to Girlfriendoseyo today -- Raphael's or Vermeer's paintings are so perfect, so realistic, it's like they're just seeing. Picasso's paintings are so intuitive, so emotional, it's like they're just feeling. Van Gogh sees and feels. It's amazing how raw and visceral these paintings are in person.


This one WAS in the exhibit, and Girlfriendoseyo and I were both totally gobsmacked. I just can not convey to you how powerful this painting is in person. I really can't. Even if you eat the computer screen where the painting is displayed, you won't be as deeply impressed by it as we were. Go, seek it out, and see it yourself.


This next painting was there too, the only of his self portraits (I think).

This one broke my heart, and also caught hold of me for several minutes: every line said, "dude, I've lived a f***ing rough life." He died at age 37, but this, one of his early paintings, already looks about fifty.


Everybody loves these next three. . . they weren't at the exhibit, but they might have been too much for me if they were. My old roomie Anthony once told me the story of his buddy, the self-proclaimed "biggest Bjork fan in the world", who, when he got the chance to see Bjork perform live, ended up having to leave the auditorium after the first few songs, completely overwhelmed with the power of his experience. I scoffed at the story then, and called dude an idiot for flinching away from a potential high-point in his life. . . but now I think I might understand a bit.

Considering how these three are still amazing, gorgeous, and fresh to me, even though they pop up of every tea room wall, on every Starbucks mug, in every poster-shop window. . . to actually see them in person, to have their impact amplified that much -- I might have to look away for a while, too, before staring into the sun like that.



Dear Lord, the man's night skies were breathtaking!

This one WAS there. In person, it's almost a different painting entirely.

And I wish I could explain what he does with flowers. . . but there's just no way. (This is why people write poems, I suppose.)


This wasn't at the exhibit, but again, look how he just lays his soul bare in the skies. The indoor still life paintings' backgrounds were totally flat and dull, but this Vincent fellow, he had some kind of a thing about skies.

Thanks to him, now I do, too.


Wasn't at the exhibit, but just -- wow. Just wow.


I love painters.
The German poet Rilke (my personal poetry hero) wrote, in the First Duino Elegy

"already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world"

And this is why artists draw -- because there doesn't have to be a story, or a meaning, or anything but a field and a sky. . . but that field, and that sky -- WOW!

Here it is! Be amazed!

We're right back to that again, aren't we? Can't that sometimes be enough? Can't that sometimes be the entire end and purpose of some art? As John Keats said,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

But with words, Keats had to say beauty is truth. These painters just show something beautiful, and they don't even have to add a single layer of interpretation if they don't want to, and they can just leave it at "here it is. be amazed."

(Girl With a Pearl Earring, by another Dutch guy who was pretty good: Vermeer. Here it is. It's beautiful. Be amazed.)

Yeah, sometimes there's other stuff in there, too. . . but there doesn't have to be. With writing, it's almost impossible not to add in a little pontification, a little theme or interpretation or explanation -- it's why I get bummed every time I read Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey -- he starts off with a "here it is. be amazed" and then starts adding other stuff. Sometimes in other poems, he got it right, got it pure, but often he was so busy explaining the perfection of his moments, or describing his own feelings, that he clouds the beauty with too many traces of his own voice -- kind of like an amazing photograph with a text line across the middle of the composition saying, "taken on a fuji finepix E550"

For your benefit, I've created a visual representation of what I mean. Which of these pictures would you rather have on your wall?




Here's a Picasso painting I talked about in a previous post.

I love about Picasso that he stripped away everything in his paintings except the things he decided were important for that particular painting.

Form? Not needed.
Proportion? Why?
Perspective? Does it serve the painting's main theme?
Conventional Placement Of Body Parts? Let's talk about that again later.

But what he DID keep in his painting, distorted, exaggerated, or rearranged for proper emphasis, maintained the exact emotional content of his subject, even when the recognizable form was long gone, and so, even though you wouldn't recognize her to pass her on the street, you FEEL this woman crying (the painting is named "La Femme Qui Pleure" - the woman who cries), more (or at least as) clearly and authentically than/as a hundred photos of women actually crying.


The other thing I love love love about Picasso is his face. Look at his eyes. Those are eyes that have been trained, for an entire lifetime, to see into the heart of things, and find wonder there. "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." That he not only learned how to SEE the world that way, but was also skilled or intuitive enough to translate what he saw onto canvas is as much a miracle as the way Mozart heard the music perfectly in his head, or the way Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony while stone-deaf, or the way John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison managed to be born in the same city, in the same era, and meet each other.

Even when he's very old, you still see a child in his eyes. You see a mind still open. Still dancing.

That kind of wise simplicity appears from time to time, in somebody's eyes. . . not even in every artist, though. My favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, has a sharper edge in his eyes.

but it doesn't surprise me that someone who uses words (which are basically boxes, categories, and judgements impressed upon the things that actually reach one's senses) would have a sharper edge than someone who uses colours and shapes to lay bare his soul.



Would you believe that behind those eyes lies one of the finest religious-scholarly minds on the planet?

I hope, when I'm an old man, I have eyes as encompassing, innocent, and simple, as that.

But more than that, I hope they look that way because I've worked my whole life to see the world simply and wonderfully (wonderful meaning full of wonder, of course), and maybe even that I've been clever enough to transmit some of that tight-packed wonder into some books that other people can read.

How long does it take to write a poem like Rilke, or paint a painting like Picasso, or a story like JD Salinger?

A few hours, or a few days, or a few months. . . and an entire lifetime, of course.

Not the FULL meaning of life, but a good chunk of it, I think.

Finally: yes, it's true. Fall is gasping into winter here in Korea. Last night I chatted with friends, eating sushi, and looked out the window as the wind showered leaves down from the trees onto the street.

Huge floppy leaves streamed into a dark little side street. No picture, but it was sure beautiful. Fall is waning, and the multicoloured leaves are falling fast, to make room for winter's starkness.

(PS: A bald tree in front of a streetlight is a really beautiful thing -- the way the thinnest twigs catch the light in a halo makes me think of spiderwebs.)

Next morning, street looked like this:


Unfortunately, some of those leaf piles concealed restaurants' compost bags, so it was a bit risky to stomp through them, and this pile (and many others) were big enough to conceal a sleeping hobo (who prefer to be left alone, rather than kicked by big kids like me), so I was a little cautious dragging my feet through them and letting the leafy crunchy sound fill my head up with happy-sauce and happy-sense.

I love the vein pattern of these kinds of leaves.


Today is Sunday. I walked with Matt for a good two hours this afternoon, on a riverside, a hill, and a university campus, talking (which was nice) but basically just being out in the middle of fall, letting the wind blow around us, and being alive. Fall in Korea is heaven, I swear. Even in the city, and even more in the country.

Trees are so beautiful. In the words of Annie Dillard: "You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn't it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo?" Sure glad God decided to go for the glamour and make something really, really, ridiculously good-looking instead. My friend Anna once used the word gratuitous, as in "We have a gratuitous god" and I'd have to say the beauty set into the world around us is absolutely gratuitous -- totally unnecessary! Beauty for beauty's sake alone! Almost shocking to my sensibilities, if I actually think about it, and definitely an apalling degree of overkill -- one tree ought to be enough beauty for any city in its entirety, yet instead, we're just overwhelmed by them, so much that we don't even think twice about cutting down these miracles of beauty and function!

Trees and colours against the sky: here's late fall in Seoul (today was the first properly cold day in Seoul -- gloves instead of pockets, heavy coats instead of layers).


Yet somehow the bamboo trees kept ALL their green.


Next: a path. With colours. I wish you could have been there. The green and red on the path is recycled car tires or something -- it makes the surface very pleasant and springy for walking or jogging.


Certain trees' leaves curl up like a hand when the cold gets to them. It's a bit hard to see this one, but imagine an entire tree where instead of falling, the leaves have curled up into fists -- not unlike some people who curl themselves up in the cold (instead of just going inside). Almost like Christmas tree ornaments.


This was a little tree grove in Kyunghee university: every leaf colour imaginable was somewhere in the grove, layered above and below the other colours. The leaves hadn't been swept up or rained upon, so they gave a really nice crunch underfoot. Matt and I lay down on our backs and stared up at the layers of leaf-colours and bare branches.


Like this. There were a few hundred birds in the grove, pipping and singing away, and the people walking by gave the ground a rustle. The sun was just low enough in the sky to come in from the side, and it was as if the sunlight plugged the colours in, threw a switch and set them blazing.



This (below) was the view from on our backs, looking up at the leaves. The sun and the leaves and the breeze and the birds joined together in an act either of love or of worship (or maybe both, if that's not too blasphemous or superlative for you). It was cold enough to see our breath, and every direction had a different mix of colours. The picture is two dimensional so it's hard to see how the leaves were layered one above the other, but I tell you, the rocks and trees were singing today.


After five or ten minutes (or maybe it was thirty seconds, or maybe it was five days -- it doesn't matter) Matt stood up and said to me, "Congratulations. You have taken part in a perfect moment in time." And he couldn't have been more right if a voice from the sky had spoken along with him, and then a mysterious hand had materialized and given him a high-five.

I can't find the exact quote, but I came across a spot where Steven Hawking said something to the effect that, of all the possible universes that could have existed, isn't it interesting that the one we live in, the one that DID come about, was one that contained creatures who could contemplate it, and wonder at it. Whether this leads us to proof of some creator or not, the fact remains, the universe constantly screams out "HERE I AM! BE AMAZED!", and we, humans, are lucky enough to have the capacity to do exactly that, and from there, even to search for a meaning to it all. Thank God! Framed in religious terms, the entire world was worshipping God today, and calling all the people in Seoul to worship with it. It was absolutely transcendental, and yet also absolutely embodied, rooted in the Here and Now of creation, and I don't know if there needs to be any more meaning to an autumn day than "Autumn is beautiful" and "Here I am! Be amazed!".

Here it is. Be amazed.



The earth is visible in this picture of Saturn.







And look at this one again, too. Just soak it in. It's as beautiful as a liturgy. . . I don't know if the picture is, but the moment sure was.

A chapel is a beautiful place to worship, sometimes (I'm thinking of those cathedrals that create a space of holiness by their mere design). . . but when God builds a place of worship, it's never exactly the same for two days in a row, and that says something.


Sometimes I think that's enough meaning for life -- just that it's so darn full of beauty. Some stories have no real meaning except "here's a great story" and some autumn days are the same, and seeing that, and accepting and enjoying it for exactly what it is: breathtaking beauty -- is an act of worship to whichever deity one chooses to credit. I'm glad I'm alive! Thanks, God, for giving me senses!



Other stuff:

The trivial:

how many song references can you spot/recognize in this chart?

It's Autumn in Korea. . . hang in there and I'll tell you about it. If you remember Josh Barkey from university, here's his blog, and a post that I really enjoyed -- a cool perspective on sin, if you will.

Some pictures, just to increase the tease.

In a city as crowded as Seoul, sometimes parking solutions get creative.


From a hostess bar: white fetish, schoolgirl fetish, the name of the bar (if you can't see it) is "better than beer". Matt and I decided there were probably no white girls OR school uniforms on the premises. . . and it wouldn't take much for it to be better than beer anyway, given the quality of Korea's local brews. Won't find me in there checking, though.


A little konglish

I know, why don't you write about why you love to write/why you write, and what you like about literature? Your own philosophy of your art.

Just hit play and start reading. Soundtrack!



I said in the comments of my books post that the person who found my intentional error got to pick my next topic,

Mel won the contest, finding the intentional error and being kind enough not to mention the numerous typos. That’s right: Hamlet was written by William Shakespeare, not Victor Hugo.

Mel’s question was “Why do you write?”

Why SOME people write:

For legacy. Nobody remembers England’s top swordsman in the year 1603, but everybody remembers Billy Shakespeare was writin’ him some plays. Some pretty good ones, too.

It’s validating, even gratifying to see one’s name in print – if you go to the TWU Library, you can look up and read my honours thesis: something I wrote is in a library! That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? It proves that I exist, in a way.

But here’s my real answer: why do I write?

In my second year of university, I bought a bunch of pocket-sized notebooks, and began carrying a notebook and two pens everywhere I went. Still now, nine years later, I always carry pens and pocketbook. The book catches phone numbers and appointments and, more importantly, little things that I notice around me.

You see, if waking up early helps a person feel (and thus BE) more productive, and having regular quiet time helps a person feel (and so become) more spiritually centered, and keeping a dream journal helps a person remember more of their dreams, then journaling helps me feel like I’m paying more attention to the details of life, and inevitably, I DO notice more, simply from the habit of writing down what I see.

It’s not for posterity, that’s for sure: having all those notebooks cluttering my shelf was never the goal -- and going over old journals has rarely borne fruit in the idea department – maybe two grains of wheat in a pile of chaff. In fact, during my second year in Korea, I lost the journal of my entire first year in Korea, in a food court. It was gone forever, but I wasn’t really upset:

The greatest benefit of keeping a journal, I realized then, is simply being the kind of person who is in the habit of noticing, and who respects his own thoughts and observations enough to write them down. The habit of noticing may lead to realizations, and even self-knowledge; it may not lead anywhere except to wonder, and that’s OK, too, but by conditioning myself to be receptive, I become more of the person I want to be – one who sees the world like a child, as a place spilling out wonder from hundreds of tiny cracks that nobody notices, or that everybody else also notices, but promptly forgets (I don’t actually think I’m that special – I just think I entertain thoughts and observations that other people dismiss – my filter’s on different settings, is all).

The little details? They can fill a life up, I’m convinced, with wonder and texture, differentiating one day from the next, or, if unnoticed, their absence can leave a life blank and indistinguishable from day to day. I love my day-to-day existence. Ask anybody who sees me every day.

In summary: I write because it makes me into. . . I won’t say a better person, but it makes me more and more of a person I’d like to be around.

Then, once it’s enriched my own life, why do I write about it and share it? Well, if you see a beautiful rainbow, you point it out to your friends, don’t you? I hope to publish. . . maybe this would be like sending a picture of a really great rainbow to a photography magazine, or putting it on your wall, so even more people can go “well goldurn, that’s a purty rainbow.”

I have another conviction: that every human has a deep desire to know and be known. We yearn for connection. Whether it’s because we long for the closeness we had with God in the Garden of Eden, or because our transcendent soul reaches through dharma to pull us back toward harmony with the true nature of things, or because we’ve been genetically imprinted to be social creatures by aeons of natural selection favouring the humans that work better as a unit, the fact remains that communion with others is a fundamental desire for almost everyone.

Writing is a way to know and be known.

I can know myself by writing – the directions stories take reveal something about myself, and the important things in my life. It’s a common phenomenon for people to discover that the simple act of talking, or writing a problem out often gets them over the hump of solving, or coming to terms with it. In my own life it has certainly been true that the communications I have with friends near and far have helped shape my self-knowledge. I can also share, and connect, and maybe we won’t feel so lonely, if we know that we were both deeply touched by a John Keats poem, or a Salinger novel.

Next question: why stories, then, Roboseyo, Rob, Roboseyo? Wanting to tell a story has little to do with noticing life’s details and trying to be as awake and aware and mindful as possible. Wouldn’t poetry do nicely for that?

Ah, that’s true. Poetry does nicely for little details and textures in life, and poetry was an important outlet for me all through my schooling. But. . .

Arthur Lee and Love: Alone Again Or -- again, hit play and read on.



First of all, I love stories. Love, love, love, LOVE stories. It’s my conviction that stories are the most powerful way to learn something – that’s why cultural values are transmitted through folk tales, myths, fables and morality tales (if you don’t believe me, read a book of Korean folk tales notice how the different values praised in Korean vs. Western folk tales exactly parallel many significant cultural differences.) People understand nihilism better after reading “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” than after reading a hundred pages of Nietzche. Holy texts use stories: every place you go searching for meanings, you find stories, for better and for worse.

The same way humans crave connection, I believe humans crave narrative – narrative gives MEANING, a purpose to the connections. A quotation from the Jewish Theological Seminary says, “A human life is like a single letter in the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning.” We all want our lives to be part of a greater meaning. We want the random events of our lives to be part of a greater meaning, too. The story of us can be part of a great metanarrative like

“The Victory of Reason over Superstition”
“Humanity Careens Toward Ecological Disaster”
“Preparing for the Second Coming”
“Rising From The Ashes Of The Korean War”;

we also fit our lives into smaller narratives like
“The Courtship of Deb and Brad,”
“The Rude Guy at Work”,
"How I Learned to Stop Grieving and Love My Life"

and we even remember and define events and relationships with micronarratives like
“That Crazy Night Piper Tricked Me Into Drinking Bacardi 151,” or
“My Failed Attempt to Become a Tea Expert"
“The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With X”.

Scientists say the universe is made of atoms. My old Professor Szabo once said the world is made of stories, and I say the universe is made of meanings. Sometimes the meaning is as simple as "It is what it is", but reaching for meanings is our greatness. We're the only onese who could imagine ourselves improving our lot (another kind of narrative) rather than resigning ourselves to a life of hunting and being hunted.

So, Roboseyo, what are you trying to accomplish when you write?

I’m fascinated by stories, and by people, and the choices people make. Choices don’t appear in a poem, nor do characters (a poem is too focussed to ever catch more than a single gesture, a single facet) – you need a story for more than that. And if I can add some of the wonder of life’s little details and the poignancy of a person making an important choice, and the honesty of a character who seems to really breathe . . . well, that sounds like the makings of a pretty good story, doesn’t it?

I also believe that writing is an act of hope: hope that it IS possible to connect with another person, to write and be understood, to read and understand, to find a way for two minds to (partially) be one. It is an act of faith in humanity, that we CAN reach each other, and maybe even improve each other’s lives. Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to believe that, but I think writers must.

Of poetry, John Keats said once that “I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night’s labours should be burnt every morning and no eye ever shine upon them” – John Keats, letter to Richard Woodhouse, 17/10/1818

He didn’t write to have people pat him on the back and say, “You’re a great writer” – he was given over to the beauty of the world he saw, and the best way he could express it was to write, regardless of who read it later.

Those moments of beauty and insight, those moments of choice and truth, are the ones we live for.

Sometimes, I think the job of a writer at its purest, is to get the hell out of the way – characters and images and stories come, and a humble writer, committed to serving the story, will interfere as little as possible as the story takes its most perfect form. This requires a self-critical eye, or, I prefer saying, the ability to listen to one’s own writing, and encourage it (like a parent to a child) to become its best self. If I try to control it too much (like a protective parent), the story will never be bigger than my own limited abilities, but if I can get lost in the wonders of the moments and characters I want to create, maybe I’ll move out of the way enough that they can take the step from my mind and/or senses, onto the page, without getting cluttered by my own ego.

(For a great example of a humble storyteller, watch Million Dollar Baby or Unforgiven – Clint Eastwood is a very humble filmmaker, willing to step out of the way and let a story tell itself; exactly the opposite of Martin Scorsese, whose films are great, but always seem to be saying “Hey, look at this guy! He sure is a great filmmaker!”)


Here’s a long quote from Flannery O’Connor, the subject of my University Honours Thesis, and one of the most influential writers in my life:

”People are always complaining that the modern novelist has no hope and that the picture he paints of the world is unbearable. The only answer to this is that people without hope do not write novels. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won't survive the ordeal.

"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience. The lady who only read books that improved her mind was taking a safe course--and a hopeless one. She'll never know whether her mind is improved or not, but should she ever, by some mistake, read a great novel, she'll know mighty well that something is happening to her.

Any questions?

Two things.

1. I took it all away! I can't believe it!

I had twelve (count'em, twelve) boxes of stuff left behind from my time in Canada, that I'd basically asked my dad to store in my old bedroom closet when I left for Korea in 2005. Problem is, then Dad went and moved, and I had no more place to keep all my stuff that I might, possibly, maybe need in the future when I go to grad school, have kids, or feel a hankering to read my old university textbooks.

Well, thing is, I spent so much time storing it, but I couldn't even remember what I had in there anymore -- must not have been very important to me!

Plus, I had no more PLACE to store it, as my family'd all spread out and moved on from our Agassiz times. My brother was kind enough to keep all twelve boxes !!! for me while I planned to come back to Canada, but also included the proviso that I MUST do something about it when I DO get back to Canada.

So this week, my main task has been to go through all that stuff and find out what's REALLY important, and what's just staying around for no good reason.

I finished. Four boxes of books and old clothes, a bag of trash, and probably one box I'll have to send to Korea, and one box Dad said I could send and have him keep at his house -- for some of the keepsakes that are irreplaceable, like Mom's baby diary of her pregnancy with me, yearbooks, etc.. It's amazing, when you think about it, how much clutter people generate in their lives -- living transiently, moving around, sure simplifies what's ACTUALLY important and what isn't. Today I loaded old clothes and stuff with "memories" (not very spectacular ones though) onto a truck and passed them on at value village. By the same token, I brough a whack of photo negatives to London Drugs to have them scanned onto CD for me. It'll be good to have that when I've passed on a lot of the other relics.

I feel freer now. Less encumbered, to be rid of so much stuff. Stuff. Yech. Now the trick is just not to think about it, so I don't start second-guessing the choices I made about what to keep and what to get rid of. Oh gee.

But really, the stuff isn't home. There's not really any such thing as home, other than the place where you feel safe and loved. (Watch Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events for more great thoughts on home. Or listen to Tom Waits.) Having that stuff around doesn't make me more in touch with my past, and getting rid of it doesn't unmoor me, because I know who I am, and who I was, and I've already learned what I had to learn from those times of my life.

Still, it was strange taking it away to the Value Village deposit.


2.
You know the stuff that everybody says is "great" but it just doesn't resonate with you? Like when somebody says "You HAVE to see Braveheart! It's, like, the BEST movie EVER!" and you watch it, and it just doesn't do anything for you? These days, as much as everybody loves Bob Dylan, I just don't dig it. I'd rather someone go for clarity than obscurity in their lyrics. His singing style is very expressive, and his best (Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks) holds up with anything ever made, but I just don't find myself reaching for my Bob Dylan CDs very often.

And then the other stuff that people sniff at, but that always makes you happy? As lightly as he's regarded by many, I just can't stop enjoying Cat Stevens. Beyonce also always makes me smile, and by gum, what's wrong with having Hanson on your hard drive? I like some of the classic stuff too, but not because it's Very Influential in the History Of Music, because it's friggin great music, enjoyable and worthwhile! Maybe "Desolation Row" is deep, but "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (and "Wake Me Up Before You Go") make me want to dance!

Isn't it funny how we can feel self-conscious about other people's ideas of "greatness"? Now I'm guilty of doing this myself -- as a music afficionado (which is a music snob's equivalent to a cynic saying "I'm not a cynic; I'm just a realist"), I sometimes put on airs and say sniffy things like "Yeah, that's not bad music. . . for its intended audience" or "No, if you listen to it a few more times, it'll grow on you"

But I've recently decided to stop listening to music because somebody said it's great, and only listen to it if I enjoy it. I'll still listen to anything, but there are some styles that just don't make me really, compulsively listen again and again. And I'm OK with that. I deleted "Songs in the Key of Life" and Pink Floyd from my hard drive, for the same reason I threw out my "Chaucer" book -- as impressive as it looks to have it on the shelf, I don't actually read it.

If it turns out I miss it later, I can always replace it, and then I'll know there was more to it than I thought.

By the way, everybody reading this should find out about a singer from Toronto named Feist. I'm not saying it's great, I'm not saying YOU'll like it, but I do. Also, an album called "From Here We Go To Sublime" by The Fields.


bye now.

Rob

mmmBop!

My dad gets married tomorrow.

A good counsellor, a good listener, and a good conversationalist will allow a person to set the terms of the conversation, rather than guiding the conversation to his/her own personal conversation comfort zones through too much talking, conversation manipulation, or leading questions. Good listeners get out of the way, and only assert their presence enough to keep the speaker moving in the right direction.


I think the best poems are that way, too: rather than TELLING you what you ought to see, and feel about a particular instant in time, a good poem just says "Look." and lets you taste a little experience, and good poets will put you right there beside them, so much that you don't even notice their presence: you're just sitting there yourself, looking at the same thing a poet noticed once.


It sounds so simple to use words to clear a way for a reader's own imagination to find a beautiful space, but then, it sounds so simple get a medical doctorate: just go to school for years, and work really hard! It's easy, too, I suppose, to be successful in business: find a need, fill it better than your competition, and make sure people find out! Easy peasy, lemon squeezey!


Rilke said, "Ah, but poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines."


Here are some poems worth a lifetime of gathering sweetness, because instead of just saying


HEY READER! HERE IS SOME SWEETNESS I FOUND, AND NOW I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT!


the poet just says: "I was here." or, even better, "look"


and why do the poems need to MEAN anything more than what they say, really? can't it be enough to say, "a frog jumped into a pond. Plop." (that's a loose translation of the most famous haiku ever written)


(all translated by Kevin O'Rourke, from a book on Korean Poetry I carry with me every day)


Ha Wiji:
(untitled -- but a perfect, perfect picture)


The guests have gone; the gate is closed;
the breeze has dropped; the moon is sinking low,
I open the wine-jar again and recite a verse of poetry.
Perhaps this
is all the joy a recluse ever knows.





Evening; Self Portrait
by Cho Byunghwa


I've cast off in life what may be cast off;
I've cast off in life what may not be cast off,
and here I am, just as you see me.




Prank
by Kim Namju


A sunbeam
the size of a
chipmunk's tail
sits
on the doorstep
of my cell.
I'd like to scissor slice it,
pop it down my throat,
melt my frozen body
as spring snow melts.






(this next one is the best erotic poem I've ever read)
hwang chini


I'll cut a piece from the side
of this interminable winter night
and wind it in coils beneath the bedcovers, warm and fragrant as the spring breeze,
coil by coil
to unwind it the night my lover returns.





if you don't like poetry, tough. Maybe my next post will be about the transformers movie or my favourite foods in Canada or trucks and shiny power tools. But for now, think about something beautiful you've seen, and how YOU'd share it with the people around you.


I have to go to bed now. My dad's getting married tomorrow.


love

Rob

June 2006: A Trip to North Korea

North Korea just sent a half-dozen missiles into the ocean, which is about the international relations equivalent to a drunk breaking a bottle over his head to show the people around he's hella tough, and they'd better not mess with him. Because some of you may be worried about me, I'd just like to assure you that I have been firmly landlocked, not exploring in any areas of the sea where a missile might land on me.

I got a concerned e-mail from one of my university friends asking what it was like living in Korea, in the shadow of Kim Jong-il's unpredictable madness and how that affects the South Korean mind. This topic is particularly current to me, because I just came back from a weekend trip to North Korea.



Yes. That's what I said. I just made a weekend trip to North Korea. I came back the day before they launched the missiles. When I heard the news with my roomie (who'd also gone) he asked me, "was it something we said?"

There's only one place in North Korea where outsiders can visit. It's called Geumgang Mountain, or Geumgangsan. It's roundly considered the most beautiful mountain in either Korea -- Sorak Mountain, Jiri Mountain and (one other whose name I can't remember) are the prettiest in South Korea, but a lot of people who care about such things will tell you that Geumgang Mountain takes the prize. As a symbolic gesture to show the desire for the Koreas to work together, South Korea, North Korea, and China worked together to create this little resort town where people are allowed to visit Gumgang Mountain on special tours. There's a tour group called Adventure Korea that focusses on arranging tours for Westerners in Korea – they put together tours and trips to areas that are hard for westerners to go on their own, because of language or cultural or simple "I've never heard of that place" factors, giving westerners a chance to see parts of Korea that we otherwise wouldn't otherwise experience. You may remember my story about visiting a scenic island with the same tour group in April 2004, and dancing to ridiculous music on a tour boat with a bunch of middle-aged Korean women. (if you don't, you can read it here)



So we gathered on June 30th, late at night, after all classes were finished, and piled onto two buses, left at about midnight, just in time to watch the Germany-Argentina World Cup Soccer quarterfinal on the bus TV (more about that later) as the bus drove through the night, right to the far east coast of South Korea. There, at about 6AM, we had a rest stop break to change into our hiking clothes and switch buses (and leave our cellphones and communication devices behind). Then we headed off toward the customs offices -- both North and South had to check our visas and documents, and we were carefully briefed on how to avoid getting fined at North Korean customs for answering questions with anything except the exact words and information on our passports and trip ID cards. Then we drove directly to Geumgang Mountain, and started our hike at about 9:30 or 10:00 AM, after an all-night drive. Most of us had between two and four hours of sleep.

The North Korean tour authorities seemed to like having everyone taking the tour in the same places at the same times: fewer variables and worries, easier to watch, I suppose. This meant that everybody visiting Geumgang Mountain that weekend was on the same mountain at the same time. The trails were crowded, and, where the trails narrowed, any time somebody far ahead in line stopped to take a picture, the whole line backed up.

I certainly was not expecting to encounter traffic jams in North Korea.

However, the path was fantastic. It ran alongside a river that tumbled over monstrous boulders and rushed down long rock plains with awesome speed and power. Walking up a mountain, alongside a tumbling, boulder-littered river, between trees, with the sounds of rushing water all around, set me right back in British Columbia, wandering around the mountains and rivers near Chilliwack and Mission.





Most of the hiking was under a smattering of rain that weekend, but the raincoat I bought before I hiked Jiri Mountain with Matt has continued to prove itself worth the money. Unfortunately, the absolutely unreasonably huge waterfall was also nearly obscured by mist. There were Korean and Chinese characters carved into dozens of the rocks. We were warned not to lean on, or touch, any of them. They were mementoes and monuments praising the leaders, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung, and as such, were respected almost religiously. Some of the monuments were amazing in scale -- huge, two-storey high Korean characters carved into bald rock-faces on the North Korean mountainsides. As with many totalitarian regimes, one of the main ways they retain their power is by developing a cult of personality around the leader -- Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong-Il have all put monuments and signs and statues about themselves all around their countries, to hold the people in control through devotion to their leader. We were warned strongly not to say "Kim Jong-Il" or "Kim Il-Sung" while we were around North Koreans, because they would take great offense for saying their names without prefacing it with their title, "Dear Leader" or "Dear Father". There was a huge sign with a images of the two leaders, father and son, in front of one of the hotels, and you were not allowed to to take pictures of it unless one of the North Korean hotel employees held the camera, so that he could frame the picture in such a way that both men's full bodies were captured in the photo. Cutting off any part of their bodies was a form of disrespect and, of course, unacceptable.

Here's an example of such a picture, as framed by the N.K. fella:




Back at the village, we saw more signs of Being In North Korea. You weren't allowed to take pictures of North Koreans without permission. You weren't allowed to take pictures of the North Korean guards. There were certain hillsides on one of the hikes where everybody was told to put away their cameras: there was an anti-aircraft gun concealed on the hillside. One of our co-travellers found a recording device in the bedside table of his hotel room. All the workers were thin. . . but not sickly thin. Best foot forward, you know. On a slightly less freak-out-paranoid note, a lot of the clerks and shopkeepers didn't speak a single word of English other than "Five dollars," while in South Korea, almost everyone speaks at least a few words of English to talk about their profession. I've heard, though I ought to fact-check this, that North Koreans haven't allowed any English words into their "pure" language -- instead of just saying "cheese" with Korean pronounciation,

they'll make up a new word for it that's totally North Korean. This led to the cute situation where a waitress at one of the restaurants asked me, with an endearingly shy tone, "what is this?" (in Korean) about one of the side dishes, to find out the English phrase for it. I said a few other words to her and she began to blush terribly. It was very sweet. . . but odd, because South Koreans her age have ALL studied at least enough English in high school and middle school to say "this is soup" and "here is salt" and "I learn some English high school."





So I asked her to take a picture with me.

But everything there was beautiful. The mountainsides, even in the drizzle, were cragged and beautiful -- ancient, worn rocks rounded by rain with cracks full of trees and green spurting out between rounded rock-faces.











I met a person who was really funny in North Korea, so I asked the old question: "How long will you be in Korea?" you know, to sound out whether I should invest anything at all in this person . . . "oh, about six more weeks" was the answer. Having Matt as my best friend, and having many Koreans among my friends, I'd almost forgotten just how transient most westerners living in Korea are. Sigh. It was like being back in my first year again.

As to the missile thing. . . Koreans didn't get too excited about it. Whether through denial, or from the sheer feeling that "oh, old Jong-Il's up to his old tricks again", South Koreans, even as close to the demilitarized zone as Seoul, are surprisingly blaze about the North Korean situation. It might just be that they/we have to keep on with their/our lives because what else can we do, really? Whether I sleep in my closet or in my bed won't change the aim of any of the long-range weapons pointed at Seoul. Koreans DO express that tension, I believe, in other ways. . . but to go into that would require making generalisations that wouldn't be fair to some of the Koreans on this e-mail list.


I have a new student named Cecilia in my youngest class. They're five year olds, and they're. . . well, they're five year olds. Sometimes really sweet, and sometimes. . . five year olds. (Recently, after seeing Harry Potter 2, where the character Dobby keeps beating himself when he feels like he's doing something wrong, Ryan started hitting himself in the head every time something happened that distressed him.) Anyway, my new student is named Cecilia, so, of course, I sing the Simon and Garfunkel song, "Cecilia" (at least the chorus, where it ISN'T singing about a woman cheating on her lover) as often as possible. The words go "Cecilia, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily. Oh Cecilia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please to come home, come on home." My students have been trying to sing the song, too -- singing along, or singing it on their own, but, because they don't know the song's words exactly, they've been attaching words they know to the sounds they hear when I sing. Thus, I've been getting versions like this (with the tune totally correct):

"Cecilia, a look at my heart. A look at my heart and a
maybe. Oh Cecilia, a diamond my knee, a diamond my knee. . . "
"Cecilia, you're breaking my car"
"Cecilia, I'm breaking my stuff"

Some of my kids were talking about the Boogey Man – the monster hiding in closets and under beds -- but instead of Boogey Man, they were saying "Gogi Man" which is Korean for "Meat Man".

We were looking at shapes, and I showed them a flashcard of an oval. "What is this?"
"Teacher! It's offal!"

So yeah, lots of things have happened since I wrote another of these letters (how's 'gee, I sure don't write these letters often enough' for the most predictable running theme of my e-mail updates?)

But it's been mostly good. I think I"m in a much better place now than I was before -- January was rough, March was rough, April had its challenges, but things have slowly been improving since then, through a variety of small shifts and changes in my situations and attitudes. I'm writing a lot. And writing well.



Also, here's one of the coolest things I've seen in ages -- here in Korea, we have what they call "Fusion" culture -- restaruants, music styles, fashion styles, that fuse and combine disparate elements from east, west, past, present, and wherever else they find it. As you watch this one, think about the way that past, present, east and west combine. The musical instrument being played is called a Kayageum. Beatboxing and breakdancing both originated in the inner cities of America, but (especially breakdancing) have become really popular in Korea (team Korea's a regular contender in world breakdancing competitions). The musical piece, of course, is an ancient classical piece, with a hip-hop twist. . . yet it all works together to create a really neat impression.

Enjoy. Seriously, if your computer and internet connection are fast enough, this is REALLY cool. (and even better on a huge screen before a movie starts).




My Dad visited for two weeks at the end of May. That was lovely. My students still ask about "Opa". He came here with modest ambitions: a few weeks after returning to Canada, he needed a minor surgery, so we mostly took it easy, but it was good to be around Dad for a while, and it was good to supply him with a place where he could "get away from it all" for a while. We went to the church where he went with Mom and everybody was happy to see him there. We went to a sauna once or twice, and took some walks around Seokchon Lake and Olympic Park. We ate some fantastic foods while he was here, including a duck dish that was probably the most delicious food I've had since I came to Korea (and that's saying quite a lot). All in all, a very satisfying chance to see Dad again.