Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Her mirror


Visitors always complained about the mirror in her bathroom.
“I didn’t know I had such bad skin until I looked at myself in that mirror!” one guest said.
“Whenever I visit your house I’m reminded of how ugly I am,” said another.
The mirror was situated between two high quality fluorescent bulbs, the kind of lighting that doesn’t let a single flaw go un-illuminated. This mirror was where she spent hours searching and striving for perfection, the way a priest spends his whole life pursuing God. It was the kind of mirror for people who had forgotten what self-esteem was, for people who valued beauty more than anything.

Thursday, July 7, 2011


I only clean when I have a problem. If you come to my apartment and it’s entirely clean, I’ve crawling away from a big problem. When I’m happy, I couldn’t care less. If you see my clothes everywhere, dirty dishes piled up and populated with insects, and papers in piles of no real order, I’ll probably say, “Oh well, let’s get out of this place. Who wants to stay here anyway when the world’s so beautiful?”

Memory

"For most of our lives, we don't think that what we're doing is important. It seems like ninety-nine percent of the time we're thinking about things we've already done, in the past, or our to-do lists, our hopes, our dreams, the future. We're too busy with thoughts to focus completely on the present. We only focus when something really important is happening.
"Do you know how memory works? We can only make memories well when we're focusing on that moment. That's why we misplace our keys, or leave the stove on. They're things in our daily routine. We never think about them consciously. It's not important. We remember important things, because we recognize them as important at the time.
"When a bear is chasing you through the woods, trying to tear your head off, that's something you remember for the rest of your life. Why? Because you're fully in the moment. You have to be. And then later, because you were so intensely focused, you can remember everything about that event: the exact shade of brown of the bear's fur, how many teeth he was showing you, how long the strands of saliva dangling from his teeth were, the crunch of the leaves under your hiking boots, the scrape of his claws against the earth, the smell of the pine trees, the crisp autumn mountain air, your sweat.
"Now, being attacked by a bear isn't the only way to create a memory. You can make new memories at any time. If you focus on being in that moment, concentrate on taking everything into your mind through all of your senses, leaving nothing behind, licking the entire plate clean, you can make a memory that will last you for the rest of your life.
"We can't be sure what will happen to us. Maybe we'll get in a fight next week, break up, move on, and never see each other again. Maybe we'll stay together, get married, grow old, and love each other til the day we day. Maybe somewhere in between. We can't see what circumstances the future will give us. But what we do in this very moment can change our futures. We can control the future by creating the past, by making a memory that will last until we die.
"Let's make a memory together. Focus. Concentrate. Feel the sand under your toes, soft, but also grainy and hard. The wind blowing that strand of hair across your face. You pushing it back away. That child's laugh. The gentle crashing of the waves. The burning sunset. The salty air. Our hands, warm, together.
"We can make this last forever. In this moment, I love you more than anything in the world. I might not feel the same way ever again. But in my memory, the memory I make right now, I'll be loving you this powerfully, and since I'll have this memory forever, I'll love you forever."

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

From the last chapter of Siddhartha

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. I suspected this when I was still a youth and it was this that drove me away from teachers. There is one thought I have had, Govinda, which you will again think is a jest or folly: that is, in every truth the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real."

"The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people--eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and the dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good--death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me."

Long quotes, but still small compared to how much is said.

I've read this book three times now. Currently I've been reading the Bible, thinking about God, and trying to figure out how to live my life. So the most recent time reading this book has been the most powerful and insightful for me.


In reading the Bible, I see many contradictory stories or ideas. But these passages from Siddhartha explain those away: words cannot fully encapsulate wisdom, and certainly cannot contain God. I've frequently been tripped up on words in the Bible. God is greater than anyone can imagine. Religions seem to be invented by men to contain God, to define him, to transmit His words to us. But like wisdom, the word of God (which might be what we call the elusive "wisdom") cannot be told simply through words.

Religion is too one-sided, like the words Siddhartha mentions. I met a student who was writing about how Creationism and Evolution don't have to be separate ends of an argument; they can co-exist and even complement each other. In general, men telling each other who is right and who is wrong about God is inherently foolish. Who can say that they really, completely know God except God himself.

My friend recently laughed at a book he was reading because the author wrote that he had never believed in God more than when he was in a North Korean work camp. My friend laughed and said, "Yeah, when he saw his friend getting beaten to death with a pipe, it made him believe in God." It does sound ridiculous, and I almost conceded the point to him. God is supposed to be all-powerful and all-good; how do things like that happen?

Churches make strong distinctions between sinners and saints, the work of God and the work of the devil. If you do x it means you've sinned, but if you do y, then you've done God's work.

But isn't everything God's work? Isn't even Satan God's work? In these passages from Siddhartha, we can see that everything is connected and everything is good. Of course, "good" is just a word. We could just as soon say "everything is bad" or "nothing is good" or "nothing is bad" and they would all be true. A limitless God is something that we can't comprehend, so why do we have to try to define Him, or Her, or It? Let's just live, ask questions, and think. And love.

Coffee Bean observations (from July 4)

This cafe is nice; I like it. The music is the kind of music that should be in all cafes. Some, like Caffe Bene, play rap music, pop music, shiny, catchy music designed to get your attention just like all the flashing neon signs in this city. Coffee Bean's music is soft, light, and flowing. Like a river, you know it's there, you can hear it, you can see it, but it doesn't rob you of your attention; you can still think. It's much better to think in front of a river than in front of a neon sign.
The place is clean too. Shiny stone floors, shiny, soft, black leather chairs. The wood tabletops shine too. It's not stuffy, smells cool and fresh. The smoking area is nearby, and a faint cigarette smell wafts in at times, not intruding, but hinting, and it reminds me of my grandmother's house.
There are three other people in the room. I wonder if they have any idea if I'm writing about them. Two of them are a couple. They're sitting in the leather chairs by the windows like everyone else in the room; the hard wood, wicker, and metal chairs in the center of the room are empty, like a desert in the middle of an oasis. The man is wearing a kind of Che Guevara hat and thick black-rimmed glasses. He looks out the window a lot, presumably thinking. His girlfriend has short hair, isn't dressed too fancy, but still talks on her phone too much. When she talks to him, he smiles and listens, but she talks much more than him. She's very skinny. Thin arms jut out of her billowy yellow T-shirt and thin legs prop her up behind billowy blue pants that hang like curtains. She's pretty and stylish. They just left.

Now it's just me and an artist girl sitting at the table in front of me, facing me. We made eye contact for a moment when I first sat down and I couldn't tell if she was a girl or a man with long hair. She's not girlishly pretty. But now that I look at her she's prettier than that glimpse revealed. Longish hair, half tied, falling around her face, unkempt. She's wearing a shirt that looks like a man's shirt, a gray button-down, a bit too big for her. She had two books on the table before, the top one was about Andy Warhol. She didn't look at them, she was always looking at her phone instead. She has an iPhone, like everyone else. Now that she is standing up, I see she's wearing a bright red skirt and sport shoes and bouncing as she walks. Her entire body is very different from the top half I saw of her over the table. Her art books are in one of her two army green bags.

TPR cheating dream (from June 28)

I'm somewhere watching CCTV. I'm not sure what's going on exactly, but some crime is on the tape, and I know where it is.
At The Princeton Review (where I work), the other teachers know that I've seen the CCTV tape and know about the crime; they are guilty of what I've seen. I've also seen other forms of dishonesty, such as giving children answers for their tests. I don't say or do anything, but they know that I know.
Eventually Audrey (my boss), followed by many other teachers, all wearing the black TPR polos we all have, burst into my room without saying anything, looking sternly at me. My face flushes. I'm afraid. Then a fat, ugly, mean teacher says "We're here to have the students take the tests again." Now that they know their dishonesty had been revealed, and for fear that I might tell someone, they are going to have the students take the test again to get an honest result. The students fill the desks of my classroom after this is announced.
They tell me I can go, that they will take care of the test, but obviously I want to stay, to keep them honest; how will I know they just won't cheat again? I'm being shuffled out of the classroom as they hand out the tests, and I know that it's wrong and I should stay, but they're herding me out like a sheep.
I say "You can't treat me like a--" but before I can say "child", the fat teacher, with a stony face says "uh-huh, ok" as if I'm a whining toddler whose words are insignificant. She shuts the door in my face.
I walk away from the classroom and into the labyrinthine academy. The halls turn in many different directions and there are classrooms everywhere. I try to glance in at a few of them. My youngest brother Cian is in one class. I see him answering a question, then writing something, then leaning over his desk, with his eyes tied to his teacher's face with a string. He doesn't see me. He's a good student, I'm proud of him.

Monday, July 4, 2011

July 5 - Jobs dream

I'm on the phone with someone from Mexico was introduced to me by my friend. I've never met him, he just got my phone number and is calling me about an English teaching job. On the phone, he is very strange and not welcoming. It's like he's playing with me. He won't give me any real details about the job, although my friend has told me it's lucrative and a good job. Finally, he says, as the last part of the interview, I'm to tell him the definition of a word. Then he says, dramatically, "The word is...hhhrfffghf." I hold my ear closer to the phone and say "Can you say the word again? I couldn't hear you." He says the same muffled sound, clearly not a word. I hang up.
He calls back and I answer, telling him that I couldn't hear him and the phone must have not been working. He is a little bit angry and tells me that I must tell him the definition of that word, or more precisely, I must make up a definition for this word that doesn't exist. That's the real challenge: not a test of vocabulary, but of creativity.
I ask him to use it in a sentence and he tells me: "The 1988 vintage had a certain hhgfhhghf that pleased him."
Quickly, with reflexes and panic honed in classrooms, I start walking faster, pacing, with the phone still held to my ear, and I start speaking very quickly, looking down at the ground: "a distinctly oaky  flavor caused by long periods in the casket, and an acidity that reminds one of an attack of rabid badgers on the tongue."
I want to say more, but nothing is coming to mind, so I just stop speaking, although I'm still pacing and my heart is still beating; the creative engine is still heated up but has no more fuel.
He's silent on the phone for a while. Then he says he'll email me.

Then I'm in China. I'm with my sister and her friend who has worked there and I ask my sister's friend about how to get private lesson gigs here. I've applied for a coaching job in China, despite only having coached a low level middle school team in America. I check my email; I read a cryptic message from the Mexican, which confused me, until I read the subject: "You're accepted". I also have an email from the Chinese team, which has a brief English message among the Chinese that tells me I'm accepted as well.

We're on a bus going to our destination in China. I'm with the two girls and a lot of other people we're talking to. It's a sunny day. I'm thinking about my options and how I'm not sure if I should take one of these two jobs, or just go back home; I've been away from home for so long. My sister tells me to just take one of them, of course, why would you even think about it. I say aloud something that I don't really believe: "Teaching in Mexico or coaching in China: pretty good to have those kind of options!" Everyone else on the bus, all travelers, many American, smile at me.

Then we're at a huge bus stop. The glass dome over it seems to go into the sky for a mile. We ask the small information desk how to get to our hostel. They don't speak English. They point and things on our map and draw arrows, but we're still not sure where to go and we're smiling and they're smiling because everyone is frustrated but is trying to find the humor in the situation. Finally we leave and my sister says goodbye in Korean, mixing the two languages up.

As we're leaving the tourist information building, there's a huge, wide street, at least 10 lanes across. One tiny, green, one person car backfires and then the wheels fall off. My sister says "Oh my God!" and then the front part falls off. Then we can see the driver who is leaning back against his seat with his arms at his side and mouth open, looking dead already. The car trips over itself, flinging the bottom of the car, with the driver, onto the front part that had fallen off. It's gruesome and improbable. People run to help him. The man stands up, not dead, but now a tangled mess of human: one arm and shoulder bent behind his back in an unnatural way.

I run towards a wall and start throwing up. Not even my sister or her friend feel the same urge.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Moon and Mars Dream

I'm at a party on the moon. It's a club, not too big, low ceilings, not too fancy, but I can't see well because it's very dark. There's gravity; actually everything's the same as it would be at a club on Earth except that the people are wilder and more drunk, more festive. They're on the moon after all.
You can look outside and see the stars and the surface of the moon, illuminated by spotlights but gray, not like the pearl you can see in the sky at night. I glimpse outside at times during the party. When I do, I think, "I can't wait to tell my friends about the party on the moon."
I start talking to a girl who's there. She asks me if I've been to some places on the moon, tourists spots. I don't know the names of any of them, I didn't know there were tourist spots on the moon, although of course there are tourist spots anywhere; I just assume they're some craters that are bigger than the rest. I laugh and tell her no, we're on the moon, what kinds of sights are there to see? She laughs out of pity and I'm disappointed in my answer.
Then I pull her aside and say "Do you know how short life is? I've never kissed anyone on the moon. Not many people can say they have. Have you?" She smiled but she didn't kiss me.
Then I was in a spaceship, looking out the window at Mars. It was red, very red, but, like the moon, there wasn't anything special to see.
Then I'm walking in Apgujeong at night. It's dark and there's the light from the streetlights, and the lights of the cars, and the stores. People are walking around, some are laughing, others just walking. I wonder if I was on the moon or if I just imagined it, and I wonder if it even matters.

Journal 7-1 fight club


Today’s focus: anti-materialism (again).
I started with my girlfriend. We were going to meet her friend and her friend’s son, and I had debated with myself what I should wear. I decided on a t-shirt and jeans, because why do I need to prove anything to anyone. She wore shorts and a button-down shirt, also pretty casual. And in fact she asked me if it was OK to be that casual, if I didn’t mind. I told her of course not and that I had thought (if only briefly) about my own clothes, but reminded myself that I love my girlfriend partly because she doesn’t care too much about things like clothes.
Then we walked past a suit shop (one of the many in Cheongdam). I asked her if she would like it if I wore the suit in the window instead. She said it would be very nice sometimes. I agreed, it was a nice suit and I would look great in it.
Beauty can come from materialism. The cathedrals in Europe were paid for through not-so-holy means, and the idea of building a huge, rich, ornately decorated place to worship a God whose son was a carpenter, owned nothing, and encouraged his followers to give everything away is a bit more than ironic. But still, those cathedrals are beautiful. Beauty comes from interesting places.
That night, at the café with my girlfriend and her sister, the subject came up again. She was talking about the spoiled kid who she’s teaching. Her student has so many tutors; her parents have too much money and pay other people to teach and take care of her. When she acts up, she gets new expensive things. And for me the most interesting part of the story is that the mother, despite being the richest of all the parents who JungRim knows, is the one who looks the most scared.
“Only when we lose everything are we free to do anything” is the line from Fight Club I mentioned after our chat. People who have nothing are afraid of things too, but unlike the rich people, afraid of losing their superficial possessions, the poor have to confront their fears, and in doing so usually makes those fears smaller.
I can only guess, since I’ve never really been rich, that being too rich is a kind of addiction. Just like any other addiction, you have to keep feeding it to make up for some deficiency in yourself. Scared rich people should be a contradiction: money should mean stability. Food on the table, a roof over your head for a long time. Survival assured. But when spending money becomes a reaction to some outside influences you can’t cope with, it becomes an addiction. If you don’t know how to make your daughter feel better, spend some money on her. If you don’t know what other people think of you, buy some expensive clothes or a nice car to impress them. If you don’t know how to teach your daughter, just get the most expensive schools and tutors. But then there’s a problem. Since you’re letting money take care of the things you should be taking care of, you become even more scared of losing that money. It’s taking care of everything for you, your life is based around it; if it goes away, everything will fall.


Journal 6-30 edukators


Watching Die Fetten Jahre sind Vorbei. The scene with Jule explaining about the debt she owes to a CEO for totaling his car was powerful for me.
I’m growing angrier with both the capitalist system and, more importantly, with myself.
First, myself. I chose to go to an expensive private college, without having any idea of what I was going to study or what kind of job I would have. I did get a scholarship, but I mainly went there because I wanted to play soccer and I liked that I could explore different subjects and find out what I wanted. I made the decision to go to Beloit when I was in high school.
At that time, my parents told me I could go to whatever school I wanted to; cost didn’t, and shouldn’t, matter. And I could study whatever I wanted to. Follow my dreams. It was hard for me to decide; because I had no idea what I wanted (I still don’t really). But I made a decision, although it wasn’t a passionate one.
Then, almost right before I left for college, my parents told me I would have to pay for a third of it. They phrased it in a way to make it seem like it was good for us (my sister was going to another expensive private college at the time and was in the exact same situation), that it would build character and that we could get some good experience of how to pay for something worthwhile. I realize now that it was only because they realized that they were in so much debt that they couldn’t pay for our educations themselves, even though they had practically promised to before.
I was a stupid eighteen year old kid with no experience with debt or jobs or even society as a whole. I obsequiously and even a bit happily agreed to take on the responsibility (although I didn’t have a choice), thinking that if my parents were telling me to do it, it must be good for me.
Now I’m stuck with debt that will be difficult to pay off soon, especially with the kind of jobs I can get as an English major (although luckily I got a decent job abroad). My seemingly good decision six years ago has me set up to be a debt slave for the next ten years of my life. Of course, everyone must pay for his decisions.
But what kind of system is it? (the real problem is my parents, but as they are some of the most capitalistic people I know, and because they shouldn’t be brought into this, they’ll be left out)
Every kid is told to go to college, but before they have a sense of what working is like, or what college is like, or what debt is like, they’re told to decide.
Then, while they’re paying off their debts, they’re also being told to compete with their peers to own more other things (luckily I don’t give a shit about this). Even though I can be considered more “wild and free” than my peers by traveling abroad and not choosing a career, the thought of  my debt creeps into my brain too often, and is paralyzing.
The main goal in my life at this point is to get rid of my debt, so I can be free. But what kind of goal is that? To complete that goal, I need to make money: money is the main focus of my life. I never planned on it being that way. And by the time I pay off my debt, I’ll need to start saving for retirement.
I’m sick of this system. Can I just run away from it? Can I just forget about the debts? Are they real?

Journal 6-29 nuna meeting and humor in the bible)


Nuna and I had a Bible meeting today (YoungEun was sick with cramps). I had read a bit of Luke right before, looking for humorous parts, or parts that could be seen as humorous, because during our last Bible class, a member said that there was no humor in the Bible. Of course there’s no sentence announcing that Jesus will tell a joke, and maybe there are hardly any references to laughter either, but I had a hard time believing that Christianity was the only religion who’s God didn’t have a sense of humor. Divine laughter at the follies of men is a common thing in almost any religion; surely it’s present in Christianity too.
As soon as I started looking at the Bible in a humorous light, things just popped out at me (seek and you shall find): Luke 12:6 – “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
That last part, if seen anywhere else other than in the Bible, would be seen as a joke. And just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it has to be taken so seriously. Of course there are many serious things in the Bible, but if God is really everything, and the Bible really touches on everything in life, then of course there has to be some humor too.

We talked about this for a bit. Then we talked about some women in a church group she went to who were talking about women’s role as defined by Genesis: how women have great pain at childbirth and how they are to look towards their husbands as their masters. I gave her a different interpretation: that it says that childbirth “increases” after Eve ate the fruit, not that it began; this means that the pain was always there, but now that Eve has the knowledge of good and evil from the fruit, she can feel the pain even more strongly. And I looked at other parts of the passage to show that the focus of the passage is on Adam and Eve changing their focus from God to the earth, the focus of the passage is on the relationship between man and woman and God, not between man and woman alone. She liked this interpretation and was also amazed at it. She said that I can get the main point of things very well.
We then talked about the hypocrisy of most people who go to church, and read the Bible without thinking. So many people invest so much time and money into the church, but how much do they even get out of it? They think that they have to do x, y, and z like it’s a grocery list, but really the truth lies in asking questions, not taking prescriptions from another person. Nuna told me about how so many people just told her to believe and not question, and I told her to never believe anyone but yourself; only when you ask enough questions to get enough evidence to prove something can you believe it. The church is ruined by people telling other people what they should do instead of people asking questions to each other and opening up each other’s minds.

My transformation continues to go well. I’m trying to keep myself slowed down, relaxed, and observant of what’s around me. It’s amazing how many things I didn’t notice before. It’s unbelievable how tense I was before, and how I couldn’t even slow down enough to listen to my body and mind. There are so many things to blame: Seoul, my job, my loneliness. But blaming is not the important part; what’s important is that I’ve found some things that will always work and help me to feel more focused and centered. A list, of concrete things, in no specific order:
-Stretching a bit each day
-Not masturbating or looking at porn
-having a cold shower at the end of a regular hot one
-lying on my back without the covers, trying to relax and empty my mind before I go to bed
-not jumping out of bed and starting my day dazed, but rather waking up slowly and letting my mind wake up too
-not too much stimulation (I was doing computer, then mp3 to work, then book, then class, then book during break, etc.) taking breaks to simply think or be aware.
-exercise

I feel like I’m putting myself in a good position to enjoy and appreciate the things that are coming my way, and also to accomplish the things that I want to.
I still need to improve in some ways. I need to make more friends and have better relationships with more people (although I’m doing this more and more, just over the internet). I need to join some groups. I need a hobby. I need an exercise partner.

One last thing: today I ate berries and sesame leaves I picked from the garden in front of my apartment. I also read the part of Walden where he builds his own house. I would love to live in a house that I built myself and eat meals from food I grew myself.