Looking Back: “Erosion” (1999)

In 2005, I hadn’t published much of anything, in any sense approaching a professional one. I mean, I’d gotten poems and short pieces into chapbooks, had published a couple of poems and a a small think piece in the university magazine were I did grad school, and a few short student articles in my undergrad campus newspaper; I’d even had a short piece of fiction included in a refugee awareness training program, though that was because my sister asked me to write something for the handbook she was compiling. But I had submitted a story to precisely one market in …

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Hitched

Well, I just realized that while those on Facebook all know about it, I haven’t mentioned it here, so: I got hitched last weekend. That’s right, Miss Jiwaku is now Mrs. Jiwaku–and in a rather literal way, too, since the inscription in our wedding bands is (in Korean) Jiwaku. For those wondering, that’s an Indonesian term of endearment that translates literally as “my soul” (but which couples use). I haven’t updated because I’ve been busy: both of our mothers were able to come to Korea for the occasion, and we’ve been pretty busy showing my mother around, meeting with Mrs. …

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Behind the Curtain…

Behind the curtain, I’ve been drafting a ton of blog posts in spare minutes when I’ve been stuck in my office. I’m not happy with any of them, but I’ve drafted a bunch. I’m finding it harder and harder to feel like I want to make pronouncements on anything. When I talk about Korea, I get things wrong often enough that I’m reticent to bother — especially when not getting things wrong takes so much damned research. When I write about books and authors — aside from Ezra Pound — I find myself much more, um, ambivalent. I’m at a point …

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Ill? Maybe…

To those who are expecting an email or some kind of other contact: I woke up weirdly shaky, and tired, and bleah. I think I caught some kind of cold or something spending the day outdoors in sandals yesterday: it was colder than I expected! Anyway, I hope one more good night’s sleep fixes me up. I need to make a trip in to Seoul to pick up a pair of shoes, assuming I can find some in my size that is. More about why in another post.

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Apologies

I’ve been dealing with a number of different fires that have broken out lately, including: myself, then Miss Jiwaku, being quite sick in the last week and a half the necessity of finalizing audio tracks for the film we’re making before next Friday (though the deadline was initially today, when I was still quite ill!) a medical emergency with a fellow expat coworker, and all kinds of organizational (re: his family) and workplace fallout for that. (For those who know Michael, his brother has posted an update on his Facebook Wall, which is where the link above leads.) helping a …

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Happy New Year

I’m told that not long ago, Koreans tended to reserve the phrase “Saehae bok manhi baedusaeyo!”1 for Seollal, the Lunar New Year (or what we in the West call Chinese New Year). However, people tend to say it a lot more now for January 1st, so that’s what I’m wishing you all out there. For Miss Jiwaku and myself, it was a quiet New Year’s, and a busy week before it. Well, quiet compared to some, I suppose, but we had a lot of running around to do, things to get done, and so on. That cooking at home thing …

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“Teach Me How To Brew!”

A week or two ago, we were planning out the events for the semester, and it turned out we have funding for both a “cocktail party” and a “movie night.” During the course of the discussion, I suggested that it might be interesting to brew up some beer especially for the party, and that this would be quite easy to arrange. The question was whether we could get funding for such a thing. I finally just got approval for the idea — funding for ingredients will be available, so all systems are go. But I figured I’d like to make …

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Stepping Out of the Shadow of Maybe

Well, Miss Jiwaku and I are paying close attention to the news about Japan’s ongoing crisis in Fukushima, and the good news is that it seems to have stabilized. (The bad news is that it still doesn’t seem to be getting better, so the stability is probably precarious and it’s stable but at a very dangerous point.) It seems a little self-indulgent to worry too much, since compared to a lot of people in Japan we’re insanely lucky right now. But unlike some people around here, we’re both acutely aware that national borders, as fictions, do nothing to block the …

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On This Day…

I have a friend who was born on the same day Elvis died. I think it was actually on the same exact day that the King shuffled off this mortal coil. I can’t brag of any such simultanaeities, but I discovered a while back who I share my birthday with: On March 4th, the following people of interest (to me) died: William Carlos Williams, the modernist poet Gary Gygax, the creator of the RPG game and specifically of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG game Meanwhile, the following interesting people were born on my birthday: Antonio Vivaldi (yes, the guy who …

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