Anicha

Everything changes:

What’s tobacco one moment,

Smoke the next ~ then air.

George Carlin’s Faith

If there is a god,

And I’m certain there is not,

May he strike you dead.

Tommy

Motor-mouthed, squirmy,
Incorrigible hell-boy:
And still I like you.

QUIET

The past two mornings I have woken to something special, something rare, something as welcome as a new friend, a new lover, a winning lottery ticket:

Silence.

And this silence, so beautiful and so complete, was so strange to me I almost couldn’t identify it, almost couldn’t orient myself to the difference. I just lay there in bewildered expectation, like a child with britches down who awaits the promised lashings across his back side, only to find to his surprise, relief – and dare he feel it – glee, that the lashings aren’t forthcoming. It was almost eerie to awake to no sound, as if the world had ended and left only me behind. But even if the world had ended and left me as its sole survivor, I would gladly take it, and at least for a few days – until such time as I was driven mad by abject solitude instead of incessant noise –  I would luxuriate in this rare treat and smile upon waking, instead of ranting at the maddening inconsideration that allows in the first place for a rock quarry to be operated in the middle of a well-to-do neighborhood . . .

It’s Chusok today, Korean thanksgiving, a holiday in which virtually all Koreans travel to see their parents and grandparents, to pay homage to their ancestors and to eat lots of yummy food. Ulsan is a very new city, so very few people are from here. Therefore, the city empties out leaving behind a stillness reminiscent of Christmas morning in the States, when all are at home opening presents and sighing off the stress of the holiday season.

I’m glad I have nothing to do this weekend. Aside from having a cold and needing to lay low anyway, I am absolutely giddy about this silence. For two days, and one more to come, I can let go of the fear that I might be driven mad by the metallic pounding that wakes me at seven and continues in adagio fashion throughout the day, sounding for all the world as if some kid were outside my apartment practicing his baseball swing on a concrete telephone pole with an aluminum bat.

If there is one among the many things I don’t like about Korea, it’s the noise and perhaps the fact that, in a society bent on progress and the acquisition of economic power, there is little if any room for consideration of others – their peace, their rest, their sanity. Of course, I am bringing my own U.S. country boy baggage with me, and I knew better than to expect much quietude. But when I moved from Mugeodong to Gooyoung I expected to deal with less noise, not more.

My old apartment was located in a densely populated neighborhood. It came with some of the usual sounds: spouses fighting, horns honking, students practicing musical instruments, the drone of television, a dog (apparently abused) yelping, the white noise and the chatter of humans, the occasional scream, gleeful and otherwise. It came with unusual sounds also, like the mechanical whine whose source I could never locate, that droned throughout the night like a symphony of turbines needing grease. And the loudspeakers that come standard with every apartment, through which various announcements are made on a daily basis, often early in the morning, Sundays not excepted: Someone is double-parked, it’s recycling day; we are going to come and spray you crib with bug juice . . . These speakers are loud and you never know when they are going to go off. Even if I could understand Korean, I couldn’t imagine any reason why not to disconnect the thing, so I did. But you can still hear the muffled announcements through the walls, or through the vent in the bathroom that is shared with the adjacent apartment.

So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that I was going to be able to move back to Gooyoung-lee after all. I looked forward to the relative peace, the suburban if not country feel of the place. You can also therefore imagine my dismay when I learned of the consequences of living in an apartment that was located smack dab in between the “rock quarry” and the elementary school.

Let me first say that the rock quarry is not really a quarry, though it functions like one. There’s a hilly lot several acres in size directly across from me that, over the past year or so, some workers using heavy machinery have been leveling and terracing. The soil in Korea is very rocky, so if you want to flatten a hill you have to bust up a lot of rock, which is precisely what they are doing. But instead of using dynamite to break up the rock, they use a backhoe that has a long, hydraulically operated spike on the end of it. It’s like a gigantic jack hammer at the end of a long, iron arm. At a steady rate of about 76 beats a minute the hammer slowly chips away at the rock until at last a large chunk of it breaks off. The arm moves a few feet and begins to pound away at the next section of rock. This arcane form of earth moving continues from morning call until lunch break, resumes after lunch till about five or six p.m. . . . seven . . . days . . . a . . . week!

The sound pelts my apartment directly, but it also reverberates off the elementary school on the other side of my apartment, effectively encasing me in a constant, resounding, metallic pounding. It’s like sonic water boarding.  And when I say it drives me mad I am only being slightly hyperbolic. When I say I can’t wait for this madness to end, I mean I can’t wait for this MADNESS to end. And since I have been teased into thinking it might end soon, I am going to continue to throw whatever hope I can into this projection.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago my friend read a notice on the entry door of my apartment building that said that the noise was going to cease at the end of the week. The company responsible for the racket apologized for the inconvenience and I suppose, hoped for forgiveness.

Not.

But the racket never stopped . . . not until yesterday, the first day of the Chusok holiday. Now, when I look at the site with its massive piles of broken up rock, I also see that it is possible that they might actually be nearly finished with that phase of the project. I hope so, but I also wonder what comes next. With my luck, the next round of construction will be even louder and more obnoxious, if that’s possible.

But even if the next phase is relatively quiet, I am still going to have to put up with a lot of noise. My move to Gooyoung has been a serious upgrade in aesthetics – why with my swank digs and views and proximity to nature – but my access to quietude while at home remains illusive. With the school across the street I have various sounds to cope with. There’s the morning call, which is a long, synthesizer-spouted, muzak-esque tune that drones on for minutes as if calling a bunch of Hello-Kitty Hobbits to a pillow dance at Romper Room. That their class bell, which rings every half hour or so, is a carbon copy of the fucking ice cream truck isn’t  much fun either. The children’s playful chatter and joyful screams over a well kicked ball or an ousted dodge ball opponent are all fine and well, and in a way provide for a nice background, reminding me that all is not business and toil in Korea. Of course, there are the cuckoo birds in the evening and at night, the crickets with their calming song. Even the clumsy melodies of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” issuing from the music academy across the way aren’t so bad. Not as bad as the screaming kids who gather at the “Pong-pong” (a half a dozen trampolines linked together with protective padding all around, all of which is bounded by a chain-link fence and a vinyl canopy) till ten a.m., bouncing up and down and pushing each other over, throwing balls at each other all while dancing to the same set of pop tunes night in and night out.

But none of this is really as bad as the domestic disputes, which – despite their lesser frequency and duration relative to the other noises – are nevertheless extremely nerve racking. Despite having only a smattering of neighbors here in Gooyoung, these outbursts are as frequent as they were in Mugeodong, if not a bit more intense. One night last week the husband in the building adjacent to mine was so out of control and so violent, that I nearly called the cops on him – this despite the fact that I couldn’t register my fears nor my complaints given my inability to speak the language. It was two a.m. and not only was he screaming at his wife at the top of his quaking lungs, he was also destroying his apartment. The shrill sounds of shattering glass and the loud, repeated, bludgeoning thuds made me wonder if it was a person he was busting up, or just stuff. Later, after the squall had died down, I saw him, appropriately enough, leaning out the window in his wife-beaters, calming himself with nicotine, one cigarette after another. He looked no different than he normally does when he smokes out his window. Just another day at the office . . . just another night at home.

No more than an hour ago another couple was spending their Chusok going at each others’ throats, giving me a respite from my holiday quietude and announcing to whatever neighbors that haven’t yet high-hoed off to grandmother’s house, just how much they hated each other – at least for the moment. It all makes me wonder if this is just a normal sort of way for spouses to blow off steam, as a couple of my Korean acquaintances have suggested. One woman I know would be quite prone to these episodes if it weren’t the case that her husband is a taciturn type who prefers a violent ejaculation or two, a slammed then locked door, and a sullen retreat into his darkened, alcoholic psyche. Another friend of mine says that Koreans are like Italians in that they let their minds be known, even if in order to do so a good deal of screaming, and perhaps an overturned table or two, are necessary. If this likening is true it still makes me sad, because Italians are wont to erupt and express their feelings not just because they live in close quarters with one another, but because they are passionate people – while Koreans are most certainly not; in fact, these marital martial arts notwithstanding, they are the opposite: reserved, polite and deferential – at least, that is, until they have had enough.

Perhaps one day I too will have had enough, and will release my compressed and latent frustrations through some dramatic and volcanic eruption worthy of my hosts. Perhaps there is something to be said for this kind of venting. Who knows, it might do me well. Then again, it’s a beautiful autumn day, the sun is warm and gentle and in its afternoon descent it is saturating the rice patties with its almost phosphorescent glow. The still river bends behind the bamboo field, glistening in peace. All is calm and all is quiet and all is well. The only thing left for me to do is decide whether to take a walk in the forest, or to relish the absence of noise and luxuriate in the rare opportunity to take a peaceful, soundless, stress-reducing nap.

Night Train

Train whistle nocturne
Soars through the evening air, a
Distant lullaby.

Consideration

Standing on the bus,
Squirming babe in arms, she stares
At the seated man.

Dragonflies

Sailing in mid air,

A graceful tandem as one ~

Two dragonflies mate.

Karaoke

Normally reserved,
She, with mic in hand, becomes
A soaring goddess.

Cabbies, Kimchi and Cancer ~ Part III

These tales notwithstanding, cab rides are normal affairs, just like they might be back home, with the exception perhaps that Ulsan cabbies drive as fast as – or rather just a bit faster –  than traffic, weather, speed traps and decorum will allow; ignoring traffic signals, creating and then squeezing into little nooks and crannies in the frenetic flow of traffic, and racing each other to the next fare. I get queasy in cabs here.

Perhaps this is because I am unaccustomed to being in the back of a car. All I see whizzing by I see from the side, instead of the front. And of course all that weaving and braking in rain and at high speeds catches me off guard, no matter how much I psychically prepare myself for it. I’d be better suited in the front seat, where at least I would have a semblance of control, but riding shot gun with a perfect stranger with whom I don’t even share the commonality of language feels uncomfortable to me. Besides that, upon entering a cab one often encounters the overpowering smell of kimchi. It’s a garlic-soaked, chili-laden, fermented smell that, once consumed, reasserts itself in the form of a slightly sweet, though more pungently sour, form of severe halitosis. If you happen into a cab shortly after a cabby has had his meal, you’re in for a nose full.

There is no food in the States I can think of that is so ubiquitously consumed as kimchi is consumed here. Virtually everybody eats it, usually several times a day. It’s a rare bird who will tell you its not their favorite food, a rarer bird still who claims not to like it and a bonafide Korean freak who will tell you they don’t eat it at all. Many Koreans won’t even leave their country without it. I remember boarding a plane in Hanoi that was destined for Busan. I couldn’t believe my nose. I had gone three weeks without seeing, hearing of, or catching a whiff of the stuff, as it is – to the best of my knowledge – not even available in Vietnam. I was still in Hanoi, but I may as well have been in Seoul, as the smell on the plane left no doubt as to what nation the bulk of the passengers hailed from. I don’t know how many of them brought kimchi with them, but I assume it was the majority.

Kimchi is not just their national food. It’s their national treasure. Without it I think the Koreans would lose a major part of their collective psyche. There’s even a museum in Seoul dedicated to nothing but kimchi. Eighty different types of it are on display. I can only imagine the smell. One of my students recently visited the museum. She loves kimchi, but even she said the smell was awful.

Personally, I like the stuff alright, though I only eat in occasionally, when I am dining out. I won’t have it in my refrigerator, as it coats everything with its puissant odor, and when I open the door the smell comes wafting out like some cooped-up, bloated ghost and proceeds to permeate my walls with its essence for some while thereafter. It’s bad enough getting on a bus or a train only to find myself enveloped with its fetid after-effects, but to have it in my house too is more than I can bear, despite whatever medicinal benefits it’s purported to have.

Speaking of which, it is a universally accepted fact here in Korea that not only does kimchi taste wonderful, but it is also extremely good for you. Three of its primary ingredients – garlic, chili peppers and cabbage –  are generally known to health experts around the world to be cancer fighting, vitamin laden superfoods. Of course, it’s other primary ingredient – salt – is not.

Garlic is, of course, thought of around the world as a cure-all for just about any disease or ailment. It is known to help boost your antioxidant enzymes; helps to prevent cardiovascular disease; it’s an anti-bacterial; can prevent or reduce skin clots and even help reduce the damaging effects of nicotine, which makes addicts like me breath just a little easier. It’s also said to be an aphrodisiac, which might explain why I have been so damned horney lately. I have been eating lots of garlic to help ward off any potential flu, as the Koreans are extremely wary of the swine bug and tend to look at foreigners as little more than potential carriers of the virus that might kill them.

But I digress.

Chili peppers are also considered, taken in small doses, to be very healthy. Some researchers have found that capsaicin can limit or even reduce the growth of prostate cancer cells. Also, chili peppers have a high dose of vitamins C and A, which are both immune system boosters. They also have antioxidant properties.

Cabbage is of course a super vegetable. Though many people, myself included, don’t care much for it’s taste, particularly when it’s had the snot boiled out of it, cabbage is nonetheless loaded with vitamin C. It is not only rich in vitamins A, B and E, but it also has a nitrogenous compound known as indoles. Apparently there is some recent research that indicates that indoles can lower the risk of various forms of cancer.

So, given all of this, why is it that Koreans, right after the Japanese, suffer the second highest rate of stomach cancer in the world? And why is it that many other forms of cancer, which have been relatively low in Korea, are on the rise? Could it be the kimchi isn’t as good for you as Koreans steadfastly maintain; or could it be simply that they eat too damned much of it? The typical breakfast in Korea: kimchi and rice with perhaps an egg. The typical lunch: kimchi and rice. Dinner can be a potpourri of wonderful food, but kimchi, along with many other salty, pickled foods, is always on the table too.

All in all, Koreans eat an awful lot of pickled, fermented and very salty foods. In my brief research of stomach cancer, it turns out that the incidences of it in the West have been reduced drastically in main part due to the advent of the refrigerator and hence, the reduced reliance on fermented and salt-cured foods. Of course, everybody has a refrigerator in Korea, but that isn’t going to stop them from eating the food that defines their culture. Refrigerators also have nothing to do with the ubiquitous consumption of ramen, which is a fast food par excellence in Korea. Every super market and convenience store has half an aisle dedicated to nothing but the salt and MSG laden stuff. It’s tasty to be sure, and as simple and cheap a meal as you could want, but in the end,
it ain’t all that good for you.

So despite whatever health benefits that come with the ingredients that make kimchi what it is, there is clearly a point of diminishing returns, and that point is ironically proving to be the death of some of the people who love kimchi more than anything else in the world. Then again, something’s got to kill you, and just as I choose to continue to smoke because it aids me in many ways in the short term, you’ve gotta take the good with the bad. I suspect that Koreans would be quite hesitant to even acknowledge the adverse affects of too much kimchi, so I don’t bother to tell them. Then again, they’d probably not want to acknowledge the adverse affects of stress and the evidence that is out there to suggest that stress has an awful lot to do with cancer as well. This is probably the most stressful place I have ever been, full of people working like dogs, toeing the line, doing what they’re told and having little time to rest, reflect, relax and blow off steam in productive ways. And in the face of stress we tend to rely on things that make us feel good, be it sugar, alcohol, nicotine, shopping, drama, sex or kimchi. In the end we all get to choose our poison. We can only hope the poison has a good deal more positive attributes than it does negative ones.

Afghanistan

There are a million reasons to stay the fuck out of Afghanistan, not that any of our “leaders” will entertain any of them. Hell, we can’t even trust that the reasons we are there have anything to do with what the politicians say. Smoke and mirrors if you ask me; not to mention a lot of useless death. But then, why build a shit pile of bombs if you don’t have a theater to explode them on. Yeah, it’s a cynical view, but it’s probably got a heavier dose of truth in it than you’ll get from any politician.

At any rate, I watched an interview between Lynn Sherr and Rory Stewart on the Bill Moyers Journal, and I have to say that this Stewart dude is one inspiring character. This is a guy who walked the entire length of Afghanistan alone, at the onset of the war while the Taliban was roaming around and Afghanistan had no government. And he did this because he knew that in order to get a sense for what the country was really about, he would have to hang out with the people in the small remote villages where most Afghans live. Talk about cahones!

What he has to say about Afghanistan and the advice he would give our leaders if only they would listen is well worth checking out. Besides that, he shares with us what I consider to be the political analogy of the year. They are talking about Mr. Stewart’s visit with Hillary Clinton, who sought his advice on Afghanistan. I’ll quote it for you:

LYNN SHERR: And again, their reaction? They listen politely, you say?

RORY STEWART: They listen politely, but in the end, of course, basically the policy decision is made. What they would like is little advice on some small bit. I mean, the analogy that one of my colleagues used recently is this: it’s as though they come to you and they say, “We’re planning to drive our car off a cliff. Do we wear a seatbelt or not?” And we say, “Don’t drive your car off the cliff.” And they say, “No, no, no. That decision’s already made. The question is should we wear our seatbelts?” And you say, “Why by all means wear a seatbelt.” And they say, “Okay, we consulted with policy expert, Rory Stewart,” et cetera.

Sometimes you wonder why we try.

Watch the interview here.

Cheers,

AN ~

Enmity

Anger in us seethes;

Each ~ a sleeping volcano

Someday to erupt.

back in black

Well, September has faded into true autumn – the leaves turning, the nights nippy, the rain gentle, like a blanket against the skin. I have been away for almost the entirety of the month. My apologies to those who have come to expect something new every day or two. I moved at the end of August and have been out of the writing loop ever since. I am back now with renewed intent to keep this site fresh for the foreseeable future.

First up: my love for Lewis Black. There’s scarcely a better way to express your anger vicariously and humorously than to watch this guy go. His commentary on the rampaging anger in the U.S. these days is just hysterical; I mean, any guy whose first question to Serena Williams’ on court outburst of profanity is: “Am I the only one turned on by that?” gets my vote. That his second and third questions are: “Excuse me – is she single? Does she have a sister? (She does! Time for me to give a shit about tennis again.”) Well, let’s just say the man knows how to put things into perspective.

In response to the talking heads’ hyperbolic commentary of this newfound anger in America, Mr. Black welcomes us to this phenomenon quite appropriately:

“Hey America. Welcome to the dark side. What took you so long?”

I was in stitches from start to finish. I hope you are too.

Click here for The Daily Show. It’s the middle section.

Cheers,

AN ~

Om

Back sore, knees aching,
Skull chatter battles silence:
Meditation sucks.

I Never Said I Love You

I never said I love you,
Though if I did,
I said it like a philosopher,
With words deliberate and measured,
Tentative –
Questioning Love’s meaning,
Its myriad parameters, manifestations,
Expressions,
Attaching disclaimers hoping to debunk
Romance’s mythological aspirations,
While with a bated, second breath
I cited its transcendent qualities,
Secretly hoping they were possible to achieve.
Then, to myself, honoring the comfort of your breath,
I would sheepishly admit that being in love –
A recondite admission at best –
Was better than being alone.

I never said I love you,
Though if I did
It was only in the place of anger –
My lurching, desperate words
A passive-aggressive plea to be recognized, subsumed,
Held up in the cradle of security.
Like that time when my father died and I had to travel
Half-way across the continent with money I didn’t have
To be his lone eulogizer;
To collect his ashes only to leave them on the train
And find, day in and day out,
That no one turned them in to the lost and found.
All the while there was you
Chastising me my incorrigible lethe,
Then turning smugly away, forgetting
That not a soul assisted my journey –
Not even you, my love,
Who stayed behind luxuriating with money
And friends you did have,
Loving me in your self-satisfied way,
With phone calls on the cell phone
You bought me for the occasion,
Prying from my stoney lips
Those words . . .
Always right before hanging up.

I never said I love you,
Though if I did,
It was when I was drunk, and so were you,
And there was laughter in the borderless field;
And we like aquatic angels were swimming
With translucent wings
Along an endless stream of possibility,
Howling cavalier exclamations
In camouflaged tongues,
As if knowing that all –
And of a sudden –
Would evaporate as all magic does,
With the blink of a weary eye
At the soundless morning call;
Leaving us with erased memories,
Headaches, cotton mouth,
And eyes unable to meet the golden light.

I never said I love you,
Though if I did,
I didn’t know what I was saying,
Nor perhaps what I was
Not saying.

I never said I love you,
As if three words comprised an anchor
And your heart a bottomless sea;
As if your saccharine cliches,
Your shine-eyed eternal promises,
Your long-winded, osculant kisses,
Your emotional transferences and
Your wiles, sneaking about the cage of my laconic heart,
Would somehow braid a sticky, sinewy ligature
That would bind me in eternal rue.

I never said I love you,
Though if I did
I take it back,
Because I never said it right.
And if ever I see you again –
Though it will only make you scoff,
And prompt you anew,
In one final, parting tremor,
To spatter my error
With the blood of your unrequited heart –
I will say those words.
And I will say them with a tenor
Worthy of their sound,
Even though it won’t change a thing.
Because now, only after years of practiced surrender,
Do I know what they mean;
And know too
That they apply to you,
Belong to you;
That they sing a song of reckoning,
However artless and clumsy,
That is,
Or at least was,
You and I

AN ~

Freedom

Open window yawns;
Repeatedly though, the fly
Rams into the glass.