Life and {Metaphorical} Death in Korea

"It's a metaphor" is one of the most ruthlessly abused phrases in contemporary English. See the famous Nightman episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for verification. Other candidates including any grouping of words that contain "random", "smart-______", or "historic". But it's metaphors I'm worried about here. And at the risk of sounding like an illiterate Philadelphian mop-jockey, here goes...

Many Buddhist teachers speak about the countless little deaths we die each day. Pema Chodron is the first one that comes to mind - I'm thinking of her excellent book When Things Fall Apart. She describes the death of each moment as it passes from immediate experience, never to return again. Chodron explains that it is important to allow that death to happen, that holding on to the past {and our ideas/opinions of it, whether positive or negative} causes suffering that could be avoided by the devilishly simple understanding that all things eventually come to an end. Then other things begin, which then also end, and so on...

These little deaths happen in every home, workplace, city, continent, etc. Sometimes the process can seem awfully slow, however - usually in the sense that things we would like to see "die" stubbornly refuse to do so. Obnoxious co-workers aren't transferred, toddlers scorn conventional toilets, sports teams remain frustratingly inept. In certain environments, however, the life cycle of everyday experience is accelerated. Not to mayfly-extremes, but certainly more rapid than poor Solitario Jorge. Korea is one of those environments.

There are many foreign English teachers who choose to remain in Korea for two, three, or four+ years. There are many more who bounce after a single tour of duty. For those of us who stick around, this means we have dozens of opportunities to watch our friends depart from our daily consciousness {and often from our lives altogether}. The degree to which this bothers us is largely dependent on the connections we feel to those who leave, and whether or not they owe us money.

I have been in Korea for about fifteen months, and I've lost a handful of close friends. I've also lost a lot of  acquaintances, affable semi-strangers, and people who are fun to run into on weekends. I still have the phone numbers of at least twenty people that are no longer here. When I see some of these numbers, I am tempted to purge my phonebook. Others inspire me to look up old Facebook photos. There's really no rhyme or reason to it - some of the people who conjure the nicest memories are the ones I barely knew. Sometimes the name of a close friend just reminds me of the time they crashed their paragliding apparatus into a clump of trees and cost me a chance to fly off a mountain. So there are more variables at play here than a relationship's degree of "closeness". But the point is they are gone, dead in a way, and there's really no option other than to move on. I can't afford plane tickets to twenty different cities on four different continents. 

Recently, one of my good buddies left Korea for the balmy shores of the Upper Midwest. His departure was less bittersweet than most because he seemed genuinely happy to leave - unlike many ex-expatriates, he had a proper job lined up once he touched down in the U.S. Let me clarify - it was probably less bittersweet for him, but it was still a bummer for me. Mainly because I liked and respected him a lot - as happy as I was to see him excited about blazing new trails or whatever, it was disappointing to know that we'll never get to climb Jirisan or sing in another noraebang or gag at the smell of dried squid again. Those moments are gone. Dead. Sad. 

I suppose this is practice for another departure that is coming soon. My closest friend in Korea, a guy who I consider a brother in all of the beautifully cliched ways that our generation is programmed to express, is leaving. Dying from my life, at least for the foreseeable future. This dude has been right next to me for some of the best experiences of my adult life. We've taken photos with hordes of English-speaking Korean coeds between the garish souvenir shops of Insadong, spent countless hours philosophizing outside cheap convenience stores {Family Mart being the unequivocal favorite}, been chased down by the Sihanoukville tuk-tuk mafia, see the first sunrise of the New Year at Angkor Wat, rode speed boats in the Celebes Sea, eaten fried noodles at midnight on the streets of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown. I love this guy, and he will be dying soon. He'll still be in this world, of course, but in much the same way as Grandpa's ashes in the old urn on the mantelpiece. Pictures, disembodied words, memories - but not a physical being whose socks I can borrow anymore.

At the same time, there is life. For every person that leaves Korea, one arrives {sometimes the ratio is skewed upwards, as recruiters are fond of reminding us; English-speaking labor is plentiful at the moment}. Miraculously, these newcomers are often pretty neat human beings. Plenty of opportunity to make new friends, and therefore plenty of chances to create wonderful new memories with aforementioned humans. 

It's impossible to replace Old Yeller; comparing grief-assuagement puppies to old legends is hatefully unfair and has not, in my understanding, ever worked out well.  But life and death goes on in Korea, and it makes sense to embrace those who have just been "born". We'll hopefully be sharing a lot of time together before it is our turn to die, and in those doddering last days I hope they will be kind enough to buy me dinner and maybe store a few small boxes of unwanted bulk goods. It will be my turn to die in Korea, and some other poor bastard will be born into my disorganized desk and moldy shower. 

End note - the other day I found out that an artist, gentleman and true mensch has somehow cheated death and and will be returning to Korea in less than a month. It's a much-welcome slap in the face of the laws of Korean-teaching-thermodynamics. If you're reading this, welcome back good buddy...

Cabinets

"You left a lot of weird stuff in the cupboards," he said to me over the roar of a mind-bogglingly untalented indie rock band. 

The fat drummer was flailing wildly at the cymbals while the lead singer loudly encouraged us to rock and/or roll. He was largely ignored by the audience with the notable exception of some extremely intoxicated Filipino factory workers with tremendous hair. I thought about the two-year old Tabasco sauce and concluded my friend was probably right.

As far as I can remember, which isn't especially well, when I moved out of my old apartment I left behind the following items: seven packets of dried seaweed, a small tub of pseudo-American peanut butter, half a bag of penne, an odd assortment of spices {salt and pepper are the only ones I'm certain of, though they were mostly empty}, large bags of peanuts and sunflower seeds, and the aforementioned Tabasco. There were some other things in the refrigerator/freezer, but again my memory is fuzzy. I think there was a bottle of aloe juice and some very frozen packets of Korean dumplings {mando}, however.

I started thinking about these things because the guy I was talking to that night happened to be the same guy who replaced me at my old school, Cheonan Wonderland. He had, as we discussed at some length, basically become the "new Nick". By that I mean he now inhabits the basic environments and roles that I once occupied. He teaches my old kids, sits in my old desk, poops in my old toilet  Being replaced isn't that unusual in Korea - few people make a lifelong career of teaching kindergarteners here. But not many ex-teachers get to sit down with their replacements and hear an analysis of the life they left behind from the person who now lives that life. It was interesting, to say the least.

Before going further I have to mention the oddly antagonistic relationship I held with my cabinets in Cheonan. When I arrived in August last year, I was intrigued and mildly horrified by the contents of my kitchen. The cabinets were coated with a strange dust that looked oddly reddish, as if someone had spilled a bottle of paprika and then let it sit there until the grains had some kind of Vulcan body-meld with the wood. I made a few extremely half-hearted attempts to scrub some of the dust off but to no avail. In some places there were darker reddish-orange circles - it reminded me of the ring a very hot/cold cup of coffee leaves except this coffee was the color of Ron Howard's hair. 

Over the next twelve months I existed in a weird state of detente with my cabinets. I did not try to clean them, and in return they did not smell too badly or attract insects. A co-worker living several floors above me {and her eventual replacement} was plagued by cockroaches during this time and I didn't want to risk an infestation by altering the cabinets' natural equilibrium.  I have a very basic grasp of science mixed with a strong superstitious streak, and my thinking ran something like this:

 "There must be some combination of herbs and spices within the confines of the cabinets that is keeping the insects at bay. {Co-worker} is female and thus far more hygienic than me in most ways. What prevents me from suffering the same fate as her? Guess it's the protective scum-layer."

During the entire time I lived in that apartment, I never had a single problem with roaches, spiders, ants, or any other creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. No harsh ecosystem destroying disinfectants = no insects. And I do remember my co-worker being a compulsive germophobe. 

In fairness this is the same type of mental gymnastics that leads Chinese people to believe ground-up panda cocks are a remedy for male pattern baldness. Science is not on my side here. But I'm wandering way off track - the important thing is what my dirty cabinets said about their previous owner.

I'm not sure where to begin with that question just yet. But for an interlude, I will describe the various cabinets of my new apartment and what I assume their contents say about the girl who lived here before me.

First, let me say that moving into a Korean apartment is far more pleasant if the preceding occupant was female. This place was stocked. Granted, many of the items were baffling to me - I'm not sure why an outwardly healthy single-headed human needs three hair straighteners. Does a sock drawer really need an air freshener? But I'm not complaining - it was great.

In the kitchen, she left behind a wondrous assortment of foods that I mostly didn't feel like eating. I bequeathed that poor bastard some stale pasta - she gave me four different kinds of ramen. Plus curry, though I am pathologically terrified of Korean curries and won't eat it unless the alternatives are fish-based or even more yellowish. There was a large box of sugar-free crackers that I did eat, feeling mildly homeless as I munched on saltines while walking by the local galbi place where people sat demolishing giant slabs of meat. 

There were at least three boxes of fabulous teas, all of which bore the images of pajama-clad teddy bears, gently snoozing moons, piles of thick warm blankets, and other things that subconsciously encourage you to go the fuck to sleep. I tried a cup or two and it seemed to really work - though I was hellaciously exhausted 

and in all likelihood an IV of Red Bull wouldn't have been enough to keep me awake at that point. So the people at Celestial Seasonings still have my slightly hesitant trust.

Beneath the gas range there were enough varieties of cooking oil to perform some kind of task that requires a hell of a lot of cooking oils. Olive, canola, peanut, sesame...some other things that I didn't look at closely. Also a couple types of vinegar and something called "balsamic", though I am pretty sure that is just a fancy vinegar. 

On to the bathroom - this is where things get interesting. Not in that way. Or I guess really any way, to a normal person. In any case there were no sex toys, lubricants, or other items that would suggest the bathroom was used for non-personal-cleansing purposes.

But there were Q-Tips. Oh, were there Q-Tips...and an obscene amount of combination mini-flossers/toothpicks that stood with their points in the air like a tiny phalanx bent on making my gums bleed. And a nice large bottle of knock-off Advil, or something like it that presumably contains most of the same ingrediants. Tons of bandages, but no anti-bacterial ointment. No toothpaste or mouthwash either, though there were some bottles of apparently expensive shampoo and conditioner {so I was informed by my girlfriend}. 

The thing that really stood out for me, though, was the cold medicine. There were at least a few dozen packets of cold-remedy powders designed for every conceivable time of day. In my life I have been accustomed to curing cold symptoms only with soup or pills. Possibly Sprite at times. I understand the drinking fluids part - it makes sense to prevent dehydration and promote regular cellular function and some other stuff as well, I assume. What doesn't make sense to me is purposely making those fluids taste so horrible that swallowing them is more unpleasant than the cold itself. But I gave some to my girlfriend, who had a pretty awful cold at the time, and she seemed to get better after taking them. So maybe there is some payoff to the horrible taste, though personally I will stick to Campbell's.

One more note about the cabinets - kitchen, bathroom and "main room" {I'm lumping those in with the others even though traditionally they'd probably be considered closer to dressers} - they were all occupied by air fresheners. The air fresheners were all purplish in color and smell remarkably unobtrusive. My dishes, toothbrush, and jeans don't smell like lilac or lavender at all. Nor do they smell bad - the air fresheners just establish like a scent vacuum so that no smells exist at all.

So what does this say about the girl who lived here before? I feel confident in saying that she liked things to smell nice and made an investment of sufficient effort and capital to ensure that her dwelling did not smell like a locker room. I can also assume that she valued a good night's sleep and did not like sniffling. Also that she was at least a semi-skilled cook who enjoyed making food and did not resort to peanut butter toast and apples four times a week like I do. 

Behind those fairly certain theories lie a vast array of entertaining and irresponsible hypotheses I could make. She might have had so many Q-tips because she had abnormally dirty ears...or cleaned a lot of computer keyboards in her spare time. She was either hopelessly addicted to camomile or just liked the sound of hissing kettles. She flossed three times a day to maintain her movie-star-perfect teeth or to correct years of Britishly bad dental hygiene. There's really no way to find out without asking her, which I probably won't do.

So if such an extensive and intimate stash of evidence can tell me so little about the character of a fellow human, what is my poor replacement supposed to make of some legumes and crusty Tabasco sauce? Maybe if he heard my explanation he'd understand that I'm not really a Pledge-averse dietary freak - that there are perfectly reasonable reasons why I left things in the condition I did { I should mention that my diet consists of more than seaweed and sunflower seeds - I just ate all the good stuff before leaving}. It could change his opinion of me, possibly. But I don't think that I could really explain to him who I am or other deep metaphysical ponderings just by describing my housekeeping routines.

I think this is why it's hard to really know someone without making a concerted effort to dig into their brains, and past the brains, in many cases. Even the things we surround ourselves with can sometimes cause misleading impressions about our personalities and what we consider important. It's tempting to classify folks into neat Odd Coupleish categories, especially with oodles of evidence, but this strategy can lead to completely false conclusions.

I didn't have a bottle of Tabasco sauce in my cabinet because I loved it so much. In fact I'd never used it once during the whole year I was there. I hate Tabasco. I just didn't throw it out because it made the cabinet feel less empty between shopping trips.

Sex, Lies, Betrayal and Explosions

None of the above are discussed here. Let's talk about books instead.

A few days ago, I finished a book called Infinite Jest. It was written by a man named David Foster Wallace. He wrote some novels, essays, and short stories and then killed himself in 2008.

Infinite Jest is over 1,000 pages long and contains about a hundred pages of endnotes. It's not easy to read. I am about 1.5 notches below a legitimate speed reader, and it took me nearly two months to finish the book. I've started (and failed to finish) other obscenely large novels before - Anna Karenina, Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace are among the most notable. I love the old Russians but I just couldn't stick it out. Maybe because the characters' names all sound the same. 

Three or four nights a week, I would read Infinite Jest for about an hour before falling asleep. At first, using this time for reading felt like a sacrifice. Previously, that time had been dedicated to a rare pleasure - TV watching. Usually The Simpsons or Arrested Development. Sometimes, if I was in a particularly egg-headed mood, I'd watch documentaries. Something about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, or early 1990s American arcade games, or anything narrated by David Attenborough.

After watching the documentaries, I often felt like I learned something. How human beings can become insanely territorial and hyper-competitive about the most trivial of accomplishments - thank you, A Fistful of Quarters. How ignorance, pride and confusion can lead well-spoken intelligent people to make terrifically fatal mistakes - hats off to Fog of War. How magnificent birds of paradise attract mates. That one was from Planet Earth, I think.

But none of them ever made me think the way Infinite Jest did. The act of holding a thick, heavy chunk of paper in my hand and manually flipping individual pages made me feel like I was making some kind of active attempt to consume information. It was entertaining, to be sure - I don't have the masochism/self-discipline to read a thousand pages of mind-numbingly boring shit. Still, it didn't feel like plain entertainment (which is kind of funny because in many ways the book is about entertainment and its role in our lives). Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I felt my determination to consume and appreciate the book had some kind of tangible intellectual reward. Like the effort to devote my full attention to reading and understanding the words on the page lead to a real benefit.

In the foreword to The Best American Essays 2010, Robert Atwan discussed (whined about?) the downfall of active reading in the 21st century. He might have a point, however. Serious reading does seem to have taken a shot to the groin lately. I don't mean what we read - people have always like to read cheap and exciting crap, and they probably always will. It's more a matter of why and how we read. 

Why - We read for the same reasons we watch movies or listen to albums. Not for entertainment, though that's a pretty decent cover. We read so that we can judge. So that we can present an opinion or interpretation or alternate viewpoint. To show that we have absorbed some largish piece of information and analyzed it in some intelligent fashion. We look at it from some kind of perspective (bonus points if it begins with neo and included a hyphen) and then formulate a judgment on it. The words can't just mean what they say - there must be something behind/under/around/between them. And in this way many vigorous and impassioned conversations are born.

How - When I was growing up, there was a semi-popular series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. In these books, you'd read a page and then be presented with several "choices" - one decision would lead you to page 79, where you'd rescue the princess, and another would take you to pg. 101, where the Maori tribesmen feed you alive to a patch of carnivorous dandelions. It was a primitive way of giving the reader some active agency in the reading experience. Today we've become a bit more advanced - the Interwebs allows us to post comments before even finishing a story. We can offer chapter-by-chapter feedback using "social media" (a term I have grown to dislike even more than "....in this economy..."). Polls will ask our opinion, informed or not, and then convey our feedback to some mysterious entity that presumably uses the polls' results to make some decision, or not. Either way, we are active and involved in our reading. Empowered, if you will. Understanding the material isn't nearly as important as having a reaction to it.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, reaction. I think it would defy physics or something (biology? chemistry? I'm not a science person) if we didn't have a reaction to stimuli. But reaction should be accompanied by introspection. I don't know what the correct ratio is, but I do believe you should look inwards before you speak outwards. Or something like that. Infinite Jest made me think a whole hell of a lot. Here are some of the main culprits, in the form of quotes. 

"Certain things not only can't be taught but can be retarded by other stuff that can be taught." 

My fourth grade teacher once gave our class a creative writing assignment for Halloween. We were supposed to write a ghost story - I think a haunted house was to be involved in some way. I populated my story with thinly disguised characters based on my classmates. I say "thinly disguised" because I used their actual names and only changed some unimportant physical characteristics - for example, Bart Larson was twelve feet tall and covered in reptilian scales. The other kids loved the stories and from that point on I neglected multiplication tables and stuck strictly to the fourth-grade-horror-fiction-writing business. After seven or eight installments my grades had suffered enough to earn a semester-long ban from the old classroom Macintosh. I didn't write any more stories.

A few years later, my English teacher (who I greatly respected) held an essay title contest in our class.  We would write around three essays per month. To be honest the students could give two shits about the actual content of our essays, but we were nuts about the title contest. I quickly figured out that the more bizarre and nonsensical my title was, the more my classmates loved it. It didn't matter if the title had any relation to the essay itself - the sheer weirdness of the words was beautiful enough. Becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion of the seventh grade essay titling world might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but I took some considerable pride in it. Then the rules were changed (the title had to pertain directly to the essay's content and omit profanity or scatological references or unflattering comments about peers' choice of underwear), I became righteously pissed off at the arbitrary censorship and promptly refused to write another good title again. Or maybe "was unable to" would be more accurate...

I wasn't taught to love writing. No teacher ever sat me down and said, "Hey, kid, you're kind of shitty at expressing your thoughts vocally. Maybe you'd be better at letting some of those thoughts out if you used a pen and paper instead. You might feel pretty relieved if you were writing things down on a consistent basis." I was never taught to think in strange ways because, by definition, if you can teach someone to imitate something then the thing you are teaching really isn't that strange.

But I was taught to be clear and coherent in my writing and by extension clear and coherent in my thinking/expressing of thoughts. Unfortunately real life isn't usually clear and coherent like that. It's usually weirdly twisted, often not in an unpleasant way. And you can either get comfortable with that idea, or spend many years with "Pissed Off" as your default setting. In my case, I am working on unlearning many of the lessons I absorbed at a young age.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that the sun's the same sun over all different parts of the planet. 

Five or six times a week, I think about a person I love. I think about how quickly we shed our skins - how less than eleven months ago we awoke in the same city and were separated by something greater than space. I think about this person and am filled with a kind of quiet, hopeless, happily determined and accepting love and wonder what we would say if our new selves met again. If anything is the same except for my unconditional love, and if we are both still living on the same planet in the same universe.

We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young.

Being trapped in the self:  the main reason I -  started reading, developed an interested in dogs,enjoyed writing, pretended to like pro wrestling, played baseball, tried out for the school musical, quit the basketball team, ignored my sisters for around five years, had my first alcoholic drink, hated high school, tried to appreciate Pantera, went to church, scorned old friends, smoked pot, changed majors, transferred universities, hit rock bottom, entered therapy, joined a meditation center, came to Korea. 

Notice that the positive things came only after a prolonged period of great desperation. There was nothing I could give to make the feeling of aloneness go away. Taking things didn't work either. None of the masks fit. Acceptance is the only thing that really worked, I think. And acceptance takes patience, perseverance, and a lack of other semi-viable options. So it's not for everyone.

"It was if his head perched on the bedpost all night now and in the terribly early A.M. when Hal's eyes opened snapped open immediately and said Glad You're UP I've Been Wanting to TALK To You and then didn't let up all day until he could finally try to fall unconscious, crawling into the rack wretched to await more bad dreams. ~(my emphasis)

The incessant mental chatter that is your constant companion in times of mega-huge sadness/stress. The reason I gave up caffeine in January 2010 - waking up so jittery and terrifyingly alert that my brain didn't need any assistance in reaching 100% (in)efficency. That awful feeling when even after a "good night's rest" the same crippling fear is waiting to greet you in the morning. 

No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was unendurable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering.

The point of the Dhamma. Why living in the present moment is, in my opinion, the most effective path to happiness. Mark Nunberg's voice: "Oh, it's like this now. This is how it is. Can this be OK?" And finding out, more often than not, that it can be OK. That things only get unbearable when you start imagining that same fear/loneliness/depression/sadness/hatred stretching out into infinity. Most mature adults can deal with a disappointing moment - only a genuine goddamn saint can deal with a lifetime of shit.

David Foster Wallace received a MacArthur Fellowship award in 1997. Supposedly these awards go to people who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work." I'm not sure if this is always the case, but it does lend some credence to my feeling that David Foster Wallace was a genius.

At least thirteen or fourteen times during the book, I was forced to put it down and shake my head in confusion/admiration/awe/agreement/some combination of the previous. It certainly wasn't an easy read - flipping back and forth between main narrative and endnotes 388 times is a pain in the ass - but after getting about 100 pages in I felt a strange trust in Wallace. I knew he wasn't pulling this shit just to show how clever he was. There had to be some sort of reason, even if I couldn't sense it at the moment. 

Luckily, there was. I think. Infinite Jest was unlike any book I have ever read or will hopefully read again. A work of modern genius that defies any real attempt to analyze it. Wallace hung himself three years ago - he won't be writing any more books. I feel somewhat like a music fan who fell in love with Kurt Cobain in 1997. 

All we can do is enjoy what exists in this present moment.

Submersible Buddhism

There are few things as unnatural as a human being breathing underwater. As a species, we're amazing ill-suited to survive (or even visit) the briny deep. If there's a useful feature for marine locomotion, we lack it -  fins, flippers, gills, eyes with fixed irises, etc. Most of us don't think about this on a daily basis because there's really no reason to do so. Very few people sell used automobiles or adjust insurance claims for denizens of underwater caves.

But forget that - think how strange it is for a person to be floating around beneath the waves. Forgive the anthropomorphisizing and picture a fish with artificial arms and legs, a big bowl of water over its head, lurching drunkenly down the street with perilously little control over its basic motor functions. The only reasonable reaction you could have to such a thing could be simply stated as: "What the fuck?" If tuna had better-developed frontal lobes, I think this is the same sentiment they'd express at the sight of a human floundering around by their neighborhood reef.

 Kind of like this.

But judgmental aquatic fauna be damned, last week I decided to take the plunge (semi-literally) and get certified as a scuba diver. Scuba diving has been one of those life-long dreams that was, until now, thwarted by unfavorable geography, limited leisure time, and woefully inadequate disposable income. Since two of those three problems are currently under control I decided to seize the crab by the pincers and go for it.

Now, there are two fairly substantial reasons why scuba diving might not be a great hobby for me. The first one is medical. I have asthma, which occasionally causes problems when I try to breathe. Breathing is an important part of not dying underwater. In fact there are few worse places to have breathing problems. And although my asthma is generally not exercise-induced, it is occasionally anxiety-induced. There are ample opportunities for anxiety to pop up when the only things keeping you from drowning are a big aluminum can and some fancy rubber tubes. But I shouldn't exaggerate this concern - a standard ventolin inhalor usually keeps things under excellent control and asthma has never prevented me from pursuing any other physically/mentally demanding form of recreation.

The second reason is really the one to focus on: an almost pathological fear of failure. I'm not just afraid of failing the final test - I'm petrified by the idea of failing any little quiz along the way. This is why I quit playing the piano when I was 12 - every missed note was a screeching rusty nail scraping against the blackboard of my psyche. This is why I gave up on Spanish after my junior year of high school - misconjugated verbs and faulty gender pronouns made me shudder so hard that I'd abandon the endeavor entirely  rather than risk another potentially embarrassing slip up. Era embarassado, indeed...

I think giving up is so appealing because it allows me to keep the "what if" narrative alive in my head. It's easy to convince myself that if I'd actually practiced the piano and applied myself a bit, I would have become an excellent pianist. My "failure", in this case, becomes a failure of motivation rather than ability. And failures of motivation are always easy to rationalize because you just have to convince yourself that you weren't really motivated to pursue something because it was obviously pointless/stupid/trivial/etc.

Of course, at some level you know that such reasoning is utter bullshit. At some point all the mini-adventures you have aborted or failed to begin reach a critical mass and you come face to face with an ugly black-toothed gremlin who informs you that you're a stinking gutless coward who will sleepwalk through a pathetic and vacuous existence before dying alone and unfulfilled in a dark alley full of garbage and sick cats.
This was my experience, at least (some mild artistic license taken with the imagery - the gremlin was actually quite polite and had excellent teeth.)

I encountered the gremlin about nine months before coming to Korea as I was wrapping up my university studies. College is usually a time for experimentation, exploration, and a lot of other long words that begin with "e", but for me it was basically a four year exercise in fear of failure. It wasn't until my last semester of college, when I was introduced to the Buddhist teachings, that I finally found a solution. And every step I've taken since then, from getting on the plane to jumping in the water, has been influenced by those lessons.

Let's use scuba training as a specific example.

Before last Saturday, I had never strapped on an air cylinder before. I was unable to define the term "negative buoyancy". I could not tell you the difference between a second-stage regulator and Austin Powers' Swedish-Made Penis Enlarger. Given my lack of familiarity with the topic and its relative complexity, there was a fairly high chance that I would be failing in many little ways throughout the two-day training session. A hundred opportunities to feel ashamed and worthless in the eyes of authority figures, friends, peers, and myself. Damn...

WTF?

I thought about this on the train ride up to Seoul. And I was pleased to discover that my instinctual reaction was a kind of cheerful "Meh." It's not like I was looking forward to fucking up. But imagining the moment of failure had lost its paralyzing intensity. There is probably some Buddhist terminology that describes this situation pretty well (e.g. understanding the Ultimate Reality underlying the Conventional Reality that we experience moment by moment etc....) but I don't understand it well enough to include it in an explanation. In the simpler words that my teacher Mark used, though, the feeling could be expressed as one of compassionate non-judgment.

 Understanding that you're going to make mistakes. Admitting that its uncomfortable to feel lost and confused and seeing nothing inherently wrong with the feeling. Realizing that tearing yourself a new one accomplishes very little. Brushing off your scraped knees and getting to your feet. Leaving your pride in the nearest waste basket and continuing down the road.

Alright, so I was feeling positive and accepting and calm and all-in-all very Buddhisty around that time. It was Saturday afternoon and it was time for our first actual dive in the pool. This was another opportunity to practice non-judgement. The pool was aptly named "The Dungeon". It sat in the basement of what seemed to be a kindergarten/residential home. There was an awful lot of dust floating in the pool. Also spiders. Quite a few small, black, thoroughly drowned spiders in that pool. But I really didn't mind. In some weird way it made the whole thing seem more outlaw-ish and romantic. Equanimity in action.

I wasn't feeling nearly as generous the next day when it was time for our open-mask swim. Real quick - when you dive, you wear a mask that covers your eyes and nose. I'd say the two most important things the mask does are: 1) allows you to see and 2) prevents you from trying to breathe through your nose and nasally drowning yourself. During the open mask swim you voluntarily relinquish these two advantages to simulate losing your mask in the open ocean. Obviously this is a good skill to learn but, like childbirth, the experience itself can be kind of shitty.

And oh lord, did I fail that test. One of the main rules of scuba diving is to avoid quickly ascending to the surface. It can make your lungs pop or cause nitrogen bubbles in your brain or something equally unpleasant. Anyways, I quickly ascended to the surface. Twice.

I was on the bottom of the pool (only about 5 meters down, but still). I took off my mask and swam around, then attempted to put on the mask again. This wouldn't have been a problem except I wasn't breathing through my mouth, which was attached to a regulator mouthpiece providing perfectly breathable oxygen - I was breathing through my nose, which was attached to nothing but water that was doing its best to drown me (I didn't know this at the time - it was noticed by my keen-eyed South African friend Haig). Panicked, I kicked to the surface and sputtered my way to the side of the pool. Twice.

2008 Nick would have been royally kicking his own ass over this repeated failure. And to be honest a couple of highly worrying thoughts flitted through my mind - "Am I going to be denied certification if I can't do this?" and  "What if it happens in the ocean - I'm fucked!" being the two most note-worthy. Yet miraculously these thoughts didn't stick around to torment me. They weren't running on a continuous loop through my brain like they would have a short time ago. And it wasn't like I was doing something extraordinary to push these thoughts out of my head. I just wasn't allowing my grasping, unconscious mind to keep them in. Not trying to control things - letting it be. Mindfulness practice being practiced. The thoughts popped in, said hello, and were replaced by new thoughts. Like, "How bad would it smell if I peed in this wetsuit?"

Long story short - Haig told me about my breathing technique issues. Since I wasn't hysterically consumed with fear or self-judgment or frustration, I was able to apply his advice and breathe exclusively through my mouthpiece. I still felt a little twinge of fear when I popped off the mask, and again when I tried to put it back on my head, but the fear was manageable and temporary. I got a little certificate that says I passed some level or whatever and in two weeks I will go to the ocean to finish my training and become a fully certified scuba diver. Mostly thanks to a South African engineer and the teachings of an itinerant Indian who lived about 2,500 years ago. These dudes helped an American English teacher get scuba certified in South Korea. What an odd, small, nonsensical world this is.

One final note - there is something very meditative about scuba diving. You can feel your arms and legs moving in the water without having to exert any energy to keep you upright. They don't really have to do anything - just be there. It's not quite like being disembodied but it's kind of like giving your body a nice break from gravity-imposed requirements and just letting it be.

More interesting though, is the breath. In all the meditation sits I've ever done, I have rarely paid such close attention to the breath as I did underwater. At times the breath seemed like literally the only thing in the world. Part of this was due to the weird, unearthly, Darth-Vader-like sound the regulator makes and the tiny bubbles that float to the surface with every exhale. But mostly I think it is because when you are underwater, nothing is more important than the breath. It consumes your full attention. You breathe slowly and deeply because that's the most efficient way to use the air in your tank, and it keeps you from panicking.

 It feels a lot like the breath that comes when you have been sitting for a while and your mind has calmed down and your heart isn't pounding so fast and you can just relax and allow things to unfold exactly as they are going to anyway.

Neat.

Apparently, Students Are Real People.

I am the Sun, and my students are planets. Some of them orbit close enough to absorb my English-speaking-life-sustaining rays. Others lurch through Saturnesque ellipses where their intellectual gifts are too substantial to ignore yet too distant to reach. And still others, deficient in motivation and their parents' admonitions lacking any sort of real gravity, wander completely out of the the system and cease to be planets altogether. Like Pluto, these students are discussed for a few days and then forgotten entirely. Does "Aaron" still exist? I guess maybe, but who cares?

These thoughts are, for the most part, nicely entrenched in my brain as I go about the business of teaching classes and writing report cards. They are comfortable and validating and seem to make sense given my immediate experience. And then some troublesome Copernican life experience pops up and blows the whole system to hell.

Recently my school held its biannual Sports Day. Basically, it entailed seven unpaid hours of my Sunday being spent at a local soccer complex. Our current school semester started in April and Sports Day was to be our first exposure to our new kindergarteners' parents as well as UV rays, this winter being unusually cold and sunless by Korean standards. I was enthusiastic about getting a tan but less so about meeting certain parents.

To be fair, there was actually only one upcoming introduction that had me worried. Let's call the student Rufus (for reasons of confidentiality and because I've always wanted to name a Korean kid Rufus but so none of them have let me do it and also because Rufus sounds like a canine name and this particular child's listening skills are roughly equivalent to those of a feral dingo ). 

Anyways, this kid has been an upside-down floater in my koi pond since Day One. Impervious to coloring pages, incapable of correctly repeating simple phrases like, "May I go to the bathroom?", an inveterate picker of boogers and thrower of pencils. I mean, after seven weeks of quality instruction (at least B+/A- in my estimation) his "G"'s still looked like demented sideways sixes. He hadn't made a lick of progress since the first day he was committed to my class, and I had let his parents know as much in no uncertain terms in his last report card, despite my Korean co-teacher's pleas for more diplomatic language. She just had no idea how brutal the original report had been. I don't know if the words "hopeless" and "utterly incompetent" have ever been erased so often from a 300 word document concerning a 6 year-old.

So when Sports Day rolled around, I was anticipating the uncomfortably limp handshake and indirect eye contact that occurs in social settings where both parties have a bone to pick but must put up the pretense of politeness since they are both rational adults. When 2:00 PM rolled around the kids and their families began to trickle in, but there was no sign of Rufus. I was briefly hopeful that I'd dodged this particular bullet and my attention was soon diverted by three children trying to ram their index fingers into various orifices that did not appreciate the intrusion. (On a side note: there must be an especially hot and unpleasant circle of hell occupied solely by whatever sadistic Korean invented  the dung-chim. If you don't know what this is, you're much happier for it. In this case ignorance is indeed bliss.)

But eventually Rufus and his parents did arrive. It would be more accurate to say parent, actually, since only his mom was present. As it turns out, his old man was currently living in America for what I can only assume are job-related reasons. A few weeks earlier, my Korean co-teacher had mentioned that Rufus would be going to America someday but her details were hazy and I didn't think much of it. There was never any indication that his father was already living abroad.

As I watched the little hellion scamper about, an absolutely demonic grin on his face as he grappled with an equally fiendish friend (not from our academy), I felt a surge of empathy for his poor mother. She was chatting with the fiend's mother, apparently invited along for moral support, about god-knows-what. Since I couldn't understand what they were talking about, I imagined what their conversation must sound like.

"How is your husband doing in America?"

"Oh he's fine, it's been a rough couple of weeks but I'm starting to get used to it. Rufus is such a handful though, plus I have to work and find a buyer for this damn apartment and mountains of paperwork and oh I'm so nervous about leaving...just a little frazzled. But it's OK."

"You poor dear. When are you leaving? Rufus has been studying at the English school for a few months now, he must be learning a lot. I bet he'll fit right in."

"We've only got about a month left. And are you kidding? Look at the kid - he can barely keep his own pants on. Nobody can understand what he's saying in Korean, let alone English. Sometimes I dream that I'm a tiger and thus fully justified in eating my own young."

The direct scorching heat might have been getting to me a little bit by the end of the hypothetical exchange, but for the most part I think it could be accurate. Watching the two women chat, I was reminded that although the time spent in the English hagwon defines the students' lives in my eyes, there is quite a bit going on in the outside world that I (and most teachers) will never see.

It's so easy to judge the kids by how well they follow the rules, fulfill class objectives, demonstrate noticeable improvement. Some students are so sullen, disengaged, and flatly disinterested that from inside the hagwon it's difficult to imagine them being bright or charming or almost lovable under different circumstances. Occasionally after an especially toilsome lesson it's actually easy to picture the students as English-learning robots and assess them solely on the criteria of performing that single function.

The 2011 Jerry z.5 model is full of glitches. Aesthetically it's an abomination - keeps emitting uncontrolled vapor/waste from the cranial section in my immediate vicinity, doesn't use tissues. Its memory is all but useless - can't perform basic functions or retain the most simplified data. No match for the Robert 5.0. Now THAT'S an English-learning automaton. Way better external design, data retention a Cray would envy, very user-friendly. Even brought me a pack of cookies the other day.


But of course they aren't robots, they are human beings like you or me. Albeit smaller, stinkier, and more infatuated with dinosaurs (some of them, anyway). And not only are they human, they're also in the very earliest stages of development. They are learning a foreign language at about the same age I was learning to not poop in my pants. It's really amazing that we have any enthusiastic students at all, in my opinion. Why should they learn English instead of jamming erasers up their noses?

Travel? Please...the most exotic vacation destination most of them can imagine is Jeju Island, where English is not in especially high usage. They're not going to be dreaming of hiking around Stratford-upon-Avon or Greenwich Village or whatever passes for a tourist destination in Canada. World wandering is not high on the bucket lists of most 6-12 year olds.

Lucrative jobs? Ditto. If I had cared about getting a high-paying job when I was that age, I would have put down the Civil War books and sports equipment and learned something useful, like fractions. Very few people think that far down the road when they're in K-6.

The joy of learning? Maybe. But that's kind of a Judge Stewart re: pornography case - the kids might know they're excited about learning something when it hits them full force in the face, but it's very hard to explain why such enthusiasm is valued or desirable. Either they feel it's interesting and absorbing, or they don't. And if they don't, you can try to change your tactics up a bit, trick them into buying whatever you're selling, but if they don't bite...well, the world needs ditch-diggers too (to quote the less distinguished but more entertaining Judge Smails).

By the end of Sports Day, Rufus' energy reserves had been entirely exhausted. He literally collapsed in a happy and snot-covered heap on the soccer field's scratchy artificial turf, a look of dumb beatific contentment on his face. It was strange to see that mask instead of his usual maniacally blank eyes and cheek scrunching grin. His mom went over to pick him up and she grunted as she hefted his limp form onto her shoulder, Rufus' small frame immediately tripling in weight as do the bodies of all sleeping children.

Seeing their fragmented family and hearing a brief synopsis of their story helped me understand how I, and all teachers, fit into the lives of students. Especially teachers in the private language academy business. More specifically, it helped me understand the limited role that I play in the lives of my students (without minimizing that role). Very few kids are going to go home and break their toys/kick their dogs/weep bitter tears because I don't like their journal entries. They don't wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night with the conjugated forms of irregular verbs running through their minds. They aren't going to suddenly realize what unmotivated and underachieving loafers they are after failing to complete a week's worth of homework and receiving an exasperated tongue lashing.

They've got other stuff going on. They've got social hierarchies to navigate, parents to please/disobey/love/manipulate, taekwondo boards to kick, pianos to practice or avoid practicing (depending on personal inclination). They have toys to play with and idols to emulate and treats to covet. They have body image issues and superiority complexes and hormones and societal pressures and older siblings and a thousand other stressors to consider. Their lives have dozens of dimensions beyond learning English - some of them with more immediately important ramifications to consider. I share their lives for, at most, 13 hours a week. I have little idea what goes on during the other 155.

So it turns out that I am not the Sun, and my students are not planets. I still can't decide on a good cosmological analogy for them, but I have now decided that I am a comet. I flash in and out of their solar systems. For some this might be a newsworthy occurrence, others will have more important/interesting things to do and pay little attention. And at this time, that seems to be "just the way things are".

All I can do is try to be the brightest damn comet I can be. 

Living With and Without Fear

Fear is an sneaky son-of-a-bitch.

It's amazing what we mistake for fear. The common strains of anxiety, perplexity, frustration. We can get completely wrapped up in an emotion and not even recognize its true origin. How many times have you found yourself wrapped in a cycle of distressing thoughts and been unable to pinpoint its impetus? A lot. I'd guess.

A few days ago, I was in a fit of righteous indignation over the seemingly trivial matter of vacation days. Now, what you're reading is just words on a page, but try to make this concept physically/emotionally tangible for a moment: getting stressed over the amount of time that is allocated to relieve stress. When you spell it out on paper (or its cyber equivalent), the notion seems absurd. What could possibly be more counter-productive than worrying about vacation days? Hating your spouses' Valentine's Day present?

When you have the luxury of resenting gifts, you are living without fear.

That sentence isn't meant to be condescending, though there is an unfortunately unavoidable aftertaste of "I've-seen-some-shit, son" (unavoidable, at least, to the extremely amateur wordsmith). If I could say it better, I would. But I can't. With that in mind, just trust that dental examinations of equines presented gratis are generally conducted by those who have fuck-all else to occupy their time. Lifelong habit dies hard - if you don't have a legitimate reason to be pissed, it's easy to manufacture one.

It's easy to forget that teaching overseas (and I speak of Korea in particular) is an incredible gift. Frustration is an easily renewable resource when you can barely communicate with your co-teachers or order a decent meal in a restaurant. There are very few of that saintly type who can keep their cool while trying to teach prepositional phrases to a group of bored teenagers who would rather whittle pencils into shivs than listen to another lifeless track of the Workbook CD. There have been very few stabbings in my classes, but I keep waiting...

A person can only worry about these things if they have no greater fears to occupy their minds.

When I came to Korea in August 2010, I was obsessively concerned about passing the medical exam. There wasn't much of a logical reason for this; my mind simply needed something to worry about. Fear is a stimulant, and if you use it for a longer enough time you inevitably get hooked.

After I passed the exam (on my second try, after initially failing the blood pressure test), I fell into a mind-numbingly comfortable routine. In the years before I came to Korea, fear had been my daily companion. I quit drinking coffee because each morning I would wake up with such severe anxiety that feeding those jitters with caffeine seemed certifiably insane. Yet I discarded this seemingly integral part of my personality within weeks. By the time November rolled around, it was easy to forget that my therapist had ever suggested a regimen of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. There was nothing substantial to fear, because the concerns of an ESL teacher are so remarkably insignificant in the chaotic and unsympathetic scheme of human existence. The students have low test scores? A pile of poorly-written diaries need to be graded? Some flash cards need to be laminated? Fuck, please...give that list of worries to a double-amputee victim of the Khmer Rouge and see if he bats an eyelash. Shit is trivial.

But habits are hard to kick, and I had some ups and downs. Sometimes I'd fantasize about the lush pastures awaiting in other academies and beyond - public high schools and universities being the most tantalizing day-dream destinations. Never mind that I was earning decent money at a fairly rewarding job with pleasant co-workers and a supervisor with surprisingly humane employee treatment policies.

A few days ago I got an email that threw this lovely yet unappreciated situation into jeopardy. And suddenly I was living with fear.

When you live with fear, each minute brings sixty opportunities to slip into a tar-pit of self pity. The untrained human mind is notoriously adverse to prolonged concentration and so when you take the entire waking day (let's say 16 hours for convenience's sake) into consideration you are presented with 48,000 potential descents into severe, instantaneous depression. Like all pits, the bottoms of these are sticky and thus it's easy to remain stuck for extended periods.

Living with fear means constant exposure to the stench of undesired death. Death being defined as the ending of something - life in the general sense, life in the sense of "a style of existence that is preferable and profitable", or life in the sense of something else.

Buddhism teaches that living with fear, in this sense, is a blindingly obvious cause of suffering. It's quite hard to be content and equanimous when you are struggling against the imminent demise of an integral part of your being. The struggle itself means you are not content. I credit the Buddhist teachings with my mental and physical survival to this point in time, but I must admit that I'm finding it quite hard to put the teachings into practice lately. The fear of utter loss is such a powerful force that it seems pointless to reckon with it. Oblivion is coming, and we must go to it - willingly, or kicking and screaming with all our strength and rage and helplessness and pent-up fury. I guess we're on the way whether we like it or not so we might as well have a smooth ride out, yet its hard keep such an easygoing mindset moment-by-moment.

Life with fear is so alien to life without fear. When you live with fear, it's hard to remember the fear-less version of you that existed before. And vice versa. Life with fear puts all of our mundane daily worries into perspective, but is this really a good thing? For most of us, such perspective comes only in times of utter despair. If only we could have this perspective without the fear that inspires it. I think this is the gift of the truly spiritual beings/persons; they can see the sufferings of the world in a proper scale without the aid of fear - they understand how to appreciate the struggles of the people they meet without inflating or minimizing their importance. And so they can respond accordingly from a secure base of wisdom, calmness, and empathy.

I hope to draw some inspiration and strength from their examples. Because for the untrained mind, living with fear can be an almost unbearably hellish experience. Wish me luck.

The World Doesn't Care About American Pop Culture (As Much As We Think)

Who the hell are the Kardashians?

When I was about 12 years old, my family took a trip to Paris. To my lasting shame, one of our meals was purchased from McDonald's (and I didn't even have the presence of mind to order a royale with cheese). My younger sisters were too preoccupied with their Mulan Happy Meal toys to care about the culinary travesty that had just taken place.

During my freshman year in college I spent a few weeks in Ecuador and had the pleasure of viewing Steven Seagal's Under Siege 2. I was on a crowded bus, surrounded by live chickens and blown-out speakers and old ladies who were not shy about audible flatulence. Needless to say, I do not have favorable memories of that film.

Most Americans who travel abroad have a similarly sobering tale of American cultural imperialism - Simpsons T-shirts in Guyana, outdated Madonna tunes at a bar in Turkey, Nikes and Starbucks pretty much everywhere. It's obvious that various expressions of American pop culture are making inroads into previously untouched areas. And from there, I guess, one could come to the logical conclusion that these ubiquitous symbols of American prosperity/glamor/awesomeness are threatening to the indigenous cultures. Once the kids get blasted with some Black Eyed Peas, they'll lose their taste for...well, whatever passes for music in their backward-ass country.

Scary stuff - imagine a world where everyone reads Stephanie Meyer, listens to Jason Mraz, and thinks Step Up 3 was a good movie. The soulless corporate media machine of America rolls across the globe, obliterates its woefully over-matched/under-airbrushed competition, and smothers humanity with a brain-deadening tapioca sludge of Survivor, Beyonce, and US Weekly...

There's just one problem with this doomsday scenario. Actually, several billion problems. As in the number of people who don't care that much about the slop Hollywood is pushing. 

In Korea, the domestic entertainment industry is far more influential than American imports. I yell at my first-grade students for singing the insipid lyrics of 2PM or Tiara, not Justin Bieber. My middle school girls aren't drawing pictures of Channing Tatum on their desks; they're doodling the faces of equally good-looking and talentless Korean celebrities like Gang In or Rain or some other guy I don't care about. When we go out singing at the  noraebang, my girlfriend saves her most inspired performances for mopey Korean ballads. Korean pop culture is still vacuous, but at least it's Korean.

If you meet a Korean child on the street, or a friendly ajusshi in a restaurant, they might tell you how much they like Rapunzel, Prince, or Michael Jordan. If you go out drinking with a Korean, you will DEFINITELY have this conversation. In my opinion, this shouldn't be taken as an obsession with American pop culture. It's simply an attempt to establish a friendly connection via similar interests or experiences. I haven't watched a Manchester United game in, well, ever, but I mention Park Ji Sung every time I talk to a Korean kid who seems interested in soccer. Likewise, my hometown Minnesota Twins are semi-rivals of the Cleveland Indians, but I always put in a good word for Choo Shin Soo. People like to be friendly, and it helps to have a bit of common ground.

And we've got a lot of common ground, to be sure. Many Koreans have seen Inception, follow the NBA, listen to Radiohead, etc. But there are also some big fucking chasms between Korean and American culture. One of the best examples is Kpop, which is dominated by girl/boy groups assembled by various music-production corporations (even the term "record label" seems a bit too mom-and-pop for these behemoths). The Backstreet Boys would cringe at the cheesy choreography and cringe-inducing lyrics of most Kpop numbers. Kpop is to music what Pixie Stix are to food: a neuron-frying blast of sugar that can be delicious when you're in the mood  to get wild, but usually makes you sick to your stomach. To continue the analogy, Americans over the age of 12 wouldn't be caught dead consuming the stuff. But Koreans lap it up. By the same token death metal and gangsta rap haven't really caught on in Korea. Different cultures like different products.

These guys would sell about a dozen records in the U.S., yet
they're some of the biggest stars of the Korean music scene.

Wright Thompson recently wrote an article dealing with India's expanding cultural influence on Central Asia. In the article he made the argument that Western pop culture was, in many ways, too foreign to be embraced by many Asian societies. One of his best examples pitted Bollywood against Hollywood. American media, he argued, emphasized the glories of individualism to an extent that alienated Central Asian audiences. American love stories often involve the lovers giving a middle finger to their parents and society. They're going to do what they want, and everyone else can go to hell if they don't like it. Blockbusters like Titanic and Dirty Dancing to mind. Bollywood protagonists, on the hand, operate within the system of a collectivist society; that is, they attempt to convince their parents and peers that their love is worthy. This is something many Asians can relate to - defying society isn't quite as sexy/thrilling as it is in America.

A few years before Thompson wrote his article Stephen Asma wrote an excellent book called The Gods Drink Whiskey (which I will happily gush about to anyone willing to listen) that addressed similar issues in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia. Asma wrote that, upon arriving in Asia, he worried that Cambodian culture would be overwhelmed by a wave of American glam-consumerism. He worried about this until he realized that Cambodian kids didn't give a shit about MTV because they couldn't identify with the Western artists on its shows. It wasn't until MTV created spin-off channels dedicated to regional artists that the youth of Cambodia, Thailand, and elsewhere started paying attention. People want to cheer for people that look and sound like them. It might sound tribalistic, but it seems pretty well ingrained in human nature.

You can see similar phenomenon in Korea. Magazines like Maxim, Vogue, and even Men's Fitness all have issues that are primarily dedicated to Korean celebrities and Korean current events. Television programs like Superstar K, while outwardly quite similar to Western programs like American Idol, push a brand of entertainment that is targeted specifically to Korean tastes. When you really take a close look, most of the homogenizing of world culture is occurring in the packaging, and not so much in the actual product.

It's tough to argue that the world's metropolises are starting to resemble each other more than ever before. There is quite a bit of cross contamination; it's startling see Korean casino adverts featuring Pierce Brosnan, or a Coldstone Creamery on every corner of Seoul. And let's be honest - Dunkin' Donuts needs to calm down and quit opening a new shop every 3 blocks. But the sky isn't falling just yet. The West won't be achieving cultural hegemony any time soon. Some aspects of Western culture are undoubtedly appealing to people of other nations, and those people have every right to adopt them. They are discerning, intelligent humans capable of making their own decisions, and it is sneakily condescending and paternalistic to think Americans should curtail the spread of their own culture because Asia/Africa/etc. just can't resist the sexy shininess of it all.

It's evident Korea and the rest of the non-Western world would like to sample some of America's wares. And its just as obvious that they find other tidbits unappetizing. The end result is a sometimes fascinating, sometimes bewildering fusion of cultural elements that bears the brand of globalization while still maintaining a distinctly local flavor. It is, to borrow a phrase from Southeast Asian T-shirts, "Same Same But Different."

A Catholic, a Buddhist, and an Atheist Walk Into a Soju Bar...

"If you get lost, don't use the big neon crosses as landmarks. You'll be totally fucked," my co-teacher warned as we walked to the bank. I had been in Korea for all of 36 hours, and I was planning on being lost quite often. So this was disconcerting news - few things are as instantly recognizable as a brightly glowing crucifix set against a pitch-black sky.

This is what I'm talking about.

What exactly were so many churches doing here? I came to Korea in large part because I wanted to live in a predominantly Buddhist country. Asia itself was an ancillary attraction; pandas and tea and chopsticks held no real interest for me until I started practicing Buddhism. Yet here I was in the heart of Asia (or at least some fairly important appendage), and I was surrounded by more Christianity per square kilometer than ever before. It was a little disappointing.

I had done some research before coming, but I hadn't really paid much attention to it. Nothing fails to hold my attention quite like statistics. With that in mind, my apologies for dropping the following numbers on you:

Korea's own National Statistics Office said that about 23% of Koreans considered themselves Buddhists, 26% identified as Christian, and 47% claimed no religious beliefs.

Other surveys may have deviated by a few percentage points, but the overall picture of Korean religiosity was consistent: roughly half of the population could care less about religion, while the opiate-popping types were pretty evenly split between Christianity and Buddhism.

My parents were pretty pleased at the large Christian presence in Korea. Many Westerners equate Christianity with recognizable civilization. And not just the Bible-thumpin', evolution-denyin', vaccine-scornin' ones either. Intelligent, open-minded, educated people can be a little wary of Eastern religions - the New Age-y crystal ball gazers have given Asian traditions a lot of bad press in the West.

There's something comfortable in knowing that there are respectable gentlemen in white collars providing moral instruction, and not just a bunch of  spell-casting headshrinkers dancing around. For my mother, anyways.

Before coming to Korea I tried to imagine the influence each religious group had on Korean society. Buddhism had been around for much longer, I thought. So it must have some pretty deep-seated roots in Korean culture, and it should be obvious to spot its influence. Christianity is newer, but it has the "zeal of the convert" factor in its favor. So which religious tradition would be more dominant in Korean daily life?

It took all of three days to answer that question.

Christian missionaries have been doin' serious work in Korea. They started coming in the 1790s, then royally pissed off the Joseon Dynasty (which was based on Confucian principles) and promptly got massacred. They rallied in the late 19th century when the Hermit Kingdom began to open, willingly or not, to the outside world (namely, the West). And since then they've been on a roll, especially the various Protestant sects (Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.). One of the interesting idiosyncrasies of Christianity in Korea is the differentiation between "Christians" and "Catholics". Apparently the Papists aren't real Christians, and vice versa. In a very somber heaven somewhere, John Calvin nods approvingly.

Buddhism, on the other hand, has been dealing with hard times for a while. The Joseon Dynasty wasn't any fonder of Buddhism than Christianity, burning many temples and forcing monks to flee into the mountains. The dynasty stretched from the late 1300s to the late 1800s, giving it plenty of time to stamp a Confucian identity onto Korea. Confucianism isn't exactly a religion, more like a system of ethics and guidelines for a stable society.  So in some senses Buddhism and Confucianism weren't direct competitors, but they had plenty to disagree about. Confucianism, for all its qualities, is a highly rigid system and the ambiguities of Buddhism were an unsightly turd in the teapot. So Buddhism took it on the chin for a couple centuries, before making a comeback in the 20th century.

Today though, Buddhism in Korea is facing a tougher opponent than the Joseon Dynasty. Christianity has been, throughout the centuries, the Cassius Clay of conversion (to make an awkward comparison, since Clay himself converted to Islam and became Muhammad Ali). Churches are rivaled in number only by convenience stores.

Last weekend, I was walking through the streets of Myeongdong, a popular shopping district in Seoul. There the religion is fashion - the faithful bow down before stiletto heels and leave generous offerings at the cash register altars. It was a glorious summer day - in Minnesota people would have been in tank tops, though Koreans have the cold-tolerance of Galapagos lizards and thus wore hoodies. But moving on...

Entrenched in a busy intersection there was a group of about twenty Korean people. One man was screeching into a blown-out microphone in a tone I have only heard from propaganda films or over-excited fruit vendors. As we drew closer I could see they were a Christian group. They carried signs similar to the one below.

Gets right to the point.

I don't speak Korean, but I am guessing that we were being threatened with eternal damnation, ceaseless torment, perpetual suffering, fire and/or brimstone.  In the business world I think it is termed a hard sell.

And this is a pretty common occurrence in Korea. Street demonstrations are only the most attention-grabbing conversion efforts. Live in this country long enough, and you'll encounter some well-meaning evangelists who ask you to attend their church (some standard selling points: English worship services, rockin' social events, lots of pretty girls/handsome dudes). Sometimes a simple "No, thanks," is enough to send them on their way, and sometimes you are stuck in an extremely uncomfortable conversation of interminable length. People are determined to spread the Good Word, and they aren't easily discouraged.

I've yet to see any equivalent actions undertaken by Buddhist groups in Korea. Generally speaking, the most obvious sign of a Korean Buddhist's religious affiliation is the small band of prayer beads, or mala, worn on the wrist. Occasionally you'll see a grey-robed monk wandering the streets for alms, but they don't carry signs or megaphones. They are easy to ignore.

It's not surprising, then, that Christian recruiting efforts have been much more successful in recent years. On the streets of Korean cities, Christianity is a visible and dynamic presence. Buddhism is generally relegated to the home or remote temples, which is to say: out of the realm of public daily life.

If you're a Westerner sympathetic to Buddhism, these trends can be very worrying. We were born and raised in an environment heavily influenced by Christianity, and many of us have become very familiar with its shortcomings. We know about the sexual abuses committed by priests, we've learned about the persecutions carried out by over-zealous missionaries, we are cynical about the corruption and ungodly behavior so often seen at the highest levels of church authority.

It becomes easy to support Buddhism almost blindly. Most of us get out Buddhism-related information through pop cultures. We know that Buddhists are supposed to be super-chill, peaceful types that never get angry and never eat meat. They don't yell, poop, or cheat on their spouses. On the other hand, we've seen Christians do all those nasty things. Buddhists are friendly benign hippies, minus the pot. Christians are intolerant ignoramuses, harshing whatever your buzz happens to be. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Of course, it's not that simple. My girlfriend attends a Buddhist university in Seoul. There are many non-Buddhist students there, just like there are non-Christian students at schools like Notre Dame in the U.S. In any case, one of the Christian student groups recently donated three brand new copy machines to the university's computer lab. A week later, they were mysteriously broken. It was eventually discovered that a group of Buddhist students had tampered with the machines because they were upset at the growing Christian influence at the school. That's a very non-Buddhist thing to do - at the same time, it's very human. We get fearful, we get angry, we lash out.

Anger. Fear. Delusion. The Buddhist teachings are, at their core, a series of trainings for overcoming these obstacles to happiness. We can't be happy if we're scared, pissed off, or confused all the time. But we can't overcome these habits simply by declaring ourselves "Buddhist". It's just a word. It doesn't mean anything. In fact, some of the best "Buddhists" I know aren't Buddhists at all.

Last Saturday, I met a man at a fried chicken restaurant. I never cook on the weekends. It was about 2 a.m., and I'd just returned to Cheonan from Seoul. He invited me to have a beer with him, and I reluctantly accepted. I've been stuck in too many one-sided conversations with Koreans who don't speak English but like to laugh at my long hair and non-proportional faces. I wasn't looking forward to speaking with this
half-drunk ajusshi.


It turned out to be one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had in Korea. Although his English could generously be described as "broken", the man was an amateur history buff and student of religion. He rattled off a litany of facts about Douglas MacArthur.  He had read Thich Nhat Hanh extensively. He was deeply interested in the Indian tribes of North America. He spoke with kindly admiration about totemism and animism.

He asked me my religion, and I told him that I followed Buddhism. He replied that he was a Catholic himself, but he held deep respect for the Buddhist teachings. It was part of Korea's heritage, he said, and there was a lot of wisdom to be found there. We sat and smiled at each other for a few minutes, occasionally mumbling some remark about the time or weather, and then returned to our homes. A Korean Catholic and an American Buddhist. Weird.

I've been worried about the future of Buddhism in Korea (and all of Asia for that matter). Modern Buddhism is not really a mission-oriented religion. People hold their individual beliefs, but there's little emphasis on spreading those beliefs to others. In theory this should allow Buddhism to coexist peacefully with other religions. And when dealing with Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, or ancestor worship, this has usually been the case to one extent or the other (with many exceptions of course - religious wars are not an exclusively Western phenomena). Western religions are a bit different though - the major monotheistic religions hold exclusive truth claims. As Christianity begin to make inroads into previously Buddhist countries, will its leaders and practitioners tolerate the old traditions? The tension is high right now - sometimes, it's enough to make you wish for just a little bit more apathy. At least the people who don't care about religion aren't tearing down temples.

On the subject of temples, I visited one the other day. On May 10th Koreans celebrated the Buddha's Birthday. It was a national holiday, apparently, but I didn't see many signs of celebration in the city. Maybe that's good - the Buddha's coming hadn't been commercialized in the same way as Christmas or Easter. Only a few paper lanterns strung up on street signs gave any indication that there was something special going on today.

I'd like to report that the Buddha's birthday was marked by golden beams of sunlight, millions of delicate lotus petals falling from the sky, the harmonious trilling of birds and whatnot, but in actuality the weather was lousy. Grey, overcast, and buckets upon buckets of rain. Climbing up the steep mountain, muddy and wet, I heard the words of my meditation teacher Mark Nunberg in a bemused voice, "Hmmm, this is how it is now. Being clammy and sore is like this. Can this be OK?" And it really was - I was just thrilled to be there. Celebrating the Buddha's birthday at a real temple. Now that's neat.

When we reached the top of the mountain, I forgot that I was ever worried about Buddhism in Korea. In front of the large bronze Buddha statue, people were lighting incense, chanting, and bowing. Thousands of pink, purple, and white lanterns hung from strings crisscrossing the courtyard. Teenagers helped crotchety grandmas across wide puddles, their gnarled hands carrying brightly colored prayer candles. A monk's chants rang out from the main meditation hall, accompanied by the steady beat of a small drum. Inside, people were bowing, meditating, and leaving gifts at the altar of the Buddha. Maybe after that they went home to smoke, drink, gossip, fornicate, or whatever - actually of course they did, they are human. Buddhists aren't perfect. But man, it was a beautiful time, and there was some real joy in being surrounded by like-minded people.

In one hundred years, I hope foreigners are still writing rambling, disjointed essays about Buddhism in Korea. And I hope they remember to bring umbrellas when they visit the temples. That rain can be ruthless.

The Shot Heard Halfway 'Round the World

Across the globe, every major news outlet is burning up with a story of tremendous social, political, and historical importance. Meanwhile, Korea is picking up its collective remote and flipping back to that channel where a bunch of dudes play Starcraft.

Unless you've been living under an especially large and sound-proof rock, you've heard the news that Osama Bin Laden was killed yesterday. The event held a lot of significance for many Westerners living in Korea. We remember where we were when the planes hit the World Trade Center, we remember the countless hours of CNN footage, we remember the awful conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that ensued.

Osama Bin Laden has been, in many ways, a central figure in the lives of young Westerners. We've been living in a world he helped create, for better or worse. The laws of society changed overnight. The economy took a hit. Thousands of men and women (not much older or younger than ourselves) shipped off around the world for the ostensible purpose of catching the bastard.

Obligingly, we chose sides. Our positions made perfect sense to ourselves and simultaneously sounded like naive bullshit to our opponents.

After 10 years, every viewpoint imaginable has been discussed ad nauseum on one cable network or another. It's hard to imagine a fresh perspective on Osama Bin Laden, Iraq, the War on Terror, etc. Or at least, such a thing is hard to conceive in the West. Here in Korea, nobody seems to give a fuck.

My girlfriend lived in Canada for two years and China for three. She studies international business. If any Korean has a global perspective (i.e. cares about the same things Americans care about), it should be her, right? Nope. She could not have been less enthusiastic when I brought up the subject of Bin Laden's death last night.

"I don't really care one way or another," she said.

I was persistent, though - mainly because I had little else to talk about. Korea is one of the few countries where America is still seen as a "cool" place and a strong ally. Shouldn't this event have some impact on average Koreans? After all, the world is a safer place now...

"This is boring. I don't care. People can be happy or sad or whatever. It's not a big deal in Korea."

When I spoke with a Korean co-teacher this morning, I got the same response. She muttered a few words about hearing about it on the news, and went back to grading papers. None of my kids seemed especially interested in talking about it either - even the older ones, who would normally pull out their own fingernails if it got them out of writing essays.

Korea is an incredibly insular society. 9/11 did not cause the backlash of social problems that it did in the West. They've never dealt with Islamophobia for the simple reason that there are about 50 Muslims living here. Korean airports don't have strip searches and high-powered X-rays to deter nail-clipper wielding hijackers. Terrorist bogeymen don't have much hold on the national psyche because there are much more practical foes to fear, such as the wildly unstable totalitarian dictatorship to the north or the ravenous behemoth that is China.

America had been searching for Bin Laden for a decade. Thousands of people have died in the process, trillions of dollars have been (or will be) expended, and the course of Western history has been shifted onto a strange new course. Supposedly, we have now accomplished one of the primary goals of the war against terrorism.

Korea's reaction is that of a distant aunt who is informed of her nephew's success in a piano competition. She nods politely, offers a few congratulatory words, and returns her attention to matters that are closer and more interesting.

I can't help but feel an odd sense of perspective living here. Korean textbooks will probably never mention May 2, 2011. Bin Laden will cease to be news as soon as the next episode of Superstar K hits the airwaves. And yet back home, people who don't do too many drugs will remember that day for the rest of their lives. Completely divergent narratives, even in a globalized world.

Sometimes even world history isn't that historical.

Some Say It Better

Spoken (or written) language is often a horribly disappointing medium. As an ordinary human being, there are countless times when words are incapable of expressing the power and urgency of a certain feeling. And so the emotions of the moment are blurted out hesitantly or repressed altogether.

The expatriate is an especially susceptible victim of this phenomenon. When you don't speak the language shared by 99.9% of people in close proximity, you're prone to spurts of uncontrollable honesty (often under the influence of stress, lack of sleep, alcohol, loneliness, etc.). The urge to communicate overcomes the obstacles of doing so. Unfortunately for most of us, we're poorly equipped for this task.

I'm often amazed at the unspoken suffering floating amongst foreigners in Korea. Including my own. We're all transplants. All of us running: to something, away from something, or simply in place. Thousands of stories to tell, but very few skilled storytellers. And there's a simple reaction to uninteresting or poorly-told stories - the audience stops paying attention.

You get used to this pretty quickly. 

"Why are you here?"

"Ah, <debt/adventure/boredom>. You know how it goes."

Filler. Pure and simple. You might get close to a handful of people, and the fuzzy picture of their motivations gets a tiny bit clearer. But you're still filling in the blanks of their story for the most part. Meanwhile, people's hearts are straining through their chests, their minds and vocal cords are bursting with a million thoughts and ideas and unfocused feelings, desperate for an outlet, any kind of outlet. We have so much to say, but so few ways to say it.

Try as we might, we just can't find a way to express how we feel. So we turn to musicians, poets, writers, anyone who seems to have a goddamn clue when it comes to communicating human sentiment. We re-read essays and novels for the umpteenth time, we sing the same sad songs at noraebang, we latch on to anyone who has consumed the same literature in the hope that maybe there is some kindred spirit who understands our mindset, even if we can't articulate it.

What if we could just come out once and scream it? "I am ______, and I feel like _________ right now."  Would it be cathartic? Maybe. What about the aftermath? I don't know. Venting is rarely a clean process in real life. 

It seems, then, that storytellers are incredibly important. They say what we wish we could say, only they say it better.

Maybe you're tired and broken,
your tongue is twisted with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear.


What do you want me to do, to do for you
to see you through?
A box of rain will ease your pain
and love will see you through.

~Robert Hunter

Race in Korea

I knew something was up when I read the words, "Cow dung huts."

During a staff meeting in January, the teachers were discussing a new project aimed at informing our students about global cultures. The kids were, after all, almost 7 years old. It was about time they memorized the capital cities of Finland, Mozambique, and Papua New Guinea. How else were they supposed to succeed in the cutthroat world of kindergarten education? Valuable berths in prestigious elementary schools were at stake.

We were handed a garishly designed packet of materials. Purportedly, these were intended to facilitate students' learning by providing a quick rundown of the essential facts for about a dozen nations. Through a series of strenuous coloring exercises, the students could learn about the food, clothing, shelter, and environments of each country. Which all sounded perfectly reasonable, until we actually looked at the packet.

One of the countries in question was Kenya. Under the category of "dress", there was a picture of several Kenyan women wearing what appeared to be lion-skin togas. Their ears, noses, lips and eyebrows were full of piercings; their cheeks and foreheads were streaked with paint. It was the same caricature of "dark savage" that convinced 17th century Europeans that full-scale colonization and conversion wouldn't be such a bad thing for Africa.

When it came to housing, our materials were equally unforgiving. According to the packet, Kenyans lived in "cow dung huts". Having never been to Kenya, I'd have a hard time claiming this is unequivocally false. However, look around the streets of Nairobi and you probably won't see bovine feces used as a building material. The most generous thing I could say about the packet is that it was purposefully inaccurate.

Our students, though they are extremely young, already have prejudicial views towards Africans. Anyone who thinks that racism is a major problem in America would be flabbergasted to see its manifestations in Korea. The color of one's skin is incredibly important - the lighter, the better. Hence, the many cosmetic creams that contain bleach to chemically obliterate any trace of pigmentation.

Dark skin is considered "dirty", for reasons that continue to befuddle me (if anything, a tan would help hide the facial blemishes that plague many people here). Old women wear enormous ahjumma visors that flip down in front of their faces like riot police helmets, and it's not unusual to see beach-goers wearing full tracksuits as they splash around in the tide.

It is quite astonishing to see the undisguised scorn that many Koreans, old and young, hold for dark-skinned peoples (especially those from Africa and Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines or Thailand). My students, who write incredibly endearing notes and give  more unsolicited hugs than a room full of hippies, are also capable of spouting incredibly racist comments that would get them expelled from an American kindergarten. And they have no idea that someone could consider this offensive.

Of course, in a homogeneous society like Korea, one could argue there's no reason to watch what you say or do. Over 99% of people in this country are ethnically Korean. If a TV show features comedians in 1930s blackface and no black people see it, is it offensive?  There are very few big angry black men who would cause a fuss over such jokes. Besides, Koreans never owned African slaves so they have none of the residual guilt/sensitivity that comes with such a stain on a nation's historical record. It makes sense, in a way.

Considering Korea's own unpleasant experience with exploitative colonial powers, though, it's a little surprising to see Koreans so easily stepping into the role of ubermensch. The Japanese occupation (with requisite oppression, deprivation, and wholesale rape of the country) hasn't made the Korean people any more inclined to feel a connection to fellow victims of imperialism.

In my entirely uneducated opinion, I think the recent economic success of Korea has gotten its people a bit high on their own supply (of electronic goods). Put simply: Korea makes refrigerators, cell phones, and affordable mid-size sedans. Africa can't even figure out how to stop everyone from getting AIDS. The memory of poverty fades, and all that's left is a smug sense of superiority and some crotchety old ajusshis.


Americans haven't yet succeeded in getting all creeds and colors to sing Kumbaya under a triple rainbow while enjoying unicorn stew, but life in Korea gives one a greater appreciation for the progress that has been made over the past 50 years. We don't always move quickly or gracefully, but I do believe we are slowly stumbling our way to a better society.

It would be tempting to end this blog post with a grimly condescending analysis of Korea's future, saying something along the lines of:

 "As the former Hermit Kingdom is drawn into the multicultural world of tomorrow, it will need to radically alter its attitudes and policies to cultivate greater equality and tolerance if it wishes to maintain its place as a major economic power."

But in reality, I don't think it really matters (in that sense). Korea is already too damn crowded to accept a massive influx of immigrants. Their electronics-based economy isn't really dependent on the cheap labor that comes from underdeveloped countries, so the demographics aren't likely to shift in a manner that requires a new evaluation of race relations. Koreans marry Koreans, few foreigners move here permanently, and thus the cycle is continued. Korea can enjoy basketball and rap music without having to worry if those menacing black teenagers with baggy pants are going to rob them.

And foreign English teachers will continue to be bemused and slightly offended at all the odd little bits of racism in Korean culture. Like the time our Arts and Crafts project was a black paper-cup "African" with a grass skirt, bulbous eyes, and a Sambo-esque pair of giant grinning red lips that would've made D.W. Griffith say, "Damn, fellas, ain't that a bit much?"

But eh, that's Korea sometimes.