From the other side of the border

The conference in Tepoztlan was fun. For an introvert like me who doesn’t always enjoy the constant socializing at some conferences, saying the conference was fun is giving it a LOT of credit.

I guess the fact that it really wasn’t a conference in my “field” also helped. I didn’t feel the pressure to meet anybody big in my field or to chat them up. (Not that I do that in conferences in my field anyway.) I didn’t feel like I had to impress anyone. I was more or less an active observer at the same time I was a participant.

And I did end up getting a lot of help on my own work. The paper I presented, which I didn’t think people would be all that interested in, culled enough interest among the participants for me to get a good batch of quality comments. The conference being a history conference, most of the participants were historians, and getting comments and suggestions from historians, I found, is refreshing. They tell you things about your paper you overlooked or things that simply didn’t enter your mind. I also got a very generous offer of introduction to a very big scholar in my field (broadly defined).

But more than that, I liked the people I met and hung out with. Living with them and seeing them everyday for a week, I feel like I really got to know some people the way you don’t usually get to know people at conferences. It’s an interesting and pleasant experience.

The highlight, however, was definitely the hot Cuban guy. Not exactly my type, but objectively speaking, hot. Since his English wasn’t very good and since my Spanish is even worse, or rather, since I can’t speak Spanish, our communication remained minimum. But I think I know him quite well. I think I know his type. Although he’d probably reject to my saying so. (I was called out for holding the stereotype of the Latin lover over him. I tried to wiggle out of that by denying any familiarity with such stereotype. I’m not American, you know.) The sensitive, romantic, artist type. Heh heh heh. Sings well, dances well, gets along with everyone well.

I laughed when he seemed to use a bad pick-up line. Maybe it was because of the language issue, but it sounded too trite I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Do you want to come over to the party at M later?”
“Umm, I don’t know. It’s a bit late for me.”
“But why is it late? We have all the time in the world.”
*** Burst into laughter here. Who does this guy think he is? Christopher Marlowe? I could hear the first line of Marlowe’s From the Passionate Shepherd to His Love: Oh come with me and be my love–Carpe Diem, right? Which reminds me that my first love actually wrote out the entire poem for me when he first started dating. Hmm, so maybe the unreceptiveness (is this a word?) is my problem.

I totally thought he was kidding when he said he’d written two books and was working on his third. That he was a writer. Oh yeah, I thought to my self, I have a whole list of books my self. Books that I want to write. But I discovered that he is actually a pretty established writer in Cuba. His second book won one of the 2006 Casa prizes! And I thought he was a bum, if an attractive bum. He seemed so laid back, I couldn’t imagine him having the discipline to write. But apparently he gets up at 3 in the morning and writes while looking out the streets on his beloved Havana. This is one romantic who actually works! Kudos to him. I guess I was thinking too much of the sensitive, artist types I know from college who protested on the streets instead of being classes and who spent night after night discussing politics and literature over cigarettes and alcohol. Beautiful, wasted youth. None of the guys I know survived their youthful exuberance and swagger, though.

Do I regret not hooking up? Not really. I think I’ll have a sweeter memory of the guy this way. Besides, I’m too old for hook-ups. Sad, but true. I ain’t no age-defying, rejuvenating cream.

Day before departure

So I’m leaving tomorrow for Mexico. I think I’m ready. I’ve had my freaking-out moment over the weekend when I realized that I needed to figure out the logistics of travel and all that, but that’s been taken care of. I finally summoned up enough courage to go over my essay–sometimes it’s just very embarrassing to read over stuff you’ve written a while ago.

I’m determined to have a good time in Mexico, meaning I’ll hang out with other conference participants, engage myself in the intellectual conversations, and also go out after the sessions in the evenings. I’ve been thinking in the past couple of weeks if I’m not too sober. And too work-oriented.

There’s a line from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that I’m mulling over these days. “They were just careless people.” Gatsby’s description of Daisy and her rich husband.  Carelessness is a side-effect of affluence in this context. What separates Gatsby from his dream girl is that he can’t afford carelessness. Even after he becomes rich through bootlegging, he constantly has to watch out for where he’s going. Being an upstart, especially through illegal means, he is ever vulnerable to falling back. Crashing even to a state lower than where he used to be.

Everybody wants to be able to afford carelessness. Not that I want to be mindless, or be less socially conscious, but I think I’ll try and be a bit more easygoing overall. I worry too much and think too much.

Having said as much, I have to add that the recent kidnapping of Korean Christian missionaries in Afghanistan is creating debates about Korean society and Christian influence in Korean society. I do think it was extremely irresponsible of the sending church to authorize such a mission. Korean churches can be so . . . . irrational in their zeal. I’m more interested in the growing awareness of how “Christian” Korea is in the U.S. And what that adds to the American perception of Korea. I have a lot of frustrations about Korean society and the way things are done in Korea, but I am concerned when I encounter critiques of Korea that don’t really seem to be based on any knowledge of the society and its history. Uninformed anti-Americanism in Korea, which seems to be on the rise, worries me.  Because it neither facilitates solid social critique nor cross-cultural communication. And propagates prejudice and stereotypes in its stead.

Church

I visited a friend’s church today. I’m not sure why. I guess I must be feeling lonely or something these days. I did go to church a couple of times in Philadelphia when a friend of mine who used to live here asked me to go with her. She’s not Christian. Her boyfriend is. So I went to the presbyterian church in Center City with her about twice. The sermon was boring and mundane. I stopped going and left her to work her own way to her boyfriend.

There was a period in my life when I was a faith-professing Christian. For about six years. I basically stopped going to church after I’ve moved to the States. I don’t know why, especially since most Korean foreign students seem to start going to church, even those who didn’t like church before, after they come to live in the States. To socialize; to meet other Koreans; for solace. I did go to a couple of Christian graudate student meetings in the department at Chapel Hill. Met some good people there. Didn’t quite keep up, though.

I like going to service as long as the sermons are good. I like the ritualistic side of service, something that my church in Korea significantly downplayed. While the problem I have with faith is that I simply can’t adopt a God-centered view of the world, I kind of like the suggestions of selfless devotion and ultimate communion in the Bible and the hymns. My friend’s church seemed to be on the lookout for a new minister, so they’re having a number of assistant ministers go around and to the sermons each week. I found the sermon today pretty entertaining. The title was “Making room at the table” and it was on the passage in Luke about the return of the prodigal son. Or, more precisely, it was focused on the reaction fo the older brother who resented the festival his father gave on the return of his prodigal son.

The preacher’s personality really came out in his sermon. He gave “family” as one of the two conditions for acceptance to the table. And he gave the example of how shocked he was when his aunt brought a friend (newly arrived from Mexico) to Thanksgiving–the holy family dinner!–when he was in middle school. I liked how he identified with the first son and not the prodigal son. He seemed to a moralistic and upright person. Someone with discipline and a degree of self-righteousness that accompanies such discipline. The brothers in my previous church, when they preached that same passage from Luke, always identified with the second son. The prodigal son. They were the sinners returned home to the gracious father. They didn’t believe in good deeds. Human deeds. They believed in grace and grace only.

I liked how human the preacher was. How he admitted to his humanness by talking about the “offensiveness” of the parable fo the prodigal son. Of course, he didn’t stop there. He went on to say, in a quite moving fashion, that it’s really the outsiders who become insiders when they come in the door. But his preaching itself was very human.

I’m not sure if I’ll go back . . . I know I can be a religious person in the sense that I can subscribe to the self-disciplining in religion, but I’m simply not sure about God. I’m an agnostic. I think I need some solace, but I’m not sure if I can trick myself into believing that solace comes from God. Again, that is.

Grumbling . . .

So here I am on a Saturday morning in the library trying to read for an upcoming conference. The stuff I need to go through is so out of my way–material from a different discipline–I’m not sure what I can do with it. It’s hard to get into. Which is frustrating.

Summer is going fast, but at the same time, I feel like each day is pretty long. On the one hand, it probably means I’m not doing everything I should be doing, but on the other hand, it may very well mean that I need a boyfriend. Looking back on how my summers were after I’ve moved to Philadelphia  . . . well, it seems like I was seeing someone each summer. But I haven’t had that much luck dating in the past few years, which makes me very skeptical about love. (And a bit about my lack of judgment when it comes to guys.)

There are still some things that are kind of confusing when it comes to intercultural dating. It’s funny how the dating norms are kind of different here and there. What get most confusing, though, are not so much the logistics–asking people out/being asked out, what to do on dates, etc.–but the subtler side of establishing a comfortable ground of affective communication. If that makes any sense, that is.

Or maybe I just never met the right kind of guy.

Talked to friend who I haven’t talked to for ages yesterday. She had a serious breakdown recently. She was telling me the last phase of her now-broken-up relationship with her boyfriend, and it just sounded so horrible. In addition to not being there for her when she needed him, he seems to have been verbally abusive. “You’re not physically very attractive to me anymore”; “I really don’t like the way you dress these days”; “You’re not fun to be with any more,” etc.

Granted I’ve only heard one side of the story. But I just don’t get how mean a relationship could become. Where’s the initial respect they had for each other? My respect for my ex’s just hikes up when I hear about guys like the above. Sadly, though, the world seems more full of the latter type of guys than the former.

Migrancy and Loneliness

I read this NYTimes article on Mexican workers contracting HIV a couple days ago. Mexican migrant workers, who have families in back at home, have sex because they’re lonely, because they need money; they contract HIV; they go home and their wives and kids contract HIV; family ends up all miserable.

This article sticks with me. It’s hard to say I understand the plights of migrant workers, but my heart really goes out to those who tremble with loneliness away from friends and family, who anxiously grope for a better future as they stumble through life in an unfamiliar society. Those who are overwhelmed by the desire for some kind of companionship and human contact.

For the years that I’ve lived on my own, I don’t think I’ve really thought I was lonely. But now I feel like I need some solace.

I am such a failure in the department of romantic affairs . . .

The World According to . . .

It’s come around to such that I only read fun novels (i.e. novels not directly related to work) when I’m traveling. On the plane, that is. For the round-trip to Seoul this time, I read Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist on my way there and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace on my way back. Having a good novel really helps me do the ten-hour flight thing. Otherwise, I’d be so much more miserable. Both novels were really good, and they also jerked me back to the realm of reading for pleasure.

The novel I read for fun after finishing a writing task was John Irving’s The World According to Garp. It’s the fourth? Irving novel I’ve read. The one that I like the most is still A Prayer for Owen Meany, but Garp was pretty good too. I’ve been meaning to read it for a while; I picked it up this time because it recently came up in a conversation with the date. The date, who is not in English, has read Irving.

As someone who loves to read and to write, of course I like books about writers and their lives (and the relationship between their works and their lives). The part that I found the most charming was how Garp’s first story got him Helen: “The Pension Grillparzer” wouldn’t make Garp enough money to buy a good car. Garp, however, expected more than money or transportation from “The Pension Grillparzer.” Very simply, he expected to get Helen Holm to live with him–even marry him.” The woman marries him because she’s won overy by his writing. The relationship between Garp and Helen, husband and wife, is also that of a writer and a reader. And I just find the way they relate through writing and reading so . . . . ideal. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone fell in love with me through my writing? I’ve read this that you wrote, and now I’d like to marry you. Uhhhh…. well, on second thought, in real life that might be scary. But still the idea of bonding over reading and writing is something that I can’t get over.

The date described the book as not being very kind to the women’s movement. He’s not a very ideologically inclined person, which is not necessarily bad, but I do wonder what he thinks each time I make a “feminist statement.” He must think I’m an ideological fanatic. The only literary critic he mentions is Harold Bloom too, though I think that’s more a result of his undergradaute curriculum than anything else. I must have a conversation with him about feminism in Garp when I see him this evening. I think debating whether the book is feminist or anti-feminist is beside the point. That’s exactly what is ridiculed in the book. But I don’t think the book primarily makes fun of feminism either. It ridicules ideological extremism, but it also displays a good understanding of sexism, and especially institutional sexism.

One thing I can’t get in the novel is Garp going crazy over Helen’s affair with her graduate student. I mean, I can see why one would go berserk over the spouse’s betrayal, but didn’t Garp himself engage in a couple of affairs himself? It’s not like he was such a clean slate himself. But for someone who’s had a couple of affairs with young babysitters, he is remarkably self-righteous in condemning Helen of her affair. I just don’t get it. The only thing I can think of is that Helen’s affair resulted in a substitution of Garp with the lover in her priority of reading. Since the relationship is built on Helen being the first reader of Garp, her affair is truly a betrayal. Eh, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.

The next two books on the read-for-fun list are William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Writing and War

“I explain the reasons for and benefits of silent eating. “Use your other senses to know the people around you.” (Oh, to me, talking is a sense.) “Without talking, you can still communicate with your fellow diners. Look at them. Smile at them. Rest from your usual social personality. Without the distractions of conversation, see your food.” Naked lunch. “Feel the energy and atmosphere of the room. Listen to the sounds”–birds are singing!–”and smell the food and the cut grass. Hear the noises of your chewing, and be aware of tastes and textures. Slow your eating, enjoy each bite.”

It’s not a passage from a weightloss guidebook. It’s from Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace (271), where the war veterans attending the writing workshop at the Community of Mindful Living are asked to a meditative, silent lunch. I have to admit that the idea of silent eating is a bit strange, although the call to “rest your social personality” is attractive. The book’s been interesting, if a bit slow going, so far. I always enjoy Kingston’s formal innovations and experiments–what she does differently in each book formalistically in relation to the content.

Despite the narrator’s (presumably Kingston herself, but you can’t be sure; remember the autobiographical controversy around The Woman Warrior) insistence that the workshop is not about healing–”Healing, I avoid that New Age word. It implies that something’s wrong, that they’re unwell, and need fixing” (265)–it (and the whole book) seems very much about healing. I think the iffiness that we (or at least me and the people around me) feel at the suggestion of healing is interesting. I remember getting a question at the MLA on healing in Theresa Cha’s Dictee. Although I steered away from any therapeutic implications in my readng of the text, and made that clear in addressing the question, I have to admit that healing through literature is something people who take literature seriously always have hanging in the back of their minds. It’s just that we don’t know how to talk about it in a non-New Agey way.

Kingston’s book is fueling my desire to be a part of writing group. Creative writing and not critical writing. I’ve thought about it when I was in Seoul–since I had a few fleeting ideas about stories I’d like to write–but I’m a bit hesitant to look into the possibilities of joining a writing group. It is quite a bit of a commitment. Do I have the time to do it at this point? I had the urge to write fiction a couple years back when I was in Chapel Hill too. And I did scribble a couple of short (really short) stories that are, ahem, embarrassing. It’s hard to keep on writing on your own when you have other commitments and interests. I am, however, always enamoured by the idea of sharing one’s writing with other writers who are interested in listening.

A companion piece to An Other Tongue

Because I gotta live, I need a place where I can just whine, rant, relax, be euphoric, be silly, and be sad from time to time. Personal life and work bleed into each other for me even as I try to keep them separate.

Philadelphia is scorching hot. The high today is 97F but the weatherman said the felt temperature is more like 108F due to humidity. Awesome. I finally bought a fan this morning at my neighborhood CVS. Yeah, a fan. I don’t know where I can shop for an air conditioner. I’m that dumb when it comes to living skills. But I successfully assembled the fan. And it works fine.

It feels somewhat strange to be back in Philadelphia after spending five weeks with family. It’s funny because I wanted to come back when I was in Seoul–just wanted to get away from the petty concerns that seemed to fill up the lives of family and friends in Seoul and secure some space for myself where I can concentrate on what I like to do most, read and write in peace. But now that I’m back, I don’t know, I kind of miss my family, I miss having people around to chat about random stuff, to joke with, to play with at all times. And I miss being able to eat good food without doing the grocery shopping for myself. More than anything else, I miss Korean confectionaries. I think Korean bakeries are the best bakeries in the whole wide world. I love the baked goods from Korean bakeries. The variety of goods, the texture, the cream, the sweatness . . . they just manage to get everything so right! And I miss that . . .