As I was waiting for the subway Thursday morning, the friendliest man in Korea (maybe twenty years my senior, quite pungent, wearing two hats, one on top of the other, with a soiled coat and pants, the hem bound up with striped leg-warmers – similar looking to the striped elastic half gator/half garters that laborers wear here [that harken back to the look of the way traditional men’s hanbok pants were fastened] but not as nice, yet too misshaped to be socks) started chatting me up.

When he found out I was a foreigner, instead of asking why I didn’t speak Korean like I always get, he instead started chatting to me more!  Hello!  Hello!  Hello!  He opened up his backpack and pulled out a bag, and from that bag he pulled out another bag, and then he started crushing peanuts in his hands and pushing them towards me.  I politely declined because I wasn’t feeling myself, but that didn’t put him off.

He would rummage around in his bag where he had a folder full of different photo-copied articles in Korean and read them as if he were on a mission, and then he cajoled/harassed/encouraged a bunch of middle-school-aged kids to take the opportunity to speak English to the foreigner, who all gave each other side-ways glances or shyly looked at the ground.  Then he started talking about someone in Florida and pulled out some pocket ledgers and started flipping through them. He pointed to a name on one of the pages, Odette, and had me repeat the name several times while he tried to pronounce it.

Before I knew it, his phone was shoved in my face and I was talking to Odette.  I asked her if she was his daughter in Florida and she laughed.  “Oh my god no!  He’s just some crazy old guy I met at a subway station!  He’s got an amazing memory, though!”  “So are you in Florida?”  “NO!!! I’m in Maseok!”  “And you’re not his daughter…”  “No no no!  I’m just teaching English here…”  And so we started to have a conversation, when suddenly he was tugging on his phone and I said, “I’m sorry, Odette, he seems to want his phone back!”

He got on the kids’ case to talk to me again, and so one of them asked me how old I was, and we played the age guessing game.  At which point he sat down to study his photocopies.  The kids moved on to another train door and I took their spot, keeping an eye on what crazy thing my new friend would do next.

He saw me looking his direction and, fishing into his backpack again this time he pulled out some cologne.  And he did a little jig while spraying himself at strategic locations with the cologne.  And then he got this bright idea and his face beamed and he started coming my way, finger depressed on the nozzle…

I think I let out a little scream as the cologne hit me, but I managed to side-step most of it, and tried to play it off as good-naturedly as I could.  “no, no, no, that’s okay! thanks!”

He sat next to me, reeking of cologne-covered b.o., fished into his bag with his grimy hands, pulled out a walnut, cracked it, and insisted that I take some of the nut-meats, to which I protested again when the train came.

Turns out he transferred the same time I did, and he insisted on being my guide the entire way.  While waiting for the next train I went ahead and bought him some coffee, to atone for turning down all his overtures.  And then, when I was surveying the route I would take on my subway map, he asked me where I was going, and proceeded to DRAW on my map his chosen route for me!   And then he told me he was stopping at Cheongyangri and eating some good food.  And he was so disappointed when I didn’t get off at his stop and go eat with him.   It was so sweet, as he was leaving, he said “hello, hello.”  Because he didn’t know the word for goodbye.

Why can’t typical Koreans be so friendly?  If I hadn’t had an appointment, I would have loved to have hung out with the old guy, even if he was a little crazy and stinky.  I mean, a friendly Korean is a gem, a rarity.  Maybe not to most white foreigners, but it is to me.  I should have given him a big hug, grime and all.

Later that day my friend Joyce called and told me there was a festival I should see, the Daeboreum festival for the first full moon of the year, and that they did cool things with fire at night.

But I already had plans to go visit my friend Miwha and her two daughters.   Maybe next year.  I see there’s a big one in Jeju…

I told them about my subway friend, and it turns out that walnuts and peanuts are a tradition on Daeboreum, and that the sound of shaking them in a bag wards of evil spirits and ghosts, which are called dokkaebi (도깨비)  Now I feel even worse that I turned down his offering to me!  (but his hands were so grimy!)  Suwan drew some for me, and while they varied in the amount of horns they had, they always had a magic bat.  The bat could be used to protect people or hurt them, depending on how good you were.

This one is similar to the one Suwan drew for me:

They’re always depicted kind of like cave-men

Miwha said they also eat 5 grain rice for 5 days in a row.

But perhaps the coolest thing is that I learned there’s a rabbit in the moon.  Looks more like a bunny than a man’s face.  I’ll always see bunnies from now on.  Korea changes a person’s views forever…

After that I was full-blown sick and basically stayed in the same position on Jane’s floor the entire time, aching or sleeping.  Some company.  I also missed getting to immigration to renew my alien registration card and will now have to pay a $100 fine…but I have somehow turned into a weenie when it comes to being sick – don’t know when that happened, but it did.  But I still really enjoy being a little delirious and especially not caring about anything, especially eating.

The following day we went to the hogwan and sat back as the students created posters of entirely their own direction after only being given images of adoption.   It’s so great what kids can come up with on their own!

From there I went to meet me new friend Kakki who’s moving away already for dinner in Suwon.  She just sold me her little 7-speed folding bike, which is super-cute, and which I plan to roam around the area a bit and see things that seemed too far to walk (that is, if I can hack the hills – most of the roads look fairly level and in the depressions, but we ARE in the mountains and looks can be deceiving)

After dinner I lit up a cigarette as they were walking to go meet more friends and I was heading back for the long commute home (way over 2.5 hours from Suwon), which is something I never do at home but often do in Seoul just because if I offend anyone, it’s minor and nobody I know.  But this time it wasn’t just a disapproving grimace.  This time heads were snapping in our direction, half a dozen people scowled.  And one woman looked like she was going to charge towards me and smack me.  Seriously.  She wasn’t just offended – she wanted to beat the crap out of me.  It was scary.  She looked like a rampaging gorilla, or a pit bull that can barely be contained by its leash.

So I was trying to figure out what was so different about this.  Was Suwon really that much different than Seoul?  Even the people I was with noticed (and believe me it’s rare when white foreigners ever notice when I’m treated differently)  I’ve no problem with a little disapproval, but outright hostility verging on violence is another thing.  And then I realized – I was walking down the street with half a dozen white people.  So not only was I a brazen hussy smoking in public, but also smoking while walking, but also cavorting with white people and ACTING JUST LIKE THEM, totally without shame. The whiteness was the active ingredient that made me so despicable, a white that no Korean harlot in fetish shoes, her buns hanging out of her micro mini and her false eyelashes hanging on by a thread of glue, being held up by some soldier, can match.  Because even in her whoredom she’s still looking and acting more Korean than I am.  Smoking is an act that may not be viewed favorably but is totally excusable performed by any white woman.  But to be (look) a Korean and act like that.  Well, might as well stone her.

I’ve already decided if I meet my family, then they gets what they gets.  I’m not hiding in shame for any reason.  That’s what happens when children get sent to other countries with different value priorities.  I’ll explain on the first meeting.  I won’t sugar-coat anything.  I’ll lower their expectations as much as humanly possible.  Would save a lot of the grief I hear my adoptee friends who’ve reunited go through every day.

Why don’t I just not smoke in public in metropolitan Seoul?  Because it’s the only place I can be even remotely free.  Because it’s full of foreigners and I’m a foreigner.  Because I don’t accept double standards imposed on me simply based upon the color of my skin.

I’m not Korean.  I’ll never be Korean.  I’ll never fully be anything anywhere in any country.  That’s just the way it is.  And when judgment like this take place, I don’t know why anyone would want to be.

I do know I wish I didn’t have so much fodder for writing in this blog.

One time I had the great fortune to have temporary job as an assistant Architectural spec. writer.  While most people might poke out their eyes having to format endless technical specifications in a legal framework, I enjoyed the OCD nature of it.  But mostly I enjoyed the company of my temporary boss, Miss Lotte Eskilsson, a sweet and bookish lady approaching her golden years.

On one particular day Miss Eskilsson got quite uncharacteristically fired up when I happened to mention primary colors.  Excited and irritated, she took down a book from her shelves about Swedish color theory while railing on about how there are NOT three primary colors, but four!  And then she went on a little rant about how limiting our non-Scandinavian color triad was…

Yesterday, while mixing colors for my first acrylic painting ever (which was worthy of the garbage can because painting with acrylics is like painting with GLUE and that pre-mixing the colors on the palette is better than blending on the canvas and that I’d do much better making thin glazes out of the stuff) that I remembered there were alternate color-mixing theories.  While I can see the future merits of its fast-drying properties for texture and abstractions, right now I lack the confidence and skill, so I’m going to go get oils as soon as possible – only I saw canvas but no stretchers, or canvas boards, so until I figure that out I might have to paint on masonite (which is super-cheap here)

So the three primary colors of the system we’re used to is chromatic and based on the subtraction or addition of light, while the four primary colors in the Swedish Natural Color System (NCS) include green, and they are based on the way in which the cones in our eyes perceive hue, as opposing waves.  It turns out that this system is not only scientifically calculable, easy to catalog, and creates a really pleasing palette of subtle hue relationships that can be relied upon for digital media and reproduction.

Nothing that a painter couldn’t approximate with the normal color wheel, but the theory of the NCS color wheel with its opposing wavelength complementary colors could be called upon when mixing shadows, etc. in  a less haphazard and more precise fashion.

If you like geeking out on this kind of thing, you can read in-depth about it and more at this website called handprint. I need to read it several more times, as it’s pretty technical and I don’t really have a grasp of it.

Wish I had Lotte’s book!  And a Daniel Smith art store…

Recently another international/transcultural adoptee approached me to add my photo to a video where he wanted to feature adoptees who speak  out publicly about their experience.  But I turned him down, because the background music he chose as a message of hope was David Bowie’s Heroes. I don’t consider myself a hero, though if others view me that way I am happy to have some role in inspiring them to work towards their own authenticity.

Also recently, another adoptee friend received some tragic and possibly terminal news and, like other adoptee friends I’ve known – tired – was not adverse to such a conclusion, but accepting, if not relieved.  I understand this.  We who have been cast about, our fates – despite all our best efforts – having a path of their own, have learned to roll with the punches.  We who have always lived with adversity as our constant companion have come to view free will and fate and the meaning of life on different terms than others.  It’s got nothing to do with being suicidal, and nothing to do with not loving life.  It just is what it is.  What else could it be?

Which got me to thinking about this movie:

The movie is fateless, (Sorstalanság in Hungarian) one of my all-time favorite movies, based on the memoirs of nobel prize winner Imre Kertesz, and stunningly, gorgeously filmed by Lajos Koltai

It’s not like any other holocaust movie ever made, because it does not focus on good vs. evil or romanticize endurance.  Its unique perspective (from the recollections of a 14 year old boy) is its place in time, and that time is the moment at hand.

And it speaks to me of one who is a survivor of sorts.  Because when faced with adversity, one does what one has to do, and one appreciates what one can, and one prevails – not out of heroism – but because we are existential and human.  It’s our life, it’s all we’ve ever known.  Adversity has hard-wired into us an acute awareness of everything others take for granted.  It changes your world view in the most essential way.  And ever after you roam the planet living an alternate reality.

What struck me about this movie was that, even after he was freed from Buchenwald, the boy can barely deal with a world so unlike his concentration camp experience.  Because that WAS his life.  Non-acceptance is not an option.  Appearing disaffected is the only recourse.  Whatever the rest of the world thinks of or imagines life there was like, it was his reality, and it forged the person he is and how he digests the world around him.

Not that being internationally/transracially adopted can compare to the horror of death camp, but the point is that your horror is our life.  How would you be had you lived our lives?  You would be fateless, that’s what.  You wouldn’t believe in destiny.  You’d just be or not be.  Smell the flowers while they are here.  Welcome death when it comes.

I encourage all people to watch this important movie, so you can understand what it is to live through trauma.  It’s not total devastation.  It’s sometimes beautiful.  Alien.  A sober and solitary journey.

These days, that’s what unwed mothers giving their babies all seem to say.  They give up their babies because they have no options and they hope the babies will grow up, come back, and search for them.

Now, what are the odds they will be able to do that?

Also, the unwed moms are telling us that the adoption agencies are telling them that they will have a better chance of reuniting with their children if they give up their babies to international adoption.

Better chance.  Does Holt tell them about the 2.7% reunion rate?

I just had the privilege of viewing some photos for a future exhibition of unwed mothers who gave up their babies.  They agreed to have their face photographed to improve the odds that when their children search one day, they can more easily be found.

How brave and sad and fucked up is that?

A few months ago Jane translated my on-line Holt family registry at Holt Korea.  Because, you know, you post your photo and bio in your native tongue and they don’t translate it.  So these moms had better learn English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, and Swedish…’cause who knows which country their child was sent to.  Most adopees don’t even know an on-line registry exists at Holt Korea’s website, or that there is a difference between Holt Korea and Holt International…

Even the adoption agencies can’t keep track.  Supposedly Jane was sent to the Netherlands…

What gets me is – how can anybody see any of this and still justify international adoption?  How?

So today I attended our high school’s senior graduation.  The last one I was on vacation and I’d just assumed it was right after school let out for winter break.  But no, that would make sense…Instead, Korean students take their college entrance exams and cease to be studious.  Their last month of school is spent goofing off, enabled by their teachers who show movies and let them do whatever they want, because they are “unteachable.”  These seniors even have to go to night classes.  Then, after winter break they come back for a week and again do nothing!  Man, set them free and don’t drag out the babysitting, for God’s sake…

None of the students today wore uniforms and we all assembled in the new auditorium, the students filling only the front half of it (it seemed like half the students were missing?) the parents and family filling the back, and on the stage a dozen city and county officials, a couple of teachers and the principal all dressed in suits.  I was dressed like a total scrub, and felt horribly conspicuous so under-dressed while sporting the “Congratulations on your graduation” ribbon all the teachers were given to wear.

Then, we were all lead in singing the national anthem.  Once again, it always surprises me because everyone in Korea only sings the first stanza and once again, I somehow know the second stanza from having to sing it in Heritage camp once when I was a kid and I remembered my Korean tutor asking me to sing it and how shocked she was because, as she told me, even most Koreans don’t know the second stanza.  I had one of those adoptee moments because it really feels weird to put your hand over your heart saluting the flag and singing the national anthem while bitter thoughts of being thrown away by your country crosses your mind.

Thank God we have a small school because they then hand out tons and tons of little awards.  There were a few whoops and hollers, but really tame in comparison to a U.S. graduation, and none of those Euro-centric academia gowns and mortar-board hats with tassels.  The principal and two other officials gave speeches and I was totally appalled to barely be able to hear him because parents and students were having loud conversations all around me.  Surprisingly, afterward everyone sings “Auld Lang Zine” in Korean.

The whole school left before lunch, so I went looking for a restaurant, but the whole town was eating out after graduation.  It seems they must have graduations for middle school students as well.  I stopped at the Goat and Duck place and there are only two items offered for single servings:  both soup.  Since I’d had the Goat before, I ordered the other soup, assuming it was duck.  Wrong.  Nae Jang Guk.  Which turned out to be intestines, which I fished out as I couldn’t even fathom biting through…

I stopped at the Alpha office supplies afterward to look for canvas-surfaced paper to try painting on.  They didn’t have any oil paint or canvas or stretchers or anything – just acryllics and watercolor.  Fortunately I had a small set of acrylics I bought but didn’t use for the puppet play that never transpired last year.  I did buy some gel medium because I read that acrylics dry too fast to push around for long, and I can’t imagine not being able to do that, and I’ve never used acrylics before.  Well, we’ll see.

Yesterday one of my students from last year brought me a hand-made Christmas card and a present, as we didn’t have an opportunity to connect before the break.  There’s something really all-American about this girl.  Something about her motivations, which are thoughtful and self-exploratory without being overly concerned about what her peers think.

The place is getting more comfortable, and at the same time not wanting to be included in society is really nice.  I’m just about business, but of course trying to provide value while here.  It’s going to be a good year.

Sorry I haven’t written lately.  I’ve been ’round the clock busy with TRACK work – for upcoming crazy ambitious events – and I’m talking CRAZY AMBITIOUS, which is to include dragging the art installation out again – and the all new multi-language website, which is structurally sound, works like a dream, and I’ve only got to copy and paste all the old content into it, finish the French menus and teach the TRACK team how to use it.  But I need to get away from it for a minute, since I’m also writing the broadcast book at school and so I don’t ruin my hands with carpal tunnel, I need to not be using the track pad or mouse.  I suppose I’m still on a computer, but typing is less strain than the other work.

All this work has been a wonderful antidote to the past month of emotionally destabilizing events from which I’m still numb and haven’t quite figured out.  The good thing is all my friend’s woes are working themselves out and I was able to help a little.  The work is so all encompassing that I’ve no time to even realize that I’m in Korea or not with my family or lonely or any of it.  It’s just project completion goals, achievable small goals, and plenty of them.  I thrive on this kind of pressure.  It’s the opposite of stress.  Stress is having no future and too much time on your hands…

Been so long since I’ve blogged – do I have any thoughts?  Or rather, do I have any coherent thoughts?

Two of my adoptee readers (that I know of) are preparing to come to Korea:  one to live for awhile, and one to visit for the first time.  One has found and one is searching.  One is sick of being treated like an other in America and wants to try on being an other here.  The other one wants to experience blending in for the first time.  What can I tell them (and others?) about coming here?  I’ve certainly changed being here, and a lot of it has been quite recently, undocumented here (these are how changes really occur, when we’re not paying attention).

I think the biggest change is I’ve stopped registering the differences.  I wouldn’t just write this off as becoming inured to culture shock – it’s still occasionally shocking;  even Jane goes through this after six years here – it’s more that I just don’t care.  And not caring is actually a liberating thing.  I’ve quit trying to adjust.  I’m just me in this place.  I’ve quit trying to revive whatever might have been Korean.  I’ve quit trying to make Korean friends.  I’ve quit longing for relationship and connection with Korea and Korean people.  I’ve nothing to love about them or hate about them.  They just are what they are.

When you first get here (adoptees, at least) everything hurts.  The sight of loving Korean families hurts.  The sight of children hurts.  The sight of biased harsh old people hurts.  The sight of old people enjoying community hurts.  The evidence of imperialism and blind acceptance of that and the self loathing and insecurity of that hurts.  The traditional culture that’s not yours hurts.  The family obligations everyone hates but you long for hurts.  The inability and frustration of not being able to communicate.  Oh, the list goes on and on…

And you don’t fit in and everyone judges you against their own fantasy of what an adoptee is.  And it’s a position with no foothold.  You don’t belong with any community:  foreign, Korean, even adoptee – as that doesn’t really exist.  This is the thing you have to realize.  This is a place you are from and a place you pass through.  Of course you know that when you first get here, but you don’t really KNOW that.  You dream of some meaningful and fulfilling connection, and you can’t really know the depth of that until you’re not here…and there is nobody helping you or patting you on the back or hugging you for the effort, either.  the work here is all on you, and it’s all personal – it’s subdural/subconscious/sub sub sub anything you can verbalize kind of work. But oddly enough, that kind of work doesn’t take place until you verbalize something in the ballpark. to someone.

So I guess my advice would be to treat coming to Korea the same way you treat any large body of work, and that is to set little goals and recognize milestones.  And don’t come if you can’t have any options to take a break when needed.  You should also have an outlet of some kind, beit physical or spiritual, as long as it’s not self-destructive.  It’s also nice to have an adoption-free zone, and I’m talking about people or a place where the word adoption doesn’t even enter your thoughts. Of course you can’t live there, but it can recharge your batteries.

On my trip back home my daughter cornered me in a conversation, calling me out for my habit of always building hastily assembled life-rafts and not learning to swim/of taking care of everything and everyone and ignoring working on myself.  She’s right.  So art school may be yet another life-raft, (more like a holey ship) but it is more about finally not ignoring myself.  I feel saved.  It feels good.  Even if it takes me another decade to get there, at least I’m on the road to self-actualization.

The biggest thing that has changed is that I accept that there is no discovery that can mend any of this.  This shadow is my constant companion and I just have to make friends with it.  Of course, I always knew that too.  But knowing and owning are two different things.

The one thing I still have is anger.  So many adoptees, the vast silent majority, swallow their sense of injustice because their outcomes were good enough to not justify outcry.  (never mind that swallowing any negative emotion is harmful)  Even as an abused child, I felt my outcomes were good enough to not justify outcry!  But this whole thing with Holt has felt like a rapist going free to rape again.  It’s like they have diplomatic immunity.  I’m all for vigilante justice in the case of  rapists – not to hurt them back, but to prevent them from hurting others.  And Holt continues to hurt others.  And they should thank their lucky stars that we adoptees are much more civil and ethical than they are.  I can’t express what it feels like to have no recourse.  And I’ve been raped before, and this is 100 times worse than that, because it altered EVERYTHING. A total mind fuck, that’s what identity reassignment is.  Now even with evidence of tampered documents there’s nothing I can do within the current laws.  All I can do is witness, witness, witness.

Really, adoption of children is a social issue that society should take care of:  it should never be privatized.  Middle men drive up the costs and introduce conflicts of interests.  We are allowing them to continue posing as saints when really they are opportunists and exploiters that are being enabled by people willing to turn a blind eye to ethical violations if it means getting what they want.  Plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the ocean.

But today, the work is alleviating some of that anger, and it feels good.  It’s not a life-raft, but it is soothing.  I’m happy to be one of the voices young adoptees might encounter the first time they’re not a captive audience at culture camp.  That’s my vigilante justice.  And art.  Just you wait.