Project

My next project is a collection of creative nonfiction culled from over three years of life with my wife in South Korea. 

The project itself should be more than reminiscence, since I hope to say something of not only private value. But I have to explore the memories before I turn them into stories, so every day I’ll sketch one here. These posts will serve as a prep kitchen of sorts. 

And there is so, so much to prepare. Impressions, encounters, excursions, feelings. Relationships. Sights and sounds and words. Change. Sometimes the nostalgia gets inside me and erupts in a warm shiver, and then nothing seems more important than finding a way to express it with words. Impossible thing.

Mud flats with red reeds at Incheon; the apocalpytic flats of Saemangeum; clear-cut hillsides drying in the sun; yellow skies in Spring; the dim cold concrete hallways of Brezee; ubiquitous copse of apartment towers.

Cheonan’s hills, the one behind the university where we walked most every day, or the bigger one in Buldgang where we discovered so much; hiking in the rain up Gwandeoksan, and drinking mokale at the summit; another rainy forest walk, this time in Busan around an ancient temple; the many trips to Taejosan with the giant seated Buddha; the one time we hiked there in mud and provoked stares when we went for supper at the sundubu restaurant. 

Flowers in spring, and the pictures I would take of them. Running familiar routes, through the park in Buldang, or for longer runs through the country toward Asan and back, where ajumas give you fresh tomatoes. Running races, the marathon in Chuncheon where they had hardly any water and it took an hour to get out of the crush of the crowd. 

Subways, speaking of crowds, and so many trips under Seoul from station to station. Bungee jumping. The beach at Daecheon, the pottery shops at Icheon and the friendships we built at these places. 

Nostalgia is often dismissed by serious writers. Too sentimental, too private, too uncritical. Nostalgia is selective memory. It sets up a golden age where none existed, forgetting the bad times to remember the good. All true.

But it is also a powerful motor of our narrative impulse, our drive to unite disparate moments into a story that makes sense of ourselves. I think it may be possible to use that energy in order to say something true. I think it’s possible let the past move you without letting it deceive you. 

So, I’ll try to spin these fragments into something whole, and hope that others will connect with them.

Saying Something

Having nothing to say, I will say this, which will not turn out to be anything, in the end. And that is saying something.

Mar

A man walks in solitude, late at night. He’s been moved by a beautiful film. The streets are quiet and the air is warm. A small smile holds his face in repose. 

He turns a corner. Up the way a bar has let out for the night. A group of drinkers stands in a tumble on the sidewalk, yelling cheerfully. His way lies through them.

One screams a joke. “Sorry, can’t come through here, didn’t ya know? Sidewalk’s closed!”

The joker gets nothing. The man keeps walking, and does not smile. The drunk whispers stupidly to his friends, feigning regret: “Oh-oh; guess this one’s not in the mood!”

On the other side of them, the walker having passed that interruption feels it spread into the world, small drop become blot. He achieves distance with every step, and their happy voices fade. Yet the silence stays broken.

*

A woman runs on a favored road, where every tree is known to her. Her pace is even and her mind is clear like the light on this day. She seems at rest in motion.

Behind her a car turns the curve, speeding. It has no muffler. In periphery she sees it brown, rusted, low-slung. To be safe she tacks left into the sideditch.

When it passes she feels the air beside her ear disturbed. In front of her a glass bottle strikes a small oak. The car is already gone. She can still hear its engines gunning. Her jaw goes stiff. 

*

Packs of children at the museum.

*

Refrigerators abandoned in the grass.

* 

Barbarians at the gate.

*

The ignorant indignant given power.

*

And the interrupted, intent to restore what was marred. 

*

In Vienna, a vision dismissed by the vulgar. The artist moves away, makes vows. He will not be distracted. And the insistence of the world will not move him. He will spread peace like wet blood on a sheet. 

He will make things come true.

* 

Plastic litter for old stone ruins. Ruin upon ruin.

The Aside

There are the pleasures of consensus, and of dissent. Both compel us.

There is another pleasure too. This one is more subtle. More beautiful, I think. Let’s call it “the aside.” Maybe you’ve felt it.

It happens during a disagreement. The angrier, the better. And then, a break. This is the aside. Something proffered by one to the other. A commonality unrelated to the question at hand.

It can be anything.

•  a fly on the shoulder, and your enemy brushes it off
•  a question for clarification, and your opponent pauses to explain
•  the pressing need of another person, and you both stop to help
•  some loud noise, and neither of you knows its cause
•  a joke
•  the end of the world

The aside does not produce agreement. Nor does it win the debate. It’s more like a wonderfully pertinent interruption. A redeeming irrelevancy. Relief. The potential to remain “human” while we argue about what that means.

Things Requiring Comment

So, I am reluctant to be called “writer.” I mentioned this before. There are two reasons. The first is that there many bad writers. These writers are not bad because they are unskilled. They are bad because they don’t know they’re unskilled. They insist on the title “writer,” and sully it for me. 

The second is that there are many good writers who are unpleasant. These writers seem to write well precisely because they are unpleasant. They make meaning by discovering clever and beautiful new ways to tell us why nothing means what we think it does. 

One of a good writer’s most reliable targets is “sentiment.” Sentiment is what the bad writers trade in without knowing it. Inspirational poems from Reader’s Digest, and the like. Sentiment is cliche without comment. It’s life without salt. Good writers like salt.

I think too much salt is unpleasant. There’s a peculiar stench to the fear of being naive, or being seen as naive. I smell it everywhere. Too intelligent for epics, too smart for romance, too correct for traditions. Too afraid to navigate the tropes. I smell it on myself, too. 

The result: things I believe left unsaid. Things I feel left unexpressed. Things tarnished by qualifications, beautiful things marred by assurances. Things that should be allowed to just be, but are not. Love. Grass underfoot. The view from a mountain in winter. Bravery, belief, elevation. 

Things requiring comment.

Once I loved these things. Now, like a good writer, I love my thoughts about these things. Maybe I can no longer tell people what they are. Maybe I can only tell people what I think they are. And what I think they are, what any good writer thinks they are, are things people used to love. Things they loved, before they read books. 

I write my wife the most beautiful poems. I do this because I love her more than life, more than self. Like Romeo loved Juliet, like Tristan loved Isolde. I love her with all the melodrama I can muster. We live happily ever after and always will. 

I believe this like I don’t believe in God. But I’ll never show you those poems.

Chess

Those gifted with foresight have the advantage of seeing several steps ahead. They know how one thing makes another, and another, and so on. Desired circumstances may be cast as the outcome of these moves, so that the planner begins to think of feelings, relationships, and personal encounters as the result of his own machinations. He takes responsibility for whatever arises, because he wants this responsibility. 

His mistake is to believe that responsibility is his alone, and that conversations are amenable to strategy. The more subtle his foresight, the more tempting mistake this may be. He can foresee the consequences of particular actions for all kinds of complex systems - why should the same not be true of human interactions? The temptation is particularly strong if the strategist has had much success in his efforts - or, rather, believes that those successful interactions have been due to his efforts. 

Planning conversations ahead of time becomes habit, and a crutch. He may not plan for conversations he anticipates will be comfortable, but when he discerns the potential for embarrassment, or the possibility that his confidence will be diminished, the habit may assert itself almost unconsciously. 

He can only change by committing to notice when the planning mode kicks in. He must then consciously refuse to indulge it. It is a simple - simple but difficult - matter of changing the subject of his internal dialogue. 

Knowledge is an object or pattern of thought. Wisdom is the ability, (or the  willingness?) to choose what one thinks about and how. The planner’s weakness is the potency of his thought. The more powerful our mental abilities, the more difficult it is to recognize that they can be viewed as something we do, rather than something we are. It is hard to see them as a choice, a practical matter to be judged by how happy and healthy they make us, rather than by their sheer virtuosity. 

It is a question of treating ourselves as a creation, and not only as a given.

Swayed

We sat wondering at an advertisement. Like when I was a kid and across the street from the grocery store was Morrow’s Shoe Repair, where one time I saw a single customer leaving. I supposed it was a relic somehow surviving into an age when people threw their shoes away and bought new ones. 

Or like late night ads for compilation albums - best of the 70s, best of soul, 100 greatest love songs - with the 800 number on the blue screen demanding that you call before stocks run out. Who buys these things. What do they look like. And why are they still awake.

We sat wondering at something like this, and trying to imagine what sorts of people permitted its existence. Who does it sway, and are we of the same species. 

Then we stretched ourselves and asked the better question. Whether the alien constituencies of hummer and yoplait would be as confused by what sways us. Do they wonder at the appeal of tasteful book jackets?

See?

Asphalt underfoot black mashed rock
and the flat of the shoe strikes it without
thought of forewarning there is no stream
of consciousness only the moment disconnected
from the next as I am writing each word without
linkage or pause for consideration of appropriateness
to see what comes of it but perhaps
that seeing is the linking, the afterthought that comes before?
we will see, I suppose, when the lines end and the thought decides
randomly
to be finished with itself
and is this poetry - an eruption of something once spilled called “self”
not craft or carving according to design but instead some primal object
that spins itself like a spider’s web (there I did pause to collect an image)
and is moved string to string by the emergence of lengthening lines not content, only geometry, rules that come out to give order but have no purchase on the game that is played in their spite this is Wittgenstein
I am copying, the worst of fears, this is Bloom, the anxiety of influence
apparently inescapable as you as I can see from the production
emerging in this space and now is it coming to an end
the angles seem to be indicating as much, and
(that and, just to make things even) and
parentheses just for effect, and
I will now denote the finish
place the qualifying period
look at the shape here
is it not pleasing
to the eye
see?

When I Cried

1. Not when Old Yeller died.
2. When Charlotte died. 
3. Smallpox struck a town. They needed blankets. The shopkeeper demanded full price. The hero blasted the store’s show window with a shotgun, and took the blankets. I cried for the shopkeeper.
4. For Javert and his stars.
5. My grandpa was dying while I was far away. She offered me her neck. I used it for as long as I could.
6. To hear the Requiem. To play in F minor.
7. When Murin was murdered.
8. After they left, before it got started. By myself.
9. Before I told her.
10. And after.
11. For So-Young’s wake. 
12. When I realized what was happening.
13. When I remember the beauty.

What Makes Heaven

In class we were warned against immanentizing the eschaton. This is an act that takes us across the line from imagination to murder. It happens when creation becomes violation.

The seductions of the beatific vision are too great for most of us, we learned. Too great for great souls even, the genius monsters of history who are much easier to admire than we might think.

I wonder if this is right, or if we are being kept from something beautiful. If this is God forbidding fruits, and to be free is to take it and eat. What if on the other side is not perdition, but salvation?

At least great souls take the risk. Their failure may kill, but what is life now anyway. Something to be improved, or nothing. Are we not a thing to be surpassed?

Look at me admiring, now. Admiring those who shut their ears and eyes in order to drive forward. Because I know what heavy terrors enter and would keep the feet frozen. We were not told about that.

We were not warned of what happens when the eschaton remains trapped in the head. It’s true that the vision is dangerous. But that’s because there is not enough room for it, inside. It will be real, or it will kill you.

Clearly I have missed the point.