Finally, a new post.

In between classes today, I was doing research for my upcoming vacation to Thailand, Cambodia, and Loas. Looking into getting a Sak Yant tattoo- a sacred Buddhist tattoo that is meant to protect devotees- got me to thinking about piety in everyday life.

While I've given up drinking of late (mostly for non-enlightened reasons, like my wheat allergy- drinking isn't the same without beer- and the fact that I wanted to look thin for being on TV), I still have a long way to go on the road to enlightenment. Thinking about the list of things one must do in order to maintain the magic of a Sak Yant tattoo, I imagined what lengths I would be willing to go to. In different areas, monks ask different things of those wanting a tattoo- like, in Thailand, one must go for three days and nights without speaking to anyone else, while in Cambodia the list includes giving up intoxication, inflicting pain on others, and walking under houses (traditionally Cambodian houses are on stilts).

I found myself thinking that I would easily give up all of those things, that my new way of living since I've been in Korea has already become more focused on not doing those things. And so, from now on, I've decided to look for enlightenment in every way that I live my life.

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

Mother Teresa

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think it depends on whose words your counting.


Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

The World's Fucking Mad

And everyone's still hung up on colonialism, postcolonialism and racism no matter what side of the fence they lie on.

The implications of today's attacks in Mumbai are hard to grasp as it's still happening, but the ransacking of the city once called Bombay's most luxurious hotels and the targeting of only American and British hostages is maybe the best modern example of direct postcolonial tension I can think of.

When I start to think too hard about the state of colonialism (and, more importantly nowadays, postcolonialism), though, my mind wanders to the fall of the American economy, the election of a half-black president, the beating Venezuela's president took in their recent election, the state of Nigeria..... and everything becomes a jumble.

Anyways, Amiri Baraka's "Something in the Way of Things (In Town)" seems to pick up where my train of thought drifts off.

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdnKuhpcpo

Remember what you seen in your own mirror and didn't for a second recognize

The face, your own face

Straining to get out from behind the glass

Open your mouth like you was gon' say somethin'

Close your eyes and remember what you saw and what it made you feel like

Now, don't you see something else

Something cold and ugly

Not invisible but blended with the shadow criss-crossing the old man

Squatting by the drug store at the corner

With is head resting uneasily on his

folded arms

And the boy that smiled and the girl he went with

And in my eyes too

To be expounded upon later:

I've gone through a sea change of emotions in the past few weeks, and as a result have a lot of ideas that I want to expound upon.

Today, however, I've mostly just been staring at art- especially that of Willem de Kooning- in between teaching classes, daydreaming about museums and missing the slide library at MSU.

*How is it that art becomes a commodity- how do we value it? Is it for better or worse that we put a price on the thoughts of others expressed in paint and plaster? If we consider art in such a way- that the expression of genius is a commodity- could it be said that the work of Einstein on the Atomic Bomb is art? Where do we draw the line between art and other disciplines? Beauty and commodity?

*The idea that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012- while I've entertained this thought many, many times, I realized the other day, staring out my window into the Seoul night, that I don't believe in the end of the world- all energy must go somewhere. After I pondered this, I realized that it would be more likely that, if all this nonsense about the Aztecs or whoever it was is true, that they were foreseeing a change in the notion of time (it's an antiquated one anyhow, you know?) rather than "the end of the world"... That Four Horses bullshit is just that, people take things too literally and sometimes I'm even guilty of that. I think it's more likely that our society will realize that time as we know it does not exist- we'll have a completely different relationship with time and space...

Oh when I was a bard,
My life was hard,
Life was hard.

Sure, in Shakespeare's day,
Thou wouldst be OK.
But with the Industrial Revolution
Came music recording and reproduction.

There ain't no place in rock 'n roll
For a mandolin or lute solo.
So I took my music to the streets-
Layin' down some REAL oldschool beats.

But life is hard, as a bard.

I've been out in space for a while now, on one of those trips that sometimes I think I'll never come back from. The recent rains in Seoul, and the hint of autumn in the humid air, wake me from my dream little by little, as the hellishly scorching summer fades slowly.

I'm not sure what I wanted to say here- if anything at all- but maybe I was just looking for a small way to record my presence, to remind anyone who might read this of my aliveness.

My hands are full of blisters from a hard hour's rock climbing, and my head is full of tasks that I've got to complete, so I'll leave this at that.

Give endlessly, receive selectively and always give thanks.

Today officially marks my fourth month in Seoul, and I feel that the moment requires some massive insight about working as a teacher, or living abroad, or working as a teacher abroad.

Instead, however, all I can say is that I'm still forever toeing the line between quitting my job and couch-surfing my way around Asia and completely throwing myself into the quasi-teaching profession that is EFT. There are still things that I love about Korea, things that I hate, and things that I love to hate (like Korean pop music) and my itinerant spirit is forever tugging at my shirt, pleading with me to quit my job, pack my things, and trek the Himalayas for as many months as my money will sustain me, but I'll hold out for as long as I can...



Either way, life is grand.