“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily. Labor omnia vincit improbus.”
“When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and intertia.”
“There is no royal road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art.”
People who come up to me after playing a show somewhere often say that they too want to learn the guitar, and, usually, that they even tried, but they gave it up for one reason or another. Anybody that asks me for a free lesson or two, gets them almost immediately because they actually take no time whatsoever to learn:
1) Play every day: the more the better. If you can only play for 30 minutes, that’s fine, but if you can play for two hours, that’s better. Half of playing guitar is the ability for your fingers to hold down the strings for a long time, and if you don’t play every day the muscles in your fingers atrophy. Nobody thinks about finger muscles.
2) Give it time. Perhaps in 6 years of steady playing, you will be competent. Even if you’re playing it as a hobby for thirty minutes every day, you will be decent enough in a few years. If you’re really serious and play two hours every day, sure, that time will probably reduce, but if after one year you can play a C and a G chord really, really well, you probably don’t understand how far you’ve come…
Most things in this life could probably be boiled down to these two little rules: practice and be patient. As a matter of fact, I personally guarantee that absolutely anybody can learn absolutely any skill with enough practice and patience. Admittedly, we’re dealing in the world of the physical here. By that I mean it might not be possible for anybody to learn the details of string theory or quantum mechanics or neo-materialist literary theories, but if somebody wants to learn how to bake, having had no previous experience with flour or ovens or cutting in butter or anything, with enough time and enough practice, they will eventually be able to bake about anything you could want.
As a matter of fact, I would say that anybody CAN learn about quantum mechanics or string theory or anything else if they are determined to. It might take twenty years of daily effort, but if they want it badly enough, they will get there.
Therein lies the nut, though. Desire is something that we generally consider to be the major player in the world of the physical. I want your body. You want to kiss me. I want to eat delicious food. I want to see something beautiful. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I want to learn to bake. What gets lost in the melee of growth and development that happens as a result of desire transmuted into effort for the acquisition of the desired object(ive) is that desire is mental. What happens when you learn something new or put effort into getting something? The mind expands. The mental world that you have developed for yourself grows in conjunction with the skill or effort required to possess the object petit a.
Sometimes what we think we want has nothing to do with what we really want, and the only possible remedy for such a situation is the attempted acquisition of what we think we want, because only then will we be able to have the truth of our desires.
Oh, let them talk about the constant motion of desire and the inability to ever have what we want, should we decide against ever attempting to acquire our desires, the human experience seems to get lost. Perhaps it is that we have become too accustomed to our inability to have what we desire:
--Beautiful celebrity bodies being paraded on every channel
--Unobtainable automobiles
--Skills obtainable but requiring a lot of effort
--Advertisements for things not everybody can afford
Perhaps we try for a while. We go to the gym. We save up every month. We practice for a while. We play the lottery. But years of failure have taught us all that we can’t get most of the things we desire, so what’s the point in trying?
We are all ascetics. When we languish in our mires of sloth and inertia, our resolve grows weak, and when once resolve is weakened, the dam might as well have already been breached.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
All Things Come to an
end, but not all things get finished… or at any rate finished in the way that we want them to be. It’s funny how instructive our middle school years can be in this arena. Thinking back on timed group projects where the winners were the first people to completely finish their project, I remember the dejection of looking at an unfinished project when the time came to an end.
On the other hand, it also seems as if when a things finishing time and ending time coincide there is a moment of something-or-other. It’s that moment when you look around and see that everything is as best as it could be for the moment, and something like a touch of pride comes over you for having done what you set out to do in the allotted amount of time.
My time in Korea is coming to an end. In just over a month I will board a plane and return to the land of my birth, to the land of pounds and inches (good-bye the simplicity of a system based on tens), to a land of expansive emptiness and massive cities (although Seoul puts them all to shame in terms of mass), to the land of freedom, and to the land of beer that’s worth drinking.
I think part of why I am okay with leaving Korea now is that I have finished my project: a book reflecting the culture of Korea (emphasis on reflection), noting personal adventures, and full of cogitations on what it means to be a human being in general.
Freedom comes up frequently in these thought-sessions, and it occurs to me that freedom is a concept that exists in the two worlds of existence: physical and mental.
In the physical realm, it is usually pretty easy to tell if you have freedom: are you confined to move in a small space, do you wear shackles, or do you live behind a locked door that you didn’t lock. On a larger scale, there are the geographical confines of the country in which you live and the reality that other countries are different: language, culture, values, morals, etc. It’s amazing how much of a factor fear plays in the reality of freedom. I find that a lot of Americans have the attitude that there is probably no better place to live in the world than America, so why should anybody ever leave. From a psychological standpoint, I believe it’s that they fear their paper towers might be torn down from the reality of another country being… better than America. On the other hand, Koreans aren’t afraid of that. Most of them don’t like Korea and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t because there aren’t many places where speaking Korean is going to get you very far… so they learn English. Physically confined, whether from an institutional or geographic sense, is usually uncomfortable for the other side.
Freedom of thought is an incredible thing. The ability to have a revolution of the mind is perhaps the greatest freedom in the world, and it must be owned that western people are generally the people that have this characteristic. From an early age, we learn that it is entirely possible to defy our parents. We say, “No!!” we bear our punishment, and we learn that it will be just fine—and perhaps all of this because it’s what we see all over the culture (especially in the media). This one characteristic of Western thought carries itself through to moe in the adult manifestation of our ability to change our mind and be independent. Perhaps that’s what we don’t understand when we are children, but the defiance that we pay for is exacted from us in the future as well with the independence we must all bear. On the other hand, Korea is a country where when father or mother says you “should” do something, it’s the same as saying you “must” do something. What seems like a hint or a nudge in America is an edict in Korea, and you can probably guess what an order feels like to a Korean. If mommy or daddy says you must do something, there is really no not doing it. What they get from it, though, is essentially a lifetime of dependable dependence. They’ll live with mom and dad until they get married, and mom and dad will determine if the boy is worthwhile or not—usually depending on how much money the boy has and what prospects he has for the future.
At any rate, my time being associated with these cultural differences is coming to an end, and a whole new period of being culturally different from the place I am is going to begin. I am afraid of this particular ending.
I’m afraid because it feels finished. I’m afraid because I have changed so much. I’m afraid because I plan to be in a place that I haven’t been, steadily, for ten years. I’m afraid I might like it. I’m afraid I will find it odious.
Sometimes beginnings are far more terrifying than endings.
What I have gotten used to, and what is coming to an end, is simply (yet complicatedly) this: everything I now know is just a little different. Did you catch the most important word in that sentence? EVERYTHING. Every single thing is just a little bit different than what I used to know, and now everything I’m used to is tinged with the dust of being just slightly different. Everything from McDonald’s special sauce to the grocery store experience to the pub experience to the restaurant experience to the food experience (which is sometimes VERY different) to walking down the street is different. There is nothing like seeing big groups of Koreans standing on opposite corners of a vacant street and not daring to cross because the sign is telling them not to… I always think that my mighty western ability to think logically tells me that there is no danger, so I can probably run across. Also, I know that’s called jaywalking, but tell me the last time you saw somebody get a ticket for jaywalking… much less a foreigner on a neighborhood street in Suwon, South Korea.
It’s all ending. The parts that remain unfinished are simply my relations with the people I have met here. The people I’ve become acquainted with are very special to me. It can be difficult to make lasting friendships here (look up Aristotle’s three types of friends) and this is because there is that nagging, lingering reality in the back of your head that reminds you of the ending of your time here. Generally speaking, you can come away every year with about two or three truly good friends. The hundreds of others that you wind up meeting all fall to the wayside eventually—for me at least. Once again, the physical aspect of the friendship is coming to an end, but the mental aspect endures until such time as the physical can be re-ignited.
All endings are beginnings, but not all finishes are. When you finish a race, you don’t immediately begin another race. However, at the end of the race, you begin a period of not running. I’m not sure if my logic is spot on in this aspect, but I think it’s something like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Finishes and endings are certainly related, but why do movies not end with the words: The Finish. Even the French “fin” or the Italian “fine” that comes at the end of movies translates to “end.” What is their relationship? Finishes, it seems to me, are those brief periods of elation or dejection that come from small victories or defeats on the way to the end. Life will end, and whether the bulk of your experience comes on the side of defeat or victory, remember that what’s important is growth, learning, and the ability to free the mind from dangerous constraints while developing it into a muscle for good.
On the other hand, it also seems as if when a things finishing time and ending time coincide there is a moment of something-or-other. It’s that moment when you look around and see that everything is as best as it could be for the moment, and something like a touch of pride comes over you for having done what you set out to do in the allotted amount of time.
My time in Korea is coming to an end. In just over a month I will board a plane and return to the land of my birth, to the land of pounds and inches (good-bye the simplicity of a system based on tens), to a land of expansive emptiness and massive cities (although Seoul puts them all to shame in terms of mass), to the land of freedom, and to the land of beer that’s worth drinking.
I think part of why I am okay with leaving Korea now is that I have finished my project: a book reflecting the culture of Korea (emphasis on reflection), noting personal adventures, and full of cogitations on what it means to be a human being in general.
Freedom comes up frequently in these thought-sessions, and it occurs to me that freedom is a concept that exists in the two worlds of existence: physical and mental.
In the physical realm, it is usually pretty easy to tell if you have freedom: are you confined to move in a small space, do you wear shackles, or do you live behind a locked door that you didn’t lock. On a larger scale, there are the geographical confines of the country in which you live and the reality that other countries are different: language, culture, values, morals, etc. It’s amazing how much of a factor fear plays in the reality of freedom. I find that a lot of Americans have the attitude that there is probably no better place to live in the world than America, so why should anybody ever leave. From a psychological standpoint, I believe it’s that they fear their paper towers might be torn down from the reality of another country being… better than America. On the other hand, Koreans aren’t afraid of that. Most of them don’t like Korea and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t because there aren’t many places where speaking Korean is going to get you very far… so they learn English. Physically confined, whether from an institutional or geographic sense, is usually uncomfortable for the other side.
Freedom of thought is an incredible thing. The ability to have a revolution of the mind is perhaps the greatest freedom in the world, and it must be owned that western people are generally the people that have this characteristic. From an early age, we learn that it is entirely possible to defy our parents. We say, “No!!” we bear our punishment, and we learn that it will be just fine—and perhaps all of this because it’s what we see all over the culture (especially in the media). This one characteristic of Western thought carries itself through to moe in the adult manifestation of our ability to change our mind and be independent. Perhaps that’s what we don’t understand when we are children, but the defiance that we pay for is exacted from us in the future as well with the independence we must all bear. On the other hand, Korea is a country where when father or mother says you “should” do something, it’s the same as saying you “must” do something. What seems like a hint or a nudge in America is an edict in Korea, and you can probably guess what an order feels like to a Korean. If mommy or daddy says you must do something, there is really no not doing it. What they get from it, though, is essentially a lifetime of dependable dependence. They’ll live with mom and dad until they get married, and mom and dad will determine if the boy is worthwhile or not—usually depending on how much money the boy has and what prospects he has for the future.
At any rate, my time being associated with these cultural differences is coming to an end, and a whole new period of being culturally different from the place I am is going to begin. I am afraid of this particular ending.
I’m afraid because it feels finished. I’m afraid because I have changed so much. I’m afraid because I plan to be in a place that I haven’t been, steadily, for ten years. I’m afraid I might like it. I’m afraid I will find it odious.
Sometimes beginnings are far more terrifying than endings.
What I have gotten used to, and what is coming to an end, is simply (yet complicatedly) this: everything I now know is just a little different. Did you catch the most important word in that sentence? EVERYTHING. Every single thing is just a little bit different than what I used to know, and now everything I’m used to is tinged with the dust of being just slightly different. Everything from McDonald’s special sauce to the grocery store experience to the pub experience to the restaurant experience to the food experience (which is sometimes VERY different) to walking down the street is different. There is nothing like seeing big groups of Koreans standing on opposite corners of a vacant street and not daring to cross because the sign is telling them not to… I always think that my mighty western ability to think logically tells me that there is no danger, so I can probably run across. Also, I know that’s called jaywalking, but tell me the last time you saw somebody get a ticket for jaywalking… much less a foreigner on a neighborhood street in Suwon, South Korea.
It’s all ending. The parts that remain unfinished are simply my relations with the people I have met here. The people I’ve become acquainted with are very special to me. It can be difficult to make lasting friendships here (look up Aristotle’s three types of friends) and this is because there is that nagging, lingering reality in the back of your head that reminds you of the ending of your time here. Generally speaking, you can come away every year with about two or three truly good friends. The hundreds of others that you wind up meeting all fall to the wayside eventually—for me at least. Once again, the physical aspect of the friendship is coming to an end, but the mental aspect endures until such time as the physical can be re-ignited.
All endings are beginnings, but not all finishes are. When you finish a race, you don’t immediately begin another race. However, at the end of the race, you begin a period of not running. I’m not sure if my logic is spot on in this aspect, but I think it’s something like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Finishes and endings are certainly related, but why do movies not end with the words: The Finish. Even the French “fin” or the Italian “fine” that comes at the end of movies translates to “end.” What is their relationship? Finishes, it seems to me, are those brief periods of elation or dejection that come from small victories or defeats on the way to the end. Life will end, and whether the bulk of your experience comes on the side of defeat or victory, remember that what’s important is growth, learning, and the ability to free the mind from dangerous constraints while developing it into a muscle for good.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Appypollylogies
This is once again bound to be more of a journal entry instead of a serious inquiry into the state of the human character, but perhaps there is something inside the things we do that helps us get a glimpse of what we are.
I’ve been on vacation for a week. It all started last Monday. We just had to get through Monday, and then we were all free for a week—Korean Thanksgiving… thank you for falling smack in the middle of the week this years instead of on the weekend like last year. So, as was usual, I made some tentative plans: off to the mountains on Tuesday, in the mountains on Wednesday, back home Thursday, pub quiz Thursday night, Friday – friend’s going away party, on Saturday my band was making its debut, and Sunday was a day devoted to time well spent with an important person in my life—my intimate friend.
But Monday came first, and Monday morning I found that I needed to clean my apartment because I was hosting a small gathering that night. This took up most of my morning. Work is six and a half hours of teaching small children the intricacies, delicacies and preposterousness of the English language. Then, the gathering began with one. Then, there were two, and then our party was complete with four, and we decided to eat grilled pig intestine and drink perhaps too much. After much, much, soju, beer, and bokbunja, it was time for pool and the continuation of the imbibing of quantities of the aforementioned. Once again… vacation. Celebrate now, because to wait for even a moment puts you in danger of regret.
Tuesday morning was rapid packing for going into the mountains. It was easier packing than usual because we didn’t plan to rough-it as much as we could have—by “we” I mean myself and my Chinese best friend: just a couple of nights camping but not having to cook. More expensive, but we were in celebration mode as it may or may not be one of the last times we ever see each other.
Unfortunately, when we arrived in the city that was the gateway to the mountains, there was one of those… what’re they called… typhoons. That’s the one. Camping became a last resort very quickly. So, we took a bus to the base of the mountain range where there was a small village and stepped into a hotel and out of the incessant rain: 30 dollars for a floor with pads, a TV, a fridge and a bathroom. Grand. I have an idea…
Because this room had no beds, it turned out that it was the perfect size to pitch our two individual tents and have our camping experience right in the motel.
First, we’d eat and get a little tipsy, because there is nothing like putting up a tent when the odds are most against you.
The night ended on a jocund note: the pure enjoyment of good company, good food, good drinks, and the knowledge that this moment is significant.
Seoraksan National Park in South Korea’s Gangwon-do has had a very special place in my heart for a long time. The first time I went there, I went with a friend, and we managed to find perhaps the most difficult hiking experience in Korea. The second time I went, I once again went with a friend to tackle the beast again and test it and myself; however, we were turned away because of lingering snow on the top which we were not prepared for. The third time I went, I went alone, and conquered that trail with something like aplomb, and including a brief dip in the river along which I hiked. This was my fourth time in the park, and for the first time, because of some safety concerns involving the slippery nature of the large rocks Korea uses to create their trails, it was time to stay at the base of the park and do all those things that most people usually do when they go to the park.
The rain ended in the morning, and we woke up prepared. There were waterfalls to see. Just past the entrance gate to the park, there is a left hand turn that leads to a series of waterfalls which terminates in something called The Rain Dragon Waterfall. It had rained heavily for almost 24 straight hours. The streams were swollen and the river was heaving. Essentially, somebody very big had seen that this series of waterfalls actually resembled an entire dragon: smaller falls all the way up, curving, jumping, diving, leaping, powerful falls in themselves, to a powerful fall that became a nexus point for the entire stream. All the water that went down to the valley came from this point. Magic.
Then we took the cable car to the top of a mountain where, with a little rock climbing, you could literally stand on a rock that you had no doubt was the exact tippy top of this mountain, and the expansive views were definitely incredible—but I’ll contend that when you walk all the way up there it seems even more moving. We ate some stuffed squid and took a little nature walk for a couple of hours, left the park feeling how powerful the sight/smell/touch/taste/feel of nature could be, had some more stuffed squid and beef stew, and then we went camping.
It isn’t quite fall in Korea. It’s just around the corner, and it usually lasts for a week, but every once in a while, mother nature likes to send previews of what lies in the future, and after a typhoon seemed like the perfect time: it froze. We froze. For the first time in almost 6 months, I believe that it was actually 0 degrees celcius.
Thursday was about the trip home. When I got home, I got a surprise visit from the girl I’ve been seeing, and, after a couple of hours, as I was putting her on the bus home I got a reminder about the pub quiz happening that night. “I’ll be there man.”
Fortunately, we took a cab—it’s an hour and a half walk, but I was tired. Unfortunately, we lost the pub quiz. Unfortunately, we decided to walk home. When I arrived at home, I literally fell on my bed, not feeling well, and having an uncomfortable presentiment about the following days.
I woke up Friday, or rather I should say I finally got out of bed at 7pm. The truth is that I woke up at 8:30am to vomit, and spent the rest of the day not doing anything or talking to anybody, because I sounded like Tom Waits with strep—band performance tomorrow… I’m the lead singer…
It’s always strange to watch someone go away from Korea. You know they all eventually will, but you never get over the sense that your time here is transitory, your days here ARE numbered, and that very soon it will be you that’s the one leaving. At any rate we looted our friends apartment after a night of debauchery—a strange, soothing, mollifying process that lets you know they’re gone and pacifies you with things you need but haven’t been about to acquire.
Saturday consisted of 18 cups of tea, cold medicine, and rest—not to mention loads of emails to the band members about the probability that our show might not happen then deciding that it’s going to happen no matter what. It happened. It was our debut. Considering that it was our first ever performance, that we practice once a week (sometimes 2, sometimes 0), and that I still sounded like Tom Waits with strep, it went over pretty well. At the very least, we got a lot of sycophantic praise that we stuffed into our caps and walked away with. And we did walk away, too… 45 minutes away to a chicken and pizza restaurant. Booze kept me going, and when I got home, it ensured that sleep was almost immediate.
Sunday was a day devoted to the girl I’ve been seeing, but I hadn’t unpacked from Seoraksan, I hadn’t done any cleaning in almost a week, the dishes were still piled up from the last two days’ extended couch stay, and I had promised to make her food—the ingredients of which were absent from my apartment. So, I did what needed doing: dragged myself out of bed, forced myself to ignore that my body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, went to the supermarket, cleaned my apartment, and started cooking. Galbi jjim, look it up, it’s delicious, and it uses grated pear in its sauce.
Essentially, it was another day in bed… essentially.
She left at 8pm. At 10:30 I was asleep. I woke up at 10:30 this morning and played guitar for 2.5 hours until I had to go to work.
That’s it. That’s the end of another week…
I’ve been on vacation for a week. It all started last Monday. We just had to get through Monday, and then we were all free for a week—Korean Thanksgiving… thank you for falling smack in the middle of the week this years instead of on the weekend like last year. So, as was usual, I made some tentative plans: off to the mountains on Tuesday, in the mountains on Wednesday, back home Thursday, pub quiz Thursday night, Friday – friend’s going away party, on Saturday my band was making its debut, and Sunday was a day devoted to time well spent with an important person in my life—my intimate friend.
But Monday came first, and Monday morning I found that I needed to clean my apartment because I was hosting a small gathering that night. This took up most of my morning. Work is six and a half hours of teaching small children the intricacies, delicacies and preposterousness of the English language. Then, the gathering began with one. Then, there were two, and then our party was complete with four, and we decided to eat grilled pig intestine and drink perhaps too much. After much, much, soju, beer, and bokbunja, it was time for pool and the continuation of the imbibing of quantities of the aforementioned. Once again… vacation. Celebrate now, because to wait for even a moment puts you in danger of regret.
Tuesday morning was rapid packing for going into the mountains. It was easier packing than usual because we didn’t plan to rough-it as much as we could have—by “we” I mean myself and my Chinese best friend: just a couple of nights camping but not having to cook. More expensive, but we were in celebration mode as it may or may not be one of the last times we ever see each other.
Unfortunately, when we arrived in the city that was the gateway to the mountains, there was one of those… what’re they called… typhoons. That’s the one. Camping became a last resort very quickly. So, we took a bus to the base of the mountain range where there was a small village and stepped into a hotel and out of the incessant rain: 30 dollars for a floor with pads, a TV, a fridge and a bathroom. Grand. I have an idea…
Because this room had no beds, it turned out that it was the perfect size to pitch our two individual tents and have our camping experience right in the motel.
First, we’d eat and get a little tipsy, because there is nothing like putting up a tent when the odds are most against you.
The night ended on a jocund note: the pure enjoyment of good company, good food, good drinks, and the knowledge that this moment is significant.
Seoraksan National Park in South Korea’s Gangwon-do has had a very special place in my heart for a long time. The first time I went there, I went with a friend, and we managed to find perhaps the most difficult hiking experience in Korea. The second time I went, I once again went with a friend to tackle the beast again and test it and myself; however, we were turned away because of lingering snow on the top which we were not prepared for. The third time I went, I went alone, and conquered that trail with something like aplomb, and including a brief dip in the river along which I hiked. This was my fourth time in the park, and for the first time, because of some safety concerns involving the slippery nature of the large rocks Korea uses to create their trails, it was time to stay at the base of the park and do all those things that most people usually do when they go to the park.
The rain ended in the morning, and we woke up prepared. There were waterfalls to see. Just past the entrance gate to the park, there is a left hand turn that leads to a series of waterfalls which terminates in something called The Rain Dragon Waterfall. It had rained heavily for almost 24 straight hours. The streams were swollen and the river was heaving. Essentially, somebody very big had seen that this series of waterfalls actually resembled an entire dragon: smaller falls all the way up, curving, jumping, diving, leaping, powerful falls in themselves, to a powerful fall that became a nexus point for the entire stream. All the water that went down to the valley came from this point. Magic.
Then we took the cable car to the top of a mountain where, with a little rock climbing, you could literally stand on a rock that you had no doubt was the exact tippy top of this mountain, and the expansive views were definitely incredible—but I’ll contend that when you walk all the way up there it seems even more moving. We ate some stuffed squid and took a little nature walk for a couple of hours, left the park feeling how powerful the sight/smell/touch/taste/feel of nature could be, had some more stuffed squid and beef stew, and then we went camping.
It isn’t quite fall in Korea. It’s just around the corner, and it usually lasts for a week, but every once in a while, mother nature likes to send previews of what lies in the future, and after a typhoon seemed like the perfect time: it froze. We froze. For the first time in almost 6 months, I believe that it was actually 0 degrees celcius.
Thursday was about the trip home. When I got home, I got a surprise visit from the girl I’ve been seeing, and, after a couple of hours, as I was putting her on the bus home I got a reminder about the pub quiz happening that night. “I’ll be there man.”
Fortunately, we took a cab—it’s an hour and a half walk, but I was tired. Unfortunately, we lost the pub quiz. Unfortunately, we decided to walk home. When I arrived at home, I literally fell on my bed, not feeling well, and having an uncomfortable presentiment about the following days.
I woke up Friday, or rather I should say I finally got out of bed at 7pm. The truth is that I woke up at 8:30am to vomit, and spent the rest of the day not doing anything or talking to anybody, because I sounded like Tom Waits with strep—band performance tomorrow… I’m the lead singer…
It’s always strange to watch someone go away from Korea. You know they all eventually will, but you never get over the sense that your time here is transitory, your days here ARE numbered, and that very soon it will be you that’s the one leaving. At any rate we looted our friends apartment after a night of debauchery—a strange, soothing, mollifying process that lets you know they’re gone and pacifies you with things you need but haven’t been about to acquire.
Saturday consisted of 18 cups of tea, cold medicine, and rest—not to mention loads of emails to the band members about the probability that our show might not happen then deciding that it’s going to happen no matter what. It happened. It was our debut. Considering that it was our first ever performance, that we practice once a week (sometimes 2, sometimes 0), and that I still sounded like Tom Waits with strep, it went over pretty well. At the very least, we got a lot of sycophantic praise that we stuffed into our caps and walked away with. And we did walk away, too… 45 minutes away to a chicken and pizza restaurant. Booze kept me going, and when I got home, it ensured that sleep was almost immediate.
Sunday was a day devoted to the girl I’ve been seeing, but I hadn’t unpacked from Seoraksan, I hadn’t done any cleaning in almost a week, the dishes were still piled up from the last two days’ extended couch stay, and I had promised to make her food—the ingredients of which were absent from my apartment. So, I did what needed doing: dragged myself out of bed, forced myself to ignore that my body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, went to the supermarket, cleaned my apartment, and started cooking. Galbi jjim, look it up, it’s delicious, and it uses grated pear in its sauce.
Essentially, it was another day in bed… essentially.
She left at 8pm. At 10:30 I was asleep. I woke up at 10:30 this morning and played guitar for 2.5 hours until I had to go to work.
That’s it. That’s the end of another week…
Sunday, September 12, 2010
I am
exhausted.
But that’s how I like to be.
I have been so active in the course of the last couple of weeks that I am finding it difficult to function right now. What I need is something like fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep in a cool room with no thoughts of doing anything other than sleeping. That’s what I plan to do, too.
But I’ve performed twice in three days, been heroically drunk, done things that a good boyfriend ought to do, and I am the proud owner of a bronze medal bearing the mark of a bodybuilding competition in which I took part in the bench press competition.
I think it’s entirely possible that drinking beer from noon until 2am the night before the competition seriously affected my performance, and I actually feel pretty bad about the whole thing because the team that took second place earned that spot by virtue of the fact that they did one more rep than my team.
Jam session
Open mic host
Going away party
Pool hall adventure
Outdoor music and beer festival
Bench Press Contest/Open Mic
Now I’m at work. It’s not that I don’t like work, but I’m certainly not that fond of it that I want to be there while simultaneously being completely exhausted. It’ll be fine.
Unrelated note: I think that one thing Asian animation has going for it is that it does still no how to make a body wait for the action. It understands how to build tension by making you wait for the smoke to clear, and, what’s more, they’ve even managed to make so many of these similar situations that a body is still not sure if the maneuver just pulled off will be successful or an utter failure. Sometimes the smoke clears and it’s all over. Sometimes the smoke clears, and it’s just beginning. That makes for a pretty decent life metaphor, doesn’t it? I’m waiting for the smoke to clear and I’m not sure if what I’ve done here will have been successful or fruitless.)
I have 9 weeks left in Korea—that’s the outside figure. The inside figure is six weeks. These facts are playing wild tricks on my mind. You see, I’ve gotten so used to being in Korea and on my own that it’s difficult to imagine how I will adjust to being in a place where people understand not only my language—well, for the most part—but also the way my mind works.
What’ll it be like to take the spirit that I have developed for adventure in Korea and turn it toward my homeland: every day is an adventure here, and I will desperately attempt to keep that same frame of mind for the return home.
For example, the other night I was busking in Seoul near Gangnam station, when a group of foreigners came up to where me and my friend had set up shop and started talking to us about things and stuff. It turns out that they were also from Suwon and just happened to be visiting Seoul. Two of them had been in country for two weeks and were still wild with the excitement and newness of things. Well, we had stuffed our earnings into a backpack and decided to head home. When we got to the bus stop, we realized that we didn’t have the bag. We trooped back to our home base and noticed that the bag was gone. We assumed/hoped/prayed that the people we’d just met had picked it up, but as none of them had phones, and only one of them asked for an email address, it was still a bit touch and go. Anyhow, we consoled ourselves that all we lost was money, some extra clothes, and a small day pack… in other words, nothing too important.
The next day I was having dinner with my girlfriend when I received a phone call from a friend of mine who had received a phone call from a friend of his saying that he had a backpack that belonged to a certain busker. Ah, the way the universe moves is sometimes extremely intriguing. At any rate, that which was lost on Saturday was returned on Sunday, money and clothes in tact. As a bonus to the story, the guy who picked up the bag (and you’d better believe I treated him to a few beers for the effort) is also a pianist, and it has been mentioned that the band I am currently fronting could use a good keys player… I’ve invited him to our practice. He does also play the saxophone, which could be interesting.
What kind of equivalent story will there be when I wander back through the world of the United States of America. Could I, like I did at the music festival, walk up to the organizer, say, “Could I play a few songs?” and wind up as one of the performers? Could I win 3rd place at a weightlifting competition? Could I find out how small the world is meeting good ‘ol Midwestern boys while busking and having it turn out that they are all somewhat musically inclined? What are the chances?
If I remember correctly from two years ago, it is sometimes hard to meet people attempting. It can be somewhat difficult to encounter people that are actively seeking out newness and freshness and coincidence and beauty and truth and going and doing and being. What I seem to remember is complacency and apathy and an entire generation of people that forgot about Rage Against the Machine and are currently growing fat and illusioned and sinking into the illusion and loving it. Plato’s image of people staring at the shadows on the wall and believing that the shadows are the things themselves rings in my ears when I see the vapid reality of modern culture all over the world. If you’re not going to attempt to see the objects for themselves at least take the time to try to find the light source.
Damnation, I do get preachy sometimes, but forgive me for being invested.
So, perhaps I have just answered some of my own questions. I have a unique “in” to the generation I’m talking about. The children of this country are being daily corrupted by an educational system that is focused on attempting to gain funding for things they’re not even sure about: when the business of education becomes the business of making money the business of educating slowly moves down the rungs of importance. The older generations are too set in their ways. It is the generation of affectable human beings between University and their mid-thirties to forties that hold the keys to the future of this country and whether or not we will become a nation of dunces or a nation of people committed to understanding the reality of things. Are we ready to take up the struggle? My plan is to put down in print the reality of things and attempt to wake up the slumbering juggernaut of the energy of a generation with so much power it has been purposefully lulled to sleep by the powers of the people that that energy would slaughter. Words should be our weapons. Our battlefield is the field of the mind. When that’s been won, the physical dominoes fall into place. This blog was all over the place… I’m not sorry…
But that’s how I like to be.
I have been so active in the course of the last couple of weeks that I am finding it difficult to function right now. What I need is something like fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep in a cool room with no thoughts of doing anything other than sleeping. That’s what I plan to do, too.
But I’ve performed twice in three days, been heroically drunk, done things that a good boyfriend ought to do, and I am the proud owner of a bronze medal bearing the mark of a bodybuilding competition in which I took part in the bench press competition.
I think it’s entirely possible that drinking beer from noon until 2am the night before the competition seriously affected my performance, and I actually feel pretty bad about the whole thing because the team that took second place earned that spot by virtue of the fact that they did one more rep than my team.
Jam session
Open mic host
Going away party
Pool hall adventure
Outdoor music and beer festival
Bench Press Contest/Open Mic
Now I’m at work. It’s not that I don’t like work, but I’m certainly not that fond of it that I want to be there while simultaneously being completely exhausted. It’ll be fine.
Unrelated note: I think that one thing Asian animation has going for it is that it does still no how to make a body wait for the action. It understands how to build tension by making you wait for the smoke to clear, and, what’s more, they’ve even managed to make so many of these similar situations that a body is still not sure if the maneuver just pulled off will be successful or an utter failure. Sometimes the smoke clears and it’s all over. Sometimes the smoke clears, and it’s just beginning. That makes for a pretty decent life metaphor, doesn’t it? I’m waiting for the smoke to clear and I’m not sure if what I’ve done here will have been successful or fruitless.)
I have 9 weeks left in Korea—that’s the outside figure. The inside figure is six weeks. These facts are playing wild tricks on my mind. You see, I’ve gotten so used to being in Korea and on my own that it’s difficult to imagine how I will adjust to being in a place where people understand not only my language—well, for the most part—but also the way my mind works.
What’ll it be like to take the spirit that I have developed for adventure in Korea and turn it toward my homeland: every day is an adventure here, and I will desperately attempt to keep that same frame of mind for the return home.
For example, the other night I was busking in Seoul near Gangnam station, when a group of foreigners came up to where me and my friend had set up shop and started talking to us about things and stuff. It turns out that they were also from Suwon and just happened to be visiting Seoul. Two of them had been in country for two weeks and were still wild with the excitement and newness of things. Well, we had stuffed our earnings into a backpack and decided to head home. When we got to the bus stop, we realized that we didn’t have the bag. We trooped back to our home base and noticed that the bag was gone. We assumed/hoped/prayed that the people we’d just met had picked it up, but as none of them had phones, and only one of them asked for an email address, it was still a bit touch and go. Anyhow, we consoled ourselves that all we lost was money, some extra clothes, and a small day pack… in other words, nothing too important.
The next day I was having dinner with my girlfriend when I received a phone call from a friend of mine who had received a phone call from a friend of his saying that he had a backpack that belonged to a certain busker. Ah, the way the universe moves is sometimes extremely intriguing. At any rate, that which was lost on Saturday was returned on Sunday, money and clothes in tact. As a bonus to the story, the guy who picked up the bag (and you’d better believe I treated him to a few beers for the effort) is also a pianist, and it has been mentioned that the band I am currently fronting could use a good keys player… I’ve invited him to our practice. He does also play the saxophone, which could be interesting.
What kind of equivalent story will there be when I wander back through the world of the United States of America. Could I, like I did at the music festival, walk up to the organizer, say, “Could I play a few songs?” and wind up as one of the performers? Could I win 3rd place at a weightlifting competition? Could I find out how small the world is meeting good ‘ol Midwestern boys while busking and having it turn out that they are all somewhat musically inclined? What are the chances?
If I remember correctly from two years ago, it is sometimes hard to meet people attempting. It can be somewhat difficult to encounter people that are actively seeking out newness and freshness and coincidence and beauty and truth and going and doing and being. What I seem to remember is complacency and apathy and an entire generation of people that forgot about Rage Against the Machine and are currently growing fat and illusioned and sinking into the illusion and loving it. Plato’s image of people staring at the shadows on the wall and believing that the shadows are the things themselves rings in my ears when I see the vapid reality of modern culture all over the world. If you’re not going to attempt to see the objects for themselves at least take the time to try to find the light source.
Damnation, I do get preachy sometimes, but forgive me for being invested.
So, perhaps I have just answered some of my own questions. I have a unique “in” to the generation I’m talking about. The children of this country are being daily corrupted by an educational system that is focused on attempting to gain funding for things they’re not even sure about: when the business of education becomes the business of making money the business of educating slowly moves down the rungs of importance. The older generations are too set in their ways. It is the generation of affectable human beings between University and their mid-thirties to forties that hold the keys to the future of this country and whether or not we will become a nation of dunces or a nation of people committed to understanding the reality of things. Are we ready to take up the struggle? My plan is to put down in print the reality of things and attempt to wake up the slumbering juggernaut of the energy of a generation with so much power it has been purposefully lulled to sleep by the powers of the people that that energy would slaughter. Words should be our weapons. Our battlefield is the field of the mind. When that’s been won, the physical dominoes fall into place. This blog was all over the place… I’m not sorry…
Monday, August 30, 2010
My social calendar is full
and I hate it. I’m essentially a reclusive ascetic content to spend my days and my time in the comfortable research of what it means to be a human. Every so often, however, it crops up in my research—and in my existence in general—that part of being human is all wrapped in being a part of humanity: the community aspect. Roughly, I am engaged to be functioning in society (as opposed to the gentle autocracy I wield over myself in my own residence) every evening for the next week.
These times are always important for me, and they remind me of how lucky I am that have the opportunity during the other times of my life to pursue those things which seem to fulfill me most fully: study and practice. However, study without application and practice without the game are exercises in masturbation. So it is that these moments of putting what I’ve been studying and practicing have special meaning for me.
I hate the fact that I have to get myself away from practice, but practice is very safe. If you screw something up, nobody’s watching you and quietly saying to themselves (and sometimes yelling loudly): “You suck.” That’s the beauty of practice. It’s the quiet advancement of the self in whatever area you are attempting to improve; however, it is in the game that what you have been practicing for so long really makes itself known.
Okay, it has just occurred to me that what I am differentiating between when I say study and practice is precisely what Plato is always on about: the visible versus the intelligible realm. When I talk about study, it is the reading that takes up some of my time every single day of my life. Whether it be a novel, an academic work, or language acquisition book, the thing I am exercising is my intelligence. When I talk about practice, it is the physical labor involved in acquiring any kind of skill. So, my practice is going to the gym three times a week, playing guitar/singing, and walking.
This is kind of strange, but my intelligible realm and my physical realm seem to have awkward counterbalances… damnit, I’m looking at myself through a strange lens… I would say that walking and language acquisition make up a duo, going to the gym and reading a novel are a duo, and playing music and reading academia are a duo.
When I go walking, I tend to do so at a particular pace and with the express purpose of being in the midst of a walk. Every time you go walking, you can find something new. Oh, that restaurant looks awesome, I’ll have to come back here. Oh, that’s where the library is. You’re picking up the language of the place where you are. The language of where everything is. You’re drawing a map inside your brain by engaging with the physical reality of the thing. This is what the acquisition of language does. Language is the drawing of maps with the mind toward meaning. When you “get the lay of the land” by actually traversing the land in question, this can be likened to getting the lay of the land of language: the more you traverse it, the more you feel comfortable with it. The bulk populace: temperance/consciousness
Going to the gym is something that happens three times a week, and it’s basically always the same. It’s comfortable. I know what I’m going to do. I know how it’s going to feel. I know that it is going to require some effort, but I know that kind of effort all too well—thanks to years and years of practice at it. In short, it’s become something that is basically just a part of my existence. Having spent the last ten years of my life almost insatiably reading novels—for pleasure or for academic purposes, my life would feel naked if it was void of a novel to read. In short, reading novels is comfortable, I know how it’s to be done, I know how it’s going to feel (especially if it’s a good novel—Proust was an exception (I’ve never felt anything like that from a novel)), I know that it will require some effort (or, at least, it should), and I know that effort all too well. The auxiliaries: courage/the body
The practice of music and the study of academia are paired because of the strenuousness of the activities. They require more effort than the others because this is the active attempt to learn something, to change the way I think about myself and the world at large. Music has the special, magical affect of being effective to the mind as it watches harmonies and melodies fall into place. It is basically sensory practice: it has a look, a feel, a sound, a touch, and (in some cases) you can almost taste it when it’s done well—perhaps that’s why we call some music tasteful and others disgusting. Reading scholarly works performs the same actions for the intelligible realms. It helps the mind see more clearly, feel more appropriately, hear what people are saying more thoroughly, touch the inner recesses of the self, and taste what it means to be human. The guardians: wisdom/sub-conscious
It occurred to me (and Gad how I love how writing does this) that writing pervades them all. They are all doing their jobs, and writing is somehow related to all of them. Walking is one of my greatest sources for writing fodder, and one constantly learns about themselves at the gym (if they are paying attention), which means words to be made. Novels are chock full of meaning that needs to be struggled with, and there is nobody out there who would deny that acquiring a second language doesn’t affect the way we write and what we write about: we are language. Finally, the deepest sources of writing whathaveyou comes from the strenuous exercises of practicing music and studying scholastically. The community: morality/spirit
I am just a writer who is doing the job that I’m most fit to do, and it is with this in mind that I bear the labor of pulling myself away from my practice and study in order to gain the knowledge that comes from the combination of theory (that which results from practice and study) with experience. I will bear the inanity and mundanity of a society that has moved away from a desire to truly know what it means to be human and finds itself floundering in a world of trivialities involving which celebrity is wearing what designer and wondering what it must feel like to be a millionaire. I will taste the fruits of the lifestyle I’m battling against in just the same way a flu shot works: a bit of the infection so the body knows what it is fighting against; and I will breathe the air of a freedom that looks good on the outside, but bears inside itself the seed of slavery that will one day ripen. To be the slave of a slave:
Brannigan: I'm de-promoting you, soldier. Kiff, what's the most humiliating job there is?
Kif Kroker: Being your assistant.
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Wrong. Being *your* assistant.
These times are always important for me, and they remind me of how lucky I am that have the opportunity during the other times of my life to pursue those things which seem to fulfill me most fully: study and practice. However, study without application and practice without the game are exercises in masturbation. So it is that these moments of putting what I’ve been studying and practicing have special meaning for me.
I hate the fact that I have to get myself away from practice, but practice is very safe. If you screw something up, nobody’s watching you and quietly saying to themselves (and sometimes yelling loudly): “You suck.” That’s the beauty of practice. It’s the quiet advancement of the self in whatever area you are attempting to improve; however, it is in the game that what you have been practicing for so long really makes itself known.
Okay, it has just occurred to me that what I am differentiating between when I say study and practice is precisely what Plato is always on about: the visible versus the intelligible realm. When I talk about study, it is the reading that takes up some of my time every single day of my life. Whether it be a novel, an academic work, or language acquisition book, the thing I am exercising is my intelligence. When I talk about practice, it is the physical labor involved in acquiring any kind of skill. So, my practice is going to the gym three times a week, playing guitar/singing, and walking.
This is kind of strange, but my intelligible realm and my physical realm seem to have awkward counterbalances… damnit, I’m looking at myself through a strange lens… I would say that walking and language acquisition make up a duo, going to the gym and reading a novel are a duo, and playing music and reading academia are a duo.
When I go walking, I tend to do so at a particular pace and with the express purpose of being in the midst of a walk. Every time you go walking, you can find something new. Oh, that restaurant looks awesome, I’ll have to come back here. Oh, that’s where the library is. You’re picking up the language of the place where you are. The language of where everything is. You’re drawing a map inside your brain by engaging with the physical reality of the thing. This is what the acquisition of language does. Language is the drawing of maps with the mind toward meaning. When you “get the lay of the land” by actually traversing the land in question, this can be likened to getting the lay of the land of language: the more you traverse it, the more you feel comfortable with it. The bulk populace: temperance/consciousness
Going to the gym is something that happens three times a week, and it’s basically always the same. It’s comfortable. I know what I’m going to do. I know how it’s going to feel. I know that it is going to require some effort, but I know that kind of effort all too well—thanks to years and years of practice at it. In short, it’s become something that is basically just a part of my existence. Having spent the last ten years of my life almost insatiably reading novels—for pleasure or for academic purposes, my life would feel naked if it was void of a novel to read. In short, reading novels is comfortable, I know how it’s to be done, I know how it’s going to feel (especially if it’s a good novel—Proust was an exception (I’ve never felt anything like that from a novel)), I know that it will require some effort (or, at least, it should), and I know that effort all too well. The auxiliaries: courage/the body
The practice of music and the study of academia are paired because of the strenuousness of the activities. They require more effort than the others because this is the active attempt to learn something, to change the way I think about myself and the world at large. Music has the special, magical affect of being effective to the mind as it watches harmonies and melodies fall into place. It is basically sensory practice: it has a look, a feel, a sound, a touch, and (in some cases) you can almost taste it when it’s done well—perhaps that’s why we call some music tasteful and others disgusting. Reading scholarly works performs the same actions for the intelligible realms. It helps the mind see more clearly, feel more appropriately, hear what people are saying more thoroughly, touch the inner recesses of the self, and taste what it means to be human. The guardians: wisdom/sub-conscious
It occurred to me (and Gad how I love how writing does this) that writing pervades them all. They are all doing their jobs, and writing is somehow related to all of them. Walking is one of my greatest sources for writing fodder, and one constantly learns about themselves at the gym (if they are paying attention), which means words to be made. Novels are chock full of meaning that needs to be struggled with, and there is nobody out there who would deny that acquiring a second language doesn’t affect the way we write and what we write about: we are language. Finally, the deepest sources of writing whathaveyou comes from the strenuous exercises of practicing music and studying scholastically. The community: morality/spirit
I am just a writer who is doing the job that I’m most fit to do, and it is with this in mind that I bear the labor of pulling myself away from my practice and study in order to gain the knowledge that comes from the combination of theory (that which results from practice and study) with experience. I will bear the inanity and mundanity of a society that has moved away from a desire to truly know what it means to be human and finds itself floundering in a world of trivialities involving which celebrity is wearing what designer and wondering what it must feel like to be a millionaire. I will taste the fruits of the lifestyle I’m battling against in just the same way a flu shot works: a bit of the infection so the body knows what it is fighting against; and I will breathe the air of a freedom that looks good on the outside, but bears inside itself the seed of slavery that will one day ripen. To be the slave of a slave:
Brannigan: I'm de-promoting you, soldier. Kiff, what's the most humiliating job there is?
Kif Kroker: Being your assistant.
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Wrong. Being *your* assistant.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Teacher and Student
These two labels seem to follow me around and lurk in all the corners of my world. In this moment I’m a student, and fifteen minutes later I’m playing the role of teacher. Even in the sub-conscious realm that writing comes from, it becomes apparent how I see myself:
“I’m a student.”
Vs.
“I’m playing the role of teacher.”
I don’t feel worthy of the title of teacher. To be a teacher is an incredibly important job. It means that the lives of young people are in your hands. I am absolutely certain that the importance of the role of the teacher has been almost completely lost in the bulk of the civilized world—although it might be preserved somewhere in the uncivilized world (although I can’t say for sure). We’re talking about a person who, for an extended period of time, is in control of how our children are learning to think. Imagine the importance of that. Is school important? Hell Yeah! I’m afraid that both schools and teachers have been tainted with a healthy dose of economics and politics, which basically serves to render them impotent.
(In a side note: if you are interested in a world where the educational system is something else, check out “The Glass Bead Game” or it’s alternate title “Magester Ludi” or it’s German title “Das Glasperlenspiel” by Hermann Hesse. It’s… educational, and it won a Nobel Prize for a good reason.)
Being a student is one of the greatest situations you can find yourself in, and what I call “terminal students” are all over the place. I once new a guy who was just heading back to school in order to get his third Master’s Degree. Don’t get me wrong, what I’m talking about here is the fact that I absolutely love being a student, but what I have learned in the last couple of years is that there are most definitely two different kinds of students.
One of the greatest pieces of advice that was ever offered to me, was given by a college professor, and it was just as I was finishing my Master’s Degree and trying to decide whether or not I simply wanted to continue on with my PhD or do something else before jumping right back into academia. She told me that being a professor is more difficult than it looks. Apart from all the academic knowledge that you must be up on: proper ways to make your paper comply with the MLA, tidbits and factoids that you must know, metaphor analyses, and language components (she was definitely an English Lit teacher), there was the fact that so many students from so many various backgrounds walk into your office, and, in a way, it is part of your job to ensure there success somehow. This goes for all subjects and all levels of education, but it is especially true in the studies of the humanities.
With that advice in mind, I embarked on a quest to become a student of life.
Of course, the ironic part of becoming a student of life is that to do this I became a teacher in Korea, but I’m going to be very honest and say that teaching English in Korea is not the most academically intensive occupation one can do.
I have been a lot of places and done a lot of things in this life already, and I feel confident that I have experienced enough to be able to teach some people some things; however, I don’t want to simply be a teacher, I want to be THAT teacher. You know the one, right? The teacher that actually affects their students. Oh, you accept up front that you won’t be able to affect them all, or, what’s even more depressing, even most of them, but I know that I remember the name of my high school English teacher to this day—well, one of them. I don’t know how many teachers I actually had throughout my education—countless perhaps?—but I know that I only remember the names of a few of them, and I’m sure that this is the case with most people.
It is with this goal in mind that I set sail for some of the most random occupations that are available. When I tell my mother that I’m going to be a long distance semi-trailer truck driver for a while and then I’m going to be a farmer, she is—as is certainly appropriate for a mother who is concerned about the state of her offspring—*ahem, concerned. You can imagine the conversation:
“You’re wasting your education. You should be teaching not farming.” Etc.
I know that she means well, but I am getting my graduate degree in living right now, and once I have that, then I can return to the world of academia knowing that I will be well-prepared for the baggage that students will be carrying with them into my office.
Everyone’s path is different. This is the struggle that maintains the parental/progeny battle. As soon as parents understand that their children must be allowed to go their own way at some point, the sooner the world crumbles. They never will and never should accept this because they ARE the owners of years of extraordinarily valuable experience, and it is their job to be the voice of reason that their children disregard but come crawling back to—or not. They represent a path that has been taken, tried, and found acceptable. Children naturally rebel against this path. They want to find themselves, so they must move away from the teachers and be what they’re going to do, be their own teachers, and become students of the world.
Here I sit: studentteacherstudent. I learn daily from Plato and William Thackeray and the guitar and exercise and run-on sentences and inappropriate lists and my students. Meanwhile, I teach the nuances of essay writing, grammar, reading, listening, and writing to some eager and some not-so-eager young faces. Then I come home and try to learn from everything I do.
What I want most in the world is to be a conscientious student, but I find myself to be lazy sometimes.
Have you ever wondered what happens to a mind that is constantly engaged? I want to be very clear and state that engagement and entertainment exist in different realms. Because I have a Korean girlfriend at the moment, last weekend I went to see Step Up 3 in 3D, and I quickly realized that when something is visually stimulating or impressive, the story, the engagement, the challenge (which is a word that I would love to have perpetually associated with the word engagement), and the effort are not necessary. If you’ve ever seen a movie from Hollywood, you can guess the story from the first fifteen minutes.
I digress… Engage the mind and see what happens. It responds remarkably well to challenges. Remember all those people that said they wrote twenty-page papers in one night and got good grades on them. That’s the effect and power of adrenaline mingling with the brain juices. You can accomplish a helluva lot when pressed to do so, or you can accomplish nothing with a lot less effort. Something or nothing seems like a pretty simple choice to make, but effort is something else. For now, I will remain mostly student and look forward to the day when I will be able to say that I am mostly a teacher. Until then, I am always a writer.
“I’m a student.”
Vs.
“I’m playing the role of teacher.”
I don’t feel worthy of the title of teacher. To be a teacher is an incredibly important job. It means that the lives of young people are in your hands. I am absolutely certain that the importance of the role of the teacher has been almost completely lost in the bulk of the civilized world—although it might be preserved somewhere in the uncivilized world (although I can’t say for sure). We’re talking about a person who, for an extended period of time, is in control of how our children are learning to think. Imagine the importance of that. Is school important? Hell Yeah! I’m afraid that both schools and teachers have been tainted with a healthy dose of economics and politics, which basically serves to render them impotent.
(In a side note: if you are interested in a world where the educational system is something else, check out “The Glass Bead Game” or it’s alternate title “Magester Ludi” or it’s German title “Das Glasperlenspiel” by Hermann Hesse. It’s… educational, and it won a Nobel Prize for a good reason.)
Being a student is one of the greatest situations you can find yourself in, and what I call “terminal students” are all over the place. I once new a guy who was just heading back to school in order to get his third Master’s Degree. Don’t get me wrong, what I’m talking about here is the fact that I absolutely love being a student, but what I have learned in the last couple of years is that there are most definitely two different kinds of students.
One of the greatest pieces of advice that was ever offered to me, was given by a college professor, and it was just as I was finishing my Master’s Degree and trying to decide whether or not I simply wanted to continue on with my PhD or do something else before jumping right back into academia. She told me that being a professor is more difficult than it looks. Apart from all the academic knowledge that you must be up on: proper ways to make your paper comply with the MLA, tidbits and factoids that you must know, metaphor analyses, and language components (she was definitely an English Lit teacher), there was the fact that so many students from so many various backgrounds walk into your office, and, in a way, it is part of your job to ensure there success somehow. This goes for all subjects and all levels of education, but it is especially true in the studies of the humanities.
With that advice in mind, I embarked on a quest to become a student of life.
Of course, the ironic part of becoming a student of life is that to do this I became a teacher in Korea, but I’m going to be very honest and say that teaching English in Korea is not the most academically intensive occupation one can do.
I have been a lot of places and done a lot of things in this life already, and I feel confident that I have experienced enough to be able to teach some people some things; however, I don’t want to simply be a teacher, I want to be THAT teacher. You know the one, right? The teacher that actually affects their students. Oh, you accept up front that you won’t be able to affect them all, or, what’s even more depressing, even most of them, but I know that I remember the name of my high school English teacher to this day—well, one of them. I don’t know how many teachers I actually had throughout my education—countless perhaps?—but I know that I only remember the names of a few of them, and I’m sure that this is the case with most people.
It is with this goal in mind that I set sail for some of the most random occupations that are available. When I tell my mother that I’m going to be a long distance semi-trailer truck driver for a while and then I’m going to be a farmer, she is—as is certainly appropriate for a mother who is concerned about the state of her offspring—*ahem, concerned. You can imagine the conversation:
“You’re wasting your education. You should be teaching not farming.” Etc.
I know that she means well, but I am getting my graduate degree in living right now, and once I have that, then I can return to the world of academia knowing that I will be well-prepared for the baggage that students will be carrying with them into my office.
Everyone’s path is different. This is the struggle that maintains the parental/progeny battle. As soon as parents understand that their children must be allowed to go their own way at some point, the sooner the world crumbles. They never will and never should accept this because they ARE the owners of years of extraordinarily valuable experience, and it is their job to be the voice of reason that their children disregard but come crawling back to—or not. They represent a path that has been taken, tried, and found acceptable. Children naturally rebel against this path. They want to find themselves, so they must move away from the teachers and be what they’re going to do, be their own teachers, and become students of the world.
Here I sit: studentteacherstudent. I learn daily from Plato and William Thackeray and the guitar and exercise and run-on sentences and inappropriate lists and my students. Meanwhile, I teach the nuances of essay writing, grammar, reading, listening, and writing to some eager and some not-so-eager young faces. Then I come home and try to learn from everything I do.
What I want most in the world is to be a conscientious student, but I find myself to be lazy sometimes.
Have you ever wondered what happens to a mind that is constantly engaged? I want to be very clear and state that engagement and entertainment exist in different realms. Because I have a Korean girlfriend at the moment, last weekend I went to see Step Up 3 in 3D, and I quickly realized that when something is visually stimulating or impressive, the story, the engagement, the challenge (which is a word that I would love to have perpetually associated with the word engagement), and the effort are not necessary. If you’ve ever seen a movie from Hollywood, you can guess the story from the first fifteen minutes.
I digress… Engage the mind and see what happens. It responds remarkably well to challenges. Remember all those people that said they wrote twenty-page papers in one night and got good grades on them. That’s the effect and power of adrenaline mingling with the brain juices. You can accomplish a helluva lot when pressed to do so, or you can accomplish nothing with a lot less effort. Something or nothing seems like a pretty simple choice to make, but effort is something else. For now, I will remain mostly student and look forward to the day when I will be able to say that I am mostly a teacher. Until then, I am always a writer.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Why do we want to feel fear?
Amusement parks specialize in the peddling of safe fear. The reality is, of course, that on any given day, at an average of 10 minutes per trip with (roughly) thirty people, that math is something like:
30*6=180
180*12=2160
So, more than 2000 people EVERY DAY ride those “terrifying” things. In a year, it’s hundreds of thousands. Those statistics ought to be enough to make one feel absolutely secure in sitting down on those death machines, but why does your stomach still turn and your heart rate jump exponentially?
It’s because—apart from the “being freed from gravity”—there is always that possibility that something will go dreadfully wrong.
Human beings love being that close to danger.
It’s the same in love. We are at once willing and yet unwilling at the same time because we know we’ll be at the precipice of potential disaster, but when it comes to matters of the heart we can be even more unwilling to let our guard down.
As it turns out, most things depend almost entirely on the attitude you take into them. If you take an attitude of arrogance and entitlement into something, you’ll find out pretty quickly that this particular attitude can be quite off-putting to quite a lot of the population. If you take the attitude of genuine interest and enjoyment into whatever venture you’re wandering into, you’ll find that people respond in kind.
I don’t have many opinions that matter. Socrates was right, we’re all ignorant, and it’s because there is too much to know. The amount of things that I know for sure could be counted on a hand that’s been maimed—and indeed that image seems most appropriate—while the things I don’t know couldn’t be compared to all the sand in Hawaii.
It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that I should start to believe in things other than human nature, but it seems like the investigation of that one thing could occupy a body for the entirety of a lifetime. It encompasses everything, see. Politics, literature, art, music, science, math, culture, economics, morality, ethics, sensuality, sexuality, language, and knowledge all fall under the umbrella of human nature.
But it’s unimaginably complex, and that’s a bummer? The structures of exactly how a human goes through its world can be broken down into types, but there is always room for jockeying, and that one piece of information means that there is always room for jockeying in everything.
I teach students how to write long sentences, and it makes me happy when they write nonsense:
Fat Eli and ugly Benjamin almost always drink dirty soju, which is delicious, over the moon, but crazy Alice and stupid Peter powerfully sleep in the subway, which is loud.
Does it mean?
Music means something, I think.
I wonder sometimes whether or not politics in the modern sense of the term has anything to do with the politics as the ancients envisioned it?
What kind of effect does the population size have on the method of governing?
What does it mean that almost all philosophers and political theorists and religions forget about the ground of their theories: is-ness.
Without the body there can be no mind. Without the land there can be no country. Does the mind actually create? Or is it perpetually a step behind?
Right now I feel compelled. That’s all.
It seems like I want to cry, and my stomach hurts, and I’m confused about why it seems like there’s a car horn honking in the next room, and all I really want to do is play the guitar, and I keep wondering when my bowels will unleash the hellish bind that I know is in there, and my computer died, and I don’t know what to do about the future, and how the hell am I going to send all these goddamned books home, and when will I finish my studies of the Korean language, and what do I do about the feelings I feel for a girl I know (and she knows) I’m going to leave in a couple of months, and why do I find myself in that position, and why do I think I actually want that particular situation, and why does it feel safer to love at a distance, and why do I believe that I am (as yet) incapable of loving because I still don’t know myself well enough, and I’m pretty sure I know about four people (probably more) who would hate that statement, and I don’t believe in a Christian god, and I know about a million people who would hate that statement, and what kind of arrogance does it take to know something that’s impossible to know, and what’s wrong with having a belief that’s different, and there are so many words I don’t know, and the decadence I’m dealing with in my life must be remedied, and what’s so decadent about using the air conditioner, and I eat leftovers all week, and survival seems like a more worthy goal than the acquisition of free time, and it is a belief I have that most of the free time across the world is spent exceedingly unproductively, and that makes me very sad, and TVs in taxis makes me even more sad, and the more I understand what is possible for people in general the less I understand people generally, and when will parents learn that their kids inherently want different things than life-givers, and when will kids learn that their parents have that most incredible of all of life’s little educators: experience, and when will humans learn that it doesn’t matter whether we know these things or not it is precisely that conflict has always existed and is necessary and productive when understood as a method for growth and development, and I fucking hate war, I hate war, I hate war, and I don’t understand why people are so bad to each other, and I’m sorry I got into an argument with one of my best friends, and I feel like I need to talk to her, and I had a dream about her the other day and we were in Venice with my father, who looked exceedingly sad as he was perpetually attempting to get away from us while toting (very literally) two babies with him and I wandered off on a walk—which happens so frequently these days that I sometimes get very scared to step foot outside my door lest I wander around for hours and stare in rapture at the fact of existence, and I miss having meaningful conversations, and sometimes it feels like I’m a dinosaur investigating my own extinction, and sometimes I just want to be quiet, and half of my time is spent recovering, and the other half is spent ailing, and I don’t know what from.
30*6=180
180*12=2160
So, more than 2000 people EVERY DAY ride those “terrifying” things. In a year, it’s hundreds of thousands. Those statistics ought to be enough to make one feel absolutely secure in sitting down on those death machines, but why does your stomach still turn and your heart rate jump exponentially?
It’s because—apart from the “being freed from gravity”—there is always that possibility that something will go dreadfully wrong.
Human beings love being that close to danger.
It’s the same in love. We are at once willing and yet unwilling at the same time because we know we’ll be at the precipice of potential disaster, but when it comes to matters of the heart we can be even more unwilling to let our guard down.
As it turns out, most things depend almost entirely on the attitude you take into them. If you take an attitude of arrogance and entitlement into something, you’ll find out pretty quickly that this particular attitude can be quite off-putting to quite a lot of the population. If you take the attitude of genuine interest and enjoyment into whatever venture you’re wandering into, you’ll find that people respond in kind.
I don’t have many opinions that matter. Socrates was right, we’re all ignorant, and it’s because there is too much to know. The amount of things that I know for sure could be counted on a hand that’s been maimed—and indeed that image seems most appropriate—while the things I don’t know couldn’t be compared to all the sand in Hawaii.
It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that I should start to believe in things other than human nature, but it seems like the investigation of that one thing could occupy a body for the entirety of a lifetime. It encompasses everything, see. Politics, literature, art, music, science, math, culture, economics, morality, ethics, sensuality, sexuality, language, and knowledge all fall under the umbrella of human nature.
But it’s unimaginably complex, and that’s a bummer? The structures of exactly how a human goes through its world can be broken down into types, but there is always room for jockeying, and that one piece of information means that there is always room for jockeying in everything.
I teach students how to write long sentences, and it makes me happy when they write nonsense:
Fat Eli and ugly Benjamin almost always drink dirty soju, which is delicious, over the moon, but crazy Alice and stupid Peter powerfully sleep in the subway, which is loud.
Does it mean?
Music means something, I think.
I wonder sometimes whether or not politics in the modern sense of the term has anything to do with the politics as the ancients envisioned it?
What kind of effect does the population size have on the method of governing?
What does it mean that almost all philosophers and political theorists and religions forget about the ground of their theories: is-ness.
Without the body there can be no mind. Without the land there can be no country. Does the mind actually create? Or is it perpetually a step behind?
Right now I feel compelled. That’s all.
It seems like I want to cry, and my stomach hurts, and I’m confused about why it seems like there’s a car horn honking in the next room, and all I really want to do is play the guitar, and I keep wondering when my bowels will unleash the hellish bind that I know is in there, and my computer died, and I don’t know what to do about the future, and how the hell am I going to send all these goddamned books home, and when will I finish my studies of the Korean language, and what do I do about the feelings I feel for a girl I know (and she knows) I’m going to leave in a couple of months, and why do I find myself in that position, and why do I think I actually want that particular situation, and why does it feel safer to love at a distance, and why do I believe that I am (as yet) incapable of loving because I still don’t know myself well enough, and I’m pretty sure I know about four people (probably more) who would hate that statement, and I don’t believe in a Christian god, and I know about a million people who would hate that statement, and what kind of arrogance does it take to know something that’s impossible to know, and what’s wrong with having a belief that’s different, and there are so many words I don’t know, and the decadence I’m dealing with in my life must be remedied, and what’s so decadent about using the air conditioner, and I eat leftovers all week, and survival seems like a more worthy goal than the acquisition of free time, and it is a belief I have that most of the free time across the world is spent exceedingly unproductively, and that makes me very sad, and TVs in taxis makes me even more sad, and the more I understand what is possible for people in general the less I understand people generally, and when will parents learn that their kids inherently want different things than life-givers, and when will kids learn that their parents have that most incredible of all of life’s little educators: experience, and when will humans learn that it doesn’t matter whether we know these things or not it is precisely that conflict has always existed and is necessary and productive when understood as a method for growth and development, and I fucking hate war, I hate war, I hate war, and I don’t understand why people are so bad to each other, and I’m sorry I got into an argument with one of my best friends, and I feel like I need to talk to her, and I had a dream about her the other day and we were in Venice with my father, who looked exceedingly sad as he was perpetually attempting to get away from us while toting (very literally) two babies with him and I wandered off on a walk—which happens so frequently these days that I sometimes get very scared to step foot outside my door lest I wander around for hours and stare in rapture at the fact of existence, and I miss having meaningful conversations, and sometimes it feels like I’m a dinosaur investigating my own extinction, and sometimes I just want to be quiet, and half of my time is spent recovering, and the other half is spent ailing, and I don’t know what from.
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