Went to the International Women’s Film Festival of Seoul with friends last week and got to watch Elaine Kim’s (Berkeley professor of Asian studies) Slaying the Dragon:  Reloaded.

It’s predecessor used to be on-line  in its entirety, but here is the trailer for it, too:

Highly recommended.  I showed it to my kids today, along with a brief history of Asians in America and an explanation of various racial slurs and ones I experienced.  I also talk a little more about being an Asian man, as they are feminized and disempowered in America.  I entreated the students to be sure their partners loved their minds and hearts and not their image, and also to please be generous towards their gyopo brothers and sisters, because they too don’t have an easy life.

I don’t talk about the added complication of being adopted, (that’s just beyond most people’s comprehension) though Elaine Kim does have a chapter on adoption in her companion education components.  In her post-film Q&A appearance she spoke about the scene where Lucy Lu exclaims “Daddy!” and then the camera pans left and we see a white guy in a suit.  She reminds us that while most Americans would find the race difference funny, that it’s actually a sobering scene for adoptees.  The DVD and education components will be available next month, and I hope I can afford to purchase them…

In other news,

Kim Sook Ja contacted me (yayy!) ready for testing and says she’s just been  really busy.  The DNA testing has been purchased and as soon as we get the tests, it will be another 6 weeks thereafter.  It takes a long time for sibling testing of unknown origins, as there are lots of different things to test for and probabilities have to be calculated.   So, we’re looking at about two months I think.  In reality, I get less and less curious as time passes.  I guess because I’m less angry and just want to move on with my life.  But we still persist with the testing because it’s nice to know the truth.

I wish I hadn’t signed this latest contract, as there’s actually work at my last job in America.  WHICH I really liked that job!  I’d much rather shoot the breeze with two regular down-to-earth guys than try and sing and dance English to heads face down on their desks.  I hope there’s still a place for me next March.   Yeah, I know I’m only just beginning my Korean experience and starting to feel a little comfortable and shouldn’t be talking about leaving.  But this is not home and it never will be.  3 years of a a 5 year plan is nothing to scoff at.  If it turns into 4, I can live with that too.  But if I don’t make 5 I’m perfectly fine with that.  3 sounds like a magic number to me, anyway…(insert De la Soul here)

Korean lessons through the Korea Foundation  are great.  Out of 14 of us, there are 9 nations represented and I am the only one of Korean ethnicity.  We have an India(n) American from NYC as the only other American.  There’s Germany, Croatia, England, France, Portugal, Canada, Pakistan, and Bangladesh…I wish I’d been able to do that when I first got here over two years ago, but teaching night classes interfered with that.  And then the following year there was no way I could make it to the classes on time.  It’s much better than tutoring or self-study.  Highly recommended.  And you can’t beat free…

My house is a total disaster, ’cause I’ve been working on TRACK stuff  ’round the clock.  Like this image I frankensteined together and still had about 50% more work to go, so please excuse incomplete colors or mismatching colors or  the wrong contrast or stringy hair, etc.

The one Korean who’s seen it said it was “surreal” because a) real mihonmo can’t afford expensive hanbok and b) modern Koreans don’t wear hanbok.

I chose yellow jeogori and red chima because those are the traditional colors ascribed to young women.  Of course, I knew that peasants all wore white, but others told me that despite Korea being known as the people in white, young women were still portrayed in literature and paintings as always wearing yellow and red.  The problem becomes, how do you portray unwed status in modern times?  Even married people in Korea don’t wear their wedding rings…Also how do you represent a beautiful but repressive past with its legacy of stigma and female oppression and justapose it with the consequences for women today?   Another person told me that maybe the girl in historical hanbok is akin to having an American dress in colors of the flag.  Or I can take that further and say it’s like a girl dressed up in her anti-bellum cotillion hoop skirt ballgown..Anyway, this idea has been round filed, so that’s why I’m showing it to you.  But I also think it still had potential -precisely because it IS weird in its Korean context.  So instead of washing out all the detracting opinions, I think what I really needed to do is push it further into controversy.  (nobody understood my other art project, for example)  The other constraint was that at the end of the day it must be beautiful, for the cursory view, the superficial view, as it was to actually be a decorative piece on an item that people will  carry around with them.

Other stuff is mocked up instead.

But taking a day off for classes makes me realize that the world goes on just fine without me killing myself.   And I haven’t had a chance to paint and at this rate It’ll take me three years to put together some kind of portfolio.   But a little vacation is in order.  In fact, it’s a lovely day for spring cleaning…bucket and sponge and towels…

DON’T TOUCH ME! boy came into class late today and said, “teacher!  My face is very happy today!”  And he was, (for him) pretty angelic all day and fully participated.  I’m guessing the passive teacher had some kind of talk with him or something…These things do get worked out in sometimes mysterious ways.  Last year, I could swear a couple problem students just disappeared. It was early on, so I don’t know if they were just soccer players that I ended up testing without knowing later, or if they transferred to another school, or what.  Though I am curious, sometimes its better to just not know…’cause if it was accomplished with candy I’ll just shoot myself!

I have taken to supporting the Korean teachers in a reversal of roles at times in order to teach the students respectful behavior.  If a student is talking during the co-teacher’s instruction or translations, I put a halt on everything and then yell, “EXCUSE ME.  But YOUR TEACHER was just SPEAKING.”  None of them know what to make of this.  Previously, in passive teacher’s class when I did that, she had nervously giggled and said, “it’s okay.”  To which I am smacking myself in the head no no no it’s not okay…and you’re welcome.  But I persist.  And yesterday.  Yesterday?  Yesterday she sent the kids I yelled at for disrespecting her out in the hall. I’m noticing a little more support lately.  I think the co-teachers are realizing that this kind of behavior just won’t be tolerated by me any longer.  No matter what their own methods are:  drill sergeant or cajoling/pleading buddy, it just doesn’t matter.  Woneomin (native language teacher) has some basic standards…No more waiting for the co-teachers to manage these classes.  Not that it’s been that bad, and even at its worse it’s a thousand times better than at Baekyoung.  But still.  It’s MY CLASSROOM.

Anyway, I think it’s working.  It’s working because It’s balanced with some awesome teaching materials I’ve found and because I’ve decided I’m a good teacher and because when I’m not scowling I’m very compassionate.  I’ve also lowered the bar a little, since these students don’t aspire to pass corporate interviews in English like my past students.  Plus I’m feeling better, so I’m less worn out so I’m less likely to get ground down.  The whole thing about kids is, even if you’re not on your game some days, is just being unrelenting.  The rings drumming on the desk next to your ear while the whole class is suspended until your head is erect is a guarantee.  That you want to avoid.  And the hallway is cold, lonely, and boring.  And a guarantee.  That you want to avoid.

Clarity.  Consistency.  It’s sorely missing from the Korean education system.  Because education with its home-room system is based on surrogate parenting and is a replacement for family structure in the vacuum created by the over-emphasis on time served in school.  The same person who is in charge of academic rigor can be found at their desk between classes, surrounded by students, complaining, whining, fawning, being cracked on the head with knuckles, or whacked on the back, or massaged, or lectured until they crack and start to cry.  And so, discipline – or lack thereof  – and its effects on learning – or lack thereof – all hinge on the level of family function – or dysfunction – generated by the home room teacher.   Teachers are to manipulate.  And that home-room teacher relationship is license to kill.  Whatever rules or lack of rules or respect or lack of respect that particular home-room teacher institutes gets imprinted there. And so the subject-specific teachers who travel from class to class must enter into a new country run by new rules and its own culture every time they enter a classroom.  It’s no wonder so many have resorted to carrying sticks in the past…

Consistency.  Last year, male students were stopped and forced to remove their earrings.  This year, I’m noticing a lot of earrings.  This year I’m noticing a lot of skirts shortened to Japanese school girl heights.  Half a dozen were in the office today and my co-teacher made them hold up a sign which read, 하의실종.  I’m not sure what it says.  Online translation says it means hidden under but whatever that refers to, it made some male teachers bust out laughing…Last year, I saw late students having to do the duck walk around the school, but this year they’re just standing in the office?  Last year the anti-smoking crack-downs would appear and then peter out.  This year I saw a teacher spraying cologne on a student who smelled like smoke…and then there’s the occasional times when students who answer questions rush to the co-teachers desk to line up for candy.  (grrr) and then there’s all those other times when there’s no candy.  The other day, as filler due to technical difficulties, we played hangman and somewhere out of nowhere my co-teacher produced a bag of candy and was rewarding the students — FOR WHAT?  I mean, where was that candy when they weren’t playing a game and were doing something HARD?  There’s so many more things like this that all seem to vary depending on which teacher is doing the discipline/bribing.  It’s a rules are meant to be broken kind of place and the consequences are not that big a deal kind of a place, that is if you have any idea what the consequences are…Since I’ve never taught in an American High School, I can’t compare current practices.  But it does seem clear to me that this home-room system isn’t much of a system.

Well anyway, things I’ve tried in the past – Korean discipline methods, group self-regulation by forcing everyone to pay for the rebellion of a few, appealing to their sympathy for my handicaps as a foreigner, humor, slap-stick, just being nice, etc. – don’t work without co-teacher support and are tiresome to sustain.  But my rings, which are decidedly un-Korean because they’re big, cool, handmade and tough (which Koreans view as gangland weapons) are my best friends.  Plus, they are an extension of myself, ever ready, and don’t impart the visible impotence of having to carry a stick. Who knew?

Every student in Korea has a photo of themselves, which is pasted into each homeroom class attendance book.  For two school years now, (I didn’t know better the first year) I’ve asked for a copy of these photos and/or a school year-book, and the request basically gets ignored.  I’ve seen that the Korean teachers sometimes photocopy these pages, and I would do this myself – borrow the homeroom attendance book long enough to copy them – only it’s more complicated for my situation, since English is broken up by level testing and academic or technical education streams, so each English class of each grade is a mixed bag, difficult to sort out.

I’ve also requested electronic copies of the list of student names, and this request was also overlooked but finally got some response after repeated requests.  At first, the excuse was that the teachers didn’t know how the kids would be distributed and then it was promised  and then, after weeks, one of the two teachers actually sent me a file but it was in a format that can only be read in Korea’s equivalent of Microsoft office. I requested having it converted to excel – but that, too, was ignored. Finally, finally I managed to extract a photocopy of their lists from them.  Grrr.  So then I had to face writing 300 student’s names in hangul so I can give them a grade…and people look at us foreigners like creeps because the students are never referred to by their name…

To top that off, 25-45% (depending on what source you read) of Koreans have Kim as their last name, another 30%(+/-) have the names Park or Lee or Choi and the remaining % hold the rest of the approximately 250 total names.  I guess there used to be a few more last names, but near the end of the Chosun dynasty some people bought/bribed themselves more prestigious names like Kim and those without surnames were assigned them during the Japanese occupation.  To make matters even worse, about 75% of the girls have bangs and unlayered haircuts, and very few are allowed to color their hair lighter than chocolate brown – the majority of what I see every day is a sea of black hair.  Their facial features and personalities are, thank God, pretty distinct, but even that loses its meaning after about student #100…

Soooo, I handed each one an index card (called memory cards here) and asked them to write down their name in Hangul, an English nick-name, three things they are interested in, and what they want to be.  Maybe 1/2 of the students could not come up with an English nick-name, 1/3rd could not list anything they were interested in, and about 10% wrote only their name in Hangul.

I also brought my camera and took a photo of each student.  Most of the students (like me) didn’t like or want to have their photo taken, but most cooperated when I explained that I needed it to help me match their names with their faces.  Some just flat-out refused.  Because they were afraid it would end up on someone’s homepage (Konglish for website) Then, there were those who were too busy sleeping.

You’ve no idea how frustrating it is to teach to the living dead!  Sometimes I walk around and rap my many silver rings on their desks next to their heads to wake them up.  Hopefully that annoyance will be remembered and avoided.  But teacher, “she’s very tired.”  Oh yeah?  I’m tired too…but there’s no sleeping in my class.

And then I have to remove one boy from a group of four goofing off, and as soon as I do that, one of them immediately lays his head down and tunes out.   I go by and say, “umm, no sleeping in my class.”  And he throws me a hate bomb.  And then the co-teacher comes by and says, “but he says he’s sick.”  and she pats his head.  “So what is he doing here if he’s sick?” I ask.  And he puts his sick head triumphantly back down for a nice nap.  He wasn’t sick ten minutes earlier when he was goofing off…

How can we foreign teachers maintain respect with this kind of undermining going on every day?  “It’s just that they hate English.”  So what?  That’s still no cause for being rude.  And besides, I’ve interviewed many teachers at my first school and they ALL have the same problems, irrespective of the subject matter.  Yesterday, I made the observation that if an alien were to visit Korea, they would think Koreans have no neck bones, since they can’t seem to hold their heads up.  At least the co-teacher laughed.  (there were about ten heads on desks at the moment)  I just succumb in her classes most days.  It’s not the kids – it’s having my authority undermined which forces me to not be consistent.  Since I can’t bitch her out, griping here is my only recourse…

I think if Obama saw what really goes on in real Korean classrooms, he’d think twice about using Korea as a model for education…

But back to the title of this post…One of the students wrote, under What do you want to be?

I want to be white.

Holy crap.  He actually wrote that.

And then there was last year in discussion class where we were talking about plastic surgery, and one girl just flat out said she thought that a lot of the surgery was because people wanted to look like white people.  And then there was the time in class where I spoke about how westerners find Asian females exotic and beautiful and the co-teacher said, “Really???”

In my little tiny town there are actually a couple English hogwans.  It’s really weird to be here in the country, walking down the street where the traveling five-day market is set up, only to pass a store-front with four foot high laughing faces of white children.  Now, to put this into perspective there’s not one white student in my school, nor one white child in my town.

That Fashion of Cry show I hate so much but accidentally hit sometimes freaks me out.  On every episode it seems they take two girls (who look just fine to me) and give them a make-over.  This make-over includes cosmetic surgery.  And interviews with the girls breaking down in tears talking about their appearance.  Noses get the side fat taken out of them to look bizarrely aquiline, nostrils are carved away, and bridges are kind of faked in.  Jawlines are shaved…

Right now the t.v. is in the background and an Estee Lauder BB (basically an acne medicated skin-colored blemish-covering moisturizer) whitening cream commercial.  And the model isn’t Korean, but white.  Seems like all the western makeup companies peddling in Korea have a bleaching product, as they don’t want to miss out on that market.  And the beauty industry in America just PALES (no pun intended) to the Korean beauty industry.  The profits here must be astronomical.

To my eye there are only a couple acceptable Korean molds, which hardly anybody fits into.  At my school, for example, only a couple girls are pencil thin.  The rest are stocky or have cankles or acne or wide faces or all manner of variations that are NOT the girls you see on t.v.

NEXT DAY

So this morning I’d forgotten my Bad Kitty Gets a Bath book I was going to read a chapter to the kids from, and had to fill fifteen minutes with something, so I fielded questions about America.  All the questions were, surprisingly, about image!  Would we be short in America?  Do Americans hate small eyes?  Would I be pretty in America?

I try to tell them that American’s just aren’t as concerned with physical image as much.  OK.  We KNOW Americans are self-conscious and driven people too – but that pretentiousness usually comes out in different ways…I think I’m going to include a couple of pages on vanity in next semester’s broadcast book.  And maybe we’ll study the lyrics of “You’re so Vain.”  People – that much mirror-checking is a sign of insecurity – can’t you see that?

I think it’s time to pull out my lessons on being Asian in America and an introduction to multi-culturalism.   Never mind that the commercials are inundated with multi-cultural images (purportedly a campaign by major companies to reduce attrition due to racism in their ever-growing ranks of foreign workers residing here).  Koreans toy with and are fascinated and repulsed by  the idea of the forbidden fruit of African descent, but the only color anyone here aspires to is white, white, white.

I used to think, when I first came here, that this notion of conquering white supremacy through the wish fulfillment of being them was a lot of bunk, but now I’m not so sure.

On a positive ending note, I am happy to witness a big change in the “What do you want to be” answers this year.  I have a huge number of students who want to be chefs, a lot of teachers, and I (yes me) bought two dove bars for the students whose answers were:

thinking

-and-

a good person

I don’t, as a rule, give out rewards, incentives, or bribes.  but I gave out a purple suede planner to a really quiet and shy girl last year who got every nuance of every tip I gave for pronunciation, and these two girls get the best chocolate I can find for thinking out of the box.

Some days I really enjoy my job…

The days here roll on evolving into an almost routine, which may be a first in my entire adult life!  Kind of comforting, actually.

Every morning, I throw on my clothes at the last minute, hop on my cute little bike, and roll past the students walking to school who all greet me with, “hi, teachuh!”

I make a cup of instant coffee (that’s all there is here), check the morning broadcast’s power point for mistakes, throw it onto my USB and head into the studio where all the kids who have broadcasting as their Club Activity all turn and say, “Good morning, Miss Leith!”  They joke around loudly while I take off my shoes and go sit in the carpeted sound-proof room, waiting for the session to begin.  Usually they’ve forgotten to turn on the monitor and lately something’s wrong with their microphone, so they have to use mine.  So after they’ve told the whole school to pull down their screens and turn on the closed circuit broadcast, then one of them always takes off one shoe and hops the mic. over to me.  At the last second, the co-teacher arrives in a rush, as she has to run upstairs from taking roll-call with her home-room, and the broadcast can begin.  I go through each of the idioms I’ve illustrated in the book I wrote, then explain what they mean and how we use them culturally, where upon the co-teacher goes into both a translation as well as adding anything she feels is necessary for the kids to understand better.  It’s always quite intense for her, as we cover a lot of ground in ten minutes, and she has to speak really fast.

Then, we wrap up and go prepare for whatever classes we have.  The kids all tell me “bye Miss Leith!”  (they forget that it’s Mzzz Leith, but I’m happy they can pronounce the “th” at the end)

Pretty much every week I get excited with some new idea to try on the kids, and it works out really good with the proactive teacher and then bombs with the passive teacher, and by the end of the week I’m feeling a little defeated, only to begin all over again the following week.  It’s gotten to the point where I just feel like the kids who have the passive teacher are just screwed and her apathy kind of rubs off on me, because I’m basically at the mercy of the mood she sets in the classroom by her not paying attention and not really being interested herself.  The kids in her classes either tend to look oppressed and gray, or they are engaged in some kind of power struggle where they are clearly winning – talking whenever they want to, hijacking the lessons by side-tracking the teacher with unrelated discussions, or just totally tuning out.

The problem is she thinks the kids will behave for her if she is best buddies with them, and she doesn’t really know how to get their respect.  She’s so much their equal, they think they can even argue with her!  I think I do, but being disadvantaged with communication I have to channel myself through her and that DOESN’T translate at all, because half the time she doesn’t bother or immediately undermines what I try to do. Another problem is she’s really young.  She clearly wants to be one of the kids.  Like she’s totally star-struck with the soccer players…to be fair though, there’s only two English teachers and she gets all the lower level students, so she’s at a disadvantage.  I don’t know how that got divy’d up, but it should be the opposite.  Those students need the proactive teacher who has the firm hand.

But really, those students need to just not be learning English.  Turns out the national curriculum is just waaay too hard for them – and asking them to listen to the foreign teacher recite scripts is like asking you to listen to Greek for an hour straight.  So with the passive co-teacher, we’ve just decided to let me try to do something more simple and engaging, but I honestly have a really difficult time with what should be a really good lesson when I walk into the classroom and it is animal house…and I know it’s not me, because I’ve used these lessons with the other co-teacher and they work brilliantly…

But the classes with the proactive teacher are a joy to teach.  She enthusiastically responds to everything I do, is always there when I need her, and never misses a learning opportunity.  She’s also a drill sergeant, and the kids really respect her.  The kids take notes, they hang on every word, they try really hard to understand, they all like me, and I feel free to joke around with them. And the new kids feel free to talk to me too.

One of them asked today, “Teacher, umm, Ms. Leith?”  Yes? “Why don’t you delete?”  Huh?  “Your spot.”  (the mole on my forehead) Because that’s part of me. “Korean people.  Delete. Delete.”  I like who I am, just the way I am.  Everybody is unique.  “Oh. Okay.”

One first year student doesn’t like me.  I have no idea why.  He just scowls hate bombs at me all day.  If I try to talk to him, he just says, “DON’T TOUCH ME!”  So I guess on the first day I accidentally touched him, but I never touch the kids and don’t recall doing anything, but it doesn’t matter what I do or say or if I apologize or anything, this boy hates the world and me most of all.  It’s really shocking.  I’m just glad there’s not guns floating around in Korean society…

I went to Kyobo bookstore in Seoul with one of my former students and we picked out an easy reader with pictures for the kids, in my effort to have them learn English more naturally.  It’s an awesome book!  I just don’t think the kids are ready for the other book yet.  (I wish I had more advanced students) 

Anyway, the book is called, “Bad Kitty Gets a Bath.”  It’s a chapter book, but very easy and full of illustrations.  Yes, they’re a little offended being treated like little kids, but they’ll soon see it’s not a little kid book.  And, despite themselves they learned the words,  rub and reach during the introduction.  And, despite themselves they got exposure to reflexive pronouns.  Plus, the book is hilarious, so hopefully they’ll forgive me.  And besides, they get to see the teacher try to lick her leg and tail and…

I’ve done a lot of research on easy books for teens and found nothing easy enough or teen enough that doesn’t also do a bad job of hiding its learning agenda or is just stupid fluff.  These things DO EXIST but they cost hundreds of dollars and are produced for schools with a budget, not lone maverick uncertified Native English speakers posing as teachers in other countries.

Also surprising from all Korean teachers is how much free reign they give us Native English Teachers with our lessons.  It’s kind of really a you-know-better-than-us, we-don’t-have-a-clue-how-to-impart-your-voice thing.

And I really can see why they think that too.  For example, it’s obvious that the textbooks are co-written by westerners.  And it’s also obvious they’re written by ancient westerners.  For example, if a teenager is shopping, the store owner doesn’t tell them, “This brand is very popular!  Many teenagers like you buy them.”  Only a person totally out of touch would call a teen a teenager to their face like that…

These books…and then it’s obvious that they are co-written by Koreans.  For example, an interview with Oprah Winfrey.  There’s no photo of Oprah, only an illustration of somebody Oprah-like.  Then there’s a dialog, and the voice is your gosh, & golly gee Andy Griffith nightmare, not Oprah.  And “Oprah” says absolutely nothing except she wouldn’t have gotten where she is today without education.  Maybe there is a Korean somewhere named Oprah, and they interviewed her…

I look forward to lunch and dinner every day.  I really like the low-budget Korean comfort food we get (unless there’s SPAM in it).  I get really tired of what little I can order at restaurants, so the variety is appreciated.  A whole new set of Korean teachers need to be trained by me that they are free to leave when they are finished eating, as I take my time and I hate the pressure of having them squirm through their politeness thinking they are in purgatory wishing I would eat faster so they could be free.

The incredibly elegant electronics teacher talks to me once in awhile at lunch.  There’s a communication gap, but less of one than w/ the Architecture teacher.  Pretty much those are the only two who even attempt it.  Today I invited myself over to his house.  I think he was shocked.  I mean, he’s been telling me about how the teachers live in this group house during the week and how it’s on the Han river and that it’s very beautiful and…so I told him that NOT ONE Korean has invited me to their house. (excluding Miwha, but that doesn’t count because I was there to give her an English lesson)  I explained how if he was a foreigner in my country, I’d invite him over for dinner right away, that that is American hospitality, and how sad it is that I’ve been here two years and NOT ONE Korean has had me over.  I tell him, how can I know anything about Korea?  So we’ll see…maybe it’s too weird for a girl to go to an all guy place, I don’t know, but I’ve definitely got no designs on any of them, and they’re all married anyway. But I’ve never been one of the girls and always been one of the guys, so that would make me very happy to just hang out and have a drink and a smoke.  I think this is going to be my pet project…

In the evening after dinner at school, I ride my little bike home – well, almost home, as I still can’t make it up the final hill – and take a nap.  Then I get up, try to read my email, and either do some research, watch t.v., or paint.

Here is session #4

It’s taking me way too long.  I think it’s because I chose to try to learn to glaze.  And glazes aren’t as forgiving, I’ve found, so my mistakes are showing through.  I also don’t like how the brush strokes stay in the glazes – I mean, strokes are nice in regular adding on of paint, but I don’t want them in my glazes.  Also, I’ve messed up the colors – I’d totally take a different approach to colorizing a black and white photo.  In addition, I’m making the basic shapes change too much.  I also didn’t draw this prior to painting it, ’cause I hate the redundancy and hate transferring a drawing even more, but maybe I should have…I also did a horrible rookie mistake and used black out of the tube for her hair, so she has shoe-polish colored hair.  Nor do I know how to paint hair and especially not baby peach fuzz.  Live and learn.  I just need so much more practice.  Hours and hours and hours of practice.  And I need to just play around with techniques.  I guess I should do something abstract but without any structure at all – just really try for different effects.  (sigh)  I really need classes…

In good news, today I got a call and am allowed to overload into the Hangul class, so I begin real lessons with PEOPLE next week!  Yayy!

Ice block’s almost melted, that means it’s time to go to bed!

In a footnote, moon also asked me if I’ve gained anything by coming to Korea.  I told moon that it allowed me be selfish for the first time.  But in retrospect I think that would have come wherever I was, just because my kids are gone and I would have had to struggle out of loneliness and find new sources of happiness anyway.  What Korea has done for me is jar me out of every last comfort zone I ever had.  I’ve never been afraid of stretching out of my comfort zone and had thought I was fearless and coming here was part of being intrepid.  But EVERY. SINGLE. LAST. crutch I ever had but didn’t know I had got knocked out from under me here.

That’s really good for a person.  If you can live through it.

Good night!

Jane sent me this link, and it’s a doozie:

Check out this expose from within the adoption industry, by a former kool-aid drinking adoptee…

 

So I was talking with a friend the other day and it was clear that the he thought this adoptee was critical and negative, that my glass is half empty and that I needed a change of perspective:  this seems to be a common perception of me, especially to those who aren’t in my environment and especially when I try to explain my observations.  To which I told him I prefer the line.  I mean, nobody ever mentions the line.

I think the line is a fine place to be.  In fact, I haven’t met a half full person that was ever in the least bit convincing:  it’s always seemed like a defense mechanism to me, a manic response to avoid looking at the things that need to be looked at.  Neither are appearances (or, in my case, sounds – the sound of me grousing) everything.  I am in no way half empty.  My actions are positive.  They balance my criticism.  At least to me.  Yup.  I like residing on the line.  It feels healthy to me.  I think criticism is important.  I mean, don’t get me wrong:  I like to laugh.  I enjoy things.  I am passionate.  But what kind of person would I be if that’s all I did?  I’ve met my share of these glass half full people, and it doesn’t take peeling many layers to discover they’re often very negative or  in reality half empty.  I seek balance.  I like the tension of that line as well.

Meanwhile, on this rok on which this adoptee lives all around her the world is falling apart:  sweet smiling adoptees talk of suicide and  bitter rok dwellers add laugh tracks to their virtual lives while trains continue to get thrown off schedule by warm obstacles on theirs. Anger, self-pity, and nihilism surround me.

And I dare to be happy walking my line.  I am happiest when I return, as I always do, to embracing existentialism, which to me is every bit as ephemeral as that line which doesn’t really exist, because lines are just a concept.  And, like existentialism, I am often misunderstood as being negative when actually existentialism is a really positive acceptance of reality and our place in the world.  To me there’s nothing negative about its this-is-all-there-is-folks message.  It means this life is a wonder. It means we have an awesome responsibility to care for our moments of consciousness.

So I was thinking this morning about those who want to end consciousness.  I fought this compulsion once.  It was because I didn’t understand what was happening to me or why I felt pain.  I only felt blinding, searing pain and the need to stop the pain.  The pain was due to ignorance.  And the pain stopped as soon as I recognized its source, which is within me.  And damn, that was hard work.

But I didn’t want to end my consciousness to flip the bird to the world, to make a statement, to seek attention,  to damn anyone, to make anyone else feel regret or guilt, to prove anything, to cry that nobody loved me, or to punctuate a pointless sentence.  Those are manipulative reasons, dramatic sad attention-seeking reasons, and really irresponsible reasons, because they hurt everyone that person has touched.  Never mind the laziness of not bothering to seek the name of the pain.  Never mind the irresponsibility to oneself to value the wonder of flesh and blood in which thought resides.  There is ignorance and then there is a cop-out:  an easy way out of doing the hard work.  I feel sadness for the ignorant but I just get damned angry towards those who know better but are just too lazy to take a hard look at themselves.

We all know adoptees have higher suicide rates than the general population.  Our work is sooo complicated to sift through.  We suffer a lot of losses.  And because we don’t get grief counseling, we sustain those losses, and for some maintaining those losses is the closest thing they’ll ever have to holding on to their identity as griever, only its negative energy burns up the resources needed to see straight.  And some of the most rational people in the world can rationalize blaming everyone in the world except themselves, if it means they don’t have to do the hardest work of all.  And we run the risk of anger over our losses becoming our principle identity…

This identity thing is something I’ve been trying to get a handle on for quite some time now.  The first time I heard about it, I was like, “What is this identity crisis thing people speak of?  How can we lose something so intrinsic to our person-hood?  Just what is identity, anyway?”

Lately I’m thinking it has something to do with myth.  Joseph Campbell would say that individuals use myth as a guide for personal development, that they are cultural road-maps, and by cultural I mean a shared common wisdom.  But for us adoptees, we are separated from those common myths and are handed instead romantic fairy tales:  we were born under cabbage leaves, we were chosen, our adoptive culture’s myths that don’t include images of us must suffice.  And as blank slates, we are frighteningly free to create our own myths of ourselves, which is what you do when even your name is inauthentic.  And so we proceed without compass, obsessed with myth because we are so lacking in confidence over our real identity, because its voice is so tiny.

And this constant reminder that we are not what we should be in all ways creates a psychological mirror-checking neurosis, an unhealthy self absorption, a preoccupation with perfection, a need to please, a need to be accepted, a need to be admired.  And recognition of this constant reminder and our inadequacies only fuels frustration and anger.

And so we become tortured artists, or tortured anesthetized vagabonds, or tortured activists or tortured anything because that’s a nice romantic myth we can make for ourselves.  And we gather others like us around for confirmation of these constructed selves.  Or we become narcissists and sociopaths in an attempt to destroy our insecurity through social supremacy.  This is one reason I take issue with some definitions of adoptee community, because there’s not a lot of real caring for each other going on, though there is often a group cry of anguish and anger going on, or a lot of enabling and sympathy.  Even if it’s justified anger and producing positive changes, it’s still not healthy how everyone ignores what their real work.  Maybe I’m critical for good reason, and not just because I’m a negative Nancy.

To choose a false self, a constructed myth of ourselves, can never fully satisfy.  It’s like putting all your efforts into the wrong career.  I think this is why so many adoptees kill themselves, because the choice between uncovering our authentic selves and abandoning all the efforts we put into our constructed mythologies means the death of that constructed person and the prospect of having to start from scratch, or rather, that tiny tiny voice so hard to reach.

We all know adoptees have higher suicide rates than the general population.  But we also have the potential to understand what matters most more than others.  And so I feel blessed.  I am blessed for all my tragedies, because they’ve forced me to reach the most catastrophic conclusion and choose life, or rather choose to kill my constructed self-myth, and work hard to find that little abandoned girl and embrace her and feel, could it be peace?

So no, fellow adoptee, consciousness is not your enemy, the choices you make to deal with your pain is.