Part two: The Advent of Meaning. . . at least for one guy.

This is the second part of a two-part post. Please read the first part first, here.

Rilke again, 'cause dammit, he deserves to be read twice. (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

"How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage. . .
place and settlement, foundation and soil and home"
(still elegy number 10)

Another pitfall:

I am surprised and amazed at how impatient people who grieve can be, for their own wholeness (myself included). I am dismayed, but not quite as surprised, at how impatient OTHER people can be with mourners, dispensing Bible verses like medical prescriptions and declaring the issue done with. "Why are you still sad? I told you to give your grief to God a month ago!"

When Bruce Lee injured his back in 1970, he spent six months in bed, reading, because if he took a short-cut or rushed his recovery process, he would have put a ceiling on his own post-recovery ability, or worse, re-injured himself. The human body needs recovery time for injuries. That's just how it works. (Bonus points: I just compared myself to Bruce Lee! I kick ass!) Seriously, though, why do I think my heart would work any other way than the rest of me? The only part of me that can change quickly is my mind, and even then, the mind often has to wait for the heart to catch up -- that's why it was so hard to break up with exgirlfriendoseyo, even when I could see that we had no future.

I finally realized it's OK to say "actually, my life is pretty shitty right now," instead of "God is teaching me patience", when my friend wrote "I think God honours honesty more than anything else we try to give him" in an e-mail. I'll buy that. Isn't that what the entire book of Job is about: finding an honest answer instead of a quick answer? Also: thanks for that, Mel.

I believe an honest doubt honours God more than a blind faith, and waiting for real meaning is more beautiful, and more consecrated, than skipping to a rote, ready-made meaning, even if the quick answer comes in the form of a bible verse. I think an afternoon volunteering at an orphanage or a soup kitchen honours God more than either of those. (And helping others can do wonders for one's own hurt.)

During the dark, disappointed, meaningless parts, I found comfort remembering that during the wait for a messiah, God made Israel the nation it needed to be, not through a series of growing successes, but through a string of spectacular failures. (Don't believe me? Go read Numbers, Judges, and Chronicles.) Ditto for Saint Peter. The word Israel does not mean "He Who Has All His Shit Together" or "He Who's Squared Things Up With God". Israel means, "He Who WRESTLES with God," and what a wonderful name for a chosen people!

So after all that grief, after avoiding those false trails, where am I now? What meaning HAVE I found? Well, my ideas about God are very different than they used to be, and I think that's a good thing. There's a lot more honesty in the mix now, and a lot more knowledge of my weaknesses.

I no longer think of faith as a helicopter, lowering a ladder from the sky, to rescue me from my griefs -- I think now that faith is more like a walking companion, someone with well-worn shoes and holes in the knees, who doesn't always know the way, and certainly doesn't have all the answers, but who'll point out a root across the path, or pick me up after I trip on it, who makes interesting observations about the trail, who'd have my back in a pinch, and who's always good company. No, he doesn't make the path shorter, but at least he makes the time pass faster, and maybe from time to time, he just happens to have an umbrella when I really need one, or a pocketknife, or a joke that helps me laugh through a windstorm. In my diary, four months before my mom died, I wrote "I want a faith like a steel cable: tough, flexible, and useful." Maybe I'm closer to that now than I was before, but I'm not out of the woods yet.

I'm beginning to think it's OK not to be out of the woods, maybe that's not a statement of despair, but a statement of hope, hope that there's still more to be learned, if I keep myself open to learning. Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.

"Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. . . .
How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you."

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Tenth Elegy, Opening)

I wrote this for Tamie's Advent blog, but I'll post it here in two parts.

Without advent, Christmas arrives through the side door, and startles me while I'm brushing my teeth for bed. With advent, it enters with fanfare, as the culmination and final satisfaction of a month-long buildup. Opening presents is the fun of Christmas, but lighting candles and reading Isaiah, looking forward to something just beyond my fingertips, is the feeling of Christmas.

Waiting is the most underrated, quickly-forgotten experience-enhancer: nothing improves a food's taste more than hunger, yet nobody thinks fondly back on hovering by the oven door, sniffing for the smell of roast turkey: caroling, presents, stuffing and snowball fights monopolize our nostalgia. Advent, though, is soaked in waiting, it drips with anticipation.

So many of us live our lives between our reach and our grasp, waiting for. . . something, and the thing between my reach and my grasp for the last two years was another very human thing: meaning.

Meaning is the rope that lashes us to the pier. It's the string wound out, that will lead me back out of the maze after battling the minotaur. "Man's Search For Meaning," (highly recommended) by Victor Frankl (a concentration camp survivor), says that meaning has the power to make any ordeal bearable, as long as we can firmly believe that our trial brings us closer to a greater goal.

Losing meaning is a scary thing - people lash out and lose rationality when their lives' meaning is merely DISPARAGED (when somebody says, "You should quit your job and raise kids" or "Just a house-mom? I thought you'd amount to more than that" hackles rise, fast. As for religious debate -- well, nobody ever strapped a bomb on his body to prove "Pet Sounds" is better than "Sergeant Pepper"). To actually lose meaning is downright terrifying -- how do you measure anything when you don't trust your own reference points anymore? Friedrich Nietzsche described it this way:

"We have left the land and have embarked! We have burned our bridges behind us - indeed, we have gone further and destroyed the land behind us! Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean. . . but. . . you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. . . and there is no longer any 'land'!"

In the space of six months from late 2005 to early 2006, I lost my mother, the woman I'd intended to marry, and several other things that were crucial to the person I believed myself to be. When my mom died of stomach cancer at age 53, I was at her deathbed. Being right there to hear her stop breathing was like being at ground zero of a meaning-grenade blast. Later, breaking up with the girl I loved was another such blast. By April 2006, every mooring was loose - I had the rope in my hand, but the other end wasn't tied anywhere! I was like a cat in zero gravity.



(hee hee hee)

The layers of meaning that had kept me warm were torn off like shrapnel shredding a winter coat, and nobody can survive winter, naked in the snow. But, I also didn't want to drape myself about with the nearest rags, overestimate my preparedness, head into the storm, and freeze anyway.

When it comes to searching for meaning, "Any port in a storm," is not enough, and I didn't want to short-circuit my own search for meaning. The German poet Rilke (one of my best friends), says, in his tenth Duino Elegy,

"How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage. . .
place and settlement, foundation and soil and home"

Sure, things were going badly, but I didn't want to squander my hours of pain, to short-cut through them and thus waste them, if I could instead come through them richer, deep green with tough foliage, rooted with place, foundation and home.

See, sometimes it seems like the world takes a perverse pleasure in poking our softest spots (it actually doesn't: sometimes life sucks, but it's nothing personal. Just trust me on this one). Faced with disillusionments that are sometimes sudden and forceful, like a nuclear bomb, and other times slow and soul-sapping, like a trench war, short cuts are easier than gritting teeth and gutting through life's challenges. Bad ports are rife in the storm, and inviting.

To boot. . .

I used to say things like, "God is teaching me patience." There's nothing wrong with saying that, and sometimes there's deep truth there. Sometimes, though, skipping to the lesson one wants to learn from a situation is a way of hijacking any true learning that might have happened.

Consider this analogy: in university, I studied literature, and discovered that there's a huge difference between reading The Great Gatsby for its colour imagery, and actually reading the Great Gatsby, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote it. Sure, if colour imagery (or Freudian symbolism, or power and gender relations: pick your essay topic from those listed on the handout) is what I'm looking for, I'll find it -- but if that's all I'm looking for, a lot of other things might pass me by.

I didn't want to be like Prince Humperdink (skip to 1:58 in the clip if you can), bellowing "Skip to the end!" instead of bearing through the full marriage ritual.



So, instead of "squandering my hours of pain", instead of just saying, "Skip to the end. . . say Man and Wife!" I wanted to dig in deep, and commit to every step of the journey through the dark valley -- because you never know which patch of mud in that valley has diamonds in it, especially if you're only scanning the tree-branches for silver apples, or thinking about the beef stew at the hostel on the other side.


Another shoddy port for the storm:

One Sunday, I heard a pastor tell a story about his brother-in-law being senselessly murdered in a parking lot by street thugs. The shock-power of the story silenced everyone, and the pastor intoned, "That story just proves that life is war. . . spiritual war," the theme of his sermon.

If that really was all he learned from his brother's death, what a narrow, embittering grief he must have had! And if it wasn't, I thought with outrage, how dare he exploit his brother-in-law's murder, using it as a prop for his own message, to shock people into listening! I wondered how many other themes he'd tacked onto that tragedy, and whether he realized his lurid tactics left such a sour taste.

It is wrong, and it trivializes a tragedy, to put a false meaning in, where one is waiting for a true meaning. The pastor who blamed the 9/11 attacks on the US Government's tolerance of gays ought to be. . .what's the religious leader's equivalent of disbarred? Publicly and loudly reproached, at least. Ditto for the pastors who blame the Colombine shootings on politicians' taking prayer out of school (did any of you get that e-mail forward, too?).

There are some situations in life where, when faced with such difficult realities, the only appropriate response is deep, sad, and searching silence. No parent who has lost a child deserves to have her child's death used as a political platform, and it dishonours my mother's death, and cheapens the entire rest of my journey, if I twist that tragedy to reinforce my own prejudices. I'd rather wait for something true. The meaning will come, but meaning can be like a shy cat: sometimes we have to stop yapping, clicking and beckoning, before it'll approach.


(part two. . .)

Four Songs that meant a lot to me.

You may remember I went through a rough patch in late 2005/early 2006: losing your mom, and then breaking up with The Reason You Moved Across The Ocean can shake a person to the foundation, I've heard. Well, I'm happy to say I'm doing much better now. Here in Korea, they say Autumn is a melancholy time, the best time of the year for nostalgia and retrospection. I've been doing that, too, digging through my old diaries, poems, and e-mails to mull over the lowest low time I've had so far in my young life, to see what I picked up, like burrs from the brambles I walked through in the valley. So far, I like what I've found stuck to my clothes and hair: I walked out of that valley with some valuable stuff in my pockets.

Here are four songs that really, really helped me during that time. I sent them to some of my friends, listened to a few of them several times a day, during January, February, and March. And April.


This one is called Waiting For A Superman, by The Flaming Lips.

It's a really good song for when you feel sad, when you're ready to give up, when your ideals, principles, or heroes have let you down.

"It's a good time for Superman to lift the sun into the sky
is it getting heavy? Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be"

"Tell everybody waiting for Superman
that they should try to hold on best they can
he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything
it's just too heavy for Superman to lift."



This one is from The Mountain Goats. Their album The Sunset Tree is a fairly autobiographical, and INCREDIBLY raw confessional about the songwriter's experience coping with an abusive father, and getting away from that situation, whatever the cost. The stubborn insistence on hope, both in the music and in the words, made this the song equivalent of my motto for a while. I'd hum it when I walked to work.

"I am gonna make it through this year
if it kills me"

Rage, sadness, hope, determination, desperation, revenge, grief -- this guy's lived it, and somehow got it all into this album. I still thank the Mountain Goats for it. I didn't listen to this one as much as some of the other ones on this page, but Good Lord, I needed this one.




Next, these are the two songs I'd listen to (along with the last two movements of Beethoven's Ninth, which I wrote about in the post linked above (and here again).

Thunder Road - follow the link and see what I wrote about it there.



This song was the surest, fastest pick-me-up in my collection. The Arcade Fire made an album called "Funeral", because during its recording, two or three band members lost parents or siblings. It was on most year-end top ten lists in 2005, and this, the opening track on that album, is like a revelation. The first twenty seconds (the musical intro), and then the chorus, are a filling-up with life in the face of partings, endings, and deaths, that can get you through a day. The song builds -- it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, like a rolling boulder gathering speed.

I like that part, but the chorus went through my head for an entire month (and it was a good thing, unlike MOST times a song sticks in your head for a month).

"You change all the lead
sleepin' in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to sing."

And this is the coda the song ends on, a call out for a purity of purpose, of living, that I needed at the time. The singer howls them out like a drowning man calling for help, desperate for life, desperate for purity, desperate to be full of. . . something.

"Purify the colours, purify my mind.
Purify the colours, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colours
in this heart of mine."

Listen to it.



I hope you like these songs. I sure needed them . . . maybe they'll do some good for you, too. Music is intensely personal, so if they don't move you, that's OK, but they sure plucked the right strings in my, at just the right time.

with my family, and the friends I've loved in my short life I have had so many people I've deeply cared for

(the pictures are explained at the end of the post.)




Before I get into that:

a thought on music: the measure of a great songwriter, I think, is that other artists can take the song and do something interesting with it. (submitted for consideration: Bob Dylan songs, Beatles songs have been covered meaningfully [or otherwise] by so many artists. See also: jazz standards, where any artist can give it their own take. If your song has been covered by a jazz artist [or by more than one] you can console yourself that it's pretty darn well-written.)



but

the measure of a great musician, I realized today, is that people don't dare cover the song, because they know they could never measure up to the standard set by the original (or at least THE version) -- Every artist who sings "Hallelujah" will be measured against Jeff Buckley, every artist who sings "Watchtower" will be measured against Jimi Hendrix. Some bands just never have, like, ANY of their songs remade, because their musical identity is so unique that no artist could measure up. Really, who's gonna cover a Led Zeppelin song? You'll never top them, so why bother trying, unless you take it in such a different direction that it's barely the same song anymore, or only do it live, where Zep is sure to fire up a crowd? Even in jazz -- "My Funny Valentine" isn't done much anymore, because that's Chet's song, and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is cute, but you won't be as cute as Louis and Ella. Mark of a musician.



Next:

a Roboseyo observation on life:
Problem is, the worst 1% of a demographic is usually also the loudest.




OK then. Blog soundtrack time: hit play, and then read.



I don't know if this blog actually qualifies as a public forum. . . though theoretically it is, much in the same way you can hold up a sign on a street corner and people can choose to read it or not. . . maybe this blog is more like holding up a sign in an alley at night, I'm not sure how many people come here, really . . . nor whether anybody other than folks who used to be on my personal mailing list still care, but. . .




In going through my old e-mails from the year before, and then the year after Mom died (no small task: over 500 pages just from the five I e-mailed the MOST during that time) I've been struck, staggered, and humbled, by the amazing quality of friends I have.



The thoughts and emotions shared during that time were pretty raw, I was basically bleeding through e-mail a bunch of the time, and my friends (in descending order of number of pages sent back and forth) Tamie, Anna, Melissa, Matt and (before we broke up) Exgirlfriendoseyo really worked like a life buoy (or maybe a tourniquet) for me.





So here are some specific things I'm thankful for, concerning each of these friends:

(in descending order of pages)





Tamie - was my grief buddy. We were peripheral friends during University, but she stayed on my e-mailing list, and then suddenly, when Exgirlfriendoseyo and I broke up, she sent a letter so gentle and compassionate that we've since become good friends. We connected deeply and instantly for several reasons, but you'll just have to ask HER what they are, for privacy reasons and such. Our e-mail correspondence was extensive, and traced a lot of changes in my character and faith, as they were happening. Tamie is wise, gentle, and compassionate. She doesn't give unsolicited advice, or answer without thinking deeply first. She was really diligent in speaking with compassion and without judgment, and by doing that, gave me a space where I could poke around at myself, during a time when I really didn't like being in my own company. Thanks, Tamie!

(also, for a while I think Tamie and Mel were the only ones actually reading my blog. . .)

(it's American thanksgiving, so I guess I can get away with this.)



Anna - my friendship with Anna was one of those "friendship least likely to happen" situations after university ended, but despite (or maybe because of) a knotty beginning, we became good friends later. She lives in my brother's hometown, and she has brown eyes full of wisdom, and she's my age, but she's still the kind of person who listens to birds, and goes outside to look at the frost on the grass in the streetlights, when it shines like diamonds. Like Tamie, our lives followed a somewhat similar arc in certain respects over the last while, and between conversations and e-mails, she's been a good travel companion through some rough patches.




Melissa - didn't get as many pages of e-mail, but it's not because I love her less (it's because we'd meet while I was in Canada, and back in Korea, I phoned her more - hard as that is to believe, considering how sporadic my calling habits are). If I had to be stuck on a desert island with one person, I'd have to choose Jesus, because then we could walk on water back to the mainland (and chat along the way) but if I got to pick three people, it'd be Matt, Dan, and Mel.


One of the things I love about Mel is that she'd beg me to choose someone else so that she could remain with her wonderful husband and her amazing two little boys (you can go read about them on her blog, which is linked on the side here). Mel makes me laugh beyond all reason, and she's been my most loyal university friend. Our friendship has had some amazing give-and-take, and I'm so grateful to have her around. She's extremely smart (but never arrogant), and she takes no crap from me, and chops me back down to size if I get too preposterous, at the same time praising me when I do well. She's one of those rare friends who can give a person the truth honestly, but also kindly enough for a person to really learn something, and maybe become a better person. She has an amazing family, and she needs support right now because her husband is far away in RCMP boot camp, so you should go put encouraging comments on her blog. She's also a badass paramedic, and you can read some of the blood-and-guts stories on her blog.




Soundtrack 2: press play when the other one ends, then scroll down and ignore the images that run as the music plays. Seriously, PLEASE scroll down so you can't see the images that play. They're really cheesy.

The song's "Call it Off" by Tegan and Sara. They're Canadian, and great.

The original version vanished, but this live version has a great crowd singalong.

Matt - Again, more that passed between us was conversation than e-mail. While I was in Canada, with Mom, he got the concentrated stuff, and the korea-related stuff, but once I returned to Korea, well, I might have made it without his support, but it would have been a much rougher, slower go, and I might be a different person than I am now. Matt's the most loyal friend, and the best friend, I've met since university, and he's influenced me more than probably anybody outside my immediate family.




Matt's smart but not arrogant, gentle but tough, honest and tactical. He, like Mel, will call me out if I'm out of line (I really appreciate people who do that), but, like Mel, when he does, it comes from a place of compassion, of knowing me well, and knowing what's important to me (sometimes I get called out by people who misunderstand me or my situation, or who press their values onto my life. . . then it's more of a "thanks for your opinion" than a "I never noticed that before. . . I'll adjust accordingly" as it has usually been with Melissa and Matt. He's funny and he keeps me light-hearted when I need it, and he's ready for a sauna, a poetry reading, a night of revelry, or a mountain-climb, as suits the situation. I love him to pieces. His wife Heyjin is so amazing she, like Melissa's family, really deserves a post of her own, so for now I'll say, I'm glad and grateful for my friendship with her.



Finally, Exgirlfriendoseyo:

Before things fell apart on my return to Korea, she was a good e-mail pal, and she got a lot of the day-to-day updates on Mom's condition. I'm glad she was in Korea waiting for me, because having someone to look forward to sure makes a difficult time like watching your mom die a little more manageable. Exgirlfriendoseyo was (and probably remains, for all I know) a sweet-hearted woman. She's caring and lovable and I'm glad I met her. We weren't quite ready to go the distance together, but I learned a lot about loving from her, and then I learned a lot about grieving from losing her, and for that, I ought to be grateful.




There's a song I wanted to have as the soundtrack for this post: Red Cave, by Yeasayer ends with the repeated lyric, "I'm so blessed to have a good time with my family, and the friends I've loved in my short life I have had so many people I've deeply cared for" -- which sounds nice, but it's miles better set in the rest of the song.





At some point in the future, some cut-and-pastes from the e-mails that passed between me and those five (e-mailing was basically my version of therapy for those two years, along with a few other habits and activities), might appear on this blog. They might not. It depends on the context where they seem most appropriately used.





There are a lot of other people who have been there for me through this time -- shout out to my brothers and sisters and my dad, of course, as well as some other e-pals and coworkers, and the people pictured throughout this post. I love you all and I'm so glad you're in my life. I haven't attached names because I don't necessarily have permission, per se, to name these people on my blog, but you've meant a lot to me. But the five mentioned that bore the lion's share of my grief (certainly my e-grief), and as I look through the old e-mail records, I'm wildly, ridiculously grateful they (and the rest of you) were around when I needed them.

Thanks, eh?





all the love in the world:

rob



(Actually, when I think about it again, maybe the one person I'd choose to be stuck on a desert island with is Dick Cheney, so he couldn't f*** up the world any more than he already has. . . but that's another post entirely)





(Morning has broken, by Cat Stevens)

Combing through. . .

I've decided, in a similar spirit to people choosing to read their old diaries, and see what insights/points/issues defined them at some past time, and maybe even re-collecting something that nearly got lost in the shuffle (what if I had some great insight that I set aside because I was too busy with X, Y, Z, or Giraffe, and never got back to it, to think more on the topic? What if I never properly incorporated some event into What I Learned This Year?)

So, I'm digging through my old e-mails, especially the ones between me and my dear friends Ma, Me, Ta, and EJ, who corresponded me during the time Mom was sick, and also the year after that, as I grieved Mom and Exgirfriendoseyo. It's been interesting, but it's going to take a lot of boiling down. I want to create something -- some kid of testament to loss and grief and connection and sorrow and vulnerability and disillusion -- but I won't know what kind of shape that might take until I've been through it all. There are literally hundreds of pages to go through, trimming the fat and digging through the peripherals to the heart of things, but I think what I'll have at the end of it will be quite valuable.

You may get some scraps here on the blog of some of that stuff, but some of it might need to go in some other place.

Do YOU ever read your old diaries?

A few thoughts.

Regarding the Virginia Tech Shootings, even though every blogger in the universe is talking about it:

1. wow. Overwhelming. Sad. I don't know what to say about that kind of tragedy. For the families, I can't even imagine.

2. If the shooter had been a Spanish, Italian, German, British (that is, white) immigrant, his immigrant-ness wouldn't have mattered, wouldn't have been discussed.

3. Over here in Korea, there's a lot of shock and dismay at the fact the guy was Korean. A lot of head shaking, even some anxiety. I know if the guy had been Canadian, I would have just said, "wow. Some people in the world are messed up," and left it at that. Some of my Korean students are trying to figure out what aspect of Korean culture led to such an act. My answer has to be: none. There are fringe people in every culture; the only difference is that this guy had access to guns; sure, he fell through the cracks, but you also have to make choices, and I'd have to say, nobody but Cho himself is responsible for his making the choice to kill more than thirty people rather than to, say, take up vandalism as a hobby, or work his frustrations out on a punching bag.

4. I'm glad I wasn't in North America when it happened because I hate, hate, hate, the way North American news networks cover stories like this. The same day of the 9/11 attack, I was already desensitized to the images of the buildings falling down, because they replayed on TV again and again and again, and that's just wrong. Somebody's sticking a camera and a microphone in the face of a family member or a student who ought to be left alone to grieve, and footage is being played and replayed beyond reasonable limits, because people will watch, and advertisers will pay. Lurid. Gratuitous. Wrong.



In other, less heart-breaking news:

Once again, my friend Tamie's blog is turning out to be a goldmine. "Every activity we neglect to do which could make an outsider an insider makes us poorer." Click on the quote to read the whole entry. It's a discussion of outsiders and integration and community that sure rings true for a guy living in Korea, where I AM a visible minority.

Cool student story: I was teaching my students the phrase "butting your head against a wall", the idea of fighting against something that one could never actually change. One of my students explained that the Korean equivalent phrase is "attacking a rock with an egg" -- I LOVE that. The other one was: I taught "the pot calls the kettle black" and he said the Korean equivalent is "the dog covered in shit scolds the dog covered in dust".

I'm still happy over here, doing well, having fun. I'm in the process of getting a root canal, so my tooth is a bit delicate until the process is finished, but I'm doing well, still writing, making friends, eating good (inexpensive) food, etc..

Interesting development: my interest in movies has almost totally waned since I started writing more consistently. I just feel like I don't need them: I've got better things to do. Sure, I'll still take time for something like West Side Story, I'll watch a movie with friends, but it's no longer what I want to do with my free time.

Take care!

Rob

November 25th 2006: More sad news and a long-awaited update.

Hi everybody. Thanks so much for continuing to care and hear about me. One of my other friends, who writes updates, kindly gave her readers an opt-out clause. I never have before, but here you go. If you don't read these anyway, or if you don't want them, or never liked me in the first place (ha ha ha), please feel free to reply, and ask me to take you off the list. I'm not a great correspondent, so being off this list doesn't mean I'll immediately start writing you personal e-mails -- this update is intended to keep people I care about in the loop, despite my bad record at keeping in touch. But that said, if you don't want the letters, feel free to opt out. I won't give you any grief if you're too busy, or if you feel like your life has moved on.


Since my last e-mail, things have been hectic, beginning with...


A trip to Shanghai -- fantastic city! Interesting regions, lots of french architecture, because it was originally built up by the
French. Huge difference between rich and poor there, but a fantastically engineered skyline and some really, really, really great food. Also, the internationals there (though maybe this was just because I moved around in the tourist areas) were a lot more varied than in Korea, it seemed. In Korea, most internationals are English speaking teachers or soldiers, or German-speaking tourists (to be really general). I heard snatches of all kinds of languages in Shanghai, and faces that looked like they came from all kinds of places.

My longtime coworker Heather had a baby! They're all healthy, and her husband Caleb Overstreet (you know him, Cheryl) is so cute when he talks about being a daddy. Suddenly he turned about five times softer and sweeter. My brother once told me about one of his friends seeing his first child for the first time, saying "a whole new section of my heart opened up", and I've seen Caleb change once that new section opened in his heart. It's amazing. It's difficult for me to wax eloquent about such a thing because I've only seen the effect and not experienced it, except to say that anybody I've ever asked about it (including a
brand-new grandfather) still steadfastly tells me that seeing your own kids for the first time is one of the most transformative events in your life. Maybe sometime I'll get a chance to experience that. (Now don't everybody think I'm dropping hints or fixing to settle down by that -- this is just to say that I've been seriously touched by this parenthood thing.) Having seen how parenthood (or coming parenthood) has changed a handful of my friends (and more every year), it's a beautiful thing, the way their roots suddenly, so effortlessly deepen, and their lives suddenly have another meaning added to it, and a meaning that comes completely out of love. It also helps me understand how some of the parents I deal with in the preschool have so little perspective on their kids -- "Well, he's really a good boy -- he just has a little problem hitting his classmates and stealing their toys and ripping pages out of books for attention and whining when he's punished -- but he has a sweet heart inside."

As Heather's due date approached, the doctor's order for her to stop teaching and rest added a whole new wrinkle to the whole
work situation. Our boss didn't manage to find a replacement on time, so first I had to teach overtime to fill in for some of her classes, and then the replacement he did find. . .

None of the teachers at the school got a good feeling about the e-mails she sent, but we didn't really do much about it at the time. Then, she arrived. Her name was Angi. She was older than the rest of us, and an extremely intense person. We'd have a beer together and she'd want to have more, go to another place, go to the clubbing district, and go until six AM. Somehow, every time she talked to my boss, it turned into a shouting, crying fit -- I've never seen a relationship get to explosive so quickly before. She made unreasonable demands that were outside the contract's parameters, she lost the receipt for her airplane ticket, when my boss had sent her money to buy it. If she didn't get what she wanted, right away, she'd blow up, and turn extremely rude. Meanwhile, she showed up late for work regularly, smoked in our building (which is against the law), and basically made the workplace very stressful.

She got herself fired in only three weeks, which is remarkable. Really remarkable. Considering how expensive it is to get a western teacher out to Korea, to have Mr. Kim willing to cut his losses and get her out of the school community after such a short time shows how negative her influence was on the school, in just about every way.

So, I was back to teaching overtime until we could find another replacement. Meanwhile, the school's new academic supervisor
had her first September, which is the beginning of a new semester, and she had to learn the ropes while juggling new classes, new books, and hundreds of phone calls from parents who wanted their kids in a higher level. As she was busy, she passed the SLP Speech Contest completely over to me. So, I was working overtime, organizing a schoolwide contest, and trying to hold together a preschool program with a new teacher, and a missing teacher. My roommate Antony was a champ for filling in for as long as he did, working twelve hour days without complaining. Finally, Lorraine came, and she's worked out really well, and my schedule, since the Speech Contest finished (on my birthday), has returned to normal just in time for next year's preschool recruiting season.

All that to say, I've been busy. It's been an adventurous time. Melissa, my old roommate, left, and her replacement is great. I like Amy quite a bit. We miss Melissa, of course, but Amy's nice too.

Since mid-August, if you asked me about my life, I'd tell you that I was too busy to do the things I loved in life.

Too busy to see friends, too busy to spend huge tracts of time alone in coffee shops, too busy to take long walks, do yoga, and write poetry.

Then I'd tell you about the bright spot in my life:

When Melissa left, she introduced me to a family she knew. The two daughters were Sally and Lisa, and Sally is a certifiable genius. She taught herself English, and now she speaks it, and writes it, better than most native speakers her age. She's nine, and she reads books written for 12-15 year-olds.

here's a video clip from a movie I saw (one of my favorites) about a Korean girl who signs up for English lessons. Sally
appears in it. Wait for the clip to upload, and then skip to about the 8:20 mark, and you can see her. The movie was made in 2003, so she's a bit older now, but you get the idea.

[the video has been taken down, due to copyright violations]

That's Sally saying "Your English is terrible."

She's sweet and smart and awesome. Her tutor is teaching her advanced writing -- formal writing in particular -- because her mom wants her to score perfect on the TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) also known as the test whose score will determine whether second-language English speakers can qualify for North American Universities. She scored nearly perfect on the TOEIC (Test Of English for International Communication), which is business focussed, rather than academic, and will earn you a job, rather than a spot in a university.

The first day we met, Lisa (the younger sister) was going through a book, and we were reading about Camels, and talking about Kiwi, and the phrase "Kiwi the Camel" came up. We thought that would be a good name for a character in a children's story. We decided to write a story about Kiwi the Camel -- I said "If you write me a story about Kiwi the Camel, I'll write one for you."

Next time I saw them, Lisa (the seven year old) told me a short story. Sally gave me a five-page long first chapter for a book about Kiwi the Camel! I agreed to write the second chapter, she wrote the third, I wrote the fourth, and so we'll go until we finish the story. Sally's funny, bright, inquisitive, and she soaks up everything I can tell her, and teaches ME stuff on the way. She's one of the three coolest ten-year-olds I've ever met. Maybe the number one!

Her younger sister Lisa was the funniest little thing. Seven years old, she earned the nickname Giggles in no time, and made me laugh out loud. She also liked storytelling, and we'd get into silly little tangents about one thing and another, and she'd draw little pictures in her or get into teasing, tickling fights with her sister. I was utterly charmed. See the attached pictures of Sally and Lisa.

Then, last Tuesday, I went to a Sauna with Caleb, and when I came out, I had two missed calls from Sally. I called back, and her grandmother answered the phone, didn't speak English, so passed the phone to Sally.

"Hi Sally how are you?"
"Not so good."
"Oh. Well what's up?"
"Guess where Lisa went." (Sally always has a roundabout
way of giving news.)
"To Thailand?" (I always give silly answers first when Sally
says, "guess what?")
"This is serious, Rob." (That was when I noticed her sad, tired voice.)
"Is she OK? Did she go to the hospital?"
"Rob, there was an accident with a bus. Lisa went to heaven."

A seven-year-old I know got killed by a careless bus driver! The family is absolutely devastated. On Wednesday I arrived at their house at my usual time, armed with a present for Sally, a card, and a lot of spaghetti sauce, for days when they don't feel like cooking. Everybody looked pretty rough, Mom and sister especially. I'll go back again next Wednesday, and then the challenge is to figure out how much a goofy Canadian can do in this situation.

Because I'm older, and not a long-time acquaintance, it changes what I can and can't do, but I've been through the wringer of loss just recently, so at least I know what not to do, and I know how cloying it is when people say "I can help you." I guess I'll take most of my signals from Sally, and if she wants to talk, I'll do my best to listen kindly, and if she doesn't, I'll just be around, and be steady. Steady's nice, too.

It's sad that a kid as young as Sally has to go through such a loss, and even worse that a kid like Lisa can be taken away so young. The random, arbitrariness by which some people die young and other live out their lives, by which some people's lives are just loaded up with death and others never lose anybody (I knew a girl named Erin who lost her brothers to malaria at age 10, and lost her parents in a plane crash at age 20), makes it difficult to make any sense of things that happen. Maybe that's the idea -- maybe we aren't supposed to make sense of it. Maybe it's just too big, too mysterious for us to say anything about it at all. Maybe the thing we learn from most deaths is simply that everybody dies.

I have a friend who stopped believing in God not long ago, and she said the main difference in her life (other than her Sunday routine) is that now she's afraid of dying.

Another of my dear friends just found out her dear step-father has terminal cancer.

And I just can't think of anything else to say.

Anyway, that's what's been on my mind lately.

My father spent two days in the hospital: there was some bleeding somewhere in his body, but it's healed up. I hope he'll be OK.

Take care, everyone.

love: Rob
(look for cute student stories and Engrish follies below)


Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
-Rainer Maria Rilke-
Ninth Elegy






(here is the cute students section of the letter. I wanted
to put a clear break between this and the rest. I almost
wanted to put them in a separate e-mail)


"David, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"A scientist."
"What kind of scientist? An animal scientist? A rock
scientist? A dinosaur scientist?"
"I want to be a make yummy food and chocolate scientist."
"You want to be a food scientist."
"Yes. Food scientist."
"Well maybe you can give me some of your yummy food!"
"No teacher. You can buy in the store."

"My daddy has a Christmas car. It's a Santa Fe"

Ten plus five is fifteen. Ten plus six is sixteen. Ten plus Ryan is Ryanteen!

Instead of activity book, my kid said "Get out your captivity book." -- and he actually knew what captivity was! He made that joke on purpose!

I taught them "silly billy". Next time I was giving silly answers to questions instead of straight answers, my kid reprimanded me saying, "Teacher, don't say a billy silly!"


and my favorite wasn't from a student. It was at the Chinese Circus I saw in Shanghai. There were signs around the auditorium saying "please turn off your cellphone and don't bring bombs" (maybe they meant flashbulbs)

It made me laugh: why haven't US airlines thought of this? Just put up a sign and that'll end all danger on flights! You could put it next to the seatbelt sign and the "no smoking" sign that never turns off.

Imagine the dialogues.
Head Attendant: "Excuse me, sir, I'll have to ask you to
return to your chair and stop threatening the flight attendants.
You'll notice that the 'No Terrorism' light is still on in the cabin."
Terrorist: "Oh. Oops. My bad." (Returns to chair, embarrassed.)


Here are pictures of Sally, and Lisa, who was killed.

January 22nd 2006: A Sticky Patch and a funny story at the end.

Well, it's been a sticky patch, and as I once said before, I don't like writing update e-mails when I'm feeling sticky. (Just wait till the humid heat of summer. . . haw haw haw.) But the fact is, I owe all you folks an e-mail -- have for a while, and by gum, I finally have a fantastic story I can use to finish it off with a laugh. (I didn’t even realize that's what had been holding me back until Sarah delivered her coup de grace of humour that day, and one of the first thoughts was "now I can finally write home."

May as well get this one out of the way: a few of you have already heard in personal e-mails that Exgirlfriendoseyo and I broke up. After a seven-month wait in Canada, and a really hard test, and a variety of tests both personal and paper, we simply seemed to be heading in different directions, and needing different things than we offered each other. It was done in such a way, and at such a time that we still respect each other, I don't have any regrets, and I wish her the best. We tried to make things work, but there was just too much else going on.

It was my first Christmas away from home this year. And my first Christmas without. . . you know, all that Mom dying of cancer stuff. I ran an entire calling card down on Christmas morning, and had some difficult and wonderful phone calls from a group of people who ranged from kind wisdom and caring to full, vulnerable empathy to some wonderful and necessary "talk-about-something-else-ification". Exgirlfriendoseyo and Matt both went down to Ulsan (where Exoseyo’s parents' extended family lives) for new year's, and I in turn got properly sick, and couldn't do much for new year's eve. On New Year's day I was still sick, and the next day, Exoseyo and I broke up, so I just put my head down and worked as much as I could handle for the rest of that week.

Being optimistic isn't always the same as being cheerful, and being hopeful doesn't always mean having a spring in your step. That's one thing grief has taught me. Right now, sometimes I walk as if I'm wearing a lead raincoat, and sometimes the best I can manage is friendly small-talk with my roommate before I disappear into my room to read or listen to music or head out and walk aimlessly through the winter air. However, (unlike the last time I was down and out like this, in 2001), I have absolute faith that, in time, things will start climbing, and in time, I will feel whole again. In time, I will be joyful and engaged again. (Engaged meaning participating fully in life, not engaged meaning rings on fingers.)

As for now, it's OK not to be swimming in a bucket of peach fuzzies. It's OK to feel however I feel, as long as I know that, here on earth, just as no joyous moment lasts forever, neither does any bad time. And until the wheel takes another turn, I can find fantastic, beautiful, funny things that can make me smile and enjoy my life, and think about those things, and I can talk to God if I need to, and God can handle any emotion I have (having invented them and all.) And if I feel joy 20% of the time these days instead of my usual 60%, well, that will eventually correct itself, as long as I don't hold onto my grief, but let it pass through me, effect me, and then end once it is spent.

I've looked up some of my old friends in Korea, from my first and second years here, and I've spent some good time with Matt, and been less distracted from my supervisor work. Those are all good things. Exgirlfriendoseyo didn't pass the test, so that must be disappointing for her (she found out on the 10th, a week after we broke up). I hope she has some good friends nearby right now. I've also made a new friend or two, and am really enjoying the making of new friends. All these things add happiness to my life.

Here are some of my best friends these days:

Deb. In the last year, I'm so glad, Deb, to see us grow closer. Thanks for your phone calls. Every time we've talked on the phone has been absolutely, perfectly, just what I needed at the time. YAY FAMILY!!!

Matt. As always, the staunch wingman. Gives good advice, listens well, and has a great knack for knowing when to engage a state of mind head-on, and when to help me get my mind off it. His good buddy Kris is in Korea now too, and he has proven his measure, and made me glad to have him around.

Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road -- this song sounds like somebody jumping into a big, '70s American gas-guzzler and chasing their dreams down the center line of a winding highway. Better still, it makes ME want to jump in a car (or on a subway, or into a pair of good walking shoes), and grab a map, or a shovel, or a ladder, and start looking for something beautiful and joyful.

Beethoven's 9th symphony, fourth movement. The third movement is full of storm and tempest, and the fifth is unbridled joy. But the fourth movement bridges them, it's still of the tempest, but there, in the distance, approaching like one of those fantastic prairie thunderstorms, comes joy as thrilling and powerful as a flash-flood. When I listen to it, I hear my life -- things are still stormy over here, but every once in a while, like a crack of sunlight through cloud, like a flash of heat-lightning on the horizon, or a rumble of thunder, joy is waiting, somewhere just past the horizon, just beyond my fingertips, at the edge of my peripheral vision, something I can smell but which moves back out of sight whenever I turn my head to look at it. Like a shy animal, I have to sit in stillness and patience, and wait for it to approach me again. I know I will feel well again. More than well. If you can get your hands on the fourth movement (or just all of the 9th), it's best to listen to it really, really loud. Then the fifth movement is awesome -- the musical equivalent of a child running down a really really long hill.

Another best friend: the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Especially his Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus -- Rilke understands how grief and sadness deepen a character and expand one's heart, enabling it to grasp for greater things than before. If you don't dig poetry, that's fine. Just skip to the place where it says "SO ENOUGH POETRY ALREADY" in all-caps (I made it all caps so it'll be easy for you to find it.)

"How we squander our hours of pain
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year -- not only a season
in time--, but are place and settelment, foundation
and soil and home." -- Elegy 10

***Sonnet to Orpheus - Part II, sonnet 13
"Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winger
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice -- more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be -- and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourSELF, and cancel the count.



***(Dove that ventured outside) - thanks mel.

Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote
housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn't it fill our hands differently with its return:
heavier by the weight of where it has been.


Also John Keats:
(from Ode On Melancholy)
Ah, in the very temple of delight,
veiled melancholy has her sov'ran shrine,
though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
can burst joy's grape against his palate fine.
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might
and be among her cloudy trophies hung.


and if you skip the others, I still recommend you read this one:


"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And form the selfsame well from which your laughter
arises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the
more joy you can contain...
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and
you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that
which has been your delight...
Verily you are suspended like scales between your
sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at stand-still and
balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold
and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow
rise or fall."

-The Prophet, Kahlil
Gibran(1923)


Somebody told me that sorrow digs the mine-shafts in your heart, and the deeper and wider those holes are, the more joy can run through them later, when the
wheel turns.

SO ENOUGH POETRY ALREADY

Here it is, folks. This was one of the biggest laughs I've ever had from a student, and it came from one of the youngest students I've taught, but there you go. One of my classes really loves my storytelling. I have a tradition of telling stories on Wednesdays (show and tell days) -- I come into class looking dejected and say "sorry kids. I don't have anything for show and tell today." Then I tell a show and tell story about what I found for show and tell that week, and what ridiculous series of events led to me being unable to bring that show and tell to class that day. Once I invited a polar bear from the zoo to come visit, but he wrote down the date wrong, and once I offended a magical cloud, so he zapped my show and tell with his lightning, and so forth.

Well, on Friday, we had a birthday party for all the students in preschool with January birthdays. Three students in my homeroom class (Tiger Class) had birthdays, so I had three crayon boxes wrapped as gifts, for those three boys. When I walked into Lion class, my student Sarah (a wildly hilarious little girl), asked me if she could have a present. I said, "No. I can't. They're for Tiger Class."

"Please teacher?"

"No. They're not for you."

"Can I open one and see?"

"No. It's not your present."

"Why you don't have a present for me?"

Then Sally said, "Show and tell story."

"Oh," I said, "do you want a show and tell story about why I don't have presents for you?"

"Yes," all the students agreed. So, off the top of my head, I began.

"Well, I was going to get presents for all the kids in Lion class, so I went to a special toystore, and they showed me a new toy that's a small robot, and it talks and sings and it has a TV and 100 video games, and a phone and a helicopter! So I bought six of them -- one for me, and one for each person in Lion class.

"Then, I was so excited that I found a great present for my Lion Class students, that I put on my helicopter hat (a regular appearance in my Show and Tell stories), and flew into the sky. While I was there, I saw Quentin the Clumsy Dragon (another recurring character). He said, 'Why are you happy, Rob?'

"I said, 'I'm happy because I found some great presents for Lion Class!'

"He said, 'Wow! That's GREAT! When I'm happy, I like to chase birds! Do you want to chase birds with me?'

"'Of course I do,' I said.

"So Quentin the Dragon and I flew high into the sky, and we flew down really fast, and we scared some birds, and we flew higher, and we did it again (this is done with hand motions and funny faces), and we flew HIGHER, and we did it AGAIN! And then, Quentin flew SO high, he hit the moon!

"But when Quentin hit the moon, he hit a Moon Monster. The Moon Monster was sleeping, and Moon Monsters get REALLY angry when somebody wakes them up! So the moon monster grabbed Quentin in one hand and said, 'YOU WOKE ME UP! I'M REALLY ANGRY!!!', and he grabbed me in his other hand, and shouted, 'YOUR FRIEND WOKE ME UP! THAT MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY!!!'

"So Quentin said, 'I'm so so so sorry," and I said, 'I'm so so so so sorry!'

"But the moon monster was so angry he didn't say 'that's OK.' He said, "I'm STILL angry,' and he started to shake us in his hands. (This, too, was done with actions and funny faces).

"Finally, Quentin was very dizzy, and he said, 'rorororororob - pupupupupuplease give him thethethethethe prepreprepresent!'

"'Give him the present? But these are for Lion Class!' I said. Then the monster shook us both again, very very hard, so I said, 'Here, Monster. I'll give you a present so you aren't angry anymore.' I gave him one of the special robot toys. He opened the present, and he LOVED it. I thought, 'It's OK, because I still have five presents for the five people in Lion Class. Now I don't have one for myself, but that's OK.' The Moon Monster started playing with his new toy, and he was so happy that he jumped up and down, and when he jumped up and down, he woke up TWO MORE Moon Monsters.

"Very quickly, I gave two more presents to those two Moon Monsters, and they were happy too, so Quentin and I flew back down to Earth, and I went home. Now, I don't have enough presents for all the kids in Lion Class, so I'll give them to the birthday boys in Tiger Class instead. I'm very sorry, Lion Class, but I don't have enough Robot Toys to give them to you.

Well, Sarah wasn't satisfied with that. She said, "It's OK, Teacher, I'll share with Sally. Scott doesn't want one."

"Sorry, I have to give them to Willy and Zach and Steven now. I can't only give them to some people in Lion Class."

"Just me teacher. It's OK." (Please realize that she's saying all this in a playful, bantering voice that's charming and fun -- she's not whining or needling at all, so I'm engaging rather than cutting her off with my teacher-authority.) Before I could answer her, the door knocked, and I was called out of the classroom to deal with something. When I returned to class, Sarah had her head on the desk, so I tapped her on the back and said, "Wake up, Sarah! It's time to get out your books."

As soon as I tapped her on the back, she stood up and shook her fists and growled "WHO WAKE ME UP! I'M ANGRY!" -- demonstrating perfect comprehension of the entire story (very impressive for her English level), and the cleverest attempt yet to get her hands on one of those wrapped gifts. She absolutely slayed me. It's not often a kid will catch me right off guard with a funny angle or comment, but she just about knocked me off my chair with laughter. I asked her if she could shake me as much as the moon monster shook me, and before I sent the students off to get their activity books, I had all five Lion Class students pulling on my arms, trying to shake me enough to convince me that I could only placate them with boxes of crayons.

It was an absolutely brilliant day. I'll hold on to those kinds of laughs and smiles, and after a while, I'll notice them more, and remember them more easily, and in time, the whole world will be as shiny as it used to be for me.

Patience. Hope. Joy.


love:
rob

Knock-Down, Drag-Out (May 22nd 2004)

It's been a miserable, white-knuckled fight with a
cold for me these last two months (that's the
knock-down, drag-out in the subject line). So bad
that I've even taken Buckley's Mixture to poison the
cold out of my body. I'm in the midst of another one
now, one that features sinus congestion, a rasping
cough, and a ridiculous rate of tissue consumption
(tissue meaning kleenex, not any other kind of tissue
. . . I'm not THAT sick yet). (How odd that I can now
list cold features the way my students can list
features on their mp3 players.)

Last night I tried to write an e-mail to everyone, but
the computer managed to swallow the thing due to an
internet explorer/search engine glitch. This annoyed
me a lot -- I wonder what happens to all those e-mails
eaten by computers. Does some computer somewhere
store them? And why do computers only eat the
subtlest, wittiest, most brilliant, long (especially
long) e-mails? What do they want with the tastiest
bits of correspondence that makes them steal all the
best ones? I don't know, but last night in my
frustration, I sat there pondering what a
understanding computer could gain about humanity just
from the gleanings of the e-mails it eats.

On Friday morning we went to a zoo with our
kindergarten and preschool kids. This reminded me of
what a zoo should not be. (So far, most Korean zoos
I've seen have depressed me -- my jury's out on the
idea of zoos in general [Yann Martel had some
interesting insights about zoos in "Life of Pi" that
are worth turning over in one's head], but I fairly
roundly dislike Korean zoos -- too small,
uncomfortable, unnatural, crowded, and altogether
depressing.) The elephant was in a space that I could
have walked around in about four minutes, and she was
backed into a corner (where the only shade could be
had). It was obvious all she wanted to do was shrink
or be invisible. Meanwhile kids were lining up along
the fence and shouting -- screaming for it to come
out. Sad. Remind me to avoid Korean zoos if I get
another chance to see one. At least when Koreans live
in houses so small that they shove their mattress in a
closet in order to unfold the breakfast table, it's
their choice, and they could leave if the city or
emigrate if they've had it with living on the 16th
floor of a filing cabinet. The elephant didn't have
much choice about whether she wanted to be a country
elephant or a city elephant.

I'm doing mostly well. My students remain brilliant,
though I can't think, offhand, of some moment of utter
cuteness that I simply MUST share with you (sorry
about that). My brother got a good episode in an
e-mail a while ago, but I can't retell it without
losing the freshness. Recently I smirked when my
loudest student, upon my second loudest student
blurting out an incorrect answer, admonished him to
"think before you speak". Only through great
restraint did I avoid teaching them the word irony.
Nothing recently has quite reached the heights of the
boy who accidentally quoted Monty Python's Search for
the Holy Grail when he tried to sound out the bumper
sticker "I [heart] NY".

Things have been changing in my life. Recently, near
the beginning of lent, I realized that my love for
music was interfering with my progress on some of the
other passions and goals in my life. Some of you
don't know yet that I put myself on an indefinite
(until it's finished) music hiatus, as I sort out what
parts of my life I want as my top priorities. Since
then, I've been really encouraged with the way my
relationships have taken shape, and I've managed to
even meet some English speaking Christians who live in
my area. (This was something I never had last year,
but something I'm really enjoying -- I went to a bible
study on Thursday night without riding a subway for 40
minutes to get there!)

I'm also reading more, and reading the important stuff
more, and growing in my faith. So to those of you
who've been praying for me, thanks, and be assured
that there have been some encouraging results so far.
(We'll just wait to see what the next step will be.)

Other than hanging out with friends, reading, spending
time alone in thought (my journals and diaries are
filling up at about twice their usual rate), and
spending ridiculous amounts of time at school to get
all my marking done, and being amazed at how much
Korean pop one overhears in an average day, and how
much that singer/song sounds EXACTLY like Madonna's
single from last fall (except the vocals aren't as
strong . . . shudder), I'm wishing it were easy to
find NHL Playoff hockey on TV here (by the way,
congratulations, all my Albertan, and Canadian hockey
fan friends), and wishing I knew a place to find
certain favourite Korean dishes near my house.

And something else.

A pair of mondays ago (not long ago, really -- it
feels like longer) I got a call at 6:45 AM from Mom
and Dad. When the phone rings before 7 am, it's
usually not because somebody in their home church got
engaged.

They'd spoken to my sister and brother-in-law
(currently living in Germany). My nephew has always
been small, slow and a little uncoordinated for his
age: instead of playing fighting games like most 4
year olds, he would sit on the floor and play with a
train set; he preferred putting things together over
running places and climbing things. He was slow to
walk, and never really crawled. We suspected this was
because he was born 6 weeks premature.


********** if you're one of the relatives/friends who
has already heard this, and don't feel like getting
depressed by reading it again, you can skip reading
until the next bunch of asterisks.

******************************************

He'd been to a doctor, and they discovered an enzyme
in his blood that's usually found in patients whose
muscles are breaking down. The diagnosis:

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

This means his muscles will continually weaken until
his heart or lung muscles fail, somewhere in his late
teens or early 20s, barring an act of God. Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy usually appears in young boys, and
there's no cure other than minimizing discomfort and
using various tricks to maximize mobility.

This is surprising and disappointing. It's difficult
to know how to grieve a situation that's going to be
difficult for the whole family, but currently isn't
too bad. It's hard to consider that for the next
twelve or fifteen years, this emotional process will
sort itself out, but it will take that long to unwind
itself. It hasn't, and maybe it won't, sink in, just
what the next twelve years will involve in that
aspect. I don't know how I'm going to have to support
my family, or when I'm going to need support. It's
just really . . . detatched so far.



******************************************

What I DO know now, is that my nephew is a really
loving kid, and he's surrounded with love from his
family and community, and that will lead him through a
life with more blessings than a lot of people with a
lot more longevity experience.

I don't know exactly how these things work in God's
plan, except to reflect in sadness that we live in a
hurting world, and that all things are not right on
this planet. (I'll say, though, it's difficult to
consider one's own nephew as a symbol of the whole
world's malaise. It isn't that impersonal. It's
impossible to be that impersonal with someone you
love. That's always the risk of loving someone --
that something will hit you right in the soft spot you
have for that person.) Right now my prayer is that
our family will have peace, and that however God does
these things, and whatever happens, that we trust Him,
and that His name will be glorified.

So those are a few of the things buzzing through my
head these days. I'm doing OK -- I think this whole
family thing is really hard on my Mom and Dad, who
feel really far away (it's all happenning in Germany,
where Rebecca and Frank are surrounded by support from
their church community.) So keep my parents in mind
too, if you're the praying kind.

Today I went to an amusement park with my co-workers,
and talked a few people into going on rides they
actually shouldn't have taken (not for health reasons
-- just for wooziness purposes). I forget that other
people have a very different feeling about rides than
I do. Roller coasters are like tickling: it's all in
your head, and its YOUR tension that makes the ride
scary, and the tickling tickle. If you can relax
through either, it won't bother you anymore, and (for
the rides) you can enjoy them, or (for the tickling),
you can say "stop it, that's annoying" with a really
dry, drop-dead voice. Speaking of which, I've learned
how to be a wet blanket for my students when they're
being too funny and not paying attention. It's weird
having to deflate jokes, when I spent so much time
learning how to make and enjoy them.

Today I was at a major intersection, and the green
"walk" sign had started flashing, so I had to run to
catch the light. I jogged along, when I nearly
stopped in my tracks, in the middle of the road, at
the sight of an old, toothless man who was running
hilariously (chest out, fists pumping up by his chest,
legs taking small, old-man steps very quickly, head
leaning backwards as if he were being pulled by a rope
stuck to the front of his shirt) across the
intersection in the other direction, even later than
myself. He had this delightful smile as silly and
excited as the grins of little boys running away from
the girl's bathroom at school, where they just soaked
all the toilet paper in the sink.

Six minutes later, I looked over my shoulder at a
group of five friends lined up to pose for a picture.
The photographer was counting down to take the picture
when the light turned and the "walk" sign came on, and
the five friends turned around and started crossing,
in unison, totally stranding the photographer with
nothing in her view lens. The image of the five girls
turning around without hesitation, and the lone girl
up the creek without a paddle, cracked me up for a
good five minutes more.

So life goes on. Again, I must weather a family . . .
I hesitate to use the word crisis, because it's a
crisis in slow motion . . . whilst eight time zones
away (for now) from anyone else in the family (as I
did when my father had a bout with cancer last year --
now that feels almost like family situation training
to prepare for this one). I wrote in an e-mail to my
brother last year, at Dad's cancer diagnosis, that
these kinds of things are exactly the stuff of growing
up. Maturing is borne of a million things happening,
some big, some small, some controllable, some
uncontrollable, some forgotten the next day, some
indelible. We define ourselves by how we react to
these million things that happen, and by finding peace
(or not finding peace) with the things we can and
can't change. Sometimes we're thrown into a
situation, and other times, we throw ourselves into
one. However those million things happen, hopefully
we're paying enough attention to notice them, and we
never stop listening, and never stop learning.

Bless you all.
Rob