But I can draw a western face…

How messed up is that?

Jeong-Ae gave me this little paper mache doll.  I’m supposed to amass a trash bag full of little naked orphans as one portion of our puppet play in Andong next month. This little lovable, flawed, raw, evocative, evolving creature made of ashes and blood – molded in Jeong-Ae’s hands in a few minutes could never have been born from my mind; my regulated, shackled, censored mind.

Each of the featured adoptees in the play were supposed to express our stories to be dramatized in the play.  But because I can’t connect to my demons or hopes or any images except hard-line realities, there is very little for me to express.  Where once I couldn’t communicate with words and had to make my family impatiently wait for me to draw a picture for almost everything I wanted to express, now I can’t speak without words.  Jane interpreted the word maum for me, which is this distinctly Korean concept that heart and mind are one.  I didn’t write down the word (damnit) for “untie,” so I forgot it, but Jeong-Ae told me I need to untie my maum.  I don’t think anyone noticed the tears welling up in my eyes as they told me this, because they didn’t know I’ve spent the last few years my whole adult life, trying to untie my maum, without success…

To be a writer who can no longer write, or a singer who has lost their voice, or as in my case, an artist who can no longer draw, is the saddest thing in the world…

For some reason, the word “sing” comes up in conversation, and I tell Mr. S. that birds sing.  He tells me that in Korea bird don’t sing, they cry.  Birds cry.  Animals cry.  People cry.  All living things in Korea share han.  They all cry.

Jeong-Ae reaches out and clasps me and Jane’s hands.  She tells us that because she has suffered, she can spread happiness. We must all promise, yaksok, to spread happiness.

Mr. S. and I hold hands.  One bird is crying, one is singing.  He doesn’t want to make me cry.  So sing, I tell him.  Sing. 

I keep meaning to document everything about Korea I encounter as a “newbie” before I become too inured to it all to be able to notice, but unlike a lot of foreigners here, my battles have kept me too busy to do as much as I’d like.  Here are a few that have been sitting in my camera that I meant to talk about, and I know I’ve been absent a few days, so here you go:

This is a light pole.  As you can see, it is armored quite heavily.  Why?  I’m really not sure, since a truck could still do a lot of damage despite the armor…

Here’s a close-up.  As you can see, this is not something you want to hug or lean up against…Korea is a hard place, full of hard textures, hard struggles for hard scrabble people, and rugged landscapes; all  beneath a blistering summer sun and the harshest winter chill.  I know it’s silly to say, but maybe tenacity and the ability to persevere truly is in our thick skin and thick blood…

If I can even say, “our.” As in our people, uri nara.  That’s the thing about being an adoptee – we have to earn that right, even though it should be as plain as the nose on my face.

This is a typical paving pattern you’ll see.  Concrete, stamped concrete, or marble is very rare.  It is mostly these various masonry units and, at the more traditional or post modern traditional sites there will be the most ankle-breaking square cobblestones you ever saw.

Notice the yellow ribbed stripe down the center of the sidewalk?  This is a wayfinding path for the blind.  And also notice how the direction change gets a different paving pattern.  Maybe I’m wrong, but there seems to be more blind people in Korea…but the ones that are here have been accommodated very well.  These stripes exist on almost all public walkways, and continue down into the subways.

where all the handrails have braile at the beginning and ends, and every first and last step has another change in paving pattern.  These wayfinding trails extend to the subway train cars (as mentioned in a previous post) and in this way, the blind can find the most expedient route to the train and exit directly to the stairs at their destination stop.

On the trains there are often blind people making their living  by walking the aisles with a loudspeaker playing music and holding out an alms basket.  There must be some organization for them, as they all have seemingly unlimited batteries for their music players and they all play a bagpiped version of Amazing Grace. And I’m a sucker for the sound of bagpipes AND Amazing Grace…

Other people in need often make a round of a train car, passing out literature describing their situation, usually selling gum at a mark-up, and then quickly make a second round to gather their literature back up.

Handicap accessibility for the wheelchair bound is not as good, but I see renovations going up everywhere.  Despite this deficit, it is still much better than Manhattan…

This is one side of Hagwon-ga near my school.  Notice the bus blocking this photograph. If you could see past the bus, you would see the entire street lined with similar buses (about fifty of them at the time of this photo) dropping kids off from picking the kids up from their various daytime schools to begin yet another round of classes at the private academies, or Hagwons.  There are so many on this boulevard that they named the street academy street.

Here is the other side of the street…ALL of those buildings are filled with hagwons.  About 6 floors each, with a retail business on the street level.  Building after building after building after building…all filled with cram schools.  The majority are for English and math, but there are also some art and music ones, and specialty ones.  This is the main drag, but there are still streets to the right and streets to the left also filled with less prominent hogwans, and sprinkled throughout this city in every neighborhood are even more.

So here’s a close-up.

See all those signs?  The majority of them are showing what schools are operating within.

Words can not express how insane this is.  If they spent 1/4th the money they spend on these hogwans to improve public education, Korean parents could contribute to the economy more, live more fulfilling lives, children could sleep at night, have sweet dreams, and think creative thoughts, and educators could focus on the child’s best interests instead of market forces…

Insane.

I wish I could make a living here in any other way than contributing to this madness.

9:30 pm, and I just noticed I had my t-shirt on inside out all day long…

Letter to my female adoptee friends:

I need a mother.

Not just any mother, but a mother who’s known loss.

I need to live with a real family.
I need to live this culture and stop looking at it through a lens.
I need to be validated.
I need affection.
I need…

I was thinking last week, that I should advertise for a mother.  I should ask to be adopted.

I need a reverse adoption.

I’m dead serious.

Jane –

Were the Mindeullae moms only those who were reunited?  Or those denied?
I thought they were beautiful.  Is there some way I can contact them?

I would help pay for expenses.  I would be a good respectful daughter.

I would like to set up a reverse adoption program for returning adoptees who haven’t been reunited, or for returning adoptees who would just like to do a homestay.  I would like returning adoptees to meet relinquishing mothers.  I think it would be frustrating, rewarding, and healing for everyone.

Your thoughts welcome,

girl4708

I quit my Korean lessons today.

Because I am too busy.  Because the lessons in text books aren’t relevant dealing with real live Koreans.  Because hearing you must study Korean very hard makes me want to cry, makes me want to rebel, makes me feel rejected as inadequate.

I can only learn about one word a day, IF that.  More like a word a week.  My brain is molasses, mid-life extra-thick aged molasses.  If it’s not relevant and used, it remains out of my reach – something I heard, but can’t quite connect.

I need to live with Koreans.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s the only way THIS particular person can learn THIS particular language.  Not so with other languages.  But THIS foreign language of my birth is beyond academic study.  Each word is coated with a hard shell.  Each word has too much significance and is loaded with pain.  I need to have someone who cares about me have the patience to wear down the hard outer layers, bouncing them off me again and again and again until they are soft enough to absorb.

TRACK is looking into setting me up for a home stay.  But really, I want to meet a family who will be committed to me, and I want to be committed to a family.  Someone who has experienced loss and who can have some empathy, and I can have empathy in return.  Someone who will be patient with me as I grow from age 2 AGAIN. Someone who has nurtured their children from pre-verbal to pre-school and are willing to do it again.

Language is meaningless if it isn’t communicating something to someone.

I have no one to relate to.

and I can’t do meaningless.

I’m shedding.

Little artifacts of me are left wherever I’ve been.

Poets on two continents have written about the value of one of these single long black strands of protein –  evidence that somebody was there.

But did it ever matter which person was formerly attached to that hair?

Or was it just a confirmation they exist, as they endlessly ask themselves, what am I?

The poets, the dancer, the red-haired boy, the father of my children, the rapist, the collective others, the pedophiles, the narcissist, the artist – they all endlessly asked themselves, what am I?

At least the artist was honest and told me he was the only thing that mattered…yeah, I did like him…

Only one person ever really loved or cared for me.  He crossed the sandlot mid practice to talk to me as I passed by, but I was late meeting new fake girlfriends and didn’t notice what his words meant.  I stopped in my tracks two blocks away when it hit me.  I never talked to him again, I was too terrified.

I would shave my head and give him all the strands I have, to listen at the sandlot again.  I would become a Buddhist for him.  But he wouldn’t ask that of me, because he loved me for who I was.   He didn’t have to ask, what am I?  He was a boy who loved baseball and a strange sad girl.

The artist once said the perfect girl is the one you can never have.  Maybe I am the sandlot boy’s perfect girl.