Gary Schwartz in Korea

After our return from the ancient kingdom , we attended a pair of music and ballet performances in Seoul through the university. The first was the annual concert of the Sungshin Philharmonic Orchestra in late October: Reinicke: Flute Concerto in D Major; Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1; and Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.  They performed in the Seoul Center for the Arts, one of the great monumental and singularly impressive performance halls in the city,

Remember that Sungshin is a women’s university and this full symphonic orchestra is entirely personed by women, with one exception, its conductor.  What was I thinking? Some Like It Hot? I hadn’t actually projected the composition of the orchestra, but out of a subconscious lurk I must have expected some male forms on stage. So I share my naivety with you as I report this aggregation was in fact hot, and not some but all of the audience liked it, immensely so and with deep appreciation – many curtain calls and an ultimate encore of the university’s alma mater. The conductor was vigorous throughout the engagement, his orchestra rapt, precise, and sensitive to the demanding requirements of the varied program. Sungshin’s President Ho Jin Shim was the audience’s most enthusiastic member, as it should only be. We had tea with her later and Teresa Zhung, the university’s Coordinator of Faculty and Student Exchange Programs, a Korean-American and graduate of Penn State, who has been a great friend here. President Shim is a leader in the performing arts in Korea and is also President of the National Ballet. She is a woman of deep intensity, intelligence, determination, definitely to be reckoned with, and remarkably youthful.

As a reward for our enthusiasm, on a balmy warm late October Saturday afternoon the following week, we were invited to the National Ballet Theatre to see Prince Hodong, based on a folktale of romance, intrigue, personal commitment, fidelity, betrayal, and brick wall tragedy Romeo and Juliette style.  The performance was in another superb venue.  This is a traditional ballet toes down, and the members limbed with grace and graced with exquisite faces, particularly Prince Hodong who posed gladly with Barbara, as you will see. The princess was sadly unavailable to pose with me.

There were many children in the audience, most of them small, but I did not hear one squeak, shout, whimper, or cry from any of them. The house supplied great big cushions so the children could see the stage clearly and be comfortable in their seats.  I refrain from the urge to generalize here at length, but it appears – from other events and observations in public places – that children receive consideration and are afforded amenities that enable them to be an appropriate part of whatever is going on.  The story of the prince and princess has the irresistible force of folktale of course, something Jungian, an Urmacht, which simply reaches for the human heart however small – the very people for whom folktale was invented to see them on through life with warnings, promises, and understanding – and never lets go.  I have seen Korean films based on other folktales, and they have this same impact  transferred into that medium. Recently I screened A Tale of Two Sisters for my Memory, Longing and Reunion class, the sixth time a Korean film (which began in 1926, in Seoul) had been drawn from the folktale Jungwha (rose) and Hongryeon (lotus), this time by Kim, Ji Woon, who adapted it in accordance with his considerable talent.

We flew to Beijing just after Election Day in November and were happy for the buffer of the Pacific Ocean and the welcoming arms of another continent to comfort us in the wake of the ignorance of  a turkey brained electorate back home. Beijing was totally wonderful, and as two total tourists on this trip, we could have assumed that China was a land of interminable delights, with people going about their daily lives with ease and freedom, except for the reminder on one of our five days there when the city was unequivocally blanketed, with pollution, and our awareness of the hideous cancers it generates and the Chinese government’s primitive stance on mental health.

No doubt Beijing is a showcase flexing with the marvelous muscles of an Olympic capitalism, stirring memories of our heyday but with soured ripples of discomfort two Americans well aware that, as Duke Ellington penned it “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” back home again in Indiana,* in the other forty-nine states of economic emergency. Among the pleasures of the city was our stay in a fivestar hotel, The Kerry Center, of the Shangri-La worldwide chain, at very reasonable rates with a superb staff, equipped with perfect English and an encyclopedic knowledge of all aspects of the city.

Along with this bounty, and knowing even less (love minus infinity) Chinese than Korean, we taxied to every spot, and we covered the basic “touristic” (as the menus in Greece always proudly proclaimed) tour sites, striking out first for the Great Wall on our first full day, a section  about an hour and a half away. A ski lift, touted as a cable car, deposits visitors after angling over a deep ravine just below the wall. The pitch of the paving of the wall sent us down nearly precipitously only to be confronted with an equally challenging rise. If you have any doubts about the wonders of the views, the structure and the awe that comes from thinking about who built this (slaves and prisoners) over the better, parts of the first two millennia ACE they dissipate once you are underway because no matter what section of the wall you choose to visit and the rubber of your soles makes contact, those who had to do the forced construction experienced the square root of agony paramount to the pyramids, gulags, and Nazi labor camps.  And as everyone learns either through study or a guidebook, it didn’t keep anyone out.

Tienneman Square is flat but still level with high discomfort. There is no bench or other sitting surface other than the stone of its flooring. It is surrounded by monolithic buildings of Stalinist-inspired  immediately post revolutionary victory of the late 1940’s wholly utilitarian construction. It’s full of police, uniformed and otherwise, and CCTV surveillance abounds.

But across a wide, wide street lies the Forbidden City of Imperial China, endless square meters of it, all of it unfolding before your eyes and tiring as its magnitude makes it, an appetite for more, and more, and more of it pulled us all the way through to the opposite gate nearly four hours later. Yes, we’re lingerers, and one feels bewitched, absorbed, and with some Lucretian atoms of oneself left behind. Choose one part? The garden.

We also took a taxi to the Summer Palace on a cloudy and sharp Sunday and saw Beijing’s first imperial telephone  from 1906, state of the art and the height of western technology at the time. The emperor’s minister of communication oversaw the system’s installation and maintenance.  “Dear Skype, you’d never believe what your evolutionary progenitor looked like….” This is another unforgettable place with  Buddhist temple at the top of a, as the brochure put it,  “very cardiovascularly challenging ascent of hundreds of steps.” The temple rises behind a five-tiered pagoda.

Beijing also has a thriving contemporary art scene, ala Soho of old, Chelsea, and Dumbo, in a district called “796” somewhat recalling the artists’studios housed in the Brooklyn Naval Yard; most of the galleries are located in former factories dating from the 1950’s deserted with changes in technology and the modern manufacturing associated with it. Some of the buildings and their former chimneys have an imposing social realismic  and cubistic rake to them.

The last morning of our stay – the angelic hotel allowed us to retain our room until 3pm – a perfect cold autumn deep blue skied day we visited a neighborhood with homes dating back in to the 17th century, pedaled in a rickshaw by the driver featured in Barbara’s photographs of the excursion; he took us around the lake which many of the homes looked out upon, stopping here and there so we could visit and tour some of the homes; they housed families at night and were attended museums by day, with staff who spoke excellent English. We took the opportunity to get married imperial China style.

We did not shop even though we were close to the Silk Market; we vi-   sited briefly and didn’t need ten thousand and four cashmere sweaters.  There were other visits and attractions, but eating was exquisite. The first night it was…you already know this…yes, Peking (Beijing) Duck note capital “D”uck, at the Da Dong  restaurant, where only the most skilled of fowl surgeons are allow to practice their art of cheirugy. The bird is carved close to or at one’s table. We had reservations for ½ duck, but we ordered a whole, and had no mercy on its flesh and skin. You know that in NYC they serve some crepes wherein with to wrap the meat, sauce, and savory scallion stalks, but we had  a 4” stack; this was not a restaurant for stinting. Accompanying the main course we had the most perfect of sautéed Chinese green leafy vegetable.  This was querquedular paradise.

I shall spare the calories and not rehearse other meals, but they were honeymoon night caliber. Our Korean won was worth about 65 cents on the dollar in China, and a dollar was 66 cents. The exchange rate was frightening at first and we ran to the bank, but the prices were so low we ate like the top 2% of Rich Americans at home and returned to Korea without spending very much.  Hall of Fame surprise!

Everyday in Seoul, still, someone is nicer to us than the day before; hosted meals abound, and we heard some simply outstanding jazz  the Friday night after returning from China, in Hyewha, two Metro stops over from our neighborhood amid an audience of almost entirely young people in their early twenties, a far cry from the know-it-all grayhairs (guesswho) who frequent the NYC clubs. There is such a difference in where the arts are at here. A young Korean woman singer joined a four piece blues group for the second set, leading off with a rendition of Nora Jones’ “One Flight Down,” a poignant country & western piece whose performance would have brought Nora to tears, and then did two gospel/blues numbers that would have had Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles going out of their minds. The performance rapport between performers and the audience was so comfortable; they truly appreciate each other almost in a family way.

Bobbie’s students are crazy about her, and she herself is being featured in some serious art department promotional materials, photos and all. The art department people exude camaraderie and receptiveness. This could be the Land of the Lotus Eaters for a serious expatriate, but I have too intense an identification with Odysseus not to want to come home, despite the diversions and seductions.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you! This, the 25th, is also my wife’s birthday, and she is pleased to have discovered that she is 14 hours younger in America. Our son Luke is with us for the week, totally flabbergasted by being so close to the border and the incident.

We dined last evening at Sanchon, a Buddhist restaurant, owned and operated by a former monk turned restauranteur some decades ago, with the traditional vegetarian meal. We took my son for the dancing, drumming, and chanting performance. With us, were Luke, and Teresa Zyung,  coordinator of exchange programs at Sungshin, who deserved  to be treated for all of her support of us. You will recognize her from the photographs I am forwarding in a separate email. This is the second time we have been at Sanchon; the performance varied from our first visit; this one requested audience performance, something I usually shy away from in great haste, but I am so enchanted by the percussion in Buddhist music, that when I was handed a gong/cymbal and a mallet, it was an offer I could not refuse.

Back to reality: The latest belligerent North Korean act took place on Wednesday, November 24, and we have had friends and family wondering : orwhat?  We were aware before we came to Seoul that North Korean artillery is aimed right at Seoul. Take a look at how close it is to the border; my dear friend and colleague at Lehman, Professor Young Kun Kim, has been invigilating our safety and advising us since well before we left NYC.  Luke arrived just after the shelling incident, and since he has never been this close to something this hot, I think he was a little jumpy…but there is nothing that a ginseng rice stuffed chicken couldn’t effectively tranquilize, not to mention the velvet hammer of soju. So we got through it. It did sell newspapers in the US though.

This has got to be the most bizarre geo-political situation in world history, although some of you are far more knowledgeable about parallels than I. I think that the population must be starving up in the north. Italian colleagues of ours at Sungshin who are professors of music have performed in North Korea, and they report that it is like stepping back two hundred years.

Bobbie and I had an incredible tour of Seoul yesterday, Friday December  3rd, carefully planned, chauffeured, guided and narrated by one of her colleagues, Professor Park (pronounced “bak”), chairman of the western painting department at Sungshin and a mensch. It was royal treatment: several museums and galleries, lunch – an endless buffet – at The Hyatt, every dish you could imagine, western and eastern, and then to his home and studio on the crest of a high, high hill overlooking an entire neighborhood at twilight.

The city is immense, as you know, and varied with mountain roads around the outlying urban but very sylvan areas of Seoul, and that’s where we were.  The paintings in Professor Bak’s studio were stunning, with deep inspiration coming from the location and more so from his hearty engagement avec le monde and his socio-philosophic view of life.  He is a powerful personality with a fascination for world historical figures from Adam to Spinoza (blew my mind) to war and antique automobiles in his commanding canvases. He has six daughters; we met five. His wife, they met in the art department in college, was also a painter. Now she qualifies for a being a national treasure for her contribution to motherhood. She was not the first talented female artist we have met whose creativity took a decidedly procreative turn. There  are still leagues to go here in gender struggle.

In mid-afternoon Professor Park took us to a famous shirt tailor, Mr. C.K. Yang, and told me to choose two fabrics from a thick swatch sampler and paid for the shirts which were then custom fitted. What did I do to deserve that? I don’t want to know, but it was simply astonishing, and the custom is to refuse nothing the host offers.   The tailor is located in a section of Seoul known as Itaewon, very close to the main US military base here in Josan, and there were photographs all around the shop, signed by generals and other American and international officials for whom he had made shirts,  and I think that this is the true meaning of the expression “Far Out!” In fact, my shirts reached me within five days, and I am not putting them on until I am home in NYC, to deal with my Korea saudade.

We are rolling into the last quarter of our time here. We will have one more jaunt, commencing tomorrow 12/9 to Jeju Island, Korea’s largest island, off her southern coast, flight time 65 minutes. It is one of the important seats of Korean culture, with great natural attractions, and local delicacies: mackeral, black pork, honey, and citrusfruits.

Jeju was wonderful, as predicted, and worthy of many days longer than we could spend there. We rented a car and drove to the eastern coast, climbed “Sunrise Peak,” listened to the women divers chant and submerge themselves, and lunched on the treasures of the deep. The woman who served us was certain we were French because my wife is so slender that we couldn’t be Miguk. “Fat” Americans seem to be like “Fat” Germans used to be in the global stereotype. I will post a final blog entry this week, but I will never be able to catch up with everything we’ve seen and done. The food in Jeju was superb everywhere from the restaurants at the Hyatt Regency, featuring an insanely Hyatt lobby centered around a huge fishpond adorned with three ducks, two of them  in big love, inhabited by a superabundant university of the largest carp we had ever seen, to the local restaurants. Almost every Korean meal is holy communion. Tangerines grow and are sold in every location on the island.

Our best lunch was mackerel steaks stewed in a thick hot red pepper sauce with a stunning fragrance and a dark rich flavor, right across the street from the water on the southern mid-coast tiny town of Soesoggak.  This was one of the many on-the-floor meals I thought, at the outset of our stay, I’d never be able to do because of a permanently out of kilter right knee, but I have been limbered by my daily ingestion of kimchi which has been much easier than trancing out in a faith-healers tent for the same results.  This seaside town has a long, deep and narrow cove with honeycombed rock walls carved by water and wind.  Jeju is in the same rank of mysterious island worlds as are Madeira and Krete.

This brings us to our final days here which are “running over the hills,”  in the words of Charles Bukowski,  “like wild horses.” Professor Park has volunteered to drive us to the airport next Friday morning. Teaching has been a huge part of our experience, aside from the moments of travel, and our daily immersion in this city of delights and diversions, but it’s too immense to just kiss and run with. I taught a total of 30 classes and Barbara 45, and the challenges and satisfaction from the process will have a life of their own which will not be fully appreciated for a long time. In the vernacular: awesome — ta choayo – [we] enjoyed everything. Michael Ondaatje has poignant words about stones skipped into water, their ripples and the cast of time in the final pages of his The English Patient; the ripples never stop as long as one chooses to remember or cannot do otherwise.

Thanks to Professor Young Kun Kim, all the Korean students who have passed through the Lehman Scholars Program beginning in the late 1980’s, my amazing and talented friend JJ Ko, originally a student at Lehman in the same period, Lehman/Macaulay Honors College students Dennis Kim, and Seon Hye Park, Jenny Yi, a 2010 graduate of the Lehman Scholars Program, and Jae Eun Mae, LSP 2014, all of whom made me think that I had to go to the land of morning calm, Korea.

The entire expedition would not have been possible without Dean Michael Paull of Lehman College, CUNY, who, legendary for his passionate devotion to adult, worker, individualized, and international exchange education programs, masterminded the numerous details necessary to make Barbara Siegel and myself the first faculty to be exchanged between Sungshin Women’s University and Lehman.

President Ricardo R. Fernandez and Provost Mary Papazian of Lehman College, CUNY, graciously approved and supported this maiden voyage.

On the first Sunday in October, Barbara and I visited the National Museum of Korea, and spent a beautiful afternoon indoors as it poured outside. The edifice, and there is no other apt word for it in English, so I fall back on my formally native tongue to delineate it, is simply monumental, an emphatic statement of Korean determination to express the uniqueness of the country.
The area has a rather long and involved architectural history, interwoven with the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, and far too complex for a peregrinator of my limited knowledge to do justice, so I won’t.  The building is monumental and serene, and the color of the stone beige in various tints but all certainly conveying the complexions of the country. The exhibits, permanent and special, were not confined to Korean art, but covered Asia in general, from the Paleolithic to the present; statues of Buddha abound, and influences on Korean art, from as far away as what is modern Turkey,
reverentially noted, and there is a gallery housing an exhibit of a Japanese ship, bound for Korea in the 15th century, carrying  twenty-two tons of copper coin amidst a cargo of ceramics, food, and mercantile stuffs, which was recovered in 1971 through undersea archeology by brave divers, of course Korean. There are also three restaurants, including a spacious tearoom to allow one to reconsider what one had just seen. Certainly this museum rivals anything in Paris with its sense of permanency and an inner space environment making a person feel the same honor of experience as if one were allowed to walk through the interior sanctum structure of a pyramid unhurriedly and with full rights and privileges of observation, and …like…it’s all for you and you alone, baby, as I remember feeling listening to Stephane Grappelli from a center box at Carnegie Hall
nearly four decades ago.

Part of the trip was occasioned by Barbara wanting to get a sense of the place before she brought two of her drawing classes out to the museum, but what really caught us were photographs from Gyeongju of huge tomb mounds of kings from the Silla (pronounced “shilla”) kingdom, the place on the southeast of the peninsula responsible for the unification of Korea. I had seen these in a book, but this photographic exhibit just reached out and beckoned us.  Gotta’ go, gotta’ see, gotta’ do!

And so after finishing teaching for the week, we took a 7:43am train on Thursday to Gyeongju, the center of the Silla Dynasty 57-935CE. The area is an archeological and anthropological treasure. We returned late on Saturday. The train trip was five hours each way, but the ride was the best, except maybe going through the Alps in April 1966, in my life, and the country here is only 23% arable, so the mountains are never far away; there are rice paddies all through the valleys, and it’s pure nature except for the ubiquitous high rise apartments which house a high percentage of the population.  This is a huge shift in traditional Korean culture; the extended family within one home has been fragmented – part of another general upheaval in the way younger persons think, particularly the women who have slaved forever and now of the opinion that happiness cannot buy money but rather the antithetical philosophical outlook, and the hell with the Beatles’  “Money Can’t Buy Me Love.”

What was remarkable about the train was that it didn’t leave us with the feeling of total frazzle that even a trip to New Haven can; there were conductors on the train female and male, but no one checked anyone’s tickets. This has got to be what is known as the honors system. I could just imagine what would happen in the States if this were the case: Total bankruptcy for the railroads, if there’re not already.  Gyeongju, the area, has a population of about 250,000, and it is a major touring spot for Koreans, so we were fortunate to have booked a pension, Bellus Rose — I have no idea about this name except that it is allegedly a type of rose, and the rose adorned the establishment’s card – and we were picked up at the train station, by Ms. Pak holding a sign with our names on it (a first VIP reception in our sweet young lives), who drove us into the rice fields where this newly founded pension had sprung up in what was in the process of becoming a packet of pensions. Lots of roses on the wallpaper, the bedspread, and those growing outside made for any MBA’s example of determined branding of a new business.

Ms. Pak drove us back to a bus stop from which we could go to the Bulguksa temple, a very ancient Buddhist temple which was inside a huge national park which incorporated a good many archeological sites as well as resort establishments, but we stopped to eat at a seafood restaurant where we had haemulgoki (sea-water-meat; literal translations are so romantic), and then made it to the bus stop which was next to one of many stoneyards (my term) a sculpture reproduction emporium, that seem to be frequent in Korea. As we were taking a few photographs, a slender slight man approached asking us if he could take some pictures of us.  This became our afternoon with Mr. U, a chef from one of the resort hotels who, as the afternoon unfolded,  we discovered was on temporary sick leave from his job after having been assaulted by a younger employee.  He was thrilled to meet us since we were jungu (my transliteration: short “u”s) speakers and he had one passion in life: to learn to speak colloquial English. He turned out to have been studying English since before the Norman Conquest, loving it, frustrated by it, ineluctably pinned down by it, in fact obsessed with it from the time he began to study it at hotel management
school a generation ago (we estimated his age as 47 from other information). Later on after the temple visit, over a couple of bottles of diet water, he regaled us with a dramatic performance of how English was taught to him in college or how he was taught English ( this instruction I can only characterize as being administered in the non-existent passive/aggressive voice) through grammar and learning of a massive series of set conversations through memorization. He had several dozen dialogues which he had burned into his brain:

“Good Evening Mr. Brown. It’s a pleasure to have you joining us here at the hotel for the next three days.”

“Yes, we have all sorts of amenities and a western menu as well. “

“We will ring you at exactly seven-thirty. Do you require anything else?”

His performance was delivered with a wit and humor seasoned with winks from him at the absurdist twists
of these inane dialogues which would never leave him and clearly had a half-life beyond the resurrection: immortally inane, almost cruel,  useless bits of language instruction driving a lingual stake through my heart since I was suffering the same torment in my Korean class:

“Is that your laptop computer or is it an umbrella?”

What can one say in response except:

“Y tu madre tambien!”

And so as we exchanged his in situ expertise for our mellifluous New York syllabification and idioms we walked and talked all afternoon in the temple grounds, stopping more than every so often so Mr. U could pencil our colloquial phrases on to the back of an envelope he happened to have from his paycheck. Did I sympathize? Do I draw breath?

He volunteered his services for the next day, but we left that up in the air. There are not enough sweet adjectives in anyone’s phrase book to capture this man’s sincerity and charm: delicate, emphatically passionate, insistently generous, plaintive about what he felt he had missed out on in life; his mother had died before he could remember her, his father a local policeman (on a subsistence salary) sent him to live with an uncle, no higher education than graduating from the “first hotel college in Korea,” and an elegant spirit.

After farewells to Mr. U, we returned, wending through the rice fields to our pension where we were the only guests.
We had signed on for  “traditional Korean barbecue,” and had pledged our appearance for 7:30, and here one’s word is one’s word. We were treated to an extensive and elaborate spread of various pork cuts (twaejigoki), vegetables and sauces worthy of all the more than 500  Sillan kings who had ever reigned. This was served in the pension’s garden, and it was just for us.  Memorable, memorable, memorable.

The next day we were driven 30 minutes away to Yangdong Village, now a UNESCO historical world treasure site (that’s not UNESCO’s terminology exactly).
This is a village essentially intact for more than 700 years, and we explored it under the guidance of a professional whose acronymic surname was BYK, Mr. Byk. His services were ours for free; Ms. Pak had arranged this on the spot once we arrived. Mr. Byk was likewise as was Mr. U the day before hell bent on debriefing native English speakers, and coming from Manhattan bestowed an epic Brahman mantle of power upon us and we were walked through gratis. It is wonderful to have such a divine power, but this is what St. John meant when he said, “In the beginning there was the word….” Mr. Byk was studied, scholarly, and comprehensively versed in Korean history and culture, had a rich sense of humor, and told us that our coming to him was simply “destiny,” and he preceded to prove it to us by outlining the course of his decision to come to work on a day when he could have been elsewhere. Mr. U had, too, declared our meeting a move destined by some cosmic force. I don’t care if this is what they say to all their dates: It’s great to be special 14,000 miles away from your E-Z Pass. Talk about entrée.  The village’s history was a mirror of Korean Confucianism, a tradition which one feels embedded in every single quotidian act of the current modus vivendi despite the ever deepening stratum of Christianity over a Buddhism that predated both.  Mr. Byk, who was interested in marriage, himself a Buddhist and a bachelor, gave us a solid supply of his professional cards bearing his “most famous  Korean movie star” cameo on it to pass out to our Sungshin (all-female all star) students in the hopes of a nibble. We were gracious and remain professional.

Walking to the public bus in the rain, we spent the afternoon in Gyeongju visiting the burial mounds in their parks; one of them has been rendered enterable.
They were so designed that tomb robbers would be crushed to death under a huge weight of stones should anyone be that ambitious and stupid. Huit clos for criminals! Requiescantur in pace omnes. No book will do these tumuli justice; they have to be seen and approached as they form the upper arc of sine curves and baseline at their circumferences. Reverence for the architectural earthwork marvel descends on one; it’s impossible to resist or deny it. Some of these go back 1800 years. 211 of them out of over 500 have been discovered.

Dinner was in the Sun Du Bu Restaurant, named for a local soupine delicacy: an uncurdled tofu soup, mild with a raw egg cracked into it, very mild but rivaling any “comfort” food we’ve ever had. This was part of Mr. U’s legacy. His previous boss at the fancy hotel he cooked for had opened it a couple of years ago with some partners, and he had recommended it.

Before training back to Seoul on Saturday afternoon, we spent hours in the Gyeongju National Museum, a super
treasure house devoted to the area’s finds and history. The Silla civilization and culture are awesome, and the displays perfectly designed for maximum effect. The only shortcoming of the museums we’ve visited is the lack of information in English and the translations were in need of native-level competency, but who needs us anyway?

We left on the 3:30 train back to Seoul and watched the shadows lengthen, the mountains shade, and the rice fields disappear into a vespertine cloak.

Gary

Shopping and Studenting in Seoul                                                                                                                   October 15, 2010

This week (09/29/10)  Korean for Foreign Faculty began with three students:  a biologist from Bangladesh, a biochemist from Kiev, Ukraine, and myself. One of us stutters at times, one of us has English diction difficulties, one of us needs a life jacket in a sea of sound. The young woman teaching us is from the Korean Language & Literature department; I thought that perhaps she might have been from English. She has been drilling us on pronunciation which is demanding, and when there are only three students in the class, each with a different native tongue and concomitant accents, it makes for a Tower of Babel situation.  And these guys are quick. Boris said to me the other day that philology (my academic training) was difficult. I told him that philology was simple compared to biochemistry.

My other classmate gave me an article of his to proofread. Hmm…community of scholars…who could say no?  It turned out to be nearly flawless; I had special instructions to pay attention to the use of verb tenses. Yes the article was in English…impeccably so.  Korean has defiant sounds for me: 3 different “K” sound productions, the same for “T.” “P” and “B“ seem to be insurmountably indistinguishable, as we exclaim in unison for two hours each class period.

Our instructor is somewhere between 22 and 29 I estimate. One has to pay attention  — serious attention – to the way she forms the letters with her lips, otherwise you’re not going to make it unless you follow the acrobatics of mouth,  tongue, and teeth, and if you’re off course  well, she wastes you with her eyes.  If I could only attach her supple speech mechanisms to my brain. Maybe Americans don’t truly open their mouths when they speak, a reflex of our romance with the shady. “You have to open your mouth when you speak Greek ,” one of my modern Greek teachers once told the class.

On the 18th Barbara was in Gwangju for a biennial  art exhibition. This was an outing with faculty and three long busloads of art students.  I took the day to work the city on my own.  First to the cleaners for the first time. What will happen when I bring my shirts to the store I have been passing for three weeks, almost every day?  Piece of rice cake.  No ticket necessary;  write your name  in a book and that’s it. No waste of paper in Korea, not a shred and chopsticks here are almost always metal, so are the water cups in many of the eating establishments. That’s an apt answer to recycling. Water coolers (which also heat water to a temperature high enough to turn a tea or coffee bag  — oh yes, that too; instant is king here) into a beverage. Overwhelmed with the ease of this encounter, I walked back up the hill for the #20 bus  (I think this bus may have served time in the Korean War;  it’s stick shift because of the heights it has to ascend and descend) whose route we had finally charted.   On then to the  Shinhan  Bank, where I had to go to pay a 500 won fee for the delivery of Eddie Bauer’s staunchest all-disaster proof winter parkas; a week before they nailed me for 40,000won tax for receiving an imported item worth over a certain amount. FedEx Rules, that was the first bank encounter, and Eddie wacked me with a cosmic fee for shipping. Guess that I won’t do that again.  From the bank, where I watched a soap on tv while waiting to meet and ask the inevitable question: Yonggo?  English? Service here is almost always with patience and understanding.  I went into a bank on Madison Avenue  and 77th Street once  to ask for two rolls of quarters, NYC’s magic passport to  parking, and they wouldn’t comply because I did not bank at their institution.  I left in disbelief and called in an airstrike.

The big event of the day was to buy a printer for our Macs, because not having a printer is a form of silence I cannot get comfortable with. I simply love to click on “Print”! It’s miraculous to be able to publish yourself or anyone else’s work for that matter, an amalgam of potency and birth. I had carefully phoned, inquired, and mapped my way to Myeoung-Dong, the city’s smartest most upscale shopping district and a haven for young, solvent, and beautiful young people of Seoul,  marketing  Mecca up to the hilt with contemporary everything  everyone has to have,  automobiles prohibited.

The Internet had assured me there was an Apple Store right in the heart of the district.  Nevertheless, it  wasn’t there and as the sun rose to its highest point the sweater and suit jacket I had put on at our mountain retreat began to overheat me in my frenzy to find the Apple Store.  Men hate to ask directions; this is a solid fact. Of course I know where I am going…I’ve never been here before but I know I can find it.  Relationships could dry up, wither, and blow away over the issue. But being here has cut my drive to wander endlessly before I declare early Alzheimer’s and abort the mission.  All you have to do is say: “Shillehamnida,” “Excuse me,” and you’re going to get help or at least an “I don’t know the neighborhood,” in Seoul it’s not an excuse, it’s the truth. “I’m not from here, I’m sorry,’ and it’s sincere because people here enjoy helping, and although the US has been a military presence here for sixty years, Miguk[s] are still a novelty, with adults, and particularly with the younger kids who just plain stare and must be saying to mom, “Why does the dude look so different from me? Was he bad and is he being punished? Did his face freeze while he was crying? Orwhat? The frozen face was a common threat when I was a kid, or as poet John Rodriguez writes, “When we was boys.” “I hope your face freezes while you’re crying,” a maternal instinct welling up in a rush to succor one’s child’s anguish. I was dragging my right knee along by now as it turned toward 1pm, and in my search and many pointings, I approached a business man in his early forties and sharply suited, herked out my  best Shillhamnida, and he started to call all of his business buddies on his I-Phone; he was determined.

Some embarrassing, for me, seven calls  later he looked at  me, and said “Well, it’s just not here. No one knows where it is, but, listen, I am going to Yongsan,the electronics district in Seoul, and I’ll be glad to take you with me so that you can buy a printer.”  I hesitated, stammered some reasons why I didn’t want to bother him – after all, I didn’t know him; maybe he just wanted to take me to his taxidermist. “New Yorker Freaks Out at Kindly Offer in Seoul” or “New Yorker is Found Stuffed,” what would the hometown papers say? Being from NYC here is nearly instant NYC celebrity.  “I was in New York,” my new guide told me.” When,”
I said, “Twenty years ago.”  Mr. K  (and that’s not for Kim) turned out to be an executive in marine shipping, a graduate of the Korean Maritime College. His trip to NYC was only one stop of many among visits to all the major ports in the US.  After we arrived at the electronics district, which is huge and also has stall after stall of  traffickers in DVDs near by, Mr. K. escorted me to several different locations: Epsom, HP, and on and on, but no one had the printer I thought I needed.

This man had   devoted half of his afternoon to befriending and basically chauffeured me around town  —  on Seoul’s amazingly immaculate and comfortable Metro.   Although I never found the machine I was after, the encounter made me think about how astonishingly generous my guide was to get himself so completely and totally involved unfazed by the expedition coming to nothing. It wasn’t a waste of time for him but really an investment in a total stranger, and you know I could have felt guilty about this if I crossed the wires of my background with the usual resignation to the tune of “That Old Feeling,” but I was only mildly tempted because I realized that I was feeling that I had deserved his companionable attention. This turned out to be just one of several similar chance meetings I have had in Seoul and elsewhere in Korea subsequently.

The next day Barbara and I found the actual store in Myeongdong on a Friday evening buoyed up by a wall to wall almost oceanic crowd of turned-on shoppers, and of course the Apple Store didn’t have a sign outside even though the place was just as thronged as those in NYC.  Still no printer nearly three weeks later, but there is one on order through the international office at Sungshin. Teresa Zyung and Stacey Cho, who have been ready at all turns to help us, came up with the idea of ordering it through the university.

Two Mondays ago, foreign faculty members were required to attend an event on sexual harrassment, and I realize I had not mentioned it, but it was very congenial and informative. The Director of Counseling Services, Dr. Paul Chae,
a most amiable and warm older man who studied for quite a while in the US, somewhere in the midwest — I tried to get that information from him but couldn’t,  an unusual failure for me  who has been exacting those kinds of  bits of information for decades – was the one and only speaker.

The powerpoint presentation, not my preferred kind of show, intentionally pitched from a serio-comic mound and designed to  hold everyone’s attention, was audience friendly, as was the lecture component.  He  asked us, about 15 men and 4 women, “How long is it permissable to look at a woman in Korea?”  That question actually had a concrete answer, although no one of us volunteered. After all,  as one of my buddies in high school who, to my knowledge, never answered a question correctly, said in his own defense after being berated by an exasperated teacher, “Well, there are a lot of answers!”  He went on, by the way, to major in philsophy in college and wrote his PhD thesis on “The Infinite.” After some suspense, Dr.Chae broke our silent contemplation ( everyone suspected this to be a “trick question”) and told us “4 seconds!” Then he counted off 4 seconds to drive the point home. The main point of the event was a simple cultural rule here: “Don’t embarrass anyone, in any way, about anything in Korean culture” particularly a woman student at Sungshin Women’s University.

The powerpoint was brief but offered insights of the intracies of not doing things such as rolling your eyes if a student did not answer a question to the instructor’s satisfaction.  There were a lot of subleties, ergo surprises. As an example of the spirit in which the event was conceived, I am including the frame from the presentation which gives you a good idea of surface, symbol, and grip on life here in its extended profoundities. We should be successful in our dealings with our students. “How does one measure success?” Dr. Chae asked, as he came to the end of his talk.  See for yourself: How to measure success. See for yourself:

How to measure success

At birth..….success is….breathing
At age 4…..success is….not peeing in your pants.
At age 12…success is….having friends.
At age 18…success is….having a drivers license.
At age 20…success is….having sex.
At age 35…success is….having money.
At age 50…success is….having money.
At age 60…success is….having sex.
At age 70…success is….having a drivers license.
At age 75…success is….having friends.
At age 80…success is….not peeing in your pants
At 90………success is breathing

The Kyoto Caper:
September 20-25, 2010

The City of Kyoto was founded almost smack in the middle of the 8th century CE, and it was a planned city from its very first street. Everything is on a grid, and this goes very far to obviate getting lost because you can right your course just by groping around the block. Seoul is the antithesis of Kyoto with its come as they happen winding streets and maze of back alleys. The closest analogue in New York is Mahattan below 14th Street while everything above that demarcation after 1800 is gridded.  Kyoto is filled with Buddhist temples and shrines, endlessly it seems, and I think it would take two weeks on the trail around the city to visit all of them, but their architectural emminence and wood and stone spirituality are never repetitious because of their founders’ and  perpetuators’ singular devotion make each one a new experience. The largest wooden structure in the world is here and it’s a temple. Many of these structures were burnt to the ground at several points in their history, either through war, fires getting out of hand, and probably more than one arson in the history of Japan. Many of them were rebuilt following the original plans, and many buldings were also lost to the ages. Since our combined knowledge of Japanese history stretches only from the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1867 to now,  what happened here for the better part of two millennia displayed itself in daunting and frustrating  complexities.  Kurasowa…help me! The first three days were torrid and sweat drenched as we climbed up to sites; fortunately Seoul had provided basic training and more for both heat and inclines, so I claim that we were miraculously in shape for the trip.

We stayed right next to the JRWest Railway Station, the central bus depot, and a new building  called “The Cube” because it looks like one in dark gray marble. It houses several floors of restaurants with a selection of global cuisines, and we didn’t find Kyoto any more expensive than New York as far as food went, but there was one sashimi piece of belly tuna that accounted for almost half of one evening’s dinner check.  At least it wasn’t at a restaurant in Jersey City. Both in Seoul and Kyoto there are endless malls of all strata of prices, but there is so much available of high quality that seems uncannily affordable. The gourmet food sections of department stores are fascinating with every kind of food one has ever ingested and every other kind that makes you want to try it. Rice cakes and candies some of which look like objects in a Dali painting…endless varieties and flavors. Tofu is one of the prized specialties in Kyoto. I am sure that Kyoto would be a wonderful place to be exiled to.  The vitality in Japan and Korea, just in these two cities alone, the extent of our contact with Asia, overcomes you. Nations of of invention and imitation, going one better than the Romans who were great improvers and copiers. That’s not truly fair…but they’re not going to come after me for that.  There is no sense of menace in the streets, and this must in part have something to do with national, ethnic, racial…whatever you wish to hang it on…homogeneity.  Almost everyone “looks the  same.” And again, people do their work like they mean it, and it is visible everywhere. The railway car cleaners on the train we took from Osaka to Kyoto (which was inexplicably held in a station for over an hour and forty minutes late – this never happens we were told), did not allow us to board until this meticulous crew of  cleaners vacuumed , dusted, and immaculatized each car, and then…and then someone pushes a button in each car and the seats perform an about face for the trip to Kyoto.

After a perfect flight back to Seoul, we finally ran into a couple of misadventures beyond the train delay in Japan. Climbing carefree into a taxi, and our taxi experiences have  been extra good and we have taken a lot of them on nights we just didn’t want to climb the mountain to our apartment, and the driver simply did not know how to get to our part of town, the precint called Seonbuk (pronounced “songbook”), despite his having his superb GPS mounted on the dash board. Technologically challenged driver with two passengers  in proud possession of a total of 30 words of Korean make for getting  nearly  terminally lost for almost an hour. “Where is he taking us” occurred to me. “His brother-in-law’s chicken barbeque restaurant…a geriatric white slave camp…back to Kyoto?” That was the first time we found ourselves on an extended play out-of-control trajectory. I knew he did not know his way by highway to our part of the city, so he drove through a vast expanse of Seoul, not entirely a loss because we got to see much more than we had before. Here’s the secret: Seoul is big.

Finally arriving at Poonglim Apartments, after not thanking the driver, and after not having the psychological weight of what to tip him for the outrageous price of the ride, given we’d gone for less than half the price to Gimpo (pronounced “Kimpo”) the previous Monday, we reached our apartment door with its electronic push button system, only to find it dead. Entry denied. How many people do you really know in Seoul at a moment in time like this? The security guard outside the building tried to help and we made contact with our two only other university contacts. The trick was, the university rents the apartment, and then it’s a territorial battle over who’s responsible for maintaining it. The university or the building super? Need I ask, “Know the Drill?” We clearly could not get any maintenance help, and with the guard’s help got a cab and went down the hill to…a hotel…The Rodeo Hotel. What’s in a name?  That name’s got to be worth a thousand pictures, and I could really take off on it, but I won’t. For 60,000 won (about $56.00) for the night who’s to say what? The desk clerk was not dressed in black, as Elvis had him costumed in his famous hotel song, but he was wondering what these two sextagenarians were doing, checking in at 11:30 on a Friday night. The sublime nature of Kyoto paired with a hotel on a Seoul back street. What a ride. Rodeo indeed.

Gary

I am attempting to add living color to my dispatches with a group of photographs covering some of our wanderings over the past three weeks. The photographs are Barbara Siegel’s. I anticipate gaining some great level of finesse in captioning, describing, and titling, but for now here’s some of what we got, so this is what you get. About the food market, there are many many of them, and what they signal is that above and beyond Marilyn Monroe’s famous film, “Some Like It Hot,” everybody here likes it really hot.

If seeing is not believing, then institutionalizing is, and this is made emphatically clear by The Kimchi Field Museum, which we visited incidentally on a spending spree at The Coex Mall, Seoul’s largest (indoor and underground) shopping mall. The supposed reason for the excursion (no mistakes on the metro – first time – merit badge applied for!) was to pick up a book on Japan because tomorrow morning we fly to Osaka and train to Kyoto for four days since the bulk of this week is Chuseok,  the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, a harvest festival. Kimchi is incomparably more serious a cultural icon than apple pie, and even Mom, is in the States.  To borrow three little words from Saddam Hussein’s immortal phrase about the First Gulf War, Kimchi is the “mother of all” health and wellbeing here, as well as an inseparable companion if not top sergeant of every meal. It’s as important as work, and it takes a great deal of careful preparation which the exhibits in the Kimchi Field Museum teach their visitors.

There may be varieties of kimchi not represented at the museum, pegged to their provincial provenance, but I would doubt it. The museum is so comprehensive that it’s almost Germanic in detail. Every variation of the genre is physically represented in the characteristic Asian synthetic model food mode most of us are by now familiar with from some Japanese restaurant window displays in NYC.  If you want to become a kimchi maker, you leave the building with definite knowledge, you know how to play the game, at least the fundamentals, something one cannot say after leaving the Mets behind in City Field (failed cultural icon). There is a research room for kimchi scholarship, and a kimchi kitchen where fresh samples are available on a self-service basis.  There are dozens of ceramic and wooden kimchi pots as well as mortars and pestles for the grinders and pounders
among the artifact ogling  (definitely us) patrons.

Do I believe in health food? There was an extended presentation on boards (just as at a student scholarship — excuse me – research conference) about the virtues of kimchi as an indispensible aid to every aspect of good health for both female and male (this is also the land of balance between what is male and what is female; just buy yourself a Korean flag online and contemplate the red and the blue forms in the center). Therefore, I now believe, at least, in Kimchi as the key to the rest of my life. Radishes (daikons) cabbage, nappa, garlic, bean-sprouts, scallions (green onions), and the entire vegetable world beyond V-8 juice can be kimchied and get this: for you pulpo fans in the Bronx, yeah octopodi as we call it in Greek, I saw a number of varieties with octopus in them.  I can see the future of kimchi-octopus gelato in the hip and groovy downtown restaurants for the young chic and rich thrillseekers at Otto’s on 8th street and “wherever particular people congregate.”

My quest for good video equipment turned out successfully, but the room they finally found me has poor sound quality.  This week presented some challenges in the classroom. I am still daunted by my paralytic tongue pronouncing the students names. I signed up and paid good money for a basic Korean language course “How To Sound Like a Six-year-old After Eight Weeks” which begins on the 29th and terminates on December 3.  That may help.

I am trying to bust my way through the Odyssey in both classes, and it’s certainly taxing my ability to condense and determine what is expendable and what is crucial in navigating through this book which is about as close to me as any work of literature, besides Ulysses and The English Patient, has been, so it’s hard to not want to talk about every other word in the text.  My students are used to the straight and direct method of absorption through memorization and then throwing it back on paper for tests. That is not my style. In Memory, Longing, and Reunion I assigned Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory online, then we discuss the painting and what (duh) it has to do with time inconographically, simply to get them on to the idea of the shape of memory. I assigned an essay on the day’s film, Bad Day At Black Rock, a stunning 1954 John Sturges film[dramatic date 1945], with Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, and a septet of evil doers, and asked the students to write on the persistence of memory in the film. They immediately literally connected the painting to the film and were stymied about how the painting and the film were linked, which was not my intention at all; I just wanted to lay the painting’s title on the essay so that memory, which is massive in Bad Day, and the way it persists and how it does this, could be thought and written about. The problem is…they’re sharper than I am but were thinking in a very linear way, by training, and thoroughly understandable.

Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss was many times more impressive than when I last used it in 2008, just because I was working through the Kubrick corpus with my seminar students then for the first time. This time the structure of the film begged to be embraced and commented on, beginning with the shots in Pennsylvania Station framing the film, then with mise en scene-ing some of the same props in both main characters’ apartments, particularly a Woolworth’s captain’s wheel wall lamp, great and subtle in a film where neither character has a clue about where her or his life is going, and vocational match of the characters’ trades, Davey, a boxer, and Gloria, a dollar-a dance hall girl, both physical contact sports which knock them out before they come to their senses and fall in love, or they knock each other out.  Then there is the medieval weaponry and the battle of the manikins in a prehistoric loft in a struggle to gain possession of a real woman.  The manikins are recapitulated in the maligned Eyes Wide Shut, his career-crowning masterpiece about marriage and its odyssean parallels. And, as you well may ask: Who cares? After class, several students stayed to talk very seriously with me about whether Stanley was a sexist and about how to deal with the gods in the Odyssey. We are glad to have the week off.

Gary

Wednesday September 8 Kubrick Class #2
I showed “Fear and Desire” which was on what Elusive DVD called a “B-“ quality print, the best they could develop from the ancient and decaying copy they finally got their hands on.  Students loved that description; I guess that they liked the idea of something inanimate earning a mediocre grade. The film had some of the fifty film fanatics (everyone came back) somewhat puzzled, but the result – some of these students are right on top of the ball – was pleasing to me. It’s strange to approach a film about war when this country is still in one fifty miles away. The film was Kubrick all the way, the only “flaw” was poor casting of the officer leading his group out from behind enemy lines.  Next Wednesday we see “Killer’s Kiss.”

The city is just waiting to serve us. After two days of teaching, Wednesday evening, we had a Japanese dinner of 8 courses for 60.000 won. We had expected a plate of sushi and sashimi.  It’s sinful, and it would have been $175.00 in NYC. We didn’t drink though. Incredible bulgogi at a place called KONGBUL two nights ago which was astounding, and the night before last a shabu shabu fish and seafood extravaganza for 16,000 won. There must be 50 restaurants within five minutes of the university, a parade of nail salons, hair cutting shops, lingerie boutiques with male and female manikins wearing matching briefs, and women’s clothing stores galore with great items on display. The rate of exchange has been very much in our favor, so far. I took out 300.000 won from an ATM on the campus (I did this in English), and the debit on my account was $262.00.  That has to be fat, no?

Thursday September 9
The students are smart and sharp and very friendly, and we are more comfortable  at Sungshin and with the city day by day. There have been problems such as rooms to show films in with no way to make the room dark enough for anyone to do anything but go mad from not being able to watch the films. I showed “Behind the Sun” [Brasil, 2001] on Tuesday, an exploding screen of searing colors and night scenes, about 40% of which was visible. Too bad, because these classrooms are gorgeous! Thus I am here in my office in Soo Jang Kwan Building (Dong-B) writing email because I had to come down today to inspect other rooms which could be darkened so that the students and I wouldn’t go stark raving with me narrating over a blank screen what’s supposed to be visible, particularly in the “Memory, Longing, and Reunion” course after I lecturer them about how all film is memory, and then we can’t see the memory: Fageddabowdit? Only in Bklyn.

I thought that might be the nadir of my film teaching exploits in the past 22 years, but the students are real truckers, and I was visited unexpectedly in my office later in the afternoon by two students who told me they loved what I was doing so much they wanted to take the other course as well. That was sweet music. The checks, I told them, would be in the mail, directly. I have relocated with the help of Hyun-Min, one of the TAs in the English department who helped me secure another room, a long story in itself. The happy ending to my film-showing odyssey was the discovery that the equipment here is set up for all regions’ DVDs, and I can play my discs from home, although I have now a great Korean source.  Bobbie’s students have marked her as a super hero since she saved them from a 3” cockroach (don’t have the cm. equivalent at my fingertips) on the first day of one of her drawing classes. She hunted it down and whacked it with a huge Asian paint brush which was at hand in the studio.

Friday September 10
There has been incessant rain for the last thirty-six hours, with another two days forecast for the same, but it’s relaxing to have very few heavy commitments besides teaching. We wrestled with the Samsung (what else?) washing machine in our apartment yesterday and won the match, gaining an even more excruciating comprehension of functional illiteracy, trying to match up the hangul letters on the machine to the instruction manual. No such amenity, however, as a clothes’ dryer. There’s a long room on the front exposure of our place with sliding windows/screens facing the city below; it’s equipped with a drying rack roped to the ceiling, but we’ve taken to the 1890’s and have our laundry drying draped in front of an oscillating fan in the living room since the humidity is off the charts on the porch.

Archaeological analysis of the kitchen has uncovered some challenging middens of grease indicating fairly extended occupation by students. Still there’s plenty of imperialistic elbow power to be exerted in taking a place over and making it one’s own, and we have cooked here from the second day  (yeah, packaged ramen the first time); last night we christened the kitchen, cooking pork and enoki mushrooms in broth — all in all pretty close to “authentic” for westerners.

Saturday September 11
We went on a shopping trip to E-Mart primarily to upgrade the bed arrangement. There was a salesperson female in the bedding section of the Mart who was going to help us no matter what, another example of Korean determination. And she did, despite a common vocabulary among the three of us of about eight words. There was a question of how wide the two mattresses on the floor were, whether they made it to queen size or not, and salesperson prevailed insisting that the bed was “queen,” and that dictated the comforter, the mattress pad, and the duvet cover’s size. We also added two more pillows and bought two clip-on booklights for reading because there are twenty seven student desk lamps in the house and nothing else except ceiling fixtures.  The desk lamps are fluorescent and manufactured by my favorite Korean knock-off co. “Samjung.” I guess that’s  “son of Samsung.” The desk lamps are good if you’re thinking of performing open-heart surgery.

Sunday September 12

We visited Changdeok Palace in the afternoon, greeted by an emergence of the sun for the first time in 3 days. People, particularly women of all ages use umbrellas/parasols or shade their faces with whatever’s at hand to ward off the sun, which can be searingly hot.  Coming from the US one thinks of southern belles and their heliophobia in  the Black Slave south, but I haven’t a handle on this here yet on why the sunshades; there is a fairly wide spectrum of skin tones  too. Changdeok Palace is extensive and its history complex, the most striking aspects are that it’s essentially of wood with dark terra cotta roof tiles, the most riveting architectural feature beside the astonishing use of color inside and out, was an extensive blue celadon glazed tile roof over one of the royal buildings. There was a traditional Korean music concert in one part of the grounds with percussion, strings, and wind instruments –- all flutes of one design and pitch or another, and I can tell you that it either rocked or swung (this was an aggregation of 10 musicians at one point) how ever you like your sound, and for us it was both. The blues are global. The last part of the performance featured a traditional sword dance performed by two women, each holdi ng two swords, and accompanied by a full complement of musicians. Changdeok is near the neighborhood of Insedong, which we had visited once earlier, and we went there for dinner. “Mandoo” is Korean for dumpling, and we dined al fresco on huge mandoo.

Tomorrow we have to attend a meeting for foreign faculty about sexual harassment. It’s the first time, to my knowledge, we will have been assembled.

Gary

Seoul After One Week

First Class, September 1, 2010

In May 1983, Barbara and I hiked 9 miles down the Sanmaria gorge in Crete. This descent began in midmorning, and around 6pm we passed through the sideropylos
or “iron gate” at the nether end of the gorge which terminated a few hundred meters from the Mediterranean. It was literally all down hill for eight hours, and the next day previously unacknowledged muscles in our legs kept us to a crawl. We had missed the last boat back to Herakleion and spent the night in a Class “C” hotel on the beach (there was nowhere else to put a hotel) on two of the squeakiest and most narrow beds in the entirety of Crete or maybe the known world.

All this represented itself to me as I was hurtling downhill twenty-six years later to teach my first class at Sungshin University at 8:35 on my way to a 9am class, and I had not had a 9:00 since John Lindsay was mayor. I realized the decent was steeper than the gorge. I knew I was in Korea, at that moment, but I had to stretch for a reason why, and I knew there were no mountain goats watching me from infinitesimally narrow ledges as there were going down the gorge. There were spectators to my down hill race as I felt all possible swords of guilt pointing at me: omygodwhatif Iamlateformyveryfirstclass?

No mountain goats but a lot of Koreans whom I was legging it past who knew this was just a migukin weirdo sweating through his suit on a sleeveless day as he was what…shaving with my double AA celled minishaver with one hand, a trick I had become adept at driving to Lehman for forty years, a Volvic Water bottle disfiguring my suit jacket. If summer’s here can winter be far behind? The neon flashed through my mind: What if there were an icestorm in December? Could I rent a luge?

Finally I reached the bottom of the narrow street and found myself in the Valley of the Shadow of Sungshin University, and now it was up a massive incline to the building I was to teach in. As I struggled up the asphalt, concentrating on every stride, exquisitely dressed young women students floated up past me. Yes I thought, I used to be able to walk up a hill too, but no one was interested in my past, and how would the future face me with eight minutes to gather my syllabi and make it to class alive?

As you are gathering, this is a long story, with ups and downs. Wringing wet I arrived in my classroom with two minutes to spare. At least I hadn’t started out on the wrong foot temporally. Sam Han, Lehman’s Institutional Technology Fellow, had hipped me to a Korean idiom: Sugo hasaeyo! “ Work hard!” Et etiam tu!

Gary

PS: There is a great article in this past Saturday’s NYTimes about a Korean woman who took her driving test 949 times before she passed. Although I am a neophyte here, my sense is that her story really penetrates into the layers of everyday life and how it’s lived. Read it: it’s online of course; check under Profile.
Gary