flexing the "write" muscles

Though I crammed a lot of books into my suitcase before I left for Korea in February 2012, I've gradually come to realize that I didn't bring nearly enough. I don't know what possessed me to leave my unread copy of The Idiot; but I did, and I'm intellectually poorer for it.

There were some nonfiction works I shouldn't have left behind, either. One of them was The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises by Brian Kiteley. Kiteley, a novelist and writing teacher, makes a big promise with that "uncommon" part in the title. But, as one Amazon reviewer states, "he lives up to it." What little I remember from skimming through it last February was promising. They were, indeed, uncommon and thought-provoking activities. I wish I had that book with me now. My prose could use some more pizzazz.

That said, I'm being more productive. I recently finished that big overhaul of the novel that I embarked upon so many months ago, and I am currently about 5,000 words into my current WIP (which is Novel #2 in the same series). Miss H is my beta reader for Novel #1. I'm nervous but excited. It's finally ready for her eyes. I don't feel ashamed anymore.

...but I am ashamed of how lax I've been with my travel writing career.  I haven't sold anything in over a year. But hope is on the horizon, even as trees leaf out and flowers bloom in Olympic Park. When the weather warms up, the sun climbs high and Spring rears her lovely head, Seoul starts effervescing with parties and events. Case in point, I'm heading to the Spring Beer Fest in Itaewon on May 4, and I'm super jazzed. Mass-market Korean beer has driven me to distraction. I'm beyond ready to sample the best suds this country's microbreweries and home-brewers can dish up. I'll have my old Geordie friend Adam (from Geoje Island) beside me, so he and I will paint the town on Saturday afternoon. YEAH!

...the practical upshot of this is that I'll get a humdinger of a travel article out of it. I just need to find a beery magazine to publish it in after the dust settles. Trust me, I'm researching markets as you read this.

And now I'll leave you with a little something. I wrote it early last year, before I left for Korea. I was involved in a writing workshop with a poet, musician and writing teacher (the mother of one of my old high school buddies). This is one of the things which it produced. It was a writing exercise in which we...um...in which we...

You know what? I've completely forgotten what the point was. Perhaps it was to choose a characteristic and then create a character based on that characteristic. Perhaps it was to choose an important piece of information about a character, but keep it concealed from the audience until the very end. Whatever the assignment's original intent, I've reproduced my response for you below. Enjoy.

CHARACTER STUDY #1

     The sun beat down upon the hard, dusty earth.  The air was dry enough to suck the juice out of any living thing, and was hotter than hell to boot.  Not a breeze disturbed the arid landscape, with its piles of white-hot rocks, the waterless streambeds, the stiff and desiccated plants.  The only sound was the lonesome cry of a solitary hawk winging its way through the boiling updrafts.  Silence and desolation reigned over the land.

     In the midst of this parched wasteland was a pathetic cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings as bleached and bone-dry as the country which surrounded it.  Ten or eleven structures straddled a wide main avenue, which came from nowhere and led to more of the same.  “Monson’s General Store” one shop front was labeled.  “Chinese Laundry” hailed another.  “The Golden Horn Saloon” was a third, and it was here that most of the town’s meager activity was centered.  Skinny, rawboned folk, their faces beaten into a mass of crusty wrinkles and wind-burned lines, moved in and out of the creaking batwings at the saloon’s entrance.  Potbellied men with greasy hair, beady eyes and clothes bleached to a grimy no-color escorted women as slender and wispy as straw.

    The bartender stood behind the worn and long-suffering bar, endlessly wiping whiskey bottles free of the choking dust.  Beads of sweat stood out on his furrowed brow.  The air of desperation was thick enough to cut with a knife.  He heard a particularly loud creak from the batwings and looked up from his work. 

     Standing at the door was a man so thickset and long of limb that he looked like an ape on its hind legs.  The entire saloon fell quiet at the amazing sight.  The stranger loped across the room with an easy, lolloping gait, like a man accustomed to venturing into strange and hostile places.   He swung up to the bar and planted himself on a stool.  The bartender stared.  The stranger met his eyes and opened his mouth, speaking in the hard, gravelly tone of a hard-bitten trailblazer.

     “Gimme a whiskey.”

     The bartender put his eyes back in.  He reached around, retrieved a half-full bottle of red-eye from below the mirror, set a shot glass on the bar and poured a gulp.  The stranger took it, knocked it back, and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.

     “Mister?” the bartender began, hesitantly, straining his courage to its limit.

     “Yeah?”

     “Why you wearing a clown suit?”

pedal power

One of the things that moved with me from Bucheon to Seoul was this secondhand mountain bike. I bought it from a Canadian friend who lived in Suwon for about ₩30,000. 

Now that the spring weather has finally arrived, I busted the thing out from under the stairs and started riding it. And boy, there's so much good stuff to see in this part of Seoul! Take the ride I took this Sunday, for instance: 

...past the flower truck...

...down the street behind our villa...

...to the main street and the T-junction that leads to the Gwangjin Bridge...

...across the Gwangjin Bridge and over the wide green Han River...

...down into the Hangang River Park...

...where I saw this. I'd ridden past it plenty of times, but never could tell precisely what it was. It looked like a runway to me, but it couldn't have been more than 300 feet long. That might have been useful for a bush plan and an extremely bold pilot, but it wasn't enough for practical everyday use.

   Then I looked to my right and saw these guys.

It was the KAMA, or the Korean Aero Model Association (since 1961). I had no idea they existed!

They're out here on alternate Sundays (I'm guessing) flying scale models from this little runway. The planes even have their own parking and run-up areas. It looked like a lot of fun, and it really made me miss flying.

Anyway, proceeding south along the park's 41-kilometer bike path...

...past the dude practicing his harmonica skills in the spring sunshine...

...to this tributary of the Han. Wish I knew what it was called. Anyway, heading east up the south side...

...one comes to a bike path, which is lined with cherry trees, which at this time of year are lined with...

...gorgeous cherry blossoms.

I gazed my fill, then biked back along the Jamsil Bridge to meet Miss H at Gangbyeon Station (Line 2), so we could head over to...

Jamsil Stadium (Sports Complex) to watch the Doosan Bears play the Hanhwa Eagles.

And that was my Sunday.

Catch you on the flip side...

33 things I'm no longer allowed to do on Fridays

1. Sing along to The Planets suite by Gustav Holst.

2. Give my characters names like "Rita Book" and "Justin Thyme" on The Oregon Trail.

3. Argue that the main characters of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are the pinnacle of manliness.

4. Croon "O Tannin Bomb" as I'm opening a bottle of red wine.

5. Watch Monty Python sketches on YouTube for hours on end.

6. Or Bugs Bunny cartoons.

7. Or episodes of Cheers.

8. Liking the Black Keys does not make me an "honorary hipster."

9. Consume a can of mixed nuts and a bottle of beer and call it an appetizer.

10. Demand that my students use the phrase "sock puppets" in every essay they write.

11. Watch the climactic scene in The Road Warrior while listening to "Yakety Sax."

12. Not listening to K-pop does not make me Nietzsche's Übermensch.

13. Finish all my sentences with the word "TOASTY!"

14. When cooking bacon, I am to actually chop the bacon into bite-size pieces rather than thwack at it with a blunt knife until it's in barely-digestible chunks.

15. Walking down five flights of stairs does not count as exercise.

16. Advance the theory that Jim Morrison is actually kind of a poet.

17. Refer to Kim Jong-un as "Jackie Flan."

18. Hang a sign on my cubicle wall that reads 'THE DOCTOR IS IN' during office hours.

19. Pretend I know jack squat about British, Irish, Australian or New Zealand politics.

20. Complain about the mysterious brown and green stains in my copy of The Bartender's Bible.

21. "To Serve Man" is not the best Twilight Zone episode.

22. Refuse to shave and claim that I'm saving money on razor blades.

23. Before spraying the bathroom walls down with bleach, I must remember to remove towels and toothbrushes from the area.

24. At the Mountains of Madness is not H.P. Lovecraft's annual family camping trip.

25. Intimidate my pupils with French if they complain that English is too hard.

26. Clean my glasses with my necktie.

27. Cooking with vodka is not an excuse to do frequent taste tests.

28. Name every chapter of my novel after a classic rock song.

29. I am not permitted to sell the extra pistol ammo I pick up during side missions in RAGE. This is called war profiteering.

30. Play air piano along with David Bowie's "Life on Mars?"

31. The fire alarm does not signify that North Korea is invading.

32. "Motorcycling through South America" is not a valid reason for a sabbatical.

33. Use hashtags on Facebook in the name of satire.

an escalating situation

I've never written much about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on this blog. This is the first time I've ever tagged a post with "North Korea," in fact. I'm reading Barbara Demick's book Nothing to Envy, which follows the lives of six North Korean citizens through the famine of the 1990s; I was probably going to scribble a bit about that at some point. But now that the rhetoric and posturing and threats are escalating, I feel like I should tell you what's on my mind. Just in case I get blown away in the next 48 hours.

As you may have heard, things are getting out of hand over here. The situation here is tenser than I've ever seen in my 26 months of living in South Korea. Kim Jong-un has torn up the armistice, effectively putting the Koreas back into a state of open warfare; disconnected the hotlines between the two nations; mobilized his military and beefed up artillery and infantry forces along the border; refused entry to South Korean workers at the jointly-run industrial complex inside the DMZ; and leveled a constant stream of invectives and hostilities against South Korea, the U.S.A. and their allies.

In its latest move, Pyongyang has gone so far as to threaten a nuclear strike against the United States. Stating that its military has been cleared to use "smaller, lighter, and more diversified" nuclear weapons, the rogue nation declared that war could break out "today or tomorrow."

Although Al Jazeera reports that Korea has threatened the U.S. specifically, by proxy those threats refer to South Korea as well. Expert analysts believe that, despite all the bluster, the D.P.R.K. does not have the capability to deliver a missile to an American territory in the Pacific, be it Guam or Hawaii. (The U.S. recently announced its intention to place a missile defense system on Guam, which might be what's got Pyongyang's panties in a twist.)

If that's true, then the only places that North Korea can hit are South Korea or Japan. Japan would be an unwise choice, as it's a key U.S. ally and bombing it would bring on the wrath of the sleeping giant. South Korea is no less an important friend of the United States, but as we've seen with the Cheonan disaster and the Yeonpyeong Island incident, South Korea's not shy about poking its neighbor with a big stick. The attack that North Korea has threatened may come "today or tomorrow" might be leveled at Seoul or somewhere close by.

I don't know about you, but this has got me rather worried. I'm not one to panic easily, but things are different now than they were when I lived in Korea before. This time I'm in Seoul, just in case you missed my last six posts. I'm at ground zero, so to speak. The front lines. I've read that an estimated one million missiles will fall upon this city if war ever breaks out. And it's not just me anymore, either: Miss H is here, and our black cat Charlie. Whatever befalls me befalls them as well, good or ill. That would wrack anybody's nerves. Mine are fraying a smidgen.

On the ground, the situation is calm. Everyone here is going about their lives as usual. Blah, blah, blah, we've seen it all before. And I have to admit, I'm pretty blasé about North Korea now, having lived on the peninsula for almost two and a half years without incident.

So why am I so worried? Well, a couple of reasons. First of all, North Korea usually doesn't close the jointly-run Gaeseong Industrial Region. It's a source of hard currency for the regime and closing it hampers its floundering economy. Even when Seoul and Pyongyang are trading rhetorical blows, the complex stays open. The fact that it's closed to South Koreans now is...disturbing, to say the least.

Second, while I've seen heated exchanges between the two nations before, this most recent one is quite a bit more vitriolic than usual. The barrage of threats from the North has lasted longer and been more vehement than any I've previously witnessed (well, since the death of Kim Jong-il, anyway).

And that brings me to my final point: there's been a recent regime change. Kim Jong-un is running the country now, and he may feel that he's got something to prove. His grandfather and his dad kept the United Nations and the U.S. on their toes for 60 years; now it's Kim the Third's turn. He may have a chip on his shoulder. Perhaps he's looking for ways to make his mark, and has decided that a smoking crater in the center of downtown Seoul is just the way to do it. He may even be foolish or naïve enough to assume that he'll get away with it.

So here I am—with my loved ones—at the epicenter of six decades of stewing resentment and barely-controlled aggression.

What's new with you lately?