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 …

Blogaholic Quiz Results (taken at Wannabegirl.org) in: Are You A Blogaholic? Results Your Score: 80 / 100 YOUR SCORE 80.0%      80.0 points out of 100 AVG SCORE 42.9%      42.9 points out of 100 12272 people have taken this silly test so far. 456 people have scored higher than you. 11717 people have scored lower than you. 99 people made the same grade as you. What does this mean? * 80 points is in the 51 through 80 precentYou are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a …

The new Korean KTX bullet train (which was launched on April 1st) seems to be having problems. A guy died of complications seemingly related to an epileptic seizure brought on while on the train—possibly, though nobody can say for sure—brought on by the fact his chair was facing the wrong direction, back towards where he’d come from. (Chairs in standard Korean trains alternate, forward and backward, and the human body apparently can’t handle as many G-forces going backwards, meaning the chair arrangement was, maybe, not such a good idea): as an article in the Korea Times claims, Police are investigating whether …

Lime quipped that the other weekend and realized I hadn’t yet posted it. She was commenting on the information sign near a temple, which in Korean was said to have been reconstructed in 1857, while in English it was rebuilt in 1875. “The English is different!” she said, and I extended it to, “Welcome to Korea, where the Englishie is different.” Yes, I think us clever. Shut up. Not including travel mishaps (like almost going to PalBokDong instead of my home in JungHwaSanDong), it takes me 40 minutes to get from work to JeonBukDae Old Front Gate; it takes half …

I had a great night last night, but I’m not going to post about that. Some things just don’t need to be posted about, and anyway it’s probably only interesting to me and one other person. But I will say that lime is my new favorite fruit. However, what may be of interest is that I got a huge schwack of sour cream last night, at the OK Bakery. I’m thinking of having a Mexican food party sometime at my house. Does anyone think this is a good idea? They have tortilla shells at the OK too, and I think …

I’m never going to say my working conditions here are perfect, and I have little faith in the legal system to defend me on the grounds of my contract here in Korea… but you know, I have a hell of a hard time complaining when little reminders of how the other foreigners in Korea live. By the other foreigners, I mean the migrant workers who are outside of the English-teaching niche. Many of them live in Korea illegally, go unpaid, suffer all kinds of abuses from their “employers”, and are persecuted by the law. (The same legal authorities who refuse …