Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Here is a post I wrote last year for advent.

Back then, almost nobody read my blog; it's a long post, but I'm also more proud of this one than most of the other writing on this blog. Thought I'd draw attention to it, now that I have readers other than my grandma.

It was written for a friend's blog, for advent, and it's a bit more personal than the expat musings and pictures of my awesome weekend. . . but it is what it is, and during the holidays, it seems like a good time for reflection. It's about my search for meaning during one of the most difficult times of my life.

Part one:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-wrote-this-for-tamies-blog-but-ill.html

Part two:
http://roboseyo.blogspot.com/2007/12/part-two-advent-of-meaning-at-least-for.html

Advent Post: How I Almost Decided to Hate God, Authenticity, and why One Sufjan Stevens does More Good Than The Entire CCM Industry... Part 1

Lately, the cause of consternation back home has been the condition of Roboseyo's faith. The last things I wrote here about faith were worrisome enough, (April Fools, when I claimed to have converted to Buddhism, and the provocative title, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins") but the eight month ABSENCE of writing on the subject seems to be even WORSE, and has been the topic of a handful of phone calls and e-mails.

Fair enough. I steered away from Faith topics here, at about the same time as I started commenting on some of the other Korea blogs, and putting my name out in that community -- I decided to try and get involved in those dialogues, and in doing so, adapted my blog for my new, hoped-for audience. I stayed away from the intensely personal subject of faith for the same reason I put on pants before I answer a knock at my door, and close the blinds when I change: impressive as it may be...don't everybody need to see that business, yah?

But last Christmas, for Advent, I contributed a guest post for my dear friend Tamie's blog, and honestly, it's one of the pieces of writing I'm most proud of. It being advent again, it seems like a good time to add another year's worth of reflection.

And this year, I have a story for you, titled, "How I Almost Decided to Hate God" about, um, just that.

As my long-time readers know, in September 2005, my mother lost her year-long battle with stomach cancer. The family was all at her bedside, and singing a church hymn, when she stopped breathing, and in a nutshell, that's the religious heritage I grew up in. After I returned to Korea, following my Mother's death, a certain, lovely young lady was a large part of my reason to return, as well as a big part of what helped me keep my bearings while watching the tumor in my mother's stomach crowd out the space where food should go. Whatever it was we had certainly had not been built to bear the weight of a giant black obelisk of grief, and fell apart, predictably, but startlingly quickly, at the same time as my best friend was preparing to marry her twin sister.

While my best friend's wedding was a little spark of joy, the few weeks leading up to it were pretty damn bleak, and I had a lot of fingers pointed in anger at God during that time. Quietly, she bore my accusations of her hating me, and even my claims that maybe she didn't exist after all, and certainly didn't give a rip about me (among other things, I have learned since then that God and religion and spirituality are not All About Me. More on that some other time.) As with my relationship with the lovely exgirlfriendoseyo, the faith I'd kept until then, too, didn't seem built to bear the weight of that giant black obelisk of grief, which turned out to pretty much be a wrecking ball.

And so that first year passed by. For a few months, I went to the dance clubs every weekend, not to meet girls or hang out, or have fun drinking, but to dance until I was a sweating, exhausted rag doll, to try and vent at least a bit of my grief and anger. My dad came and visited me, and we shared the kinds of silences that only we two could have shared, having been the two living in the house day by day, watching mom turn away more and more of the meals we set before her, blander in taste and smaller in portion as time went by, until she finally rejected food altogether.

The one-year anniversary of mom's death came and went, and a couple of coworkers took me out for beer so I didn't have to spend it alone in my apartment, staring at a wall and reliving the death-rattle (three years later, I can still conjure exactly the sound, and even the smell of that room. Sour milk and unwashed hair.) We didn't find out until shortly later that one of the two was totally batshit insane.

And one of my coworkers introduced me to a friend of hers: a former student whose family she had met and befriended. I'd heard her talking about them a few times, and asked if I could meet them before she left. Fortunately, she complied, and I was lucky enough to meet a really nice family that included two wonderful young ladies, aged ten and seven at the time. The ten year-old was just ridiculously smart: she showed me a story she wrote, and it was about what I'd expect from a very bright fourteen-year-old Canadian girl, not a ten-year-old Korean kid who'd never been out of the country.

Sally


Lisa

circa November 2006

The younger one quickly earned the nickname Giggles, because she was the funniest little thing you've ever met, and the two sisters loved each other fiercely: the younger one, Lisa, had taught herself to speak English nearly as well as her older sister, mostly out of sheer adulation as far as I can tell, and the older one took care of Lisa like a mother bear. Mom was a bit serious, pushing high expectations on her brilliant eldest, and Dad was a pretty quiet background presence all the way through, but Lisa was without a doubt, the joy in that household, and any time I spent time with that family, she made sure there were bubbles and sloshes of laughter spilling all over the place.

One day I got a phone call from the older sister. "Guess where Lisa went."
As usual, I started off silly. "Um, to Thailand? To Italy?"
"Rob. This is serious." And her voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Lisa went to heaven. She was in an accident and she went to heaven."




Yeah.




It feels impossibly narcissistic to talk about how I felt, in the face of a family losing their youngest sister and daughter. Even now, two years after, I can only type about three words at a time before taking a break to think about what it would be like to have something like that happen in my family, and pause, staggered all over again, and in the face of a tragedy like that, I have half a mind to end the post altogether...

but here's the thing.

That June, if you'd asked me point blank, I would have told you I wasn't a Christian (the label I'd had for myself all my life).  I'd have told you I didn't believe in God at all.  I'd have told you it hurt too much to believe in God, because then somebody must have LET all those life-changing, soul-scouring things happen to me, that it hurt less to believe it was total, random shit-happens chance, than to believe something out there had some kind of PLAN that REQUIRED me to go through what I did.

(by the way, I'm fully aware, and you don't have to remind me, that people have gone through much worse than I did: I've met some of them, and they broke my heart...but they can write their own stories on their own blogs)

But that's where I was at that time. It would have been easier to abandon the idea of meaning, than to have to hash through all the shit that happens to people, and try to keep looking for it, to insist that there IS a meaning, when faced with Erin, who lost her two brothers to malaria at age ten, and her parents to a plane crash at age twenty, and if you'd asked me what I thought about God, I would probably have had a few choice words for you. One of them starts with F.

But a funny thing happened when I got that phone call from Sally, and I still can't explain it. See, as soon as I finished talking to Sally (during which I was very intently focused on talking to this wonderful young lady who looked at me like some kind of big brother or kindly uncle, who'd lent me her Animorphs books), my mind went in two directions simultaneously. One part of me said "Well, fuck. That's it. In case I doubted before, God has very conveniently shown me she doesn't give a flying fuck about any of us here earthside, so fuck her too," and registered that this, if there ever had been, was a perfect moment to abandon God, purpose, pattern, and the search for meaning entirely. That door was hanging wide open, and I don't think anybody could have blamed me for stepping through it, and slamming it shut as hard as I goddamn pleased.

But you see...

at the same time, another part, somewhere in the deeper, vaguer parts of my mind, where thoughts come out as shapes and half-formed pictures and gestures instead of in neat words and phrases, this urgent need to pray for Sally and her family pulled me away from that gaping doorway, before I could make a single motion toward the door, before I could even ponder a post-God life, even though I had practically forgotten the language people use when they pray.

To this day, it remains one of the more mysterious moments in my life, and frankly, I'm still trying to make sense of it.

So where does Sufjan Stevens figure in?

Hang in there, and I'll tell you in part two.

September 11th, 2001

Was it really seven years ago?

I woke up early that morning, to feed the landlord's horses. I came upstairs to collect the dogfood the landlady set out for me every Tuesday morning, and she had the TV on. I'm pretty sure she was crying.

I listened to the radio most of the morning, and then biked limpidly to my university to be around other people. Most people were in the student lounge, watching the widescreen TV, and I remember being upset that they kept repeating the footage of those damn buildings going down. I was outraged that by the evening of the SAME DAY, I was already getting desensitized to a set of images that should NEVER cease to shock anyone, fucking ever. I watched President Bush's address in the evening, and felt apprehensive when he said he would also consider any country harbouring terrorists as an enemy: I remember saying to somebody that day, "I hope they go after Bin Laden with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer."

By sheer coincidence, the next day the Red Cross had been scheduled to have a blood donation clinic in one of the residence lounges, and students from my school packed the station out all day long: we had to reserve times.

It was a bit later before I saw this: satire website The Onion's greatest moment, their 9/11 issue, which somehow, magically, managed to capture the equal parts fury and fear that everyone felt those first two weeks, while making us laugh all the harder for feeling so sad together.

The 9/11 Onion: the headline at the time was "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" and that pretty much summed up what everybody thought when they found out.

My Brother Dan's Wedding Toast

I was the best man at my brother's wedding. Here was my toast for him and his wonderful wife, Caryn.

Dan And Caryn Ouwehand's Wedding Toast

Don't worry. It's shorter.


I remember one day going down the stairs to the room Dan and I used to share, and being greeted by a
funny kind of sound.
WHOOMPH!
Rustle rustle rustle.
WHOOMPH!
Rustle rustle rustle.

I was probably eleven years old then, and I opened the door to Dan, about eight years old, lying on the floor beside our bunk bed, wrapped in a sleeping bag, looking up at me with big, wide, excited eyes.

"Hey Rob! If you're wrapped in a sleeping bag, it doesn't even hurt to fall out of the bed!"

So I did what any wiser, older brother would do: I grabbed a sleeping bag and joined the fun.

We dumped ourselves off that top bunk or about twenty minutes until Dan's zipper got stuck on the bedframe and broke. When the zipper broke, we had to stop.

I tell this story because that was always Dan: he was the one jumping off and over things, riding his bike all around town and taking the dare where I'd shy away from it.

It's a bold step to get married. It takes courage to choose a person and entrust that one person with your future.

Dan and Caryn, though, have set up a solid foundation for their marriage. Their lines of communication are almost ridiculously open. I've spent some time with them, just relaxing and hanging out with them, and all of a sudden, Dan makes a joke, and Caryn doesn't laugh, and they start Communicating -- with a BIG big C.

"Oh. Sorry. You didn't like my joke?" Dan says.
"It wasn't funny," Caryn says.
"Not funny, like, inappropriate, or not funny, like,
not funny?"
"No, you know what? It's OK. It was funny. Really."
"But you didn't laugh. . . "

and so they go in circles as if it's a race to each be more accomodating than the other. It's silly to tease them about trying to hard to communicate excellently. In truth, it's like teasing a sprinter for having long legs.

I really respect Dan and Caryn's relationship, and the amount of commitment and effort they put into it. They work hard to have a healthy relationship: I was talking to Dan one night about Caryn, and how much I like her, and their way together, and he said it best when he told me "It's great because . . . we have a lot of fun together, but we can also solve problems." That's exactly it. They shore up each other's weaknesses, and encourage each other's strengths in amazing ways.

I've had the chance to see how they lift each other up and support each other in difficult times. As most of you know, Dan's and my mother can't be here today; a few months after Dan and Caryn got engaged, we learned that Jane Ouwehand has incurable stomach cancer. Most of the relatives on Dan's side that are here today, are planning to travel out to BC after the wedding, to visit Jane, because she's no longer strong enough to ravel here and see the wedding.

For our family this year, the joys and sorrows of life got mashed right up against each other. I know this is a bittersweet journey for many people here at the wedding, but I've also seen, because of these times, what a great support system Dan and Caryn have here in Red Deer, in their church, and especially with each other.

Dan and Caryn have built their love on trust and honesty and, moreover, on God. God has always been an important part of their relationship and their lives, so now, instead of diving off a bunk bed, Dan and Caryn are jumping together into a lifelong commitment, wrapped not in a sleeping bag, but in God's goodness and love -- and God's zipper never breaks.


Not many people get to speak for their mother and their brother with a speech, both in the space of a few months. I'm proud and honoured that I could do so, and I will never forget having the chance to do so.

Thanks.
Rob

My Hero.

My Mom's dad (we call him Opa, the Dutch word for grandfather) has made one of the main tasks of his retirement to write a family history. He started off with the life story of HIS father (my grandfather), which he published at a little, family publishing house (the kind of place that prints out genealogies and small-scale projects) to hand out to his kids and grandkids. I received my copy when I was sixteen, and (being sixteen) had no clue yet of the importance of roots and heritage. Too busy finding out who I was, I didn't have time to wonder about where I was from yet.

The man himself: my hero, Opa Boonstra:


Later, I worked for two summers as a guide at a heritage museum, and started to learn about the importance of history, and what a resource our elders are, simply through the stories that have given their lives meaning. I spent two summers hearing older folks come through the museum talking about who they were, and how things are changing, and what still stays the same. Sure, these thoughts are nothing you can't find in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," but it's amazing how the technology, the methods, and the setting change so dramatically, but we human beings are STILL just trying to figure out who we are and what we're doing, struggling to connect, to know and be known, and to feel like our lives were worth something, carving out a place in this world, like writing our names in water (kudos to John Keats for that one).

I read that book finally when I was about twenty-four, just a little while before we found out my mom had stomach cancer. I was touched and moved by what, ultimately, read (to me) as a tender and admiring tribute to my Opa's father. What a blessing for the whole family, that we can have that story written down, as a piece of our heritage, that those stories will not be forgotten in time. It was an act of love for my grandfather to write a history of his father, both for his father, and for his children and grandchildren: he gave us the gift of knowing where we are from (or at least being able to).

Here in Korea, families have amazing, long genealogies -- during the Korean war, one of my students told me how, as his family escaped their burning house in North Korea, fleeing the approaching Communist Troops, his grandfather ran back into the house to rescue the family genealogy. I shook my head in wonder, and he told me "It goes back thirty generations". Cripes!

North America, because of the immigrant culture, doesn't really think too much of Genealogies -- especially when a lot of people are like my sister-in-law: "Irishambodiargentinianativenglisherpa" or, as she charmingly says, "Heinz 57". At best in North America, unless your progenitor rode the mayflower, genealogies are a hobby. However, in reading my Grandfather's memoir, I realized that for many Canadians, especially second or third generation immigrants, the story of "How We Came To Canada" (or America) is as important a part of our self-stories as Koreans' "Your five-times-great grandfather served in the court of King Wi-na, but was executed during a purge when the next king took the throne". In that respect, as my friend Tamie says, I bow to my grandfather's effort to keep our family story alive, to make sure it is not forgotten in the past, as those who experienced it die away.

The memoir includes stories of living through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and in the second volume, my Oma (grandmother) tells her story, too, and shares the fear her family felt when her father went off to fight the Nazis, and went several weeks unaccounted for. I read how my mother was born, how they built their first house in stages, as they worked off the previous home-builder's bank loan and more funds became available to them (basement first, then frame, then electricity, septic tank? Grab a shovel! etc..)

I thank my grandparents for writing this down, committing it to paper, so that it will not be forgotten.

And for everyone who wonders whether the things they do to help others matter at all, here is an excerpt from early memories of my Grandmother's grandfather:

"Later on when [my Oma's] Opa had his own shoe shop, he would not charge people if they could not pay. People held him in great regard for that. When I (Marijke) was visiting in Shalom Manor [an old-age residence with many Dutch immigrants] in 2005, I met Mrs. Zeldenrust, who lived in Hoogkerk many years ago and had known Tante Grietje [my grandmother's aunt, I believe]. Mrs. Zeldenrust's son told me about Opa's generousity and how peope appreciated that. I was amazed to hear that story forty-one years after his death."

Forty-one years after his death, people still remember his acts of kindness and generousity. Sure, "Nazi Week" will garner more ratings on the Discovery Channel than "The Friendly Cobbler," but, dear readers, kindness IS noticed, and remembered, whether it's ever mentioned back to you or not.

My man Jesus said, "Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is , there your heart will be also."

My personal favourite kindness CAN make a difference moment:



Les Miserables: a gracious act by the Bishop pulls a life out of the gutter and redeems a character who'd given up on himself; Jean Valjean goes on to become the greatest of grace-givers, thanks (though he might never have found out) to a kindness done by a bishop who'd been robbed, and would have been within his rights to send our man Jean back up the river where he came from.

(read the book. knocked my socks off. just read it -- Jean Valjean is one of my favourite characters anywhere, because of the way he incarnates grace to everyone around him)

Preach it.

I guess everybody's doing one of these.

For me, in the words of my old Creative Writing bud, Sparkey, 2007 has been kickdonkey awesomepants, friends.

A rundown of reasons for the spring in my step:

1. Girlfriendoseyo: we met in April, we hit it off almost right away, and it just keeps getting better and better. You've heard guarded hints roundabout allusions about her on the blog, but friends, I'm crazy about this woman. We like all the same things, and (______________ insert your own mushy cliche here__________________). It's pretty great.

2. Teaching adults. No more pee fights, tattle-tales, crocodile tears, or insane mothers. Instead, I learn from my students: there are areas where they actually know MORE than me. A lot of areas! I'm actually kind of dumb, except in a few fields.

3. Words - I've written more in this year than probably any three years previously. Seeing as writing professionally is my stated life goal, that's pretty significant.

4. Living downtown - every day living in the downtown is like a people-watcher's festival. And I get to be a tour-guide when my friends come into the downtown.

5. My Colleague/Friends -- I have some friends here who are really cool, including one gentleman who has invited me to his family's house, and who's opened up, despite big differences in age and culture, and really made me feel welcomed and appreciated as a westerner living in Korea.

6. Rosetta Stone - an amazing language study program that's building my vocabulary, my spoken Korean, and (most importantly) my confidence in speaking Korean. It's been a real boon, and I'm really enjoying the noticeable improvement in my Korean ability.

7. Moving into an apartment with no TV. TV sucks.

8. Downtownucopia: the variety and quality of restaurants in the downtown make eating a joyous practice over here in downtown Seoul. discovering that good food is one of my main pleasures in my life was also good -- putting one's finger on the things that makes one happy, sure helps one REMAIN happy. In no particular order, I really love:

-Indian in Jonggak -Blood and Cow Stomach Soup -the Oktoberfest microbrewery -spicy beef-bone stew -california rolls and sushi -beef bone soup (with AMAZING kimchi) -world class dumplings -okonomiyaki -the Moroccan place I just discovered -the funny old lady who's been making pickled garnishes and organic side dishes her entire life -the fat, old Chinese ladies who make dumplings and never smile

(If any of you readers lives in Korea and wants to know where to find these places. . . let me know in the comments section. We'll figure something out.)

9. Living closer to Matt, hiking more often, and generally getting healthier, in large part because of his influence.

10. Blogging as a new, more enlightened, more frequent way of keeping in touch with my loved ones in Canada (and elsewhere), and being able to share a little more detail than you can fit into a bi-monthly, text-only e-mail update.

11. Almost all of the friends I've kept close tabs on back in Canada are doing better now than they were last year -- you know who you are. Yay for you! I'm all squirming with happy for you.

12. Going to Canada in July to see my Dad's wedding, Matt's brother (and my surrogate older brother) Joely's wedding, and all the other people I saw then, too.

13. A MILLION BABIES -- like, everybody I know is having a baby. Except me. It's awesome, and overwhelming, and awesome, and exciting, and awesome.

14. Is a luckier number than thirteen.


the bummers:

Myspace, Facebook, Internet, Blog, Youtube, Collegehumor.com et. al = New Years resolution 1: waste less time on the internet.

With all that good eatin', it's easy to get fat, fast.

I didn't call home enough: I have no landline anymore, so all phones home must be cellulexpensive, plus, I'm a bad son/brother/friend/uncle/grandson/stalker. I just don't do my duty enough.

Thanks God, and everybody else involved, for a fantastic year. I'm glad to be alive, and really happy with my situation these days.

I love you all!

Take care.
Love:
roboseyo

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?

Let me tell you about my wonderful friend.

Here's Mel and me and her husband (fiancee at the time) Brent, all at my university graduation.

I made a joke on my blog comments page that wasn't nice to Mel, so with apologies to Tamie's penance post, here's my own penance post.

Mel, also known (to me) as Mellifluous, and Melly-Cat (Melly-cat, oh Melly-cat, what are they feeding you?) is my best friend in Canada. All my students in Korea hear about her so often that "My best friend in Canada Mel" has (along with "My best friend in Korea Matt") become my own personal sigh-inducing equivalent to American Pie's "This one time, at band camp. . . " line.

Mel is great! You can go to her interesting, thoughtful, more-frequently-updated-than-mine blog (link at the side of the page), and learn more about her if you like. Our friendship goes back to a Milton class where we seem to basically have sniffed each other out as fellow artists. (Mel corrected me when she read this, informing me that she sniffed me out as an artist; I just wanted attention. I'll pass that on to you, and let you judge for yourselves whether, from what you know of me, that might be true.) Since then, we've have some of the most amazing talks I've had in my life, some of the most ridiculous laughs, and borne with each other through various "I thought I'd hit bottom, but THAT'S when everything REALLY hit the fan" kinds of crises.

She's one of the best conversationalists I know, very articulate, even for a brunette, and in the top ten list of "nicest/coolest/kindest/most reassuring things anybody's ever said to me," she owns at least a third of the spots. For example. . .

(just kidding. Those are between me and her. I'm such a tease.)

She has a wonderful husband and two great kids I got to hang out with this July when I was back in Canada, and she's an awesome life-saving siren-wailing first-class cool-under-fire paramedic.

Plus, she's kickin' smart, but even though she's kickin' smart, she hates intellectual arrogance (thus keeping me in check).

She's also the one who teased me out of talking about music incessantly (you may all want to immediately hop over to her site to thank her personally).

My friend Mel. She's top-shelf.

love
Rob

Among other things I did while sorting through all my stuff. . .

I also sifted through scads of old photo negatives, and got London Drugs to scan the best ones, the keepers, onto CD, so that I could preserve them in digital form.

Here are some of the best ones.

Matt's new haircut in Japan


Me with my favourite class ever -- from my first year in Korea.


Me in a field of dandelions.


Me in a tree in Stanley park.


I hid a camera in my sleeve, and took a picture with my university's president as I walked across the stage to receive my diploma, at my university graduation.


Kids playing at a palace on Korean Thanksgiving Day.


Dancing with an old lady. Full story here.


One silly Christmas: finishing a roll of film with mom, Deb and Dan.


At an airport in Ontario.


My second favourite picture of my mom and my nephew. (The favourite one wasn't in my pile of negatives. Dad has it somewhere.) I think this one really shows the special relationship my nephew and my mom had.


Hope those pictures made you happy!

love:
Rob

Look what I found!

Highway 22 in Alberta is also known, appropriately, as the Cowboy Trail.


Here are some pictures from google images. (See? Who needs a camera, really?)