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March 27, 2006 >> Meditate and Destroy YouI am starting to tire of books that masquerade as grand adventures but really boil down to a self-help novel. Some examples: The Celestine Prophesy, The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and, now, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho. All of the above feature a protagonist on a buddhesque quest for personal fulfillment and depth of soul, which is all well and good - who doesn't want fulfillment? - but the chocolate shell of a story surrounding these slow revelations is hardly ever delicious. I often feel like I am eating a not-so-tasty helping of New Age.
I have just finished reading a passage in the aforementioned The Pilgrimage in which the main character steals a ball from a small Spanish child in the interest of 'facing his demons.' That's right, a grown man and his spiritual guide halt their journey to take a child's toy. This is justified by some weird deja vu thing, and also the kid's eyes are "frightening". Well holy shit man, I would be pretty pissed if I was a poverty-stricken Spanish child and some uppity European backpacker had just punked my only toy in the world. I would have frightening eyes too.
So the kid asks for the ball back several times, gets no response and starts threatening to throw rocks... all fully justifiable, in my opinion. And then our noble bully tells his young mark, "If you hit me, I'll come over there and whack you one." At this point, the guide is like, "Whoa dude, you totally passed your spiritual test! A winner is you!" And that's that. The kid cries and jumps in the river.
This is totally fucked. So we're walking along and suddenly some random kid, minding his own business and playing with his ball, is a demon in our protagonist's eyes. And then the great task becomes to steal the ball. From a kid. Who is poor. And small. So basically we learn that it's okay to be a selfish dick to the rest of the world as long as you are conquering your own inner strife?
I've noticed this trend in other, similar books too: an abandonment of external responsibility in the face of a laughably pensive attempt to gain mastery over one's self. How about the self operates in a larger system? How about it's not All In Your Mind? You can't just steal shit because it looks like a test of will. You may, in fact, be deluded and crazy. Too much meditation rocks the casbah. Too many demons victimizes bystanders.
Spiritual quests are bunk, and they should've never given you a sword.
Posted by Chris at 06:40 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
March 24, 2006 >> Just sway
On Saturday afternoon, I am writing with a head stuffed full of cotton balls and nails and pieces of pringles all stuck to sensory receptors. My hair is scrambled and buzz. I am wearing the No Pants, and will probably die soon. It is a pitiful sight, me in my computer chair.
Marta has been here for a week now, volunteering at my hagwon via the "awful" (her words, not mine) Queen's Education faculty. Apparently after you're finished all your practicums with bored Canadian kids, you get to go experience the magical world of teaching elsewhere! ...before returning to the bored kids for the rest of your life. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun. The ominous overture of a stable future.
So Marta chose Korea, which was maybe a stupid choice but whatever she's here now. So far, my director has made her feel welcome, loading her up with all the worst classes at the school and flip-flopping over whether she'll pay for Marta's tiny apartment for three weeks. Weaksass, but predictable. Marta is tired and I call her wussy, but I think she's having fun... we get to shout down the kids who insist that she is "Chris teacher Canada girlfriend!!!" And it's awesome to have her here for headbutting and various familiar WLU abuses, even if she is not, in fact, Canada girlfriend. We've gone eating and whining and privating and drinking, and drinking is the reason why we are currently hazy and full of cotton and not out in the big wide world on a Saturday afternoon.
Basically things are in this gigantic pendulum state of transition right now, what with people leaving and new people coming, so we're all in this kind of countdown state of frenzy. It's exhausting, and my room is piled high with books I've been lent but haven't opened yet. The turnovers come fast and furiously and teaching in Korea is wholly adaption, one long exercise in savoring the brief lulls and eating the minutes like so much breakfast cereal. Cereal here is pretty expensive.
Posted by Chris at 10:44 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
March 20, 2006 >> Halla Hockey
There are times when one misses hockey, out here in the Asianic wilds, and watching the Canadian Olympic team get spanked by tiny Nordic nations in a crowded bar hardly scratches that itch. Do you see how I'm making overarching racial classifications here? Asianic? Nordic? That comes from too much nationalism and too little hockey. Hitler should've watched more hockey.
Now I'm happy that I'm not at home to watch the Leafs suck and Tim yell and throw chicken wings everywhere when they lose. If there was ever a year to avoid Toronto, it's this one. But I was exceptionally happy when I found out about the Anyang Halla and learned that they were taking on some Japanese team in the Asia League Ice Hockey playoffs and that I would get to go. For six bucks! Playoff hockey! I sound like a frat boy! Holy bangbusters!
Here are some pictures of Korean hockey. They are black and white because I wanted the occasion to look historic and also because my camera sucks. But you can sorta get the general idea, right? Korean guys are playing hockey on ice. There were also some gigantic (by comparison) Europeans on each team, somewhat like the foreign ringers in basketball games. O, the glories of a shrinking world!
We yelled disparaging comments at the Japanese goalie, and Dave vowed to shotgun a beer for every goal Korea scored. After a dry first period things looked bleak, but Anyang netted two goals in quick succession shortly into the second. Onlooking Koreans stared in salty amazement as Dave celebrated by stoically spilling beer all over the stands and his face. Then he did it again. It was a classy and memorable affair for those in attendance, both voluntary and involuntary.
Outside during the second intermission, Belinda and Sam managed to get into a brawl with a shitload of kids. Our friends were beaten mercilessly with inflatable Unity Sticks and every time the children started to lose interest, all you had to yell was "One more time!" and they would vigorously renew the assault once more. It was the best fight we saw all game, which was probably because fighting in Asian hockey is frowned upon. Poor oversized European ringers... all those steroids and no one to punch.
The game ended up being rather excellent, with the home team taking a narrow 4-2 victory (with a last-second empty netter). This meant that we won! Because Korea is home! And the Japanese are filthy barbarians. So I took a picture with my best friend on the whole team, Sergio.
Posted by Chris at 09:51 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
March 19, 2006 >> Lame Fight Club Diatribe
I have often thought how wonderful it would be to carry everything you own with you, in two big bags, wherever you go. I would love to whittle my worldly possessions down to the size of airport baggage.
And here's why.
When you move as often as I do, your stuff becomes a burden. You find yourself packing boxes, once again, and you can't remember why you've decided to cart a huge selection of old video game manuals through three different houses. The trinkets that you keep for nostalgia's sake wear and fade. Things lose their meaning. Your back hurts from carrying so many fucking boxes.
So you start to leave things behind. And as you discard items, you feel lighter and lighter, like you aren't quite anchored to one spot anymore. You feel a thrilling sensation of inconsequentiality. It doesn't matter if you've had those books since you were five: they're just books. You give them away, of course, because Watership Down is a sick read for any bunny-loving boy or girl. But you let them go, your responsibility lifted. You let the Playstation 2 go and the TV go and the movies go and the clothes you keep because naked is illegal and... And you start to float with the giddiness of suddenly realizing that
You don't need anything.
Now this is mostly bullshit, of course. I am a bad preacher. I have needs too. I am in love with my computer. I could never abandon the Silver God to fly off into a clear blue sky of idealistic material independence. I still operate within the Evil Conspiracy of Things. But
but
You can always own less.
This sounds so stupid, right? Played out and wiggity-whack trite advice, spewed out of countless mouths and fingertips ever since socialism. "Why do you want so much shit?" There was even a Papa Roach song about this. I feel redundant, the latest in a long series of echoes. This is a lame Fight Club diatribe. Still, you don't have to blow up credit unions and make soap in a filthy shanty. You don't even have to give up the stuff you love. Just give up the stuff you don't love: the stuff you accumulate and never use. Think portability. Think burdenless.
I see people stapled to Ontarian suburbia, in part because they have a job and a comfortable, safe life but also because all their stuff is there. And they talk about leaving and they talk about making something more, but in the end they stay because there are car payments to make and they just got a brand-new projection TV. They have bookshelves and blinds. The more they buy to distract themselves from the fact that they're still there, the more weight they're adding to the anchor.
I've noticed that some people genuinely base their life's successes around how much they own. And that's cool, because everyone has to live for something. Neato gadgets and fancy cars aren't an entirely bad way to go. It's better than being a Scientologist.
However, if you've never really thought that your grand ambitions were material but you somehow got distracted along the way and now you're stuck, try discarding the possessions you don't really need. Whittle yourself down. Be harsh but realistic. It's hard, really fucking hard, and you might need some external motivation (such as a severe dislike for carrying heavy boxes). But you'll feel lighter in the end. I swear. 9 out of 10 Tyler Durdens agree.
I think that if you can fit your entire life into two suitcases, you can do anything.
Posted by Chris at 12:02 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
March 15, 2006 >> Oh yes
Consider.
My anti-spam protection is currently tighter than... something really tight. I've been blocking automated blogspot accounts decrying my awesomeness in two-year old posts for a while now, so if my zealousness has overlapped onto you Real Folk you should let me know. I censor because I love.
My school, Ze Olde Herald in Sanbon, needs a new foreign teacher in the next month. Meaning: soon. If anybody happens across this post and thinks, "You know, Starbucks really isn't that hot of a career opportunity... what I really want is a job where I can be around crying Korean children for most of the day," well then, you should come work here. Let me know. But you'd best be cool, because you will be required to involve yourself in extracurricular activities like firework fights on the roof and dealing with Mike's rabbit's overgrown teeth.
If you have any kind of concerns about the quality education I engage in at Herald, here is an insightful conversation I had with my students earlier this week:
Jerry: "Chris teacher is crazy."
Me: "I'm not crazy. Jerry looks like a retarded monkey on drugs."
Jerry: "Me no monkey!"
Gina: "Ha ha! Jerry is monkey!"
Sally: "Monkey Jerry monkey!"
Chris: "The word on the street is that you're a monkey, Jerry."
Sally: "Chris teacher is a King Kong. Head is monkey and body is fat mouse!"
Oh, it's great to see them using new vocabulary and referencing blockbuster films. But I'll never understand why virtually every kid insists on putting articles (a, the) before proper nouns like names, but not where they should be. It's a lingual pandemic. And don't tell me I should teach them better, because I was gonna but then they called the Chris Teacher a King Kong and that shit hurts when you happen to be tall.
Posted by Chris at 06:28 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
March 14, 2006 >> White Day
Today is White Day in Korea, which means you are supposed to buy stupid trinkets and candy for all the girls you know. This may sound suspiciously like Valentine's Day, which came and went exactly a month ago, but NO! Valentine's Day is when girls buy boys things, and White Day is when boys buy girls things. The whole silly process has been segmented for additional profits.
I have also been warned of a looming Black Day next month. I don't know much about this noir conclusion to Korea's thrilling love trilogy but I suspect that I will be forced to buy sheets of heart stickers for other guys, or perhaps give them massages. This is poor.
Korea has somehow managed to take the rampant lumbering consumerism of North American Valentine's Day and extend it to a full three months. The candy industry clearly has its fingers in all the right honeypots. Pepero Day... White Day... This country loves to celebrate by buying. I am eagerly anticipating the advent of What The Fuck Let's All Just Buy Ourselves a Little Somefin' Somefin' Day.
Posted by Chris at 12:17 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
March 13, 2006 >> Elderly and Reasonable
For Chad's birthday he kicked me in the balls. I assumed that meant he had a good time. I, on the other hand, fell down and had to hug the filthy base of an Itaewon streetlamp for comfort. Then Chad and Jen went to a dirty love motel. I took the subway home at 6 am and somehow ended up talking about Judith Thompson plays with a stranger while I tried not to throw up on her. It hurt, a lot. And this is why we are all getting old, especially Geriatric Chad. Too bad he still has a dynamite right foot. He's a whore, basically, and once he gets Alzheimers I'm going to dress up like his grandmother and beat him with a hickory cane every morning before porridge.
Posted by Chris at 05:45 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
March 10, 2006 >> Small
I don't really speak anymore. I can still think and write, but I can't muster the effort to speak, to joke or make idle smalltalk at the table. I look around the room and listen to conversation around me and I am bored and frustrated. Something is failing here, some social ability to open the mouth and channel words of no real consequence. The will is missing.
I wonder if this has ever happened before, to anyone anywhere. It feels pretentious, like perhaps I am playing at being too good for everyone around me, pretending to be interested, like nothing here could possibly offer me any insight. But at the same time, it feels like there are safes to crack once you get past the outer formalities - treasure troves of experience - but the formalities themselves are so impossibly repetitive that they can't be done any longer. They won't. I need to get straight to the core without bothering with the peel over and over again. Somehow I am rejecting the essence of smalltalk, and it's only now that I see how important smalltalk is. It is a disconcerting feeling and I wish I was better.
Posted by Chris at 12:26 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
March 08, 2006 >> Simple
I like to pirate movies so I can see which ones are good before I pay to see them again. This way I only purchase quality. Quality is defined as something you want to watch at least twice, except for perhaps Requiem for a Dream because it blackens the soul. But I bought it anyway, once upon a time.
Quality should be rewarded; an absence of quality should be punished by BitTorrent and angry forum nerds and virally spread public disdain. It's the only way Hollywood will learn.
I am my own advisory critic, a picky consumer. Don't send me to jail.
Posted by Chris at 11:16 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
March 07, 2006 >> A Korean Assault on Jazz
"What do you think of the Jazz music? I think it is yucky blucky!!"
-an introductory excerpt from Elizabeth, blossoming critic and wordsmith
Posted by Chris at 06:47 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
March 05, 2006 >> Guided Tour
This morning I rousted myself out of bed at 9 a.m. to visit the National Museum of Korea. That was the plan, at least, but 9 is far too sour a time to be waking up on a Sunday. In, truth, I waved Mike off with unintelligible grunts and stupid questions and fell back asleep until noon. I had a perfect dream in which the plot wrapped itself up nicely just before I woke up, which never happens. Yup. I escaped from the suicide-cult house without having my face branded with a fork and blow torch, mysterious girl in tow, and then I woke up. No stupid epilogue about flying tea parties or rearranging someone's DVD collection. Flawless. Privately celebrating, I took the subway to meet up with Mike and Sunni who had preceded me for hours.
As far as museums go, the National Museum of Korea is impressively modern. It was just built a few months ago in Ichon and, as its name rightfully suggests, concerns itself with all things Korean and museum-y.
We got neat little MP3 tour devices, which had some technical difficulties but, in the end, added volumes to our visit. (volume! ha ha!) They were locational-sensitive, so the theory was that you'd go near an exhibit and your MP3 player would launch into a spiel about the particular piece of ancient pottery or slave price list or whatever it was that you were looking at. The spiels themselves were well done: short blurbs about dynasties and history and bloody sword massacres, delivered by an automated female voice. Our robot guide's voice was quite tolerable, except for when her script attempted to be congenial and ask rhetorical questions like, "It's hard to believe this scroll is 1000 years old, isn't it." Because robot voices are unskilled in the art of asking rhetorical questions, they all ended up sounding like monotone demands of thought compliance. I command you to picture in your head what it would be like to watch a public paddle-flogging!
Every once in a while, an automated male voice would rouse itself, like a bear from hibernation, and ask an incredibly stupid question like, "Doesn't it look like there should be pieces of string hanging off the ends?" We were looking at a set of 10th century rulers. More often than not, the female voice would ignore his demented input and continue with her monologue, and he would fade back into silent slumber until next time.
Whoever designed the tour system was clearly maniacal. Many times I would be looking at a hangul scroll and hear something like, "This lovely painting of the..." What the fuck? What painting? I was looking at a scroll. Then I would spot the painting in question and stroll over to it, and immediately my tour would switch: "You're looking at a scroll from the..." Basically I could only learn about the scroll while I was looking at the painting, and vice versa.
We got through only one of six wings of the museum. Mike and Sunni had seen the Archeological Exhibit while I was still comfortably dreaming. When I asked for a synopsis, Mike told me that after a peculiar, awkward ramble by the electronic tour about earthenware, the female voice admitted, at the end, that, "This makes no sense." Obviously a private notation from the translator, her confusion has become immortalized in the final product somehow. I love screw-ups, far more than I love pottery.
I was clearly more fascinated by the mechanics of the tour than the museum subject matter itself. The section I saw was mostly concerned with the advancement of Korean language and cartography, which was interesting but not really noteworthy. It doesn't lend itself much to any kind of satire or criticism, and if I'm not satirical or critical, what's left to say?? I'll go back to savage the Fine Arts wings next time.
Posted by Chris at 04:04 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
March 01, 2006 >> Worry, worry, super scurry
Sometimes I feel my voice start to crack, to freefall back down into swells of cyan noise. I tumble into obscurity and it is strangely comforting. But it is also dangerous.
My deadly sin is pride. My greatest fear is the mundane. I see the world, in its teeming masses, and I am afraid of sinking into the mire of comfortable consumerism. I am terrified that one day I will wake up, almost dead, and realize that I have done nothing at all. Money is a means to an end, but wealth is not a suitable ambition. Neither is happiness, at least not in the conventional sense. I need to leave an indelible stamp on this life before I go, to scrawl my marks across the eroding landscapes and arrested organisms. I need to say something profound to humanity. Didn't I just tell you that I was proud?
And so I lay awake some nights, frustrated, realizing that time is crawling forwards and I am bloody twenty-four and still nothing has happened. I am still mired. I am still lazy and still full of impotent loftiness. And I have no excuses.
The internet has put an end to excuses, opening the doors to a new public sphere and inviting anyone and everyone to just fucking Do It Yourself. And the public has responded in force, flooding this blank canvas with oceans of words, seas of images, briny wells of ideas. The corporate-guarded gateways to cultural consent gave way to an immense marketplace of text and media, building itself higher and wider and more convoluted with every passing second. Distinction has become virtually impossible in a brand new way, but there are still those who try and succeed. And I am not one of them.
I confided these fears to Sally, a twelve-year old girl on the brink of genius, yesterday during our class. I told her how it was frustrating to want something so badly and yet not badly enough to find the time to do it. Sally knows about chagrin: she studies twelve hours, dawn-till-dark. But she studies not only at the behest of her mother, but because she sees accredited intelligence as a means to achieve her goal: "I want to make as much money as possible." She is unapologetic about her greed, and often worries that when she goes to university (6 years from now) that people will want her to go drinking and disturb her work. Sally's greatest fear is friends.
But when I asked her if there was anything, anything, that she would rather do, screw the future, she smiled a little. "Well... I really want to dress up as a character from a graphic novel and go to a convention." Graphic novels - which, I've explained to her, are different from comic books because of their adult themes and horrific depictions of violence - are one of the few pleasures Sally allows herself. Still, I hadn't really anticipated nerdy cosplay as the grand ambition of a pre-teen who can read Orwell's 1984 in two days and understand it, in a foreign language to boot.
Curious, I asked Sally what character she would be. "Oh... just this girl... she is like a fighting girl, you know? And she pulls enemies into a demon world and her hands turn into - oh, what's the word - bones and then she rips out their hearts. Yeah, she looks kind of like a vampire and has red eyes. She kills lots of people." Oh. I told Sally that when she takes over the world, she'd better remember good 'ol Chris Teacher and save him from her menacing robot hordes. And she just laughed.
But somewhere in the depths of Sally's bloodlust, my fears were assuaged. If we can learn from textbooks, we can also learn from her graphic tales of gore and fleeting mortality. Time and time again, I've tried to impress upon Sally that the ever-receding horizon of the future isn't everything, that life is mostly now. And I should take my own advice. If I should, perchance, have my vital organs forceably removed by a demon-girl one day, I think I would like my last-second flashbacks of life to constitute some kind of meaningful experience for me. I would be heartbroken to see that I had wasted my existence pursuing a grandiose lectern that never quite came. I would want my organs back so I could try again. Chasing immortality is a futile pilgrimage, especially when you realize that building your own personal totem is such engaging work that hoping to build a monument for everybody is just foolish.
History swallows most everybody, and those who withstand the currents of time do so accidentally. Imprinting the world is an incidental benefit of imprinting oneself.
Posted by Chris at 12:06 AM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink