Body talk

[paper flowers in Wonju.] I'm heartsick. It's especially bad b/c I'm SICK sick on top of it so I feel like hell. Right before I said goodbye to my sister and bro-in-law today, I got an email from my dad in NY that my absentee ballot app was rejected. AGH. I think I forgot to fill in a line that said when I'd be out of town. TOTAL DRAG. Anyhow, I don't know how I made it through the day on compounded lack of sleep for the last 10 days or more, but I managed to see three rooms all over town. Definitely a few moments of horror. Now I know that I'd rather sacrifice living alone over living in the equivalent of a jail cell (that I would die in if there ever was a fire since there are no escape routes).

I think I'm taking the room w/the artist I just met a couple days ago. The house is built around a 600-year-old tree. I like to think it might give me a little stability since I've been completely uprooted from my routine, studies, and research. I realized today that this awful bereft and empty feeling comes from not being able to make any work or even pretend to do so. Living in this marriage-sodden culture reinforces the "married to your work" ethic for me. Being away from it has drained the life out of me.

Gasping for air

[Paper pieces by children at the Wonju Hanji festival last weekend.] I'm woefully behind, and have spent lots and lots of time w/my sis and her husband. Last night, I got piss drunk over Cass (Korean beer) and Korean-style fried chicken, and now I'm getting sick. The all too familiar sore throat has kicked in.

[Dak bark hanging and frames for pulling paper at the festival.] I spent another night in the hotel and it nearly killed me. It's hard living in such a densely-populated and polluted city. I've sacrificed my foot for fashion but yesterday had a great meeting w/a gallery owner and two other artists. Turns out that I had emailed one but she never got my email!! We are living similar lives right now, except that she wants to get out of Korea to do art and I came here to try. She offered her place to stay in, which is in a faboo location, but I'm first going to check out the TINY studio that my mom found for me today. If I can handle how small it is, we'll put down the money tomorrow and I can move immediately. If not...I'll have to consider one artist's home or another.

Tonight I saw the Han River, which cuts thru the city. I still feel overwhelmed and could use a breakdown but don't have the time. I'm also on the verge of another inappropriate friendship with someone I've met four times. But, OH!!! I nearly forgot. The lifesaver in the midst of this crazy time: Anish Kapoor. Yesterday before the gallery meeting, I went to Kukje Gallery (their "new space") to catch the tail end of his solo exhibit. I walked into the main gallery on the first floor and almost wept. It wasn't just the first piece (whose optical illusion TOTALLY tricked me), it was the fact that the gallery was built slightly below ground, with a huge door that slides open to reveal a gorgeous garden. It was like a vision of what I want my life to look like. At least, my home life (if I ever freaking get to have a home). I also saw Rhee Ki Bong's solo show at their regular space, and the first piece ALSO slayed me: two books in a huge blue tank of water, being propelled around the tank, floating and falling, by a forced current. It was perfection.

Death and OCTOBER

I have no idea what this is. All I know is that it comes from the sea, and it was at the fish market in Busan. I think I ate it when I took my beach trip months ago here, but I really don't know what I was eating.

This was from dinner after our grandfather's death rites. I'm posting food upon Sudha's request for a food blog. I am NOT going to start a food blog, and I already feel guilty enough b/c a dear friend insisted before I came here that I keep him updated on food in Seoul but I can't be bothered, since that involves toting around a camera and remembering to shoot. I'm usually way too hungry to do that.

[I did all the flour for what's out on the table.] Anyhow, I have been A COMPLETE LOON for the past week+. I don't know what day it is, or what month it is (and being born in October, I usually am aware of when it starts, but not this time). My inbox is swelling and I have not had any time to bat it down. I spent last night in my sister's hotel room and was a disaster today during tutoring (but now have a GREAT story about Eddie Murphy and a Korean dude in an elevator), and am still totally unsure about my future housing.

My horoscope says "Beware of total strangers and friends alike who shower you with comfortable sameness, and remain open to those who make you uneasy, for they are the true messengers of the future." That would mean that I should go live w/the complete stranger, rather than crash w/a cousin or find a room that would fit my ass and maybe a suitcase. I have NO IDEA. All I know lately:

1. Eric let me know that our 11th grade American history teacher passed away. Mr. Tucker used to tell us that we would get automatic As for the year if we got a letter to the editor published in the NY Times. I studied instead. HAHAA. His was the first class where I started to really understand feminism, believe it or not. He also had a serious thermos habit (I'm sure that was a COFFEE habit, but I didn't know about coffee addiction when I was 15), which for some reason was very reassuring and comforting to me.

2. My sister and her husband just extended their stay for a couple of days since they want more time in Seoul. We've been shopping a lot.

3. Apparently, I went from hyper fashion conscious (again, when I was 15 and thereabouts) to total schlub (mother condemns Oberlin for this), and my family is concerned. Thus, I now have a new pair of dress shoes. I've been too busy sorting out what a new Fulbrighter called my "spiritual journey" to sort out my fashion journey, but I think it involves a serious commitment to studio work, a 3-year stint in the midwest, poverty or the scarcity mentality, an attempt to take myself completely off the dating market, and just the sheer joy of wearing the same clothes every day.

4. I'm going to burst if I don't see some good art soon. Which means I really want to see some Anish Kapoor and Bill Viola before the shows come down.

5. I made it to the old tea house that a friend of Shir Ly's recommended!!! It rocked my world yesterday. My new fave tea here is citron.

6. I might never go to sleep before 2am. I have new bangs.

7. All the research backing up right now makes me want to cry. Generally, the burden of my life that I have created makes me want to cry. Of course, I don't have time to cry, which increases the burden, and all of this seems inadequate in English, but I don't have all the vocab/grammar to do it in Korean.

8. The stress must be getting to me b/c all I want to do anymore is drink beer. I know, so NOT what I ever do. But it's what I did tonight (which is why I can't sleep now).

Death days and birth days

Tonight we had our annual death rites for my grandfather, who passed away 8 years ago (that was the last time I was in Korea - I saw him when he was in the hospital a few months before he died). Today was also my nephew's 3rd birthday (LSH = Lee Seung Hyun). There was a LOT of family, including more "have I ever seen them before??" relatives. Tons of food. Tons of shrieking children. I got my first massage since I've landed, from my 5-yo nephew. And so on. All in all, it was a packed family day.

I'm feeling really sad. I am not present at all these days, which was one of my goals for being here. But it's too hard! I am especially overwhelmed by the research prospects. There are SO MANY LEADS to follow, with no guaranteed payoff. This project is no joke. I feel like I'm learning how to tame a wild animal that I have never before encountered, and that very few people have tamed in the past.

I also am suffering from overbooking disease, which is when you cram your calendar to the hilt, and then double book on top of that. Tomorrow I may meet a potential roommate. Very weird living situation prospect, but I have to get out of this current situation soon b/c it's taken large chunks of what sanity I had left. I can see why people sometimes just up and leave early, even on Fulbright. And also why independent research is really freaking difficult, especially in a field where people take one look at me and don't think I can make paper b/c I'm a woman. Or b/c I don't look strong enough. Or think I know nothing about making paper!!! This last one I need to work on - I'll ask my tutor tomorrow for help, b/c I am sick and tired of people thinking that I'm just some random person who landed in Korea to check out hanji w/o having done any research or papermaking.

I found out today that one of my aunts knows the hanji enthusiast I've been trying to meet! She had denied my request to visit b/c I was a random stranger calling her home (and she's quite old, recovering from surgery), but now I have a connection! Thank goodness. I also found out that the widow of a hanji maker in the town that I visited yesterday is still alive and well and in the hanji business. So it's nice to know that some leads are still warm. I have tons and tons of legwork to do, and it's getting colder (weather-wise) fast.

I'm definitely in a weird family zone lately. Hopefully some major pieces of my life here will come together very shortly and I can stop posting like a zombie.

Trying to be calm while overwhelmed

So, in that spirit, I'll spare the grisly details of traveling like a maniac and being w/family 24/7 (that, by the way, is NOT over yet ... tomorrow is the day our extended family comes together for my grandfather's death rites, so it's family all the way for a while). I'll come back to the weirdness of today's "quickie" day trip to a small city 2 hours from Seoul for a hanji festival later - still processing that.

I'm pulling a Terttu, but w/not as many photos. I'm going to worry about putting everything on flickr LATER. So these are the selects, for now.

On Jeju Island, these phallic fertility gods are ALL OVER the place. No joke.

This is Dragon Head Rock, a basalt formation from a volcanic lava flow. This is the angle that avoids the hotels along the seaside.

Hiking up to a Buddhist shrine, and all over places on the island, are rocks that people place that they wish on.

You do it w/o knocking down all the ones that came before, obviously.

Drinking mountain spring water at the shrine (all ladles and cups are already there - works in a culture that's not germ-o-phobic).

I loved seeing all of these in all sorts of places. This is in a mountain grotto, surrounded by candles and incense.

These are below, closer to the bottom of the mountain.

RIGHT ACTION.

A ginormous spider (there were tons, and their webs were a bright yellow, I think. Actually, I can't remember exactly, but they were striking) at the O'Sulloc tea museum, where we had kick-ass green tea ice cream.

FOOD. This place was the closest you'd get to organic, close to the ground eating. I think they grow all their stuff on sight - this is from the Spirited Garden, an amazing site devoted to bonsai trees, known as bunjae in Korea.

Ginseng being ... I don't even know. It was a creepy visit, part Dharma Initiative, part infomercial.

This was the closest we got to the "beach" on the island. This part of the island at this time of year is very dangerous, so we weren't able to get to sea. We skipped the "cruise" tour and instead got our feet wet. Of course, I had to go out a second time and then have waves crash all over me (no place to run: all rocks), which embarrassed my family to no end since I was in a linen dress that of course went see-through.

We watched this dude get up on that big formation and take pictures of himself.

This is at the biggest Buddhist temple in Korea.

This, too, which makes me wonder about what is in my blood. Since I do work like this all the time (the piece is LONG, vertical, and embroidered: labor labor labor labor labor).

Inside the temple.

I love this kind of repetition. Again, making me wonder about my bloodline.

Cheesy hotel pics. We stayed at a REALLY fancy hotel (part of the package), which was a lovely treat. My sis and her husband never had a honeymoon, so this was how we compensated for it.

In Busan, a port city on the southeast shore of Korea, there's a famous seafood market. It was pretty wild.

There were too many people so I could only shoot a few pics. The catch was gorgeous mostly and scary sometimes. Sad, too, like the turtles.

The portrait of the young artist (in a very badly coordinated outfit b/c it was the last day and I had run out of clothes [but thank goodness Pauly sent yoga pants as a gift w/my sister from NYC!!!]) knitting next to a 1995 piece by a famous dead Korean artist (Nam June Paik) in a hotel lobby.

The KTX (high-speed rail) train from Busan to Seoul.

Coming "home" to amazingly amazing "knife noodles" - cut noodles with dumplings in broth. The kimchee at this place was oversaturated w/garlic. I mean, outrageously so. This restaurant only serves this dish, and does it really well.

From the gate that leads into the bonsai garden. I wonder if I will ever have a productive life.

In between roads

I am cooling down from being REALLY angry w/my sister for leaving my camera in her hotel room in Seoul since this means I have to make an extra trip early in the morning to fetch it and then head to another city outside of Seoul for a hanji festival. I am BEAT from the travel, just having gotten back to Seoul today at 1pm and having to leave tomorrow morning. I would love to skip the festival but this is why I'm here, and sometimes research is just painful.

Tonight was hard: I was at a Fulbright intro dinner while my entire family was at a restaurant in another part of town celebrating my sister's marriage (from 2.5 years ago). I tried to get out of the dinner early but was blocked at least 3x, so by the time I was free to go, it was too late. I felt torn all night and it made for a terrible sense of not being present. I'm only here b/c of Fulbright, and wouldn't even have been at the family gathering if I didn't get the Fulbright. But...our family so rarely comes together like this. I guess, mostly never. It was hard - two of the junior researchers were like, go! Esther was like, LEAVE, NOW, and Frank was like, I come from a family that always says family first. Whew. Maybe I should just be happy to have avoided more "why aren't you married? You're the oldest!" commentary. It's amazing to me that my choice to be single is so incredibly offensive and bewildering to so many people here.

I have no pictures b/c my camera is trapped in a hotel room. But soon! I'm so overbooked I can barely stand it. Plus, it's like COLD autumn suddenly in Seoul. Good news: I got a haircut today! More on that phenomenon when I get back into town.

Off and away

I try so hard to keep my family out of the spotlight, especially when they are unsuspecting toddlers, but I have no pictures left and am wrecked from another night of insomnia. So here is my cousin's wife and daughter on the holiday. Marian got her website up and running; looks great! [she's an Obie - I advised her pre-grad school and now she's gearing up to finish her MFA.] I have one more composition to write and a reading/summary to do for next week's Korean tutoring session, then I can shower and pack. Come 6am, I'll be on my way out! I am going to try REALLY HARD to stay offline until ... well, we'll see how long I can hold out.

Back to the future

I did it! I finished my to do list!!!! I know this is a terrible pattern to reinforce and encourage, but it feels great (yoga and showering helps). I also think I'm turning Korean b/c there's a drama that I watch on the weekends w/my aunt, and tonight I was totally crying by the end. I've backed up my computer but realized it's too full, so I'm cleaning house and finding amazing, hilarious, embarrassing (like this performance), wonderful things. Some things never change. Four years ago, I said, "I want to crawl into bed all the time and sleep" and "I want to be on a real vacation with a real beach, clean, and no one I know".

The invasion has begun!!!

My leaves have gone public!! Courtesy of Elizabeth and the whole crew in Morelia. Identidades.04 has begun!

Meanwhile, I have sealed up my 2nd subscription and they will go to post tomorrow. Along w/a couple other mail art goodies to two different continents. Now that I've finished those am in the middle of a second load of laundry, and have finished my Korean homework, I just need to apply for one more grant and then I will feel caught up enough to fully enjoy my family vacation in a couple of days. Can't wait! Can't wait to be unshackled from my computer, and to get out of Seoul.

Yesterday I had two 4-hour sessions w/Koreans born in 1979. That's a lot of Korean practice and catching up on Korean culture. But it was great to meet a fellow artist who works in a craft medium and gets the whole being an artist, being an artist who uses her hands, having a weird schedule, choosing not to be married, choosing not to date life. Seyeon is working on a fantastic piece now, which looks like a cathedral sitting in a teacup, about 2.5 feet high. Very sad I didn't have my camera on me.

Distraught

[My great uncle's ashes are in one of these drawers but I have no idea which one. It's not even labeled.] I have been so distracted by the current state of affairs back in the US that I forgot that I had a blog. I had horrible nightmares last night: I was in a class that Obama was teaching. I asked, "what if you don't win?" and he was very calm about it, as were all of the other students, who were all men. I then put my hands to my face and started crying, first just my body heaving, and then it all came out and I was practically screaming. No one seemed to understand why I was so shook up. Later, Obama's oldest daughter came to him with her birth certificate and asked why she had "Lazarus" as a middle name (amongst a few other middle names), and if he had wanted a son instead of a daughter.

It must have come from dinner and ice cream last night with Kelsey, who believes that the racists and idiots are the majority of the country, and that McCain will win. We also talked about our complete lack of faith in people. I mean, in people being able to do good rather than evil. She, a sociologist, and I, an artist, both think that people, given the opportunity to lie, cheat, and steal, will do those things. We both feel that the greatest shared human endeavor that we could participate in now is the complete eradication of our species. But since that's not going to happen, I need a new coping mechanism. Obviously, I've failed in the whole not reading the news business.

On the bright side, my written Korean is getting better! People keep touching my knitting on the subway w/o asking me and some student ran past me and pulled all my stitches off my needle, but at least the skein is getting smaller! Knitting thread takes much longer than paper. Today, I'm going to meet Lori's friend's daughter-in-law's sister, who is a ceramicist.

I also recommend listening to Josh Ritter's "Girl in the War."

Shifting the spotlight

I'm getting sick again. As usual, from overwork. So, unless you want to hear about how I was on a bus today and it hit something (thank goodness it wasn't a person), follow these links!

1. Don has been putting together lots of sound and visuals on his and Rebecca's website. I met them in Mexico last summer - he is a percussionist and composer, she is a dancer and choreographer who just started teaching at Purdue this year. She's the best non-licensed bodyworker ever, and they are both amazing novice bookbinders.

2. Kathy, a pianist in Chicago, has started a new website to bring the creative community together.

3. Terttu, an Estonian-born, Chicago-based photographer, has FINALLY updated her blog w/the longest post ever, almost all pictures. I miss her like crazy.

I think that is part of my exhaustion, too, just constantly trying to keep up w/my friends in far-off time zones. Also, to indicate how worn down I really am, I actually referred to the Bible today while talking to a book arts class. In a really weird way. Even as it was rolling out of my mouth, I was thinking, "what the hell are you saying, crazy woman??" I'm counting the days until I get to fly off to an island . . . five days left!!

Boundaries

[Asia One, a b girl.] I am run a little ragged after staying up until 2am doing I don't even remember on my computer. I think it was a lot of belated updates on my website. I've been having to reformat lots of my docs to fit A4 paper to print here. But I'm close to done w/another app, which means two more and I'm done for the rest of the month. Today in class, my tutor said that I come across as too nice b/c I speak to slowly in Korean. But it's not even that - I speak quickly in English but still come across as a doormat!! We talked today about how I need to learn to say no. I am getting into a lot of trouble b/c of this, and always have. But it's funny that she mentioned the speed thing. It reminds me of when I was learning how to dance and my teacher said I had all the moves but had to do them FASTER. So that'll be my new thing.

The upside to today's failure to shore up my boundaries: I was knitting on the subway again on my way home, and got a LOT of attention. Usually a few older women will take notice and ask what I'm doing, I say I'm making a piece, and that's that. But today two women made me come over and show them what I was doing and they were like, "WHY are you only purling?? You need to knit!" I tried to explain to them that I only purl now since I'm a paper knitter so that's my habit. Knitting pulls the paper too tight. Besides, it's easier to do all the work in the front. Then, they kept trying to get me a seat by being on the lookout for people who were getting off the train. Once I sat down, the woman to my left asked me what I was doing and then the man on my right asked what kind of thread I was using (ramie) and so on.

Finally, a woman actually got up from her seat to sit next to me and ask what I was doing. So the whole story came out and she was really impressed that I'm here to study hanji, that I can speak Korean, and that I make such lovely work. It was nice, too, b/c she asked where I was staying and I told her about all the pressure from my uncle to get married, and she said, "it's not like you CAN'T, you're just choosing not to since you have your own work to do!" She was very supportive. I think I'm getting the attention more so now that the piece is getting longer and more conspicuous.

Oh, my word ruler is in another show in Denver at Abecedarian Gallery. Tomorrow is the last big obligation that I have, which makes my horoscope even more apt: "You come on stage to greet an adoring audience, do a riveting song and dance, then announce that you won't be doing any more shows for a while because you're about to go off and get busy on creating your next big splash."

My triceps are sore

Agh. This holiday shortened week is making my life a little harder than I'd like. My tutoring was pushed to today, which means I have tons of homework tonight to do before I go back tomorrow for another session, but ALL of it is really hard! I had to get another review of negations (I keep mixing up things like "I am not" and "I don't have") and learned passive voice, which is killer and completely unintuitive. I hate learning grammar that I don't even like to use. Passive voice sucks.

BUT, on my way to the post office today to mail my absentee ballot request and another residency app, I realized that I am being too much of a perfectionist about learning Korean. I'm American, so of COURSE my Korean is going to be a little off. So why do I keep beating myself up about speaking like a Korean American, if that is who I am?? I started to realize this last night while out w/Julie (we walked thru a couple of trendy neighborhoods after seeing a traditional performance at a big palace and having really good noodles): I don't expect her, a Korean-born Korean who studied English in classroom settings and spent 6 months in NYC, to speak flawless American English. And no one else in Korea seems to expect me to speak flawless Korean Korean. So why do I think I have to live up to an unreasonable standard?

This started to unravel when Julie asked me how to say in English that something is really close. The saying in Korean is something akin to, "it's right in front of my nose" (I had apologized for walking to one bus stop and then realizing I had to go to a different one down the street). I couldn't think of anything similar in English, and then thought about what I would have said if I was here. Which would have been something like, "no worries, it's like 2 secs away." And then I thought, why do I even talk like that? And it all started to unroll back into history as I tried to explain to her in Korean how people create their own very particular ways of speaking and communicating as a very direct reflection of their own identity, or the identity that they wish to assume.

She asked, "why not one second?" and I said, "I guess at some point in my life, I decided that everything would be TWO seconds...to indicate how impatient I am, but to temper it just a wee bit." I explained the same thing in relation to handwriting, about the different phases we go through while learning to write and creating our own penmanship style. Beyond the hearts that girls often used to dot their i's and j's, I remember being very deliberate about how I practiced my letters, seeing examples of how I wanted my writing to look in my teachers' notes, or later on, in letters from men that I dated, or friends that I admired. I used to never understand why teachers sometimes wrote in chicken scratch. But now I get it, and love that I can scrawl things that are only legible to me (and sometimes, not even!).