Jeff over at “Ruminations In Korea” has posted an article about a story that has been circulating among foreigners in Korea for the last little while, maybe a week or so. His post on the subject is ominously titled:Teacher Beats Student. Which is exactly what happened. You can see the video on his site, or at the Chosun Ilbo’s site where an article is also available. The short version is, an asshole teacher stood a girl up in class and told her off—I heard a rumor he was giving her hell for drinking coffee, of all things—and then he hit …

I got into two bike accidents yesterday, and only one was my fault. The one that wasn’t, though, turned out to be more injurious than I thought. This idiot pulled out into the traffic, deciding to merge as slowly as possible while I was barreling down the road (with, I may add, the right of way). Well, I braked and in a split second decision decided to brake so that I’d hit the ground instead of the car, for fear of broken glass and so on. I was thrown from the bike and landed on my left knee and right …

Artists. What are they? I was telling Lime the other night that one thing that’s difficult about being a poet-in-waiting (meaning, an aspiring poet, as I wouldn’t consider myself a full-fledged one) is believing that your work matters. To some degree, no matter how much joy and beauty and wisdom and even awakening you bring to people, it’s a difficult task to keep faith with your job. Will the lines you write in this poem change the world? Will they be good for other people, will they do anything useful at all, even in the hearts of the people who …

In an email to an old friend who was out of country last year: It’s spring, and the pretty flowers are out… you can see the spring flowers of Korea once again, this year. It’s good, isn’t, to be in the place where you are? Aye, yes, I think it is.

I managed to photograph the thing people never see when they look at us. As I once said to Lime, being a white man in Korea is sometimes like being a black man in America fifty years ago, except it pays better. And people are much more polite about it, I should add. I’m not sure how much she’s noticed the funny glares, though when I mention them she says she doesn’t care. I’ve even gotten to the point where I’m kind of used to being an “outsider”, and I’m happier with misfits anyway. I never fit in back in …

The class ends and I burst forth from the room, rushing to my bicycle and, then, on it, down the hill and home. The cool breeze softly pours up into my face. My jacket is thick and the buffalo skin shields me from the cool. On the phone, when she says, “Manaja,” I say, “Eong?” and feel the floor under my back, holding me up five floors above the ground. I feel as if I am in slow flight, or low earth orbit. It’s good. In the tea shop, a man eyes as we walk in. He looks to me …

There’s a line in a Smiths song about “spending warm summer days indoors…” That was what I did yesterday, but I wasn’t writing frightening verse to anyone in Luxembourg. The calm of a nap, feeling heartbeats shift slowly into synch like moons in orbit of the same hazy warm green planet. Feeling the sun go down, hearing the voices of the neighbourhood kids and dogs and something that sounds like a monkey, all the counterpoint to our breathing. The darkness spread out like paint, suddenly spilled just before I wake. Calm and warm together, and not worrying about the dishes …