"Widespread Dust"

Michael and I met Lee Chang-Soo, an artist in Seoul who uses mulberry bark and natural dyes in his work. As always around here, crazy labor-intensive work, but I'm glad he's doing it. We all suffer from the same disease: once you get your hands on GOOD materials, like Korean mulberry or high-quality hanji, you don't want to use anything else. He also uses natural dyes. It was fun to visit an artist's studio in an artsy art school hood, and then weird to hear the siren routines for invasion exercises. They said they're so used to them that it doesn't freak them out, and when Michael asked what you'd do if the north was really invading, they said, nothing! There's nowhere to escape!

Good old yellow dust season is in high gear, and gross. You can see it and taste it and see more people in masks and covering up their faces. It seems worse to not be able to escape from THIS phenomenon. Tempts me to skip dyeing class until it rains and just hole up at home and WORK. I started my taxes yesterday and it went on far too long, and they're not even done yet. I had a mild anxiety attack last night about overloading my schedule, but my tutor reminded me of how well I'm doing now, like a completely different person from when we first met last fall, and how I just need to ride out the grant period and take advantage of all it has to offer. Which is a WHOLE lot. It's like a test of how big my belly really is.

The best thing to greet you when returning from the dead

I slept for a solid 9 hours and even though my body feels like it was thrown out a window from several stories high (damn that bed!), I think I've made the turn and will be fine. But what made it even better was to see that Jami's first NYT piece is published! Of course, it's superb. I didn't even wait to wash my face to start reading.

Forced bed rest

[Hanhee Ham, a leading anthropologist and professor who teaches at Chonbuk University, Lee Dong Hee, director general of the Jeonju Historical Museum, me, and Michael Reinschmidt, a visiting professor in museum studies at Chonbuk, and also an anthropologist.] I got back last night from a FANTASTIC research trip to Jeonju. It was all great until we were about 20 minutes away from Seoul on the bus ride back and I got sick. I'm not sure what it is about Korea that makes me vomit so much in moving vehicles, and I wish it would stop. I also am not sure how I got myself home from the bus terminal and then started my laundry, but my body was having none of my attempts to work through the food poisoning after a while.

I had to cancel all of my appts today and likely will have to clear tomorrow since I haven't really eaten anything but a handful of crackers today and was barely able to take water in the morning. Thank goodness for Kelsey who lives upstairs, b/c she brought me more fluids and things to eat. My cousin called to see what I was up to and I was sad that I couldn't come out to play but he said to just make rice gruel and take care of myself. I have no intention of making anything since it requires getting out of bed.

But this all takes away from how amazing my trip was. In particular, Professor Ham was very knowledgeable and generous, plus she took care of the bulk of my transportation, food, and lodging during my stay. I met a ton of people who are all doing amazing work and got everything done on my list save meet one professor. But I'll definitely make another trip before I leave, so I'll meet her then. My last stop was the opening of a hanji exhibit at the museum pictured above, where Michael and I were asked to participate in the ribbon cutting ceremony, which was hilarious. Appropriate that my first one is in the name of hanji.

Pictures:
1. The hanji museum
2. A local papermill
3. An intangible property holder in hanji screen making (you can't make hanji without the bamboo screens that come out of his studio), and
4. A hanji exhibit at the Jeonju Historical Museum.

I should be packing

This is ground up persimmons (when they were green) for dye. My whole apt stinks now of it - not a fresh smell, not quite vinegary...

I had a super long lesson today. OF COURSE, I had another language barrier issue that caused me to have to undo a bunch of the work I had spent hours doing. This keeps happening w/this teacher. Oh well. He did the whole rest of the pot for me b/c I was making a mess of it (I can relate; I would be that kind of teacher if I had me for a student). So now I'm halfway thru: it's a double-walled vessel, so I'm at the opening and have to weave back down. But I'm not going to touch it for a few days.

My hanji teacher came by, too, and it was great. Like a stitch & bitch, only w/men. Kind of weird, but at the same time, it's great to spend time w/people who are weird like me. My hanji teacher had gotten us all these awesome trimmers (plier-like scissors that latch shut and have a spring mechanism) that are PERFECT for this craft. We were all getting excited about it b/c we are tool geeks. He got it in the fishing section. The fishing section is always the best place for everything. Now I don't have to worry about getting them myself (I had been instructed to go to the car section. I don't like the car section. Fishing is much easier to handle).

On the way to class, I stopped at my fave taco stand b/c the guy is cute and sweet and always knows that I'm the hanji person. Then, in the subway bathroom, I completely wiped out b/c of the squat toilet: my foot got caught on the rim and my left knee and upper shin took the brunt of the impact. Not cool, but I think I'll be lucky enough to only come away w/nasty bruises. This is why I should stay away from holes in the ground.

Tomorrow I take off for a 2-day trip to Jeonju. I booked a couple more appts this morning, so my schedule is packed. Two museums, a national heritage holder, three professors, a researcher from Arizona, a papermill, and an opening. Wheee!!

Nick of time

I realize I shouldn't take all those little idioms for granted in English. Since I have to learn a million for my Korean exam. Well, I won't actually learn them all but they're something that I hadn't given much thought until I found out I'd be tested on them.

Yesterday, I realized that I needed REAL down time, and let myself take the night off to read about polar bears and narwhals and go to bed early.

Today, I was so thankful I got that rest b/c it was another long day. Good, but long. I did jiseung homework until I had to run to dyeing class. We did a simple dye, so it was pretty painless, and I finally brought some hanji to dye so I hope that works out. Then a whole bunch of us went to a temple close to my home to meet the son of a famous late monk who was an incredible Buddhist painter. Then we went to the temple grounds. Totally gorgeous stuff. Kind of embarrassing that I hadn't been there b/c it's so close, but now I know where to go for a quick mountain escape. The late monk had done all the paintings along the outside of the temple's buildings, which are fantastic. These are my pics from the visit.

Michael and I headed back to my place to digest and then we ran out for dinner and coffee in Hongdae before meeting Kim Baek-ki and his artist friend who lives on the big island and does all sorts of work w/paper and hanji. So now I have a TON more leads, but of course that means a TON more research. But just in time: the professor I meet on Thursday down south is at the university where apparently two other professors teach, whom I should meet. So I hope I can quickly arrange meetings for while I'm there so I don't have to make that trip again.

It has been super to have Michael as an associate; our research interests converge nicely and it just makes the meetings less stressful. Plus, it's invaluable to have the post-meeting sessions to debrief. So much to be thankful for!

Marathoning has become my default

Whoa. I didn't think I had it in me, but I gave one hell of a tour to my friend Maho today. We had three years together in NY when her dad was sent on business from Japan, and the last time I saw her was at her wedding in Guam in early 2007. This was her first trip to Seoul, and I carefully wrote out everything I wanted to do with her, along w/the location and number of her hotel, where I was supposed to meet her at 10am, and then left it on my desk when I left my apt this morning. Classic.

But I got her to a palace, art exhibit at Kukje Gallery, non-spicy lunch at a famous Korean home cooking place in a gentrified hood, the requisite tourist drag, a dyeing session w/my teacher (I did bug dye today; she did the red wood), a two-second meeting w/the owner of an art book cafe/gallery, tea at the bird cafe, a long hike through a traditional Korean hood, errands at a ginormous book store, and dinner w/her Japanese friends in a market district. Where I refused to eat Korean-style beef tartare.

(Bugs + iron mordant). I even managed to buy tights and tank tops on my way home. Now I have a huge pile of Korean homework to do before class tomorrow morning. But thankfully, I was able to get out of going to my other teacher tonight. So I'm feeling slightly human again. On the escalator out of the subway tonight, I wondered if what I'm experiencing right now is not abundance, but excess. I'll think about it while squeezing out a Korean composition.

Maybe Velma was right about dying

After meeting w/a teacher, her disciple, and my aunt today for late morning / lunch / coffee (yes, again. But it was watery and I only had a little before bolting), I went back for another round of dyeing. Today was something I don't have an English translation for yet, but it makes things red and purple.

There were two other students there, excited about the process. It's nice to be reminded through other people's joy of how satisfying it is to work by hand and love the results. I was feeling worn down b/c another teacher called me three times today to insist that I come see him at the hospital (his wife is there postop) this weekend, either by canceling my other dates or by coming late at night, to a place FAR from my home. I think that people forget that I am a student, and a human being with a rather weak liver (meaning I tire easily), rather than a mechanized disciple.

I've been thinking a lot about what Melissa blogged about recently in regards to the banking concept of education. I feel like this is how it works here It's hard to participate in a system I don't believe in, and even if I did, at this point I would have to cry out, "I am not a big enough vessel!!" When the teacher thinks that I am expressly here to master a craft at the expense of my health and stay motionless under his foot for the next several months, all I want to do is run.

A few days back, Velma had emailed asking about how dyeing was going, but the "e" had slipped out and I wondered what she was referring to, b/c I hadn't been thinking about dying. But now I wonder if this will be the last straw before something gives. I pray for no nasty fights, but I have a feeling that there are going to be some major disappointments that I will have to dole out soon.

Speaking of dying, I just found out that my very first boss at my very first salaried job just passed. And so it begins.

More unwanted liquids

Korea is hard on me. Today I took black coffee. I do all sorts of things here I would never do in my American life. But there's something about hanging out w/Koreans, and also w/Europeans, that makes me drink coffee. And, more unwillingly, sit in obscene amounts of secondhand smoke.

This was my lunch. Honey cinnamon toast. Michael took Dohee and me to a lovely photo gallery/cafe and we just launched into our meeting. His Australian designer friend stopped by for a bit, and told me about a nearby place called Cook & Book (sisters, one a chef, one a book artist). Then, the performance artist that she wanted us to meet arrived.

Dohee had told me about this guy a while back but I never made the connection b/c I was just overwhelmed with other things. But wow. This guy is the real deal. I mean, the consummate performance artist. Impeccable, gorgeous, and insanely well-connected. I loved how he talked about performance art not being visual art or music or dance or theatre while still encompassing all of those things. And that he never imagined he would do this kind of work, but here he is, making amazing work and making a living doing it.

Michael and I were blown away, and after several hours (we eventually migrated to Kim Baek-Ki's office), tried to recover over dinner and then tea/coffee.

[The office.] It's almost too much to digest. During the day, I got a call from the professor down south, so I'll hit the road next week and she will make reservations at her university's guest house so accommodations are all taken care of. I'll get to meet the national intangible property holder for hanji screen making! Plus visit two museums.

Raining, pouring, pouring. Tomorrow I see my joomchi teacher and then back to my dyeing teacher. I have to call my jiseung teacher to report of my progress/lack of progress. Haven't touched my Korean homework. It's endless. Fantastic. Exhausting. Korea.

"Gloomy day"

[That's what my teacher called it; he speaks the most English of all the ones I've met thus far.] This chocolate cake was not very good. But the cafe was sweet; I was glad to have skipped the chain behemoth on the main road in hopes of finding a smaller place on a side street. It was a gallery/cafe and I spun cord while waiting for my new teacher, who was running late. Thank goodness sessions w/him are not hours long, but there's a catch: fried chicken and beer/soju afterwards. AAGH! After dyeing two silk scarves with onion skins, one set in alum and the other in iron, I got completely sloshed and then stumbled off to meet Christian for the runaway documentary hit here about an old farmer in his 80s, his wife, and their cow. You could count the number of people in the theatre on one hand. It was quite lush, though, which was nice on the eyes on today, since it's been raining and cloudy.

This new teacher also has some wild stories and his student came again, with her 5-yo grandson, who was crazy adorable and, like me, has one dimple on his right side. He wants me to come tomorrow again to do more dyeing, but I don't know if I can fit it in. This is serious teacher week. Or, maybe I've just entered the serious student phase, though I feel spread thin. My load gets heavier by the day, but I got a message from a professor down south who alerted me to a hanji show at a history museum, which is great timing. I'll get a trip in the next couple weeks and take care of some major research points that I'll need to present to my colleagues next month.

P.S. about fieldwork

Turns out that I missed my window for my most important fieldwork: visiting truly traditional hanji makers who only work in the winter. They've already wrapped up for the season. This morning I talked to Bo Kyung of FIDES, and they already visited the one place I wanted to visit. I called today, and he said that there's no point in going b/c it would just be an empty mill, but we had a good conversation. In the end, though I'm sorry to have missed it (especially since I was fully aware of the traditional season), I also realize that I got what I needed in January, and that now I understand why it would have been hard to appreciate this other mill if I didn't have my apprenticeship.

I also see how far I've gotten in my Korean skills: I had an artist friend call this mill in the summer b/c I was so unconfident about my verbal ability. He said that they didn't accept visitors, so I had put it aside. All the sites do that: they refuse you, and then you have to find another way in. This is how it has worked for me every time. So that's part of the learning curve. At least I don't have to do a last-minute trek into the deep countryside tomorrow! And I emailed him my research images/videos to date, which again reminds me how far I've come: composing missives and touch typing in Korean.

I just need to move forward with the mindset that I am fully in the hands-on research phase, and that I can ditch the fieldwork (with the exception of visiting the paper museum ... but there is no rush on that).

So much for free time

I had a grand fantasy of having the next two days free so that I could catch up on paper and Korean homework. I should know better! This is Korea. Today, I met Michael and his performing/visual artist friend, who took us to meet her natural dyeing teacher right in the heart of Seoul. I'm not sure why I always expect my teachers to be women, since they have all turned out to be men. We walked right into his studio and looked around until he showed up with another student. After introductions and talking for a while, they fed us lunch, all grown and made on site. This teacher is no joke: he's a Marxist dyeing pro! After hearing his political and philosophical stances, I told him about my great uncle and that made him happy since he was in the same camp. Who knew we'd get a crash course (more like scolding for being so ignorant) in eastern v western philosophy + the mythology of Lake Baikal when visiting an artisan.

Then, we all walked over to a traditional historical village, Bukchon, and had green tea served by a nurse who does hospice work and volunteers at the hanok. She just got married last month, and explained that we should know that she's married b/c of the color of the tie on her traditional dress: it's purple, which is the mixture of red and blue, which represent yin and yang. She also talked about how helpful it is to bring in wooden trays of tea in ceramic cups to hospice patients, since they are so used to metal trays of syringes and drugs and so on.

We then wandered over to an art opening (and I finally learned how one main road connects to another part of town! I had only known the road from one point before) of an artist who died over a decade ago. His friends created this show in his memory; he only painted stars, on blackened hanji. Michael then took me to a gorgeous store that makes amazing interior objects out of wood and hanji (the literal translation of the place's name is "paper wood"). Exquisite. Today was another huge opening, another successful dig, another enormous unearthing. It's amazing to know that there are all sorts of people scattered all over the place, deeply entrenched in Korean history and culture, just doing their thing. I go back tomorrow for my first session w/the dyeing teacher, and the next day I get to see Dohee on a brief visit she is making to Seoul, along w/another performance artist based in Korea.

I've thought for a long time that I would do this year here and then go back home and get back to my life and that would be it. But it's not like that at all. I know it's easy to say this b/c the weather is getting nice and the sun was out today and the food was good (though the box wine at the opening was frightful), but I can see now how people come here thinking they'll just stick around for a year, and then end up here for years. Or, in my case, most likely coming back for more. It goes deep.

Reluctant to admit

I lied to my teacher today on the phone when he called from the hospital to check and see how my chamber pot progress was going. I didn't want him to know I had not touched it since Thursday. He called when I was lunching w/Esther and Steph, two Fulbrighters nearly a decade younger than me but very good at advising me. Once I got home, I did other things for a few hours before I finally buckled down to work on the piece. I am a little over halfway to the point that I told him I was at. And now I realize this very simple fact, which I have been in denial about my entire life: if you don't do your work, you lose those work days, and they're gone forever. There's no doing double/triple time in the days remaining to make up for lost time. You're just behind.

I can't cheat time, even if I try really, really hard. I recognize that in exchange for not doing my work, I instead had lots of dopamine spikes over the last week. I'm feeling incredibly torn about my research, too. I'm setting up opportunities that work for my hands (more like, my hands work for them), but I've backburnered all my field work since December. The tricky thing is that I want it done by April, but I also want to stay put and work until April. The trickier thing is that I don't want to do the field work anymore. But then I get that nagging "what if?" feeling: what if this is the only opportunity I get to keep making these visits and contacts and I'll blow it if I concentrate on learning new skills. This is the problem with having an over-ambitious research plan, and being indecisive.

The bad news: While I continue not to decide what to do and what to cut, time keeps running. And now my weekend is booked - I had forgotten that my friend from Japan is visiting and I have to take her sightseeing, and one of my paper teachers in Seoul wants to see me about some exhibit. There goes my catch-up studio time.

The good news: I've finally run out of blue cord that I spun in January, so I can't distract myself any longer by making gourds. Also, I've restocked my brownie supply in hopes that chocolate will keep me afloat until July.

Returning slowly

I have been inching further and further away from the life I thought I was supposed to lead and closer and closer to the one that I like to think is a little healthier for me. I mailed off my fourth piece to my subscribers today and it felt SO GOOD to do that (as well as find a much closer post office than the one I had originally been using). All I can do to keep myself sane lately is to put "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter" on repeat.

I've also laundered all of my bedding, and today treated myself to four pairs of sparkly socks. I've decided that I should never live without red shoes (preferably boots), but haven't had time to find my next set.

Today I took a little walk in the afternoon because I came home from my Korean lesson and felt like my apartment was a prison. It made me realize that for any long-term studio and living space, I can't feel hemmed in.

For a moment, I thought, "how can it already be this warm in February??" and then realized that it is MARCH. The panic is setting in now: not. enough. time. I have to get back on the road to finish up my fieldwork but I don't want to. I have to remember that it will only get harder to travel once it gets warmer and I get more busy.

All this to say that I'm avoiding some work that is on a deadline and tired from crying hard this afternoon. Also, that the sausages under this sign were HUGE but I didn't want to shoot while the vendor was manning his booth.