If you want to go to Bijindo:

The night before your trip, you and your friend should head to E-Mart to stock up on wine and whiskey, because they might be hard to come by where you’re headed. Oh, and don’t forget some weed food. You guys should wake up at 5 AM and ride the subway to the Express Bus Terminal to get a ticket to Tongyeong. The buses will probably be sold out until 3 PM, so you’ll have to wait two hours for a 4-hour bus to Jinju. Upon arrival at the Jinju terminal, a cab must take you to the other bus station to catch the local 1-hour bus to Tongyeong.

Once you’re in the beautiful port city, attempt to ask the lady at the tourist kiosk for information about ferries to Bijindo. Fail because she speaks no English. Flag down a cabbie and have him drive you down the hill to the ferry terminal. You’ll pass some apartments with Miró murals on their sides and you’ll think Korea is pretty ok. At the ferry terminal, feel a sense of relief as you realize there are not only two daily ferries to Bijindo as the internet indicated, but at least five and you haven’t missed the last one. After buying your ticket, you should get to the convenience store and stock up on ramen. Return to the terminal just as it begins to pour, take a seat and be entertained by the K-pop on TV. When you see the ferry pull in, huddle with the other passengers under an overhang. Book it to the boat when you get the high sign.

Feel free to pass out for the 40-minute ride. There’s nothing to see but grey outside, anyway. And there are no seats in the boat, just a floor. Upon arrival to Bijindo, feel your second sense of relief. You’re finally here. Get yourselves found by an ajumma and taken to what is supposedly the last available room on the island. Try to negotiate the price of the room with the help of the ajumma’s English-speaking daughter-in-law. Fail, and pay twenty-five bucks each for the night. Uncork a bottle of vino and take turns chugging from the bottle while watching more Korean pop TV. Just as you finish your wine, receive a knock on the door. It’ll be the daughter-in-law who helped you and she’ll want you to go eat raw fish with her.

Over dinner, sample at least five different kinds of alcohol and lower your inhibitions. Make a promise to wake up for a hike at 10 AM. Try some raw abalone and sea cucumbers and fake it like they taste really good because your host paid a lot for the purportedly healthful treats. After all, Koreans are not concerned with taste, but with money and well-being. Continue the drinking train to the convenience store down the way. Bum a cigarette from a fellow foreigner. After a few more bottles of beer and helpings of dried squid with your Korean host, thank her profusely and join the other expats down at the beach. Build an animal trap with a random child who speaks three languages and has more energy than a whole class of elementary students. Get too drunk to even care about the piles of sand creeping into various body parts. Somehow, make it back to your bed.

Get woken up by your 10 AM hiking partner. Put a smile on your still drunk, but about to be hung-over face! Nibble some weed cookie and get ready for this adventure. Slop through mud, twist around branches and stumble up rocks on your way to the top. Pause several times to let your friend catch her breath and prevent last night’s raw seafood from making a re-appearance. At the halfway mark, stop and take in the view, obstructed by fog and trees. Take some pictures of your sweaty selves. Resign yourself to the fact that even though this weed cookie is making you feel real good, it’s probably better to traipse back downhill with your hiking partners, who are finished with this shit and ready to jump into the ocean.

Spend all day with your stony hangover, marinating in the hot sun that the fog has left behind. Periodically sink yourself into the gorgeous ocean, floating with the sand under you, through warm and cold waves. Eat some fish soup. Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and pass out on the bed consisting of fifteen thin blankets stacked on a hard floor. Spend another day in the sun the same way, sans hangover. Pack up your stuff, and leave your friend behind on the island. She will find her way back to Seoul eventually. Indulge in some more cookie-cookie on the ferry back to Tongyeong. Turn on that good stoner music they don’t have in Korea. Back on land, catch a taxi up to the bus station. Wait four hours for the next bus to Seoul. Spend most of that time comparing a 1999 Vogue Korea with a 2010 in the corner of a tiny coffee shop. Be amazed at the extreme differences, and understand more about this place you temporarily call home. After five hours on a bus, a short taxi ride and a shower, collide with your bed sheets and dream.

teacup poses

akimbo

relationship to parents is so bittersweet. i wanted my mom to get off my back about my messy apartment but upon walking back to it after dropping her off at the airport train, i felt so sad knowing she wouldn't be there. do we ever not need our parents? i was doing so well without them, but having them here over the past couple weeks was just nice. it's good to be able to appreciate them and our closeness and our distance

sullivan school

a very late peek at my former school's christmas program

haiku from 7th grade

flow fast sweet river
pour the nourishment of life
into my tin cup

kim da ul

i am very good at sitting still doing nothing. i can sit and not move for two or three hours and not get bored. (RUSSH novdec09)

in korea people think it's negative if you're different. i want to change that. (i-D jul08)

fin che la barca va, lasciala andare...

I think it is very important to take the time to say what you want to say.
-Haider Ackerman

You can be anywhere, go anywhere, and make of your days what you want.
-Tilda Swinton

i want to leave something beautiful for the world, like the incas

or walt whitman

46

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and
never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we
be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you
with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every
moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
and laughingly dash with your hair.

from Song of Myself

underground

chelsea and i took an evening outing to see some fountain on a bridge that's supposed to spout off five times a day. we waited for an hour or two and nothing ever came, even though i'd double-checked the times. good thing we had some (really fucking expensive... these essentials haven't exactly caught on here...) wine and cheese to keep us company. after that minor disappointment, we crept back to the subway. unbeknownst to us, the underground shopping mall we entered, thinking it connected to the subway station, goes for a good number of kilometers.

indeed it did connect to the subway, but we ended up a stop further than where we'd gotten off. we walked for a good 25 minutes underground (that's kind of a long way... we walk fast) before we got to the stop. along the way, we passed hundreds of shops closed up for the night. koreans must be very trustworthy people, because the shops simply had large pieces of cloth draped across their fronts. there was a security guard here and there, but stealing something wouldn't have been a challenge.

each shop's cloth was unique. some were pretty, some looked sad, and some made me quite curious as to what was behind them. some stores' goods peeked out from behind the drapes and some were just covered with nets, exposed. there were also a few of what looked to be nightmare thrift stores. though they had actual windows and doors, inpenetrable piles upon mounds of t-shirts leaned up against them. we came across one open store and i bought a dress there. it has silhouettes of birds, trees and taj mahals.

maintain

Sometimes what we learn is not what we expect to learn, but all information about the world and ourselves is useful, if you put it to work when you make your next decision.
- Penelope Trunk

silence on the 한강

sioux nation

doing a book summary for my school, reviewing sometimes unbelieveable u.s. history.
here is chief red cloud.

did you know that at one time, there were over 60 MILLION bison roaming the great plains?
and that by the time the late 1800s rolled around,
after all of the horrible, careless things white people did to native americans and their way of life,
there were only about 200 left?

an island in the river in spring

this morning i couldn't sleep. first of all i had this great idea a few days back when i started seeing cherry blossoms. i had heard that there is an island in the river that blooms a lot of blooms so of course i wanted to go see all the beauty and behold it. seeing and beholding are a little bit different, you know? i wanted to do both. i work from 2-10, though, so i don't see much daylight except the run/walk to school. i wasn't sure when i'd be able to get to this island, unless i got up early one day before work and took the subway 45 minutes over there... i suppose a weekend would have worked, but i like to be with people on the weekend, and i kind of wanted to go to the island by myself.

well, back to this morning. i went to bed a little earlier last night. i've had this habit of staying up late but my parents are coming to visit soon. i need to get myself back to going to bed at a decent hour so i can have lots of energy for them. i was just about to go to sleep and i thought, oh, my gosh i'm going to bed early, i should get up early and go see those flowers! so i turned on my alarm to 8.30 and put on a recording of after the quake because listening to something helps me fall asleep. the recording was not that great to begin with because his books are reading books, not listening books. but i put it on anyway.

-----to make matters worse-----

i happened to wake up around 4:30 in the morning, the recording was still going:

'...and in the light, i grappled with a monstrous worm. he coiled himself around me and bathes me in his horrid slime. i tore him to shreds but still he refused to die. all he did was divide into smaller pieces. and then...' frog fell silent. but soon, as if dredging up his last ounce of strength, he began to speak again. 'fyodor dostoevky, with unparalleled tenderness, depicted those who had been forsaken by god. he discovered the precious quality of human existence in the ghastly paradox whereby men, who had invented god, were forsaken by that very god. fighting with worm in the darkness, i found myself thinking of dostoevsky's white nights. i...' frog's words seemed to founder. 'mister katagiri, do you mind if i take a brief nap? i'm utterly exhausted.'

i was exhausted, too, at that point, trying to go back to sleep, too lazy to shut my computer. plus i was a bit intrigued about the story, i figured i'd just lie there and fall back asleep while listening...

'please,' katagiri said. 'take a good, deep sleep.'
'i was finally unable to defeat worm,' frog said, closing his eyes. 'i did manage to stop the earthquake, but i was only able to carry our battle to a draw. i inflicted injury on him, and he on me. but to tell you the truth, mr. katagiri...'
'what is it, frog?'
'i am indeed pure frog, but at the same time i am a thing that stands for a world of un-frog.'
'mm...i dont get that at all.'
'neither do i,' frog said, his eyes still closed. 'its just a feeling i have. what you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. my enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. inside me is the un-me. my brain is growing muddy. the locomotive is coming. but i really want you to understand what i'm saying, mr. katagiri.'
'you're tired, frog. go to sleep, you'll get better.'
'i am slowly, slowly returning to the mud, mr. katagiri. and yet i...' frog lost his grasp on words and slipped into a coma. his arms hung down almost to the floor and his big wide mouth drooped open. straining to focus his eyes, katagiri was able to make out deep cuts covering frog's entire body. discolored streaks ran through his skin and there was a sunken spot on his head where the flesh would be torn away. katagiri stared long and hard at frog who sat there, now wrapped in the thick cloak of sleep. 'as soon as i get out of this hospital,' he thought, 'i'll buy anna karenina and white nights and read them both then i'll have a nice long literary discussion about them with frog.' before long, frog began to twitch all over. katagiri assumed at first that these were just normal involuntary movements in sleep. but he soon realized his mistake. there was something unnatural about the way frog's body went on jerking, like a big doll being shaken by someone from behind. katagiri held his breath and watched. he wanted to run over to frog, but his own body remained paralyzed. after a while, a big lump formed over frog's right eye. the same kind of huge, ugly boil broke out on frog's shoulder and side, and then over his whole body. katagiri could not imagine what was happening to frog. he stared at the spectacle, barely breathing. then, all of a sudden, one of the boils burst with a loud pop. the skin flew off and a sticky liquid oozed out, sending a horrible smell across the room. the rest of the boils started popping, one after another, 20 or 30 in all, flinging skin and fluid onto the walls. the sickening, unbearable smell filled the hospital room. big black holes were left on frog's body where the boils had burst, and wriggling, maggot-like worms of all shapes and sizes came crawling out. puffy, white maggots. after them emerged some kind of small centipede-like creatures whose hundreds of legs made a creepy rustling sound. an endless stream of these things came crawling out of the holes..."

UMMM FUCK RUIN MY SLEEP WHY DON'T YOU

'really haruki, really? really right now?!' i remember sleep-drunkenly saying out loud to myself. that forced me to roll over and shut my computer, then i tried to go back to sleep with awful, disgusting images in my brain.

----to make matters worse part two----

there are sounds outside my house. sometimes i really can't tell if they are coming from babies or cats. freaks me out. probably means i should never be a mother. i know that i am not schizo, the sounds are real. one time my mom was staying with me at my house in seattle and a cat/baby screamed fucking bloody murder outside the window and we were both startled from sleep, scared shitless. anyway, right after all this after the quake business, the cat/baby sounds started. after a long, futile attempt to ignore the sounds, my delicate sleep was too damaged to carry on.

i didn't end up getting any rest for when my parents come, BUT i spent a hell of a long time on the blossom island today because i got up at 6:00 am! so, now we've arrived at the point you should have all been waiting for. the ISLAND! first, start this video:



you can watch it for a little bit, it's kinda cool, but it's just 'colour palettes' flashing, so please do continue on after a bit. i just want you to hear the song i was listening to while walking through this place. (click to see bigger/better images)

early sun on the river
park entrance
still early sun but now on a building
teemple
here's what i came for!
more of it...
less blossoms on these tree than i'd like... but a nice hut anyway
great king sejong
oh wait hold up, lemme play with my camera for a second
just a few more seconds
set up for cherry blossom festival
pink
rest-taker
7-11's blossoms were especially pretty...
national assembly building
lion? tiger? bear?
dead, dead grass at ntl assembly
subway bench, line 9

i learned three lessons today:
1. don't listen to recordings of murakami books, especially when i am trying to sleep
2. cats and babies still sound the same to me, and they are really annoying, especially when i am trying to sleep
3. it is pleasantly rewarding to get up early (i already knew this, but it's nice to be reminded)

situationist wisdom

'Crisis is a means of governing. In a world that seems to hold together only through the infinite management of its own collapse.'

-the invisible committee

i like to live how other people live

summary file

in the morning i wake up at 11. no, actually i don't. my alarm goes off at 11. but i'll sleep in for another half hour most days. or if i've been out drinking the night before i'll just stay in bed until 1. but on most days i haven't been out drinking. so i get out of bed and i go to the bathroom and i put on my workout clothes, socks, running shoes. then i go to the river. it's three blocks away and i have to pass through a big intersection. it has a walking light that, when it turns green, has a vertical line of triangles that disappear one by one, top to bottom, to let you know how much time you have until the traffic comes through again. right before i make it down to the river i have to make a choice between three things. when i first started running i was only doing choice number one, which was to take the ramp down and turn right, going past a couple of groups of public workout machines onto a wooden boardwalk. the boardwalk lines the bluff above the river, right next to the highway. the cars are actually pretty close and i can just imagine how much gunk is getting into my lungs. when i first started running i was only running at intervals because i would get a side ache easily. walk for a minute, run for three, repeat. but anyway now i can just keep running without stopping and i hardly ever take choice number one. lately i've been doing choice number two, which is taking the bridge across the river to the south bank. there's a park on top of the bridge and as i near the midway point the city opens up around me. the hangang shimmers under the wide blue sky and the sun is never obscured. but the other day i took choice number three. i went down the same ramp as choice number one but turned left. the path went gradually down, down until i was running practically at the water's edge. there are no cars around there because the road is right above the path. there are huge concrete columns rooted into the shore that hold up the road. everything is peaceful and calm there. the dusk wrapped itself around me. i wanted to keep going and going but it was getting darker and chillier so i doubled back. on my way home i saw some stairs and i wondered where they led. so i went up and there was a small park that had some benches. it looked like the kind of place where homeless people would hang out but there was nobody around. it was so curious and concealed. i was thinking how sad it was that it wasn't summer because i'd love to take my friends there and hang out with some bottles of booze.

revival

this blog has been dead for a long time, but it is my truest blog. i have a tumblr, i have another blog that my family reads. but this blog was my vent in college. it's been almost two years and i need a vent again. i'm at a point in my life where i want to figure out, or at least come closer to figuring out, what i want to do. i have many interests just like the next person, but it seems the thing i enjoy the most is walking (or running) around the city aimlessly. i'm damn good at it, too. how do i make a career out of that?