So it’s funny… The other night I was bitching to my friend Myoung Jae about how in Iksan, I was the only person I knew who’d actually sat down and read Confucius (or, as he’s known in Korea, Cong-Ja). Now, I’m not just talking about foreigners, I mean Koreans too. Korea’s supposed to be a Confucian society, after all. So you might think that a fair number of people are at least passingly familiar with The Analects or The Great Learning (I think this is the same book, by the way, but I am not sure). I asked Korean friends …
Month: October 2003
오늘은 행복하고 마음이 들다…
10월에 너무 아펐어요. 감기가 너무 너무 나빴고 고드를 죽이었어서 못 썼어요. 미안해요! 하지만 요즘 다 괜찬아요. 오늘은 우유를 없어지만 커피를 맛 있었어요. 오재밤에 학생이 나한테 핸드폰으로 SMS 매스지들이 보냈어. 슬픈 이야기 있었어요… 하지만 학생이 나중에 행복핼거예요. 나는 잘 졸 수 있어서 나도 행복 하고 생각 했어요. 뭐 생각 했어요? 사람들이 다 생월을 볼수없어서 사람들이 다른 사람을 많이 피료해요. 내 잘 못 보는것 다른 사람이 볼 수 있고 다른 사람의 잘 못 보는것 나는 때때로 볼수있어요. 오늘은 영화를 보�毛楮�… 같이 보고싶어요? 오늘은 완전히 정직 생월을 다시 시작했어요. 원야하면 정직하게 말 하면, 고요하게 살거예요. 오늘은 내 공상 과학 소설 (SF novel) 쓰기 …
Tattoo
Okay, so in a string of comments on a previous post, I mentioned the idea I had to get a tattoo in Korean. I toyed with the idea as something I would do if I ever left the country, to remind me of my time here. I thought of some funny tattoos I could get. In Canada, I was thinking of getting something like, “I lived in Korea for ___ years and all I got was this lousy tattoo”… in Korean, of course. But I think I can do better than that. Here is the one that came to mind …
Ever Have This Feeling?
Ever kind of find yourself plodding along in one direction in life because it just seemed as good as any other, and then, sudden as a car crash, or a safe dropping out of the sky, you turn your head and realize you’re just on the wrong path altogether? And realize that you’d kind of intuited it all along, and begun to wonder whether your doubts were a sign of some kind of neurosis, and then, no, you realize, you were just going through the motions? You realize because of that adrenalin from the crash, or the safe falling, maybe, …
Butterflies and Wheels
I am clapping my hands and quietly cheering… There is something a little breathtaking in a level of science-phobia that can see ‘negativizing’ disease, suffering and death, as harmful and repressive. One is reminded of Woody Allen’s retort to a character’s reproach, in ‘The Front’, that he really wanted success: ‘So what should I want, a disease?’ Does Marglin seriously think that disease, suffering and death (the death of other people, remember, as well as one’s own) would be a source of joy and pleasure if only it weren’t for the ‘scientific medical system of knowledge’? Has the postmodern left …