Cirque de Seoule

The year in middle school that I realized I was the only kid to still wear Velcro shoes for lack of being able to tie a bow was the same year I realized smarts were never my strong suit. Stupid is not the right word, but when I act as smart as I’m convinced I am the situation usually ends with me explaining to the police how I burned my eyebrows off.

Still, I’ve managed to keep up some illusions of wearing smarty pants by couching myself in the study of a few specific areas—a tactic as deceptively effective as slipping into an anatomy lab by wearing by black pajamas with a painted skeleton on the front. If a gorilla can learn sign language I figure I should at least be able to sound smart when blathering my way through an English class.

So here’s an irony: I just got a B- on my undergrad introductory lit course midterm. It’s one of those courses in literary dread: we read stories about depressed people crushed by the system and relate it to lit theory about the ideology of dread. We discuss the brief historical implications of the stories and skip over the artistic content of the story, which is like reading up on the history of turkey basters before throwing out thanksgiving dinner.

When I walked out of the midterm I knew I’d aced it with the same confidence I have leaving the bathroom knowing I didn’t pee on the seat. I knew my essays were solid and insightful and my short answers took the basic ideas we’d talked about in class and interacted with them. I forgot basic college rules though: don’t be the only guy not to wear underwear underneath your toga at the party and avoid original thought at any cost. It’s not always the case, but it seems to come up all too often in English Lit courses: professors like it when you parrot their lectures back to them.

This is knowledge, as Confucius defines it. “One who knows the Tao is not the equal of one who loves it, and one who loves the Tao is not the equal of one who takes joy in it.” Joy is the most basic tenant of Confucianism. He speaks about self-cultivation which comes through learning and the basic respect we offer other people. If learning is just knowledge, it is no different that trying to see farther into the distance by standing on your tip toes rather than walking up the hill next to you. We need to move beyond knowledge, he says, learning and its practice needs to bring us joy. What brings joy is not simply memorization but interacting with knowledge and making it part of yourself.

Not that we much respect this attitude. We call it amateur, which is accurate—literally to love or a lover. Its something I’m likely at fault for in my own teaching. Still I guess it’s the only way I’m willing to learn things anymore, it’s the only thing worth my time that respects the material. It would be like being in a relationship and refusing to give your girlfriend any personal information. That isn’t a relationship; at best that’s a booty call. So I guess this is a very long way of telling my professor to go fuck herself. What it comes down to in the end is that I have a blog and she doesn’t, and if I say she has a vestigial tail and an extra chromosome, folks are going to side with me. I did the same thing with the permanent marker in the bathroom stall beside the class room so if anyone questions whether or not she is a “stupid head,” they need look no further than my crude drawing.

Korea, meet the first amendment—the one that gives me the right to make an ass of myself.

Seoul Mate

Despite my night terrors and overpowering body odor, the official’s here saw fit to assign me a roommate. While I don’t know who was born first, we definitely make up the oldest members of the program. Recognizing this the maintenance crews here have installed bars next to our beds incase our hips are too bad to get up in the morning, and my desk has a hook to hang my colostomy bag from. (My fear of one day getting a colostomy bag and having some jackass friend squeeze all the fluid back into my body was alleviated a few months back when a nursing student explained that the nozzle attached to the bag itself is designed to be in intake only. Now the only thing holding me back is the hesitation of trying to find the urethra department of the medical supply store).

As my roommate has friends and a more prolific blog than myself, I thought it might be useful to link to his sight. I think I use more fart jokes that he does on average, he’s got me on actual useful information. Check it out.

Seoulitary Confinement

I feel bad for student academics. A diet of top ramen and boxed wine keeps them anemic and brittle, and a constant intake of theory papers makes it early impossible for them to interact with normal people the way that tear-wrenching body odor might for inhibit your chances on a first date. Therefore, when I saw a notice that a Korean student needed someone to proofread her papers, I sent off an e-mail.

At the time I didn’t know it was a doctorial thesis, but she said it was on Chinese Erotic Literature which at least sounded intriguing. Reading a literary analysis of Chinese Erotic Literature is approximately as erotic as a cold shower where Michele Foucault pulls open the curtain, punches you in the spine, then squirts shampoo directly in your eyes.

My only joy so far have been some of the choice lines that don’t exactly translate:

“Probably he can be a Phallus.”

“The text is rich in lecherous flavor”

“Yanli did not like any kind of exercise, even ‘the best indoor exercise’”

"Both natives, Jiaorui and Yanli, are no less pure than aliens"

"Qiqiano succeeds in establishing herself as a Phallus"

In establishing myself as sort of a phallus, I am at least getting paid for this—the equivalent of about fifty bucks. I’m on my twelfth editing hour now, which officially dips the wage per hour below the minimum. The irony that I had to pay to come to Asia and compete with the sweatshop kids sewing Gucci wallets is not lost on me, especially since Michael Moore filmed me hunched over the thesis for six and a half hours. At least I think it was Michael Moore…it was a sweaty guy in a hat with a camcorder, which is also the qualifications to work on a porno set. Technically with the low pay and the general exploitations of my labor, I should be working on a porno set too.

Steer clear of the blood pudding

Yes, in much the same way as they farm rape here, they also have what may be the worst theme restaurant known to man. I can decide if Cafe AIDS is a tragic mistranslation, or if in a failure of marketing strategy they're trying to draw the business of the terminally ill. Only the the awkward looks when I ask to buy a t-shirt will tell.

Raging Bull

“You can totally call bullshit on that. Now say it with me: ‘I totally call bullshit on that.’” I’ve only been talking to my Korean RA for fifteen minutes and already I’m preparing him for a violent ass-kicking. All the Korean students I’ve met here at Yonsei or other Universities have been not only painfully polite but are enthusiastic to practice their English with a native speaker. When they can’t find a native speaker, they talk to me.

Once, in high school, a friend and I silenced a German exchange student for an entire quartet by only speaking gibberish to one another. “Melt polka doting tree sheep sheep the tree?” I’d ask. “I car the ran…very mighty,” he’d answer while making little chicken bobs with his head. The more I think about it though, my average conversation is all that far from this display.

When their access is denied me, I can only think of big words. “Et tu, Brute?” I might say when my RA stumbles sleepily into the last bathroom stall, “a somnambulate vexation!” It isn’t my intent to be a jerk, so it must be in my genes.

Part of the problem is the explanations seem to clarify little. “Isn’t saying ‘bullshit’ very rude?” my RA asks. “Yes, but that’s kind of the point. It’s like a friendly rudeness—like sarcasm.” He gives me a confused look; he doesn’t know ‘sarcasm.’ “It means to say one thing but mean another.” He understands this: “oh…like lying.” Here’s where things get complicated. I could sit him down and explain that sarcasm (from the Greek meaning to cut the flesh or bite the lip in rage) is saying one thing and meaning another but in a way so obvious—typically determined both in levels of absurd sincerity as through tone of voice and body language—the listener detects both the untruth and the teasing associated with it. “Yeah,” I say, “kind of…”

Of course the longer I’m here the harder it becomes to recognize English. Normally this would be balanced by my picking up Korean, but really it’s more of a Robinson Crusoe style linguistic isolation. Today my professor asked me a question and I ignored him, assuming he was speaking Korean which no one does to he dopey bald white guy. “Erik” he said, and I looked up the way a dog does when you call it’s name. I’m in constant competition with man’s best friend while I’m here: I’ve got opposable thumbs but I’ve retrieved no one’s slippers , so I don’t know who’s in the lead.

Selling my Seoul

“I can’t believe this place has finger print ID scanners to unlock the doors but no elevators.” The guy at the front door of the dorm had a point; technically we get into our group housing the same way that James Bond enters MI5 but I still have to huff my groceries up five flights of stairs.

Technological priorities seem a bit skewed here. A cell phone isn’t a cell phone unless you can watch TV on it and the panel in along side the toilets here don’t do anything other than make noise (which makes it like a harmonica for bowel movements), but I’m not supposed to flush my toilet paper. I saw the same toilet paper rule in a semi repair shop in Wyoming, but when the Tiny—the ex-con working on my car—had finished half a liter of peach schnapps before nine AM on a Thursday I figured that the plumbing was thumped together with the same craft and skill as Tiny used to make toilet wine while in the box.

Hence I worry a little bit about the fact that I sold my retinas to Seoul science community for about $11.50 or about one non-supersized extra value meal per eye. Technically I just sold images of my irises; still I’m not without case to worry. They always told me that the eyes were the windows to the soul, and wearing contact lenses then staring at the sun might cook your soul like an ant. Based on what movies have taught me, the human iris is more individual than a finger print and can be used to make super-cyborgs with a human lust for murder. Right now the harmonica-toilet people are constructing ERIK 2.0 with a kung fu action grip and, for some reason, a penchant for break dancing. Also, if it is a Korean robot, I’ll start dressing like an out of work superhero (e.g. wearing my underwear on the outside of soiled sweatpants). Any day now I expect to wake up handcuffed to an office chair surrounded my scientists and military personnel. Or at least with a chip in my brain than can command me to kill.

If you see me break-dancing back in the US, ask me to pet a kitten. If a tiny kitty doesn’t immediately melt my heart, shoot me in the face with a shotgun. You should take the kitty out of my death grip first though; because if you don’t cry when a faceless robot crushes a kitten I don’t know who to call the real heartless killing machine.

Factoid

"According to a Cornell University study, 70 percent of students earning a Ph.D. in the humanities will be on welfare for at least a year within five years of graduation. "

Sweet. My years of eating Velveeta has been preparing me for a life of government cheese.

Rain Drops Keep Burning Through My Head

The rainy season has started here, and each night I go to sleep with the sounds of it wetting my window and clattering down our roof. Campus is one if the few places in Seoul where trees exist; there are no parks here and no room for greenery on the sidewalks. The drizzle brings out all the greens against the glass and brick. Of course, it’s acid rain. All the locals use umbrellas even in the slightest mist, as the chemicals in the condensation will bleach hair and mush clothing. On a sunny day Seoul is never really sunny; a thick haze fogs over the sky. If I so desired I could stare into the sun with little fear of repercussions, and after days outside my skin shows no signs of tanning. It’s an eerie effect, and one of the girls in my class claims it’s setting off her seasonal depression disorder. The students from Pittsburgh and Los Angeles swap smog stories and settle on this being the worst they’ve ever seen. As a good Midwestern boy I can pretend that this is humidity.

My class work does keep me plenty busy, which reminds me how much I’m experiencing Korea as a student rather than as a traveler. Most of my cultural experiences take place around trying to do really ordinary things here, like buying bananas at a fruit stand or using the subway. Most of the Asian-American students have some kind of family or family friends over here, so they have someone to sherpa them around town. This also means they get to take part in more cultural activities here, which for everyone under thirty means hitting the nightclubs 5-7 times a week. I’ve been avoiding this scene like the plague.


























Already the population density bothers me here: every street and store is crowded with people; it’s on par with maneuvering around the Minnesota State Fair. Now imagine if the State Fair took place around one of the onramps to I-94. Calling the drivers here aggressive is like calling a pitbull attack uncomfortable—it doesn’t really capture the severity of the situation. Everyone runs red lights here and I have yet to see a single stop sign. A bus may try to turn left from the far right hand lane to the far left hand lane of a perpendicular street, then get caught in traffic and completely block an intersection.

To balance this people have started driving motorcycles on the sidewalks. Any normal person would just drive on the shoulder of the road, but space is at too high a premium to have a shoulder here. This also means that cars will pull onto the sidewalk and park. Sometimes people move, sometimes they are pushed forward like the cowcatcher on a train might move them. Walking the four blocks to buy cereal means twenty minutes of knocking into people and breathing in their body heat while cars lurch past and around you with little to no conception of traffic laws. Factor in the smog, the neon billboards, the ooze of music out of every story and the rumble of a thousand conversations and I have no reason to head out to a bar: I have every unattractive quality of the night club scene at my doorstep. At least that makes me feel better when someone spills their drink on me then pats my ass, though.

Tae Kwon Doh!

When I told one of my Korean friends that I was going to Tae Kwon Do so I could get kicked in the face, he gave me a funny look. Of all the US exports here, sarcasm apparently isn’t one of them. It’s a joke because no one in their right mind would want to repeatedly risk someone’s shin breaking their nose four days a week. Or so the logic is suppose to go.

And I admit to a certain logiclessness in my own training. In the two and a half years I’ve spend intermittently training I’ve moved from Tae Kwon Do to So Bahk Do Karate to Boxing and finally back to Tae Kwon Do. When it comes right down to it, none of these are very different in application—the ways a body launches a fist or a foot is basically the same across the board in the way that using a fork is the same across the board. That is until you try eating spaghetti using your fork mashed potato style. There’s a whole crapload of nuance that goes on with each of these styles, which is what kills me. More than just learning something completely new it involves unlearning something old, and more importantly it means I always go in over-confident and have to get that confidence crushed. Its kind of like going on a blind date with a model who only speaks Pig Latin, but your friends only mention the model part and her “interesting” personality.

Fortunately all of the classes are taught in Korean so I have a reason to look confused. I’ve really perfected the side-cocked look a dog gives you when you bark at it. This might be why one of the black belts has started communicating with me by the “bad dog” whacking system using a paddle across my knee. For all the language and rhetoric classes I’ve taken, for my studies on persuasion and sophistry, being hit by a paddle is one of the most swift and influential modes of communication I’ve ever seen.

But at least I got a picture of myself trying to look tough on a mountain.

America Rules Again

With the 4th of July just past, I only thought it appropriate to post a link to one of my favorite articles, which has a new resonance to me these days.

I'll have a new post for ya'll soon, likely this weekend.

Open to interpetation

Every day some researcher sets a rhesus monkey in front of a row of buttons. One of these buttons will drop a nugget of food out a shoot and the monkey will munch happily. The other two usually have electrodes attached. Every day I enter the cafeteria here on campus, I test whether or not I am smarter than a rhesus monkey by pointing to the Hangul characters I believe equal vegetables and rice. Somedays I’m right on, and days like today I get a bowl of super-sonic-diarrhea-pork which is like attaching an electrode directly to my small intestine.

These days mine is a world of pointing and frowning. I find stores where I can pick things up and bring them to the counter, and I avoid routes that require me to remember street signs. I demonstrate everything with my fingers: how many, how much, when to go and when to stop. Here I am a pasty and talentless mime bumbling through the metroscape. I wonder if Koko the gorilla has this problem.

All of this might be fine if I didn’t find it necessary to flail my hands and arms about while speaking in English. To the non-native speaker it I must appear to be in a state of constant seizure with my spastic limbs and eyes rolling into the back of my head. Mixed with my voice coming in and out of a falsetto and the occasional clicks and beeps, I can’t be too far off from the medieval madmen accused of St Vitus Dance. This means it’s only a matter of time before I’m staying in a room the state springs, complete with three meals trays a say slid into the safety slot of a padded cell.

At least the monkey gets to choose when he gets the food pellet.

Under where?

Most of my morning’s here start the same way: perplexed. From the grope for my alarm clock to the ache of sensory data while I shuffle down the floor bathroom, in that first half hour of awareness proved profoundly more difficult than the rest of the day. That feeling may have peaked this morning when I stumbled into my usual shower stall to find my underwear hanging from the curtain rod like mistletoe.

Not that this spot is so unusual; we’re all too demure here to really get into flagging our genitalia at each other so most of us prefer the option of dressing/undressing in the privacy to a shower stall. My underwear tends to find a home on the curtain rod next to my towel. After that though it tends to find a home on my body.

I can imagine two scenarios. I may have forgotten to put my underwear back on after I got done showering, which if true is awfully depressing. I’ve been putting on my underwear for twenty-five plus years now; I consider myself kind of an expert. I didn’t expect problems this late in the game. Also, at no point during the whole of yesterday did I realize I was going commando, a fact which one trip to the bathroom or well-placed itch should have revealed.

Option number two is that someone broke into my room, leaned over my wallet and my laptop to get into my laundry bag, fished free a pair of day old boxer shorts. Obviously he would have spent the day with them, likely wandering around campus with them draped over his arm, maybe splitting an ice cream cone or riding bicycles through the park. After a movie and a candle lit dinner and—just maybe—a kiss good night, he draped my underwear over my usual shower stall the way a movie serial killer leaves clues for his investigator.

Neither option really comforts me, but at least now I have a reason to learn the Korean word for deadbolt.