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