Every few days I have to stop and check myself:  Stop.  What are you doing?

Korea is making me fat.

Stop.  Korea is not making you fat.  You are making you fat.

But I eat only one starch at every meal, and I take half what others do, and I avoid sugar and all the sauces and everything fried and…

Stop.  You get no exercise.  It’s your own damn fault.

But it’s too freaking hot for life to get exercise.  And there’s no time.  And there’s no clean gym here and they only use the equipment I hate and…

Oh come on.  That’s just your excuse this year.  What about all the past years?

I got exercise.  I danced.  I organized huge gatherings.  I did yoga. I went places.

Yeah, so?  And you blew that all away, didn’t you?  Over and over and over.  You blow up everything you build.

That’s because nobody shares the same passion.  It’s all about them and not what’s beautiful.  They’re all fakes.  It’s even worse here.  There’s no one to relate to.  There’s nobody here to talk with.

So what’s new?  When you had 200 friends in Seattle, you still talked the same crap.

Yeah, but they weren’t real friends.  And at least there we shared the same culture and language.

What culture?  What culture did you share?  You tried every culture and sub sub culture and rejected them all.  You’re a misanthrope.  You’re lonely because you reject everyone.

Do I?  Or do they reject me?  Everyone here rejects me before they even get to know me.  I don’t know what’s worse – pre-emptive rejection on a mass scale or rejection by people who know you.

Oh please.  You pre-emptively reject everyone else.  You don’t even put yourself out there.  How can you be rejected?

I do so.  I’ve gone to clubs.  I’ve gone dancing.  I’ve gone to English clubs.  I’ve tried language exchange. I’ve…

Yeah, and you stuck it out for what, ten seconds?

But it was so lame.

You’re lame.  You expect this place to live up to your standards?

Who are you?  You sound like my mom…

I AM your mom.

*********

Welcome to my head.  This is the kind of shit that swims around in it. As you can see, I’m not easy on myself.  And btw, rejection is a word that didn’t exist in my vocabulary for 40+ years.  I don’t like these new words I’ve learned since acknowledging I was adopted.

Intellectually, I know that living in a foreign country is like accepting the metric system.  You’ve got to stop comparing and just accept the differences.  You’ve got to put away those things you’re accustomed to and just deal and find new things to embrace.

But DAMN.  I miss cool, overcast skies and espresso carts on every corner and a pastiche of individual expression that is (sometimes) more than just style.  And chit-chat.  Without a common language, life is devoid of that huge net of light support and reinforcement validating your person-hood  that everyone living in the country of their own language can take for granted. Try it for a week.  Zero chit-chat coming from you.  Total sound deadening earplugs in your ears so you can’t understand what anyone is saying.  Just don’t talk.  At all.  You are not a monk.  This is no voluntary vow of silence.  You just. Can’t.

Strike up a conversation.  Strike up.  Strike. Up.  S t r i k e.  S T R I K E.  The word gets weirder the more I look at it.  That’s my job here.  To dissect my own language, put it on a platter, and present it to people for consumption.  Strike with a match. Ignite a conversation.  Feed it like a fire.  Fan its flames.  Communicate.  Seek consumption.  Burn passionately.  Dancing flames.  Mind meld.  Melt together.

Not happening.

Every now and then I catch myself happy.  A kind of Stand by me scene where I’m skipping along railroad tracks and singing Lollipop kind of happy.  It comes from the beautiful country scenery.  It comes from watching others living their kind of normal lives.  And when I realize this is happening, I try to kill it.

Honestly, that’s what I do.  I don’t want to end up living here forever, which could easily happen! For as uncomfortable as I am, I always able to find something to appreciate around me and have the ability and drive to make everything I do personally rewarding.  But I can do that anywhere. I want to be discontent enough that I can leave at the first opportunity.  Because the truth is, I am misanthropically miserable no matter where I am on the planet, which means I am an equal opportunity discriminator.  And those lollipop moments can happen to me anywhere.  Because all I need are a few cinematic moments to feel joy, and I can find beauty even in land fills.  So staying here means settling for what’s at hand at the moment.  But I don’t want to just settle, since I can do better – I can settle someplace where I’m not bound and gagged.

I turn my t.v. on while waiting for the kettle to whistle.  There’s a dramatization of a woman who is drummed out of a household by a shrew of a halmoni.  Ut oh.  It’s one of those reunion shows.  The father keeps the baby and the halmoni resentfully raises it.  The mother comes back for a visit when the girl is about six and she gives her a beautiful coat.  The halmoni shrew runs her off and stomps on the coat, destroying it, while the little girl watches, crying.  Back to real life, on the set, a glitter-encrusted door opens up with the real mom behind it.  Mom and grown daughter fall into each other’s arms, weeping.  MC’s try badly to produce tears.  Paid audience dabs their eyes with handkerchiefs.  I am thinking, “Phew!  Close one!  You are soooo lucky you weren’t sent away!”

Right.  So these kinds of random things happen ALL THE TIME.  Being exposed to this is the kind of settling for what’s at hand that I must deal with ON TOP OF the language thing.  Much more than I bargained for, this constant agitation.

It might be argued that the communication thing is just another lame excuse, and that I’m backing down from the challenge.  Yes, it’s a challenge that I am backing down from.  But it’s not a lame excuse.  It’s my choice.  Taking on this language would mean a level of commitment that would consume everything I have.  The only reason I would have to do so is to further facilitate the adoption reform cause.  That’s not reason enough for me.

It might be argued (and has been) that I am not allowed to criticize this place unless I am willing to stay the long haul and dedicate my life to changing it.  Dedicating a life to something is no small matter.  I don’t believe framing it into an all or nothing choice is valid, either.  I think the people telling me these things don’t walk their talk.  I also think I do plenty enough for one person.  And I don’t believe it is up to me to change this place.  It is up to Koreans to change Korea.  And the very best way to accomplish that is to influence one person who has influence.  If there is a secret key to this door, we are still trying to find it.  Maybe Jane can find it.  She’s truly repatriated.  She also had the privilege of knowing her mother and has living family here.  What permanent connections do I have?  Except for maybe Jane?

I am spoiled.  I am a spoiled brat.  I want my espresso carts.  I want my spaghetti straps when it’s hot outside.  If I must be an expat, I’d much rather it be in Prague or Berlin or Nice or Budapest or Paris or Lisbon or Montevideo or…

I want to chit-chat with the pale red-haired shy boy who sat writing at the Joe Bar cafe every day.  I want to measure and be measured by the charm and depth of a conversation, by the nuances which indicate another person’s strength of character.  I also want the ability to discern and ferret out all those pretenses that would spell troubled waters later.  Ha!  I want to have awkward conversations with others equally unskilled at social graces!  That low expectation is like a pipe dream I can’t even begin to fantasize/hope for here!

And other expats would no doubt argue with me, but from what I’ve surmised is that those who stay are here by a total twist of fate/luck.  Here temporarily, they meet someone and then, then they get motivated to master the language.  Then suddenly they become scholars and experts on Korea.  Then suddenly they’re somehow better than all the other expats passing through.  Other than these relationships, one has to question the motivations behind why expats stay…and they all have something marketable that I don’t have – exotic skin, eyes, hair.  Or, if gyopo, at least some rudimentary skills and cultural inheritance without the stigma of being adopted.

No matter how active or involved or engaged I try to get here, as a Korean deaf-mute I must by default be judged  (and judge) superficially.  I’m tired of being measured solely by my appearance and lack of Korean skills.  And frankly, with so many more hospitable environments in the world – I see no reason why I should settle for this.

So I will continue to try to stop blaming Korea for all my weaknesses, and I will try harder to just accept and embrace what I can.  But this is just a really long visit.  I’ve got my eye on the door.

I’ve removed the previous post, Advice to white men, because a reader identified the blogger in question.

I’ve just too much on my plate to deal with a gender politics battle with a blogger and/or his fans.  I’m sure he has many valuable things to share on his blog, but just because someone is sometimes onto something doesn’t mean he should get blanket approval. The post in particular just left an eeww-ick feeling with me, and this was an attempt to try and figure out why.  I would never call an individual with an identity an asshole, so once his identity was revealed I felt it only respectful to take the post down.

On morning broadcast,

1. Talk about your insomniac weekend and hold up a paddle board with the word “CRAZY” every time you mention the word crazy, which you do, a lot.
2. Play the following Steve Martin comedy sketch, explaining how Koreans aren’t the only ones having difficulty:
3. Explain that everyone in America is not rich like on t.v., that the majority of Americans are middle class and there are many poor.
4. Explain how America values hard work and labor, and that there is no shame in dirty, dangerous, or difficult work and that actually, farmers and factory workers are iconic heroes in that America was built on their labors.  Show images of proud farmers and factory workers.
5. Tell the story of the Korean teacher who, given the choice between a new teacher or an auto mechanic who makes $20,000 USD more than the teacher, wouldn’t allow his daughter to marry the auto mechanic.  Explain how an American girl marries for love and how Americans would not look down on an auto mechanic.  Point out that these are good examples of how radically different our cultures are.
6. Explain how the world thinks Americans are obsessed with money, but that in an American classroom it would be unusual for a student to talk about being a CEO of a company and instead they would talk about what they like to do, whereas in Korea it isREALLY common for kids to say they want to be a CEO of a company.

The message is:  it’s okay if your dad’s a farmer and it’s okay if you don’t become a CEO of a company, and it’s okay if your husband isn’t part of the elite class.   Just do your best and be happy.

At lunch, the principal had me sit down next to him and said, in his broken English.  “We want you stay at our school long time.”

So my gyopo friend convinced me to take this music class for foreigners.  I’m excited to do so, but also have reservations because of the time commitment and commute when I have so much on my plate.  I’m also concerned about continuing support, as it’s just an introductory survey and if I end up loving it, then what???

After taking a class, all the above still holds true.  With perfect timing and precision planning, it still took me 2.5 hours to get to the class.  Another student repeating the class also had such a commute, coming from the Taebak mountain area.  I was both happy and disappointed to see an adoptee I know there (as I wanted an adoption-free past time) but as long as we don’t end up talking about it and I can meet others it’ll be okay.  Only it kind of put me in a bad mood…(she’s a nice girl, nothing against her personally!)

An attempt to give the class in English always broke down into Korean, but the language barrier didn’t matter much.  Except for some pointless attempt to make an analogy of music with the colors of the rainbow, everything else was of value and kind of global, as music is.  And so they used numbers and the do-re-mi system to coordinate strings with notes.  All in all, the teacher was very good at imparting the basics through the language barrier, though for any difficulties or detailed explanations, she had to default to Korean.  Fortunately, there were a few foreigners in the class (a couple of gyopos and my adoptee acquaintance) who knew Korean.  Here’s an example of the instrument I chose:

This is from soundofasia.com, and on sale for only $899.00  (sigh) why do I always pick the most expensive things on the planet to love?

We were given a CD of traditional music at the orientation, and a gorgeous how to introduction to the gayageum booklet during class.  In it, it showed that Korea already has a naming convention for the notes, similar to do-re-mi.  It would have been nice to learn that instead, but I guess since most of the foreigners will stop with this class, it’s better to use something we’re familiar with.  But since we have to memorize the order, it seems we could have easily/should have done this in Korean.

Anyway, it was EASY!  Plucking is so much easier than bowing!  (referring to my cello attempt bowing trauma) Which makes sense, because with bowing your interface with the instrument is that much more complicated, where as plucking with your fingers is direct and straight-forward.  Aside from my nails being too long and the bridge for the 12th string always falling over because the string wasn’t strung tight enough, everything went really well.  It’s just too bad we only have access to the instrument during class time, so progress is going to be slow over the next 12 weeks.  I also wish the class was longer, to make my 5 hours of commute more worth-while.  I played around with the tone I could get with each pluck, and found it will only sound rich if you pluck HARD.  I also plucked out Arirang just playing around and after class, and afterward I got embarrassed when I realized that the other students didn’t appreciate that I could do that.  Then after class the teacher came over and put a mark by my name.

Hope I haven’t set myself up for failure.  Other classmates asked me afterward if I knew how to play already and I explained how my father was a music teacher, how my whole family had musical talent, and how being adopted all my attempts failed.  The other adoptee told me, “maybe you just needed a Korean instrument!”  That’s cute and all, but again – this is another reason I don’t like hanging around adoptees – they’re always making leaps trying to connect and reaching for things and getting me to participate and it bugs me.  How can one instrument be easier than another simply by merit of its origin?  Bah.  Food and language are big on the reaching for connections thing.  I discount a lot of it, (not all of it, just the things that seem like a stretch) especially with those adoptees sent away at less than a year old.  (but to clarify, I DON’T discount their loss of mother!  That’s huge)  A lot of these attempts are as annoying as adoptees liking kim chi and saying, “it’s in my blood.”  Or Koreans asking if you can handle spicy food and them saying, “it’s in your blood.”  Well, no it isn’t.  A lot of Koreans don’t like kim chi or spicy food.  What about their blood?  But on the other hand, there are many adoptees who were four, six, nine, etc. years old who can’t remember one thing.  For them, it’s not about reaching for something that never existed.  For them, reclamation is so painful their bodies and minds won’t let them go there.  Me, I’m somewhere in the middle.  I won’t reach for things that probably never were my experiences.  But some things here, like the time I ate rice porridge for the first time and tears came involuntarily out of nowhere, some things are based on very very real losses.  A major part of returning here to live is juggling what about Korean culture you want to learn.  With so much about Korean society worth rejecting, we must work at finding the things we want to embrace.  Culture we can embrace.  But we have to start from the beginning.  New.  We’re not “regaining” anything.  We’re foreigners now and always will be.

While looking up some gayageum images for this post, I got all excited when I found this:

THAT piece of scrap paulonia wood he’s cutting off is JUST what I need for my guitar neck!  I wrote the author asking him to put me in contact with the gayageum maker.  Hopefully he’ll answer me.  I’d love to visit his instrument making workshop and also buy some of his scraps.

Oooh!  hope hope hope.  I know I shouldn’t do that, but this could be a very very exciting thing, especially if me+gayageum turns out to be a good match.

I’m also checking my mail every day.  I ordered a DVD on how to play 3 stringed guitars.  I’m excited because it’s all by ear.  I’m pretty convinced that the way I was taught music – analytically – killed me and didn’t work with my learning style.  Not only do I have a steel plate in my head about Asian languages, but I also have a steel plate in my head when it comes to music theory.  There are also too many leaps I must make from reading the notes to playing sometimes.  Music, like dancing, should be intuitive, and never a problem, torture, or trauma.   It seems like everything in my life I am trying to wipe the slate clean of pollution and start fresh.

The streets of Seoul have a soundtrack to them.  Music is a big part of people’s lives here, and it’s evident everywhere.   It’s all hi fidelity, studio mastered and overly produced, except for when the old people have their radios tuned to something called TROT, which is belted out and full of vibrato and is kind of equivalent to a cross between pop ballads and show-tunes. (Think of M*A*S*H and the kind of music being played in the 50’s)  Pop rules here, and has since the radio became common-place.  So walking the urban streets is an experience of hitting zones of sound, quickening your step.

But to me, after having been in the caribbean, it still seems insulated and sterile, simply because I never hear live music and people’s reaction to what is being played is so reserved.  There’s just not the excitement of people so moved by music as to drop everything and dance, or pick up a trumpet and practice.  There are no street musicians.  Occasionally you’ll run into free public performances at selected locations or promotional events, but nothing is spontaneous or done for individual enterprise on a grass roots level.  I wish I could play an instrument.  I’d be out there busking, just to set an example.

I also tried to convince my rueda friend to take dancing to the streets, but he kept talking about finding a loud enough boom box, which I never really needed so don’t understand.  And, like every other salsa teacher I’ve met, it’s all about growing a class, which I also don’t understand.  Dance should be given away.  Everything that makes people feel good about themselves using the body they already inhabit and the skillsets they already have (if you can walk, you can dance) should be shared for free, in my opinion.

The bulk of the music is the ubiquitous Kpop, and as much as I think it’s insipid, I have to admit it is catchy, and teenagers will be singing it as they shop.  Often times, bars will pipe their music to the street and it will be American pop or jazz.  And then, in the college areas clubs will blast hip hop and the never changing, unfortunately never dying pump of the club noise some call music.

On the subways, half the people are listening to their Ipods and some are singing to themselves, sometimes audibly.  Sometimes, a bagpipe rendition of Amazing Grace will carry through the car and it will be coming from a blind person soliciting for donations.

If you are at or near a subway station and you hear oldies folk or pop songs blaring, it is usually coming from what I call the mermen.  These are the men with fins instead of legs.  The fins are made of black sheets of rubber and used to protect their withered limbs, because their half paralyzed mobility is achieved by laying their torso upon a dolly and pushing themselves forward with their arms while dragging their fins behind them.  In front of them will be an amplifier, also on a dolly, and a box or basket for change.  It’s a horrific sight to see, especially because Korea’s weather is so extreme:  especially the brutal sun.

On hot days (of which there are sooo many) where people with working limbs are panting for air, who can move and catch air or run for shelter, these mermen bake:  bake under rubber.  I can’t imagine how blistered or ulcerated their skin must be under that rubber.  And they are so dirty, as of course you’d be when you spend your life half of your body being dragged on the ground, the other half only inches from the ground, your hands as feet.  Sometimes you can see glimpses of their skin, and it makes me wince.

 

It’s so disturbing.  I mean, Seoul is a world class city.  I can’t express how much money changes hands here each and every day.  The amount of shopping that goes on, the amount of conspicuous consumption, the amount lavished on interior design and …It’s as if Korea just skipped several chapters in economic development. or political maturity.  They went from agrarian to chaebol (conglomerate companies) overnight and just went straight to Raeganomics, with a populace who doesn’t want to pay for any social services and a government that wishes democracy wasn’t so damn democratic.  Maybe all of the above systems would work if the corporations and political cronies appeased the masses better, weren’t so greedy and corrupt and had job training, etc.,  (I’m of the personal belief that all political systems could possibly work if they had no competition and operated in a closed system, but since we don’t live in a world even remotely resembling that, I’m of the personal opinion none of the political systems work) but what, what about the mermen?

Now, I don’t know why these men don’t have wheelchairs or why society can’t at the very least provide them with that.  But I suspect that if they HAD wheelchairs, then they wouldn’t be pitiful enough to beg anymore, and since society won’t allow them any more productive role or give them enough support to live, then they have no real options but to develop really strong neck muscles.   And so they bake, like beached fish, and hope that individual people will be more generous than society at large.

In the Jongro area, In Itaewon, and any of the major tourist centers of Seoul are busloads of tourists.  These busloads of tourists are Asian tourists, and the majority of those are from the Philippines.   They are here because of Hallyu, the Korean wave.  Korean dramas and Kpop music are adored by most of Asia.  Especially in S.E. Asia, Korea is seen as living the life.  It’s the American dream, Korean style.  And Korea’s got this formula down when it comes to image and entertainment.  Which is exactly why I don’t like it.  But Asia eats it up.  They come to Seoul to see the conspicuous consumption, where it really is like in the movies, where you can buy Bulgari watches and Coach handbags and Prada shoes and drive an imported Mercedes, get your eyes, nose, and breasts improved, and rave all night at clubs with exclusive guest lists.

The tourists hear Korean music and this is what they think of.  I hear Korean music and after the image of vapid infantalized girls or tramped up girls disappears, I am left with nothing but mermen.

Let’s just say I have an uncomfortable relationship with music in Korea.

Just issued a warning by the state department.  Winds of up to 98 mph possible…and I was told there were no natural disasters plaguing this country!  Hmmph!

I wondered about that, since it’s just north of a string of islands and surrounded by water…

Thankfully, I’m inland quite a ways and the winds will have been slowed down a lot.  A typhoon, by the way, is essentially the same as a hurricane but born in the Pacific and heading towards Asia.  I weathered a near hit by what they called a tropical cylone (again, essentially the same thing) in Guam and several tropical depressions while there, and it was fun and exciting (and fortunately there was no damage).  It rained like crazy, the wind picked up, the barometric pressure got really weird and then the entire sky turned GREEN.  I almost died because my cat got out of its box as I was driving to stay with friends and she insisted on hugging my feet, between my feet and the brake pedal, and I couldn’t extract her for the life of me.  I finally just had to step on her…Back at home after a lot of debris to clean up and water infiltration, but my cinderblock home was essentially cyclone proof.

There hasn’t been any drills for typhoons in my school, or any kind of drill for anything, for that matter, so I’ve no idea what we’re supposed to do.  But really I’m looking forward to that strange feeling in the sky, similar to tornado weather in the midwest.  Hopefully it doesn’t make landfall in Seoul.  There are a LOT of decaying slums that would be a disaster and human tragedy were they to be hit.

I’ll just madly scramble to get my morning broadcast done in time for school tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll make it be about storms…