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Notes From the Land of the Morning Calm

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A First Journal Entry 

Bits and pieces from some letters home...

(Jim and Deb PG-13 page)

I can't remember if I told you about this Korean Fellowship thing I was thinking about applying for. It's all gone so fast ... such a blur. I think I did. Well, the long and short of it is I applied to study in Korea and the sweet stink of Kim Chi everywhere tells me I got in. So here I am in Go-Yang City, a suburb of Seoul, at my girl friend's apartment playing the part of the freeloading boyfriend/student, typing emails, waiting for my classes to start, trying to figure out how to speak this crazy language and hunting for those ever elusive dollars (they call 'em won here and they are just as hard to find). Although much of the cost of this little adventure will be picked up by the Korean government...someday...just when they are going to kick down the cash is not exactly clear. But it's all fantastic. Nothing is going according to plan and it's great. It's just the adventure I was hoping for. I've been here just over a week so I'm not tired yet and everything seems just as wonderfully weird as the last time I was here. Yesterday, I came across a lady selling jelly doughnuts half way down the steps of a subway entrance in downtown Seoul. I guess it that doesn't sound that strange except that venders around here are usually peddling dried cuttle fish and roasted silk worms. Having just done some traveling yourself, you know how those "familiar" things in "unfamiliar" places can launch you on that mental trip...you know a trip that takes you back home and out to Mars, deep into the recesses of your mind and out into some other dimension before landing you back in the present, on the next step down the stairs toward the subway. I love it when that happens. And its been happening a lot.

...I've been busy trying to get ready for that Korean Proficiency test. I took it yesterday. I failed it, but failed it well I think. Actually, I was really happy with how it went...after the initial shock of discovering that it was all essay questions followed by an interview. Yeah, made my heart stop. I had to look up the word for interview before everything got started. Anyway, once my heart started beating again I realized that I could read about 70-80% of what was in front of me. Answering was a whole different game that I didn't play so well. The interview was fun too. Loved waiting in that long line out outside the very intimidating door. Loved watching the faces gone pale coming out after they had finished with their "interview." Yup, that's right. Just me and two "assessors" in a big empty room. Them behind a big desk scribbling little notes...me sitting in a little chair facing them. Just a little bit intimidating. I kept waiting for an officer of the Korean CIA to mystically appear and haul me off to some Korean prison for smuggling in that extra bottle of wine. But everything went fine. I got the general gist of their questions and in my very broken Korean answered. When I left I wasn't pale and I was pretty sure they understood what I was trying to get at even though I didn't say it quite right. I'll get the results later today. No matter what they are. I'm just happy I could navigate the logistics of the whole process in Korean without getting totally flustered.

...It's hot here but the "cosmos" flowers are in bloom. Suk Ja tells me they mark the end of the summer. Korea is wonderful. Wonderfully strange things happen every day. Every day I have the spectacularly spooky feeling that my world is, at the same time, expanding and contracting. Expanding, because each new experience points out new possibilities. Contracting because each new experience also seems to point out that wherever you live, living through each day is fundamentally the same. Although cultures may flavor events differently, the same basic human emotions and dispositions determine the outcome. Things are fantastic.

...Yesterday we had a big storm here. The rain came down hard and Suk-Ja and I spent the day inside. She started teaching me how to paint Chinese characters. We figured it would be a good way for me to start learning all the "han ja" I need to know. I am awful (no patience), but what a great way to spend a rainy day. The smell of rain is universal. I think the feeling it evokes is also universal, but the subtle sweet smell of the ink with its pine-ash binder was new. It flavored the whole day with something I have never experienced. And today I woke up to bright sun--that "washed clean" smell which follows a big rain. Just after breakfast we walked over to a nearby park. I thought about what you said, "Light is born out of darkness," and then I thought about the black sumi ink...And today the bright sun. At the park I could see the sharp peaks of the "Buk Han" mountains in the distance.

...It's begun...I found a TKD "circle" at the school. It's a club really and none of them are very good. There is no instructor. The more experienced people just take turns leading class. I imagine it's like baseball at Harvard. You know no one can play the "American past time" at Americas most prestigious school. But I am getting to work out which feels good...and...the other day I got to spar. This cocky bastard was leading the class. You know, one of those "bright" stupid people. Well, he lead us through warm-ups and drills, and although I couldn't understand a lot of what he said, I could understand that he was being a d--k. You can know those sorts of things even without language.

So everyone starts to get ready to spar, putting on all the regular gear. Everything looks normal except that everyone is putting on gloves that look a little bigger than your average TKD gloves. The instructor matches himself up with another black belt and they start... It turns out to be full contact, hands, throws, the whole bit. And they were going. The instructor kept popping this poor guy right in the shcnawz and generally kicking the sh--t out of him. They went for a about a minute and then the next couple guys got up to beat the crap out of each other. I mean, blood and everything, because of course no one has a mouth pieces and no one was wearing any protection for their face.

So I'm sitting there thinking "Wow, this is pretty cool. I guess I'm gonna find out just how much Pro TKD I remember." Actually, I was a little nervous, but when the instructor called me up a strange calm came over me...And when I figured out that I was fighting him, I felt even more comfortable. It was a very strange, very cool feeling.

Poor guy didn't know what hit him. Where as every other match went on for about a minute ours went on for closer to five. He just kept ending up on the ground and since he was the one who was deciding how long we were going to go for, we went for a while. I think he kept feeling like he need to redeem himself.

Oh, it felt good. You know...ridge hand, back fist, sweep, that wonderful little skip punch (although I didn't really unload), that "crane" down-block to counter his jab followed by a back first and my own jab. I got popped a couple times, but he certainly lost the war. At one point after I had tossed him to the ground and had started to let up he tossed a leg toward my knee. After I leaned down to block that he threw another for my head...so...after I blocked that one, I dropped down and decided to lay my forearm across his neck. He stopped kicking after that...so I let him up and we started again.

I felt like I was finally given permission to use everything I had been taught but which, until then, I hadn't really tested. AND MAN...it all worked good. The best part is that I felt even more calm and certain about everything after it was all done. Not an ounce of gilt about smacking the guy. I think its because I knew I hadn't really hurt him (save his pride) and that I could have KNOCKED HIS SH--T OUT if I had wanted to. I felt so in control. A stillness stayed with me for a couple days actually.

... It's Sunday night and I can't believe I have to get back on a bus and go back to school tomorrow. The weekend was way too short, but today was gorgeous, clear and cold. Last night we had our first cold snap and this morning Suk Ja and I got up early and went for a walk. The crisp air felt so good. The leaves seemed to start turning overnight and I think the rice brightened three shades toward that wonderful orange-yellow harvest color. We were happy to be up and walking around in the year's first real cold.

...It's gotten pretty damn cold, high of about 27 degrees today... I think. Low somewhere down in the teens. You see everything is in C's so I'm never quite sure how we would count it in F's. Like I was telling Dad in another email, I've made up my own conversion scale. It's really easy. If I step out side and think, "It's fucking cold today," it's one "F" below. If I step out and think "Fuck!... it's really fucking cold today." That's two F's below. If I step out and my nose hairs start crackling and my breath freezes to my mustache making it hard to move my upper lip... I go back inside and count it as a three "F's" below zero day...as in "Owh Fuck! Shiver me timbers, it's fucking cold...There is NO fucking way I'm going out today."

...So, the new years trip... Suk Ja and I spent the weekend hitchhiking around the southern tip of the peninsula. Imagine the California coastline from about San Simian (Sp?) up to Santa Cruz, replace the artichoke fields with rice, keep the windblown pines by the water and the gentle orange light, the steep rock faces and windy roads. Replace "thanks" with "kamsahamnida" when you get picked up. Substitute brick or earthen "kiwa jipdul" clustered in the coves for the small drafty wooden sea front cottages (and not so small or drafty condos). Get rid of the redwoods and plant pines, maple and ginkova trees, as well as waxy shrub that blossoms beautiful rose like flowers in the winter. Make everyone really friendly, their accents really thick, and rides really easy to get and you have Kyoung San Nam Do (Southern Kyoung San Province).

High lights of the trip: New Years eve with Suk Ja; watching the sun rise two days in a row from different "am's," small Buddhist temples (they always have the best views); drinking beer and eating dried squid on a sea wall in the small fishing village of Mi-so with a young couple that had picked us up; the man with a peppered gray goatee in Jon-do who had over stacked his cart with pine wood and made me haul it through the very small village that didn't seem so small while I was struggling with his amazingly heavy cart; the deafening "millenium song contest" we stumbled into in Ji-juk Li; and hanging out with the crazy mechanics who picked us up and took us to their shop for coffee and rice cakes with engine grease.

... I've been trying to find the time to sit down and write you out a longhand letter complete with nice envelope and cool stamps. Unfortunately, in all my searching I've only been able to find these couple of quite Sunday morning minutes. They were hiding under a gray sky, in the mist rising from the rice fields. I didn't realize you had to get up so early to catch 'em.

Sorry about all the typos and left out words your going to find. I'm forgetting how to write in English. Kind of discouraging really. Some days I feel like I can't communicate well in either Korean or English anymore.

Anyway...So much to tell. I don't know where to begin...Spring is hinting its arrival. My nose hairs haven't frozen in the last couple of days and that mist I was just telling you about means the rice fields are thawing out. The winter's here are ASS cold. The Han River, a river about the size of the Sacramento that runs through the center of Seoul, froze on more than one occasion this winter. It made my heated subway seat very hard to get out of when my stop came.

Location...I've been staying with Suk Ja and am sitting out here on very small veranda (laptops are beautiful). In front of me is a driveway of sorts leading to two underground garages. Later today this driveway will become a hub for cars and people coming and going form this cluster of 5 apartments. It will also serve as the play ground for all the local kids. How they don't end up getting run over I don't know. In every direction the view is basically the same...big, tall, 15 story apartment buildings. Imagine Marin City with more buildings. Then make all of them white with faded pastel stripes. The architect doesn't get any brownie points for the color scheme. In fact, even if I were to ever bake brownies I don't think I would give him (and it is most definitely a him) any. With all you hear about Asian societies being more "circular" the apartments here are awfully square. It's weird though, aside from the obvious proximity to my honey, this place has grown on me. At the "entrance" to the whole thing is a building filled with little shops: two small grocery stores, a baker, a bookstore, pharmacy, barber, stationary store, video rental shop. This one complex is like a small city in its own right. There are about 1500 apartments in each building, so that makes 7500 in the whole "complex." Multiply by say 3 per apartment and you've got about 22,500 people. The area of the whole place isn't much bigger than say Hall Middle school up to the border of Piper Park. Everyone seems to kind of know each other and of course they all know me, the only guy around with "yellow" hair and nose capable of casting a shadow. The baker is nuts (and his doughnuts don't hold a candle to Bill's), the stationary guy really laid back, the video guy entirely to motivated for what he does. At its best this place feels like Larkspur has been transplanted here in Go Yang City, South Korea. At it's worst, I feel like I'm living the Orwellian nightmare...big (or not so big) brother is definitely watching.

School...has been kicking my ass. For the last 6 months I've been getting up somewhere around 5:30 or 6:00 to slug back some coffee and get ready for a very long commute. I usually flip on the "Today" show (recorded the previous day) just to make sure America is still there and just as strangely canned. That may sound like I'm slamming on the good old US of A but there is something comforting about watching Al Roker be dumb, Katie Curry try to hard, and knowing the weather in St. Louis. After I flip off the TV I don't know anything about what's coming next. Some days that is really exciting and others it's just exhausting. The commute to school is about an hour and a half: crowded bus (as in you know the gender and religion of the person pushed up against you even if you can't look at them) transfer to crowded subway (imagine Tokyo and the little dudes who push people onto the train so that the doors can close), followed by another transfer to another crowded bus. I always arrive at school slightly damp (I'll explain in a minute) and shell shocked. You see the bus drivers are all crazy. It's a fact. My favorite is the old guy who doesn't have any teeth. There is a decent size hill just before the school. At the bottom, there is a traffic circle without any lights, a four-lane anything-goes sanity check. After the bus's long struggle to get up to the top of the hill, the old guy loves to throw it over from 1^st right into 4^th and go bombin' down the hill. This is all wonderfully exciting until we get to the sanity check and he hasn't hit the brakes. My dad always taught me you're supposed to break before a corner, glide through and accelerate out. But this is a "break in the corner" and only if there is a bigger bus coming from the other direction kind of a county. I soil myself almost every day. Walking into class is always a little awkward.

Although I'd usually rather have a shot of whiskey, class always start with the latest Korean pop song to raise our spirits. Felling all bubbly inside, we start into the grind of our small dictionary worth of new words and grammar patterns for the day (on average about 30 new words and 5 new grammar patterns...every day). My favorite part of the grind is trying to decipher the English "definitions" they give us for the words. My all time favorite was "'na nuhi da'- to lay (someone)." After a good chuckle, we figured out the word is used when you are "'laying' a baby down." By the end of the fourth hour, I'm always about ready to keel over. A quick lunch at the cafeteria and then back on the bus headed for the apartment city. Every week on top of daily grammar exercises, we have three page-long essays to write. I ended up passing the course, but I've never worked so hard for a B- in all my life. The last time I got such a bad grade was in macroeconomics my sophomore year when I went to the final still drunk. All in all though, I was pretty happy with how I did. Most of the people had been studying for more than a year before they started the class. Aside from learning some basic expressions from Suk Ja, I'd only really studied that little bit at Berkeley.

But I passed the course last week and I'm onto regular grad school stuff this week. Let's just say, despite all my hard work, I'm a long way from fluent and Korean history in Korean is probably going to give me another ulcer. The thing is though, despite all my griping, this language is a gold mine for new ideas and ways of looking at things. Take for example the idea of "good looking." We would say, "He/she is good looking," as if that person had something to do with how they turned out. The literal translation in Korean is "He/she became well." It takes a little getting used to but in many ways it describes the "reality" of "good looking" in a pretty accurately. Another example is that Koreans are much less likely to assign responsibility to a person or thing for something that happened. For example the direct translation for "It rained" in Korean is "The rain came." We have both ways of saying "Water fell from the sky" but we usually assign the action of rain to "it." We have to have a subject in every sentence. Koreans (sometimes, maddeningly so) don't. Although we don't really think about it anymore, buried in "It rained" is the idea that "It" has somehow done the action. There's no such implication in Korean. It makes a person think and if I were to think that last sentence in Korean it would go something like "Because of that, thought is made to become."

Another cool thing is that the lexicon of this language is a treasure chest of very cool images. Sixty percent of the words used in Korean are loan words from Chinese. Like Latin in Europe, Chinese was the written language of the "educated" class in Asia for a long time. Consequently, just as there are a ton of Latin based words in English, there are a ton of Chinese words left in Korean. If you go back and look at the meanings of the original Chinese characters (and no I didn't do this just for fun. You need to know about 1800 Chinese characters to read the newspaper) you uncover some gems of linguistic treasure. Some of my favorites are Homework (suk jea)- "sleeping-subject," Volcano (wha san)- "fire-mountain", - America (mi gook)- "beautiful-country" some might wonder about this one, and Psychology- (shim li hak) - "The study of the heart's rightness (or ability to rule or control)."

Ok, so maybe that's more than you needed to know about the Korean language, but if it hadn't been for stuff like this (and the sweet nothings I'm learning how to whisper in Korean) I'm not sure I would have made it through the last 6 months.

...The language courses finished last Friday and regular classes at the grad school started on Thursday. I'm taking four classes: Understanding Regional Studies (basically a world econ class, required for everyone) taught in English (Yippie), Advanced Korean Language and Writing, Korean History, and Introduction to Korean Studies (also required). My first class on Thursday was Understanding Regional Studies. I was very happy to have been born in an English speaking country and to have an Econ degree under my belt. I thought it would be a slam-dunk, but I really had to dig pretty deep into my store of economic knowledge to sort out our first reading assignment. I haven't had to think about current-account surpluses or how a floating exchange rate nullifies government fiscal policy for a long time.

Advanced Korean Language and Writing was on Friday. Oh dear...lets just say it took me an hour and a half to translate the syllabus. Monday is Korean history...there's 5000 years of it according to the Koreans. If it took me an hour and a half to get through the syllabus for that other class which just covered the next three months, I'll need to be reincarnated a few times before I can get through the girth of Korean History. Monday could prove to be a very long day.

...I 'm about half way through my first semester at the grad school and the level of Korean has jump up considerably from the language school. Passing this semester's courses will be tough. I just took mid-terms. It wasn't pretty, but I'm sure it will all work out. Professor Kwon is back from Japan and we've had some good conversations about poetry. I've also met a few other students interested in Korean Lit and we've started a "moonhak donga ri" (literature group). Beyond school, I've been doing a lot of reading (in English) about Korean Literature. I'm thinking about doing my thesis on rhythm in Korea poetry. I've been thinking about translation and how words, even if they are translated correctly, will have a different emotional and cultural meaning in a new language. For example, a simple word like "'non" "rice field" means something totally different to Suk Ja than it does to me. When I read "rice field" I think "Korea," "Asia," or "California farmer wasting water." Suk Ja thinks, "home town" or "country side." So my thought is that words will never carry the meaning of a poem directly across into a new language. However, I'm guessing rhythm is more universal and might be able to carry a lot of a Korean poem's emotional content and meaning into English. It's just a hunch right now so I'm trying to track down people who have written about the meaning of rhythm in poetry. I read somewhere that the Russian Formalists did a lot of writing on this topic. I also want to look into what semiotic writers say about rhythm in poetry.

Outside the academic world things are great. Suk Ja and I are having a great time. Spring arriving was amazing. All the flowers on Kwan Ak San seemed to bloom at once, the magnolia trees, the cherry tress, the azaleas, the willows, the "gae na rae," and all the other flowers I don't know the name of ("I don't know what "gae na rae" are in English. They are bright yellow flowers that grow in bushy-vine clumps). Suk Ja and I haven't been able to get out of Seoul very often, but we have spent a number of Sundays wandering around Insa Dong and other parts of the city. Suk Ja thinks I'm nuts, but I drool over the mulberry paper packed to the rafters of the little shops and love sifting through all the antiques people lay out on the sidewalk. We've also gone hiking a couple of times on Kwan Ak San and Bok Han San. Things are good.

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