I Have a Dog

I’m not sure that I want a dog, but a dog is what I am currently in possession of, and it presents something of a dilemma for me.
Let’s start with the apparent facts.
First, the canine in question was abandoned on a side street of South Korea with its puppy—she was protecting the little guy but not ferociously.
Second, she has obviously been somewhat domesticated: she has been trained to save up her defecations for the walk, she seems to only ever want to eat human food—turning up her abandoned nose at the dry dog food I purchased for her, and she is generally well-mannered.
Third, she is cute in that mangy, street dog kind of way—I’m sure that there is a fashion trend somewhere along the line that could best illustrate what I mean.
Fourth, she has this tendency, whenever I touch her (and this has, for some reason, been a theme amongst myself and female dogs that I could never properly explain) she has a tendency to empty a bit of her bladder on my floor. This is not exactly serious because I was at first worried that I would be cleaning up dog crap, and dog urine is less offensive than dog crap in the cleanup department.
Fifth, my time in South Korea is going to be coming to an end in about six months, and that raises a lot of “what if?” questions about her future when I leave.
Sixth, she requires two walks a day (morning and evening to help empty that problematic bladder as much as possible) and she has basically added an hour of chores to my already pretty packed days.
Seventh, weekends in Korea can be wild times, and I can be away from home for days on end, which means that I would have to find something to do with her in the meantime.
Eighth, the girl that I am currently spending a lot of time with has an aversion to dogs that goes back to a childhood incident wherein she was chased for a very long time by a very big white dog that was apparently trying to injure her—the veracity of the story only called into question by the chase (dogs aren’t known to chase people unless the people want them to) and the fact that the dog was big (the biggest dog I have seen in Korea is an eight-month-old beagle). Now, they do have wild dogs in Korea that are apparently very big and very feral, so we don’t want to discount that fact, and it barely matters whether the story is real or not because the reality is in her very apparent aversion.
Ninth, I am on a budget as it is. My current financial reality is somewhere between “getting by” and “struggling” depending on the day, and there are certain financial realities that owning a dog entails that I’m not sure I am capable of shouldering at the current time.
Tenth, I would like to consider myself a person who is at least capable of some compassion. I have certainly had my moments where the feelings, needs, and realities of others have been disregarded, but those were also extremely important points in my own personal development where certain decisions had to be made for my own sanity. One thing I know I am not a person who is fanatically devoted to animals. I have never had the experience with one that would make me do whatever is necessary for an animal to survive. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a point I would go to (and I’m reaching it currently) to secure the well-being of a fellow creature, but if I have to choose between the dog eating and me eating, I would certainly choose me.
All of these things amounts to just about the same thing. There is really only one decision for me to make, and to be perfectly honest I am pretty sure that I have already made it, but the problem that I encounter—here as almost everywhere—is (in the words of the wicked witch of the west) “how to do it.”
Do I just want to drop her off at some shelter?
Do I want to see if any of my foreigner friends would like a cute little companion for their time in a foreign country?
Do I just take her for a walk and not come back with her?
There is a restaurant behind my apartment that serves dog soup, should I see if I could sell her to them?
Do I do what I usually do and wait for the universe to push me in the right direction?
I even suggested in jest to my cohorts a couple of nights ago that perhaps I could slaughter her myself and make my own dog soup as an exercise in seeing how far I could push the cruelty in my heart.
I thank my mom and the sages I have had the benefit to study for the fact that I know the answer is to do what I usually do and wait for the universe to push me in the right direction. A clear path will open itself up. It is apparent that I have put myself in a position where I want to ensure that whoever takes possession of the little girl will be in a position to love her more dearly than I’m sure she was before. She cowers sometimes when you stand over her and it’s clear that she wasn’t exactly fawned over repeatedly. As a matter of fact, I feel like I’m probably the middle ground on the way to a better place for her. She is moving towards positivity. When she was abandoned, that was pretty negative. With me, she has somebody that is willing to provide for her needs, show her some affection, and illustrate the fact that everything is going to be all right. What I want for her next owner is that extreme lover of animals who would do just about anything to have a companion, that person who would ensure beyond their own well being the well being of their pet, and that philanthropist of animal love (not in the unnatural way) who will teach her real love.
I was told that the average Korean approach to having a pet is to want one, but, when it gets too difficult or financially disadvantageous, to get rid of it at the drop of a hat. This is not unusual for the Korean character that is so built on the desire to have things happen quickly that results in extremely rapid changes of mind—Buddhism might be the best thing for Korea with its emphasis on the pace of nature.
Her name is Dog, and I can’t help but run through “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” every time I look at that punum.
It is almost stunning the things that you can get up to when you decide to take a two-hour walk at four o’clock in the morning as you’re walking home from the bar. It is important here to point out that as much as I may or may not find dealing with the issue of Dog tedious, I by no means regret it. I care enough that I being left out on the street is no way to treat a dog, and I am certainly not mistreating the little dear who is being fed, sheltered, walked, petted, and generally taken care of; however, it’s time for her to move on to a better home. Learning is a very large part of my daily routine, and I have certainly learned some things about myself as a result of this ordeal: I am not quite prepared to devote my life to the well-being of something a lot smaller than me (read: dog, cat, human, or otherwise). I CAN do it. I WILL do it if it’s necessary. But if I had my druthers, I’m fine with not.

Good and Bad

Pointless. I am coming to believe and understand that it is pointless to attempt to define what is meant by good and bad. There are only vague concepts, and these things are usually so personal that it barely matters. What is good? Is there a difference between this question and: what is the good? What is bad? What is the bad?
What I see as the major problem here is that both of these terms are temporalized without anybody being immediately aware of it. Good and bad imply the past and the future. If something seems good in the present, it is either because there was some pre-existing condition that makes the whateveritis seem so, or, likewise, a view that the whateveritis will afford us some kind of benefit in the future. The same can be said for something that is bad. Either there was some pre-existing condition that makes some present situation seem bad, or, when observing something there is an overwhelming sense of dread, the future seems bleak. There is never a condition wherein NOW something erupts as either good or bad.
The next major issue with dealing with terms like good and bad is that they are also culturally different. Take the example of women in different areas of the world. A Muslim woman might be keeping herself covered because she is sincere in her belief, and, for her, it seems like a good thing to do. Those women in the modern age who would consider themselves as sexually liberated will have no problem going out and having intercourse with many anonymous partners while at the same time experimenting with mind expanding drugs, and that will be good. In Korea it is good to live at home until you get married. There are a number of thirty-somethings still living with their parents, perhaps sharing a bed with their younger siblings, and this is a good thing. Imagine getting an American man of thirty-something years old to A) live with his parents B) share a bed with a younger sibling. It might be a bit difficult. There are the Mallrat Brodies of the world out there that might not have trouble living at home, but as long as they have their space.
But lets take a step back for a second and see that with these two fairly simply understandings, we can say that good and bad are terms that involve terms that are intimately intertwined with the space-time continuum. What was good in the Incan culture (i.e. sacrificing children to gods, eating guinea pigs, and rejecting gold for the true worth of having a lot of followers) would be somewhat frowned upon in the modern age by most cultures.
(Let’s call this a bit of an aside and a cultural criticism: who’s to say that human sacrifices aren’t made to this very day in the metaphorical sense? Just about everybody everywhere has been brainwashed by culture or advertising or family or religion or economics or whatever, and this could be a sacrifice of the human character in its own way. What is purely human any more? What is not derived from custom and culture? What is not pushed on us by fat cat businessmen attempting to make a buck? What vaguely talented sixteen-year-old girl with a pert rack hasn’t been exploited when given the opportunity? Can we even be said to be human if we don’t think for ourselves?)
Heap on top of this the fact that the discussion of good and bad is a distinctly human distinction. There is no good and bad in nature. Think about a hunt: lionesses head out into the Serengeti. They hunt. They plot their attack on a group of gazelles. They wait. They’re patient. They know what needs to be done. They fail. They don’t bring down any food. Good for the gazelles, right? Now imagine that this situation repeats itself over and over. The lions start to die. The hunting pack shrinks. Food becomes even harder to acquire for the lions. Eventually, they all die. Good things are locked into time and space. In nature, if we can be allowed to use this term, it is actually “good” for the lion to catch the gazelle—perhaps not for the individual gazelle (which is probably the lamest, slowest one of the group anyway). Not only are good and bad terms of spacial and temporal significance, but they are also distinctly human, and beyond all of this they must be constantly qualified by the individual which is experiencing them—what’s bad for one is good for others.
Well… then what’s the point? What’s the point of ever delving into an investigation of something that will necessarily reveal something that can only point the time, place, and individual human that is investigating it?
Sometimes the answers to questions are in the questions themselves, and you should investigate good, the good, bad, and the bad because it will point out the time your in, it will tell you about the place you are in, and it will tell you about yourself. What greater good can there be? When you look honestly at what is good and bad, with the most careful attempt (although fruitless) at objectivity, you will reveal things about your time that you can’t understand in the present, but individuals in the future will be curious; you will reveal things about your place that might seem unimpressive or unimportant to you, but those who come after will be interested; you will reveal things to yourself about yourself, your place in society, your place in your existence, and your reality that you would never have been able to come to an understanding about otherwise.
I’m going to put it here in print that I am convinced that when people stop investigating these things that seem utterly fruitless (what is good? What is bad? What is truth? What is the nature of the human character?) we almost automatically stop advancing as creatures. Humans have been given the faculty to go about their day reasoning, even if only to themselves, and it seems to me that the most appropriate venue for these cogitations is in precisely the place you’d least likely expect it to be: the arena of impossible to answer. The most obvious reason for this is that questions with answers have a tendency to put the search to an end, whereas questions that cannot satisfactorily be answered keep the investigation in motion. Questions without answers pose more questions, and these questions keep the quest going. As a matter of fact, if there is a universal truth or a universal good, it might be in the form of the eternal quest to understand that which is impossible to understand. Religion claims to have answers to impossible questions, be wary; however, it simultaneously poses a question about which it is impossible to know with certainty, and it can therefore not be completely written off. The path of the good, the path of the just, is the path that travels toward the perpetual advancement of the self while causing as little harm (bad) as possible because causing no harm (bad) is impossible (read: failure is inevitable, and, in the words of Epictetus: Pursue the good ardently. But if your efforts fall short, accept the result and move on.)

What is it about thinking?

There are a lot of strands in ol’ duders head… man. Recently, I was sitting there having a beer with a friend of mine—one that was coming towards the end of a string of beers—and he said to me something that I wasn’t sure I agreed with, but something that I have come to understand in a different way.
All he said was:
--People like you and me, we just can’t help it.
Is there such a thing as simply being unable to help it? What part of what we are is pure instinct? What part of us is so practiced that to break the habit of that practice would require something almost cataclysmic?
I have often maintained that there is nothing whatsoever to stop the consciousness from choosing an entirely new way of being, and I’m pretty sure that’s true; however, in order for the decisions that the consciousness makes to become lasting and (perhaps) permanent, there needs to be a thoroughgoing personal discipline to back it up.
So, I started to think about the things that I couldn’t help. I have a drink before I go to bed. It’s almost compulsory these days. I’m not getting belligerent. I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not drinking excessively, but I do have that drink every day. I can’t help wandering. There are some days that I leave my apartment having absolutely no idea where I’m going or why I’m going there, but it is precisely to there that I am going, and I take comfort in that. I can’t help playing guitar. If I went a week without playing some guitar, I might crack because it’s an hour or two a day where I get to practice my instincts, feelings, and auditory senses. I can’t help writing. I recently went four months without writing… much. I did it intentionally because there hasn’t been a period in my life over the course of the last nine years where I didn’t write anything that lasted any more than three months. By the end of the fourth month, I had the shakes and words pouring out of me that made no sense, but simply had to come. I can’t help reading. I am a compulsive reader, constantly involved with, usually, three or four books at once. I always have a toilet book (there is nothing better for an excuse to read for ten or fifteen or twenty… or thirty minutes). I always have something else—generally a work of historical significance because I am a literature nerd who can’t pull himself out of the old school. Generally I have some work of a spiritual bend for daily meditations—I’ve gone through things from Buddhism to Taoism to Stoicism to Christianity, and I plan to make it through whatever –isms and –itys that I can. Finally, I will have a work of philosophy that I’m plodding through slowly.
The question that has popped into my head lately is: what is it about my activities that connects them—apart from the fact, of course, that I am the one doing them?
I can’t help thinking, and by thinking I mean reasoning, investigating, pondering, wondering, criticizing, being skeptical, accepting, and generally wandering through the musical liquor of words, impressions, and ideas.
When I read something that means, I smile. Today I read this from David Hume’s “Treatise of Human Nature,” 1.4.7, paragraph 12:

I cannot forbear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of these several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think I approve of one object and disapprove of another; call one thing beautiful and another deform’d; decide concerning of truth and falshood, reason and folly, without knowing up what principles I proceed. I am concern’d for the condition of the learned world, which lies under such a deplorable ignorance in all these particulars. I feel an ambition to arise in me of contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquiring a name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring up naturally in my present disposition; and shou’d I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other business or diversion, I feel I shou’d be a loser in point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I started reading philosophy, but I know now and knew (somehow) even when I started that it was not to find answers. There are no answers in philosophy. As a matter of fact, Hume tells us: “Philosophy…if just, can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments.”
What the fuck do we study it for?
Precisely for those moderate sentiments.
What does it matter when Derrida says that everything is metaphor?
What does it matter if Camus tells us everything is pointless and the greatest decision we can make every day is the one to NOT commit suicide?
What does Heidegger’s four-fold matter?
What does Ethics matter?
I know (kind of) what I feel, my impressions—at least that I have impressions, and ideas (or at least that they sometimes burst with a severe force through my mind). I know that these things are the result of my investigation into things. I don’t read things to find something. I don’t read in order to know something. I read in order to mull things over. I am consistently skeptical because it keeps my brain limber. I think I actually hate knowing the answers to things. It annoys me. Any time you CAN’T know, that’s where I want to go.
What is time? What are the structures of the human consciousness? What is justice? What is injustice? What is pleasure? What is pain? What does “the” mean? What is an idea? What is good? What is bad? What is beauty? What is art? What does it mean that music is such an important part of the human experience? What is a soul? How do we reason? How do we answer questions that can only be supported by theory, observation and experience—the matter of truth—but no facts?
Theory, observation and experience are the necessary components of truth, but it’s that last one that, if I might be allowed a platitude: throws the wrench in the gears. You cannot experience what I experience. Sorry. I’m not sorry. Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I hereby make no claims on my ability to function—sometimes I maintain that I’m barely human. There is only personal truth. Sorry to you universal truth adherents. The other bummer about truth is: you can’t put it into words. Truth in words defeats the point of it.
That’s something to think about.

Wondering Again

It would seem that the most common activity for me to engage in—for what seems like the last umpteen years of my existence—is the simple act of wondering.

I’ve been trying desperately lately to come up with some kind of delineation between thinking and reasoning that will account for the difference between them.

Inconspicuously, it would seem, lines tend to draw themselves where they oughtn’t to be, and onlookers begin wondering where exactly these demarcations come from.

Style and content are constantly connected while simultaneously being creatures of difference: contain them and they escape, free them and they only coagulate.

It is convenient to think that everything in the world exists in only the three shades of non-color, but that’s to do a disservice to combination and absence, isn’t it?

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian is a funny word to me—sitting up in that auspicious space along side such words as: wobbly, uvula, bovicide, and guttersnipe.

In Korea, when you’re teaching phonics, as funny as it is, you’re supposed to correct the children who are mispronouncing the words six as sex and fox as fuc*$.

Have you ever notice that when you finish reading a book your life is somehow changed, your perception has someway been altered, and something is different.

Considered at a different level, any kind of reading is practice in an art that is distinctly human: deciphering the meaning of symbols plopped onto a field.

Considered even further, reading material of a challenging bent is a taxing task for human reason, and it could be said that exercising reason is exercising humanity.

Considerate people are becoming fewer and farther between for inexplicable reasons, although I would have to blame the Enlightenment and Adam Smith.

It is at this point that I should also very much like to thank the Enlightenment thinkers and Adam for their contribution to the world of letters and understanding.

It is at this point that I ought to make very clear that all good ideas can be morphed into bad ideas: religion, Marxism, democracy, monarchy, anarchy, wisdom.

Dash-adding is a common-place element-in-the-closet for philosophers, bakers, chefs, people-of-repute, people-of-disrepute, and all those ne’er-do-wells.

Extricate yourself, please, for the love of god, from excessive, some would say ridiculous, superfluous comma usage, and I, who care, will be happy.

Complaining has never made anything better, she said to me. I responded back quickly that it certainly made me FEEL better, and that’s anything isn’t it? She responded that she supposed she had been casting a rather wide net using a ridiculous word such as anything that can mean everything, nothing, a car, a word, a meaning, a place, a noun, a verb, a book, a drink, a person, a trash can, a phone, a key, and anything else that you can put an ‘a’ in front of, but it was up to me to not take her out of context and understand which—which she was sure I did. What was there to say except, I’m sorry you feel ways about stuff: it can be a real drag when you’ve been given only two lines to say something exceptional. Of course this lead to an even greater misunderstanding of what I was actually attempting to mean versus what was conveyed, and this conversation (if it could be called such at this point) was well on its way to the resolution that perhaps it’s impossible to ever convey precisely what you mean when language is your only mode of transportation. What’s with all the talk about boats, she said as a loud thump on the wall made both of us jump nearly out of our skin—me thinking about what a phrase like “out of our skin” actually means and she thinking that somebody had obviously been killed with a blow to the head from a blunt object. Did you hear that? Of course I heard it, I said, I have a BS degree in Hearing and Auditory Sciences from Castiglia University in Firshampton Bay, New Cataractistica, just south of Bis. What the hell are you ever talking about? she rightfully queried. I’m not sure your over-active intelligence could sink so low as to appropriately grasp the simplicity of what I’m attempting to accomplish. You see… she cut me off with a wide-eyed stare and a finger raised to her lips when another epic-sounding thump bounced through the wall from our neighbors in 12C.
Death is the specter haunting US this evening, she said, I’m absolutely certain of it. How like us all, I pensively offered, but weren’t we attempting to have a conversation about something of great import before these rascals next to us decided to go about thrashing each other about and committed crimes that will inevitably lead to a lousy night of sleep for everybody involved. Why is that all you ever think about is sleep? It’s important for invigorated cogitations. When was the last time you considered help? Well, to seriously consider help, one must consider all the ontological ramifications of the question: what is help? Help means different things to different people, and it is entirely possible that what is helpful to Peter—which might well be the return of some lost goods, is not what is helpful to Paul—who is perfectly content with his lot in the whole ordeal. Yes, she said, I can see how that is wise, but I can also see that your inability to see without using your eyes is hampered by the plank of incomprehensibility. Pray, do you know the plank of incomprehensibility? she asked. I have made a very intimate acquaintance on more than one occasion with the aforementioned plank, and I should like you to know that it, she, he, we, they, you, and I have come to an understanding? And what, if I might inquire, is that? It’s where two people, in dispute, discuss matters to such an extent that there is an agreement, or, at the very least, an accord between them. Extraordinarily helpful, but you know what I meant. Did I? Do I? Don’t you? Don’t you what? No… don’t you? Wait… don’t you? or don’t I? If I had said don’t I that wouldn’t have made any sense. It is a question direct to you. I thought you were being ironic. No, just a bit silly. Have you learned anything? When it comes to antagonistic thumping, let it be known that death is absolutely certain, and sometimes dying is the most succulent activity the brain can engage in—apart from leaving prepositions at the end of the sentences they’re in.

Things Written Outside Family Mart

in Busan, South Korea with a pitcher (1L) of beer, a bottle of soju and a bowl of ramyun noodles.
I have on my Waegukin hat right now. Whenever I am in an area that is saturated with us, I feel strangely ill at ease. I am still terrible at shopping. I am still not good at getting girls to sleep with me, but apparently I am talented. Or, at least I have been told so for a couple of mediums (read: writing and music). What do you do when you’re Paul Varjak?
I always want people to sit down and tell me their lives.
Busan would be a very different experience for me, I know that much, but why do I always run away from things that seem like they will mean something in the future?
A Filipino family has set up a convenience store outside of the convenience store, and the store is their van. They seem happy.
Set me straight. Buy me beers and set me straight.
I surprised the hell out of my friend last night be being American. Is it so hard to believe?
There are big things coming in the next short time. I feel them percolating, and soon it will be time to serve them up. The future is a blank slate. We defile with our created meanings. What will you? Just put the pen on the page and see what spews forth.
I am at the scene of previous exploits, wandering through significant memories. You remember when “that” happened? Of course you do. But always bear (bare) in mind the significance of the past tense.
Yesterday I walked for eight straight hours (including four hours of city walking and four hours on a couple of mountains), spent six hours in a spa for eight dollars, went to the beach, played a show that lasted almost two hours, got heroically drunk, played the after hours show, went to a bar where cute girls talk to you while you drink—one of them was dressed as a chicken, before retiring the day at my friend’s rooftop flat.
That’ll do it, hey? If for that one day, the weekend was full.
Hey, remember that time when you slept so softly next to me? It was here in this place that we touched something. What was it? Why do I have to be so intense? When will I learn how to have fun with relationships and words and meaning and all that the world would have me understand?
I wish I understood things. I wish I could concentrate on things for longer than five hours at a time. I wish the world would rotate backwards for just one day, long enough to fuck everybody up, and then return to normal. I wish the best minds of my generation had a voice to say what they see. I wish the minds of my generation weren’t blind. I wish the reality and pain of eternal separation from meaning on no man, but it’s what we are all stuck with. I wish I could see as a Korean sees. I wish life made sense—when it so clearly doesn’t (and that is its beauty). I wish I had some insight into what it is about society that seems to foster a sense of money. I wish anybody could understand why it is impossible to own money. The one thing that makes “ownership” possible—or is it?—can never be said to be something you own, only something you have. If it were consistently seen in this light, don’t you think that we’d understand more about life? It is all fleeting. You own nothing. You are given the care of it for a short time, and the only thing that really, truly matters is the actual care that you give to it: what kind of use you make of it, how you allow it to help humanity, and the utter, delicious, beautiful meaninglessness of it in the long run.
Don’t give me this crap about an after-life, and please don’t call it believe because believing is based on experience. Faith is what it is, but it CAN be totally groundless. Jesus arose from the grave. Lazarus arose from the grave. Did they come back from heaven? If Lazarus was a good man, and ostensibly in heaven, don’t you think he’d be mad if Jesus brought him back to earth? Perhaps heaven is the rest the mind can take when it’s dead, and the nutrients the body gives back to nature that breathed life into it.
It can be amazing what we will endure for the sake of endurance. She’s tall and thin, she’s short and fat, and all we want is to feel something, anything for a pure moment. Keep an eye out for what will come, it might take unexpected forms.
What do the Korean police do, exactly? Or, maybe a more appropriate question would be: what is it about the USA that keeps our boys in blue so busy?
The obvious answer is crime. What is that nature of this crime? Everything. What is it about the USA that makes the crime so rampant? The unwavering devotion to not giving a shit about fuck. Does the fact that the cops actually carry guns exacerbate the issue? Probably. Maybe. Causes and effects are necessarily related. The question is: how?
“What?” is a way of looking at the world honestly. “How?” is a way of making all the necessary connections that exist.
Which one can I bone?
If it were possible, could you break the back of the established guilt purveyors? They sell it as if it’s free, but don’t we all know the truth? You ought to feel guilty for this. Please feel guilty for that. Drink down the insignificant significance.
We’ll feed you until you defeat us.
Hahahaha!
(you never will)
Congestion is relative,
by which I mean, of course,
that relatives
can congest the most free-flowing
of folk.
Friends will do the same,
and things we can’t control—
by which I mean most of a life—
but the trick at this point is fully
to invest yourself in decongestants.
Clear the sinuses with a good book.
Free those nasal passages in writing.
Create your pain away.
Accept the things you can’t control.
Forever seek to control
absolutely nothing.
Remember life is really good if you
simply let it be, and follow purely
spiritual whims to
the ends they’ll carry
you to.

Classes

I startled myself today with the realization that I’m pretty sure I have never left university. What I mean is that the habits I developed in university have stayed with me since then, possibly more than any other time in my life.

Normally, especially with the way most university students go about living, this might not be the healthiest or most advantageous form of living on the face of the planet, but my particular manifestation of it has some interesting quirks. The imbibing of intoxicating chemicals is still around, but in a far, far, far… um, far diminished form. That’s what university is about isn’t it: let’s drink until we can’t feel feelings any more five nights (and sometimes days) a week. Ah, well, you grow up eventually, and a couple of post-work relaxation beverages covers your needs with maybe a heavy night on the weekend for fun.

There is also still the tendency to keep late hours. This is not anything new for me really because I have been a chronic insomniac since I was in middle school; however, what I learned about myself in university is that if I exhaust myself absolutely thoroughly in both a mental and a physical way, sleep will come. As I thought it was very important to study before playing, and there was usually a lot of wrestling practice before studying, this actually worked out pretty well for me. I would be exhausted from working that day (I worked two part-time jobs), going to classes, going to wrestling practice, and spending a few hours in the library, so sleep was never too far away from me.

Those heady days are reminiscences of my undergraduate work, and it struck me as if all of a sudden that my graduate days were pretty similar. I was working a part-time overnight job in Manhattan (a labor intensive affair that actually caused me to lose thirty pounds), while being a full-time Master’s student in Queens, and juggling all of that with a girlfriend. There was always travel, work, reading, studying, writing, late nights, and at this point I was starting my guitar studies as well.

All of which brings me to Korea. The place that I find myself now (which is to say South Korea) has been very good to me. If you have ever had any desire whatsoever to teach English as a second language, Korea comes highly recommended. Korea can be everything you want it to be, whatever you want it to be, and everything you don’t want it to be. It’s that last one that you have to watch out for, but what will happen in that case is a personal growth and development that is beyond comprehension—you will be different. At any rate, Korea has been very good to me.

Last year, I was in almost complete hermitage. I was in the process of writing a book, and it took up most of my year; however, in order to cull enough fodder for the book from the year, I had to go out and do interesting things (climbing mountains, mudfests, wandering into unknown cities, trying all sorts of new food, and generally finding myself in the most out-of-the-way places that a foreigner could find him or herself), and this took up a lot of time. Beyond that, I was furiously reading and developing my understanding of myself and human beings: from Buddhist readings to philosophy to history to novels to classics and everything in between. Finally, there was a load of guitar practice that happened every week.

I’m not sure who else on the planet is stuck in the mode of being a perpetual student, but I find that my days are happiest when I spend them studying for most of the day, working hard, and playing hard whenever I get a chance. My days are like a personal university that I am putting myself through, and there is even a kind of schedule and what you could call classes.

Music A: The learning and memorization of works of music by other artists.
Music B: The creation of original music.
Literature: The examination of a work of classic literature (right now it’s “The Story of
My Life” by Giacomo Casanova).
Philosophy: David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”
Creative Writing: Currently working on a short story to be submitted to a journal and poetry is a consistent activity
Languages: I study Korean three times a week in an attempt to see how the acquisition of a second language affects the way a person thinks

The more I consider it, the more I feel like I’m in training, but it’s for something that I’m not sure will ever happen. The other day I read: “You bank on your pursuits to give you happiness, thus confusing means with ends.” Banking on pursuits will bring you only sadness, while pursuing will see you only consistently advancing. It’s difficult because we don’t know what we’re really striving for—the future being as unknowable as it is—but we know we’re working towards something. I feel like this needs a little bit of a further explication, and what I mean is that there is now way to say exactly how our goals will manifest themselves. Let’s say your goal is simply to be the CEO of a business. If that’s your only goal, you might wake up and find one day that you have achieved your goal: you are the CEO of a business dedicated to midget porn. Your goal, technically, has been achieved. You worked toward achieving it, and you did, but you couldn’t have known at the outset (unless you had said to yourself “I want to be the CEO of a business that is dedicated to midget porn”) what the manifestation of it would be.

I have always wanted to be a traveler, and I have traveled a lot. The vagueness of the goal hasopened up avenues and vistas that I had never thought possible, but it also manages to surprise me on a daily basis, and there is something to be said for stability. Everybody, on every day of their life, is training to be the person they will become. What you are doing consistently, every day, is determining the kind of person that you are going to become in the future. You will not decide to be a champion bike rider on Monday and win the Tour de France the next Friday. It is the same in existence. What kind of existence do you want to have? What are you doing today to develop the kind of person that you want to be in the future? Look at what you’re doing regularly, and understand that this is probably what you’re going to do until you make a radical decision to change your training regimen. It’s as easy as recognition, but you have to really see, and remember that slow is the way of nature.

Trying Very Hard

Right now my brain is a bit muddled. It is in the process of attempting to connect the dots between Giacomo Casanova, David Hume, Epictetus, quasi-miracles, Frank McCourt, and teaching phonics. The most obvious connection is that I’m dealing with all of these things on an incredibly regular basis currently. But there is always some way in which the things most seemingly unconnected can be connected.
All right, I fully understand that there is danger in attempting to make connections between the unconnected. This is, as a matter of fact, South Park’s bread and butter: what kind of ridiculous non sequitur crap is going on in the world at the moment. A beaver dam collapsed, people are stranded on their roofs, and it’s obvious that the REAL cause of the problem is global warming.
Epictetus warns us that we should consistently call things by their right names:
“When we name things correctly, we comprehend them correctly, without adding information or judgments that aren’t there. Does someone bathe quickly? Don’t’ say he bathes poorly, but quickly. Name the situation as it is; don’t filter it through your judgments. Does someone drink a lot of wine? Don’t say she’s a drunk, but that she drinks a lot. Unless you possess a comprehensive understanding of her life, how do you know if she is a drunk? … Give your assent only to what is actually true.”
This has actually been a big theme of my time here in Korea: what is the right name for something. I remember the first time I looked at a 5000Won note and said in my head, “Sweet, I still have oh-cheon-won.” The fact of the matter is that it is not five thousand won. It is oh-cheon-won. That seems like a really minor example, but the effect is astounding. Korea is actually ripe with madness for calling things by their correct names. My Korean Made Easy book has this to say:
“In Korea, people are addressed by titles based on age and position, which are complex even for Koreans! … So now you may understand the reason Koreans almost always exchange business cards upon first meeting—these cards contain each person’s appropriate title.”
This idea of calling things by their right names is a rampant issue in modern society. For example, I recently was presented with the argument from a farmer that large-scale, factory farming is more efficient and therefore more sustainable. Here we are presented with exactly the kind of non sequitur that ought to be avoided: efficiency and sustainability are exclusive terms. One does not imply the other, and they are only barely even related. What he meant to say was that large-scale, factory farming is more efficient that small-scale, organic farming at producing large amounts of product because that’s what efficiency actually implies.
Extending this idea into the world of literature, I have been recently reading over Giacomo Casanova’s conversations with Voltaire that he recounts in “The Story of My Life,” and when your life is constantly running between languages, you are placed in the very difficult position of ensuring that you are consistently being accurate in your naming of things. More than once in the text he refers to times when he is embarrassed in France by his inappropriate turns of phrase or inaccurate verbiage due to his Venetian heritabe, and being in Korea—with its multitudes of titles and ambiguousness in accuracy for determining those titles—has made me feel his pain very acutely.
The most obvious arena for this discussion is in philosophy, language theory, and the discussion of what words actually mean. What is an idea? What is a thought? Defining the simplest terms is sometimes the highest goal of philosophy. Hume is attempting to differentiate between things like belief and THE IDEA of a belief. What’s the difference? Is it significant? What if it is? More importantly, he’s trying to figure out what the difference is between cause and effect, and THE IDEA of cause and effect. Imagine if you will that not every existent thing has to have a cause prior to it.
This really messed me up today. Think about it for a second in terms of your own life. Your existence right now is not determined by some previous cause. Even if you were to say that you were caused by your mom and dad having sex you could fall into error very easily. That sex was merely the canvas on which your existence was to be painted. That would be like saying that the canvas Leondardo purchased caused the painting of the Mona Lisa. The reality is that the effect of their sex was the man ejaculating into the woman. That’s it.
This question has been messing with me lately as well: what of the spirit? Reading Rudolph Steiner a while ago gave me the messed up idea that the spirit is outside the body, wrapping it like a glove. At first, this idea made a lot of sense because I believe wholeheartedly in the Joni Mitchell-an “touching of souls,” but it also seemed strange that the spirit would simply exist outside the self. What I have come to think in the last few weeks is that the spirit permeates the self and extends beyond it. Yes, it does exist outside of the self, but it also manages to saturate the body with its essence. I have recently come to really hate the idea of the spirit being inside me: how can I share something that is doomed to remain inside me. No. I like this idea of a saturating, permeating, extending spirit that can touch people.
Frank McCourt is an Irish-American who taught in New York City for thirty years. Teaching is one of the most honorable professions that any human being can engage in, but I want to qualify this statement by saying that it is a profession that should never be entered into lightly. What is education? To call it by it’s right name would be to say that it is the foundation of the human character. It is everything. One of my students today said, in the course of a grammar lesson about “used to”: People used to think that food was really important, but now we know that money is more important than food.” She didn’t learn that from experience, she learned that from the education she achieved. (In a bit of a side note, I went ballistic, but they couldn’t even imagine a world in which there were no supermarkets from which to purchase food.) The question Mr. McCourt seems to be posing is: what is education?
To be honest, I leave it up to my phonics kids. They teach me almost more than Hume and Epictetus and Casanova together. You haven’t lived until you’ve spent twenty minutes of your life trying to teach six-year-olds the difference between pup and pop. The Korean word for rice is pronounced pop, and, even at six years old, these kids have been saying pop for the bulk of their life. After twenty minutes of repeating the pronunciation of pup for them, they still didn’t get it. Imagine the power of the mind that allows for this kind of thing. At six years old the mind is already very powerfully trained. Imagine the kind of training it has received, and how much experience it has, at calling things by the names it’s been taught to call things. The final question is, what if all that education, all that time being taught what to call something, is fallacious, and you wind up calling something by its wrong name anyway? “To live outside the law you must be honest.”