Travel Truth #4: If you skimp on research, you will pay for it later. My only day in Phnom Penh began with a major letdown. My first priority was to visit Kingdom Breweries, Cambodia's premier craft brewery, founded by Leopard Capital and headed up by a German brewmaster. The legend printed on every bottle will happily inform drinkers that every Kingdom brew "blends Europe's finest ingredients with purified water from Cambodia's largest lake to create a traditional yet unmatched flavor." Yeah, whatever. I just wanted to be able to say that I'd toured the brewery, chatted with the brewmaster, and had a couple of Cambodia's premier craft beers direct from the source. I was foiled in that ambition. The date was Sunday, July 20. The brewery was closed on Sundays. Rats. So I went to the National Palace instead.
The Silver Pagoda, so called because its floor is one solid sheet of the stuff. You can't see it, though. The curators covered it up with a carpet, the bastards. Apparently it's so tarnished these days that you can't tell what kind of metal it is anyway.
And then I went to the Foreign Correspondent's Club on the banks of the Tonlé Sap River for some chicken and beef satay, prawn shooters with sweet chili aioli and salsa, and some Kingdom pilsener. Even if the brewery was closed, a lot of watering holes along the riverfront still served its products.
Then I saw the National Museum. I had to buy postcards somewhere, you know.
Selfies with Siddhartha is going to be the title of my autobiography.
I rode a tuk-tuk back to Amber House, filled out said postcards, rode another tuk-tuk to the post office, mailed 'em, and then managed to scoot my butt back to FCC for some beef lok-lak and a Hemingway Special for dinner before the evening monsoons broke.
There's two parts to this challenge. Part 1 is to cultivate your personal gratitude. This means making a list of ten things that you're grateful for. The trick is to not be thankful for superficial or general things, like health, family, a good job, and so on. No, the idea here is to dig under the layers and find things, little things, that you're grateful for on a daily basis. So, without further ado, here is my spirited attempt at such a litany: 10 THINGS I'M GRATEFUL FOR:
sunsets - Heaven knows the universe doesn't need to light up the atmosphere with all those reds and yellows and oranges and pinks, but it does, and I appreciate it.
Korean immigration laws- Thank goodness there's a country that lets me live in it and pretend to be a professor and teach its students and pay me through the nose, because without it my dreams and I would have been sunk long ago.
having a job that lets me travel - Working on a professor's schedule means that I have four whole months of the year to gallivant around the world and see the sights I've wanted to see since I was twelve. You can't beat that. Two years of hagwon purgatory have suddenly become worthwhile.
Swedish Fish - Without those little red fish-shaped candies, no visit Miss H and I made to the Skyline Drive-In movie theater in Barstow, California would ever have been the same. She brought a few bags home with her today. Time to catch up on all the TV shows that we missed!
Brant and Joseph, my beer-brewing buddies - I would never have had the determination or the gumption required to start home brewing in Korea by myself. Thanks to them I have a store of goodly memories to tell about my time in South Korea...and a few dozen bottles of tasty brew in my fridge.
my mad bomber hat- Made of real leather and rabbit fur and given to me as a Christmas gift by my parents a few years back. It really keeps my head warm in winter and cuts those icy winds down to size. It'll come in handy in Hokkaido. It may seem daft to be grateful for a hat, but no other chapeau suits my personality (or my head) as comfortably as that one.
absurdity - For reminding us that life is fundamentally crazy on so many levels, and that we need to slow down, realize it and laugh at it before we all go nuts. Also for being my modus operandi.
radio - For connecting people, places, ideas, news, music, politics and free-mindedness across vast distances (and even between Earth and space) long before there was TV or Internet. There's a simple sort of elegance, warmth, beauty and intimacy to radio that television and the Web both lack. Radio (and vinyl records) fostered in me my love of music — long before I bought my first CD, I had a radio on my bedside table, dial twirled to the classic rock station. It brought me The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Owl City, and too many others to name. There's something about gathering around the radio set and listening to A Prairie Home Companion that no episode of Family Feud or Golden Girls can equal.
H.G. Wells - He didn't trust his fellow man, accurately predicted the future (grim as it was) and taught imaginative youngsters like me that there was more to life than what we could see. Good on ya, Herbert.
flying small airplanes: Not sure who to thank for this, but Orville and Wilbur Wright and Clyde Cessna all seem like likely candidates. I don't know who or what I'd be without flight. I'm so grateful to the aviation pioneers and airplane manufacturers who allowed me to taste that heady magic previously allotted only to birds and pterosaurs (and take Miss H out on some kick-ass dates).
The second part of this challenge is showing your gratitude to others. 3 PEOPLE I THANKED:
Mr. A: My animator/illustrator. He's been very patient with me, and has done some pro bono work for me in the past, creating concept illustrations of my works, which I never believe I've thanked him for. I gave him a very specific and heartfelt thank-you. Mrs. G: A very classy wife, mother, and former classmate from the High Desert. She's actually taken the time to read (truly read, and think critically about) some of my works, and give me thoughtful and helpful feedback, not the usual "your grammar sucks" or "I liked this part" blather. She is my intended audience: the person I write to when I write science fiction. I thanked her sincerely for that, and for paying attention to what I do on FB (she never fails to "like" or comment on the silly stuff I put up there, inflating my ego enormously). She also sends me neat stuff from around the Web that she finds: hilarious memes, the latest gadgets from ThinkGeek, or the coolest updates from Popular Science.
Miss H: My fiancée, of course. I took her for granted there for about 18 months of our three-and-a-half-year relationship, and am trying to cure myself of that horrendous habit forthwith. She went home to the States last week and she brought back a truckload of useful stuff for me: delicious candy and snacks, extra pajamas and workout clothes, a new eyeglasses case, and a host of other assorted gewgaws. I took her in my arms, told her I loved her, what a wonderful wife she is (even if we haven't tied the knot yet) and that I really appreciate what she did. There you go! I've cultivated my gratitude. This day, more than any other, I think, has been a valuable lesson for me. I let things go. I take people for granted. No more. I think I'm a little more mindful of things now (isn't that what the Buddhists, gurus and psychologists are always on about — mindfulness?). Looks like this challenge is helping me out already, and we're not even a week into it. Stand fast for Day 6.
Oodles of stuff has been written about writing. I'm adding my voice to thousands of others, many of them better, more experienced and more expert than I am. I'm a novice craftsman. I'm not trying to steal Stephen King's or James N. Frey's thunder, here; I'm just putting my two cents in.
Second, I like analogies. I use them all the time. They're useful, particularly when you teach ESL for a living. I used the example of a drunk person trying to talk to demonstrate the concept of incoherency in class earlier this evening.
I achieved a sort of writing epiphany this week, in the throes of NaNoWriMo. So I thought I'd share it with you, relating it to the four stages of enlightenment in Buddhism.
The interesting thing about these four stages is that they're not something one achieves in a single lifetime. It takes at least seven rebirths to get from start to finish, if you do everything right. The first stage, Sotāpanna (stream-enterer), is the lowest level. This means that you've embarked upon the Noble Eightfold Path, "opened the eye of the Dharma," and have complete confidence in the Three Jewels. You've jumped out on that road, as the Van Halen song goes. And you've pretty much secured yourself a get-out-of-jail free card: since you've attained, even at this initial stage, an innate knowledge of the inner workings of Buddhism, you won't be reborn as anything lower than a human in your next life. You'll probably wind up as human again for the second stage, but you won't become an animal or a demon. You're on the right track.
This is the stage that every fledgling writer goes through. You're in the bookstore, gazing with envious eyes at the names of all the published authors in your favorite section. You take one off the shelf and leaf through it. In a fit of ambitious fervor, you say to yourself, "I want a piece of the pie. I'm going to write a novel. If this guy/gal could do it, then so can I."
You rush home, breaking at least three traffic laws in your hurry to reach the nearest laptop or typewriter (or notepad and pen). You sit down...
...and discover that this is actually a lot harder than it looks.
Several hours, days, or possibly weeks later, with sheaves of wasted paper lying around the house (balled-up or blowing around intact), you admit that you've bitten off quite a bit more than you can chew.
This is it. The pivotal moment. The turning point. The critical juncture. Will you turn away from the path, forsake the way of the writer, and go off and do something more immediately and materially rewarding, like clearing minefields? Or will you stick to your guns? Keep seeking the elusive thrill?
It may take you a while to decide, but ultimately you come back. The typewriter calls to you. The laptop serenades you in your sleep. Every florid, stirring, eloquent bit of writing you've ever read comes back to haunt you, torturing you, taunting you to do better. After an indefinite period of soul-searching, caffeine, alcohol, denial, penury, penance, distraction and pain, you're back in front of a keyboard with your hair a mess, your colon on strike, your eyes bleary and your heart singing.
You've embarked on the path. You've entrusted your soul to the Three Jewels: Buddha (the highest spiritual ideal that exists within all beings, that of crafting tight prose, flowing style and the power to turn simple ink and paper into resonant gold); Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha, also called The Elements of Style); and Sangha (the community of those who have attained enlightenment, otherwise known as the bestseller list: the Faulkners, the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, the Plaths, the Lees, the Kings, the Grishams, et al).
Congratulations, you're a writer. Now what?
Stage Two: Sakadagami, the once-returner. You'll return to the human world once; after that, your rebirths take you progressively higher into the Pure Abodes. Now that you've cast off three of the worldly fetters (TV, the Internet, and cell phone games) and have gotten serious, you're on the fast track to success. This is the stage when you start to realize certain things about writing.
First, it's not as hard as you initially thought. If you practice, it gets a lot easier. The juices start flowing whenever you sit down at that keyboard. Some days are incredible, of course, and some are downright rotten; but you start to get the hang of getting the pure, immaculate picture in your head down on the page.
Second, you begin to let go of your search for perfection. As a stream-enterer, you were obsessed with getting things right the first time, and you savagely eviscerated any sentence, paragraph or page which didn't sing to you. There was nothing for you beyond the writing itself: no editing, no revision. You wanted it all down in one go, a finished product in the first draft. But when you got to the end and started looking over what you'd done, it all appeared puerile and hackneyed. So you tore it up, burned it, threw it out the window. Now, as a once-returner, you have a wider perspective. You may still edit as you go, and power to you; but you're more sanguine about letting things slide, checking them over in the editing, tweaking and pinching and shuffling things about. Writing is now about getting ideas and concepts down on the page; the revision process is where you tease out the fossils and unearth the gold.
Heaven only knows how long you remain in the second stage. I was there for almost three novel manuscripts and an unholy number of abortive attempts at short fiction. Now I'm not sure where I am: I think I'm sufficiently enlightened to embark upon Stage Three, but my short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writings are just sucky enough to hold me back.
But let me explain the epiphany I had:
Relaxation.
Complete, utter, total relaxation.
This is my second NaNoWriMo. My first one was horrendous. I had all sorts of time, because Miss H was home in the states and I was still working at a hagwon, so I had the morning and a bit of the afternoon to write, write, write. But it was my first time writing on a schedule...and a rigid and demanding schedule at that. Earlier I had recognized the need to write on a daily basis, and get a sort of mental routine going; but I had been rather dissolute about implementing it. NaNoWriMo was a slap in the face, a wake-up call.
Now I have embarked upon a second year's NaNoWriMo. I'm being casual about it. I haven't logged in to the website. I haven't posted excerpts or word counts. I'm not keeping track of any of my fellow writers. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. And it's easy.
You know why? 'Cause I'm chill.
Chiller than I've ever been before.
I outlined this book ages ago. It's the third installment of my magnum opus, my epic sci-fi action-adventure alternative history series. (Does that description get you excited? It does me.) For as many hours as I've spent actually writing the first three books of the series, I've spent at least ten times as many scribbling notes, random snippets of dialogue, and sketches of maps, vehicles, weapons, creatures, and characters in my various and assorted notebooks—dozens of them. I have hundreds of thousands of words in Notepad files and Microsoft Word documents: outlines, character bios, vignettes, timelines, back stories, synopses, summaries of events taking place before and after the main storyline, lists of vital statistics (names, birth dates, hair colors, eye colors, ages, nationalities, etc)...on and on and on. I have planned this shit out. Small wonder this third installment is rolling off my fingertips like Twinkies from an assembly line.
But it's more than that, though. I've learned to relax. I've learned not to worry about the many minor style errors, awkward grammatical constructions, contradictory characterizations, wooden lines of dialogue, shoehorned circumstance and contrived coincidence which worm their way into my writing. I reread at the beginning of every writing session, and my eyes unerringly find the problems and correct them. I've learned. And I'm still learning, a bit every day. I wouldn't say that I've developed my own signature style yet, but the gears are turning. I've come so far from the days when I would write drivel and fail to catch it in the editing. I'm starting to feel—to sense what great writing is, and how to approach it. I think I've even touched it on occasion. I've kept up with my reading: I finished Brave New World and am halfway through Part Two of Anna Karenina. Excellent works both. Read great writing, and ye shall produce great writing. Relax, and ye shall proceed. Take long walks (and go to the gym in the evenings) and your mind shall be cleared of clutter. Don't stress too much about your job or your filthy apartment or your poor lonely parents or your yellow teeth or your crazy cat, and you'll make out all right.
The third stage of writing enlightenment is learning to let go. Quit stressing about what Strunk and White scream in your ears. Don't disregard them, just don't let them intimidate you. Don't forget or forsake the rest of your life; don't be afraid to put down the pen and pursue it, either. Get a routine going, but keep your schedule open for introspective walks in the autumn sunshine, or a glass of beer with a friend, or a cup of tea on a rainy morning, or an afternoon with a pipe and a good book.
Relax. Chill out. You'll finish in due time. Have fun with the process. Keep working, keep practicing. Keep your feet on the path.
That was my epiphany.
Thanks to it, I think I'm at Stage Three: Anāgāmī. That means "non-returner." This is one who does not return to any human world after death. Having overcome sensuality, non-returners are reborn into five special worlds, the Pure Abodes. They are closing in on their goal: they have abandoned five out of the ten mortal fetters. They are well advanced.
I have two novel manuscripts completed, two more in the works, dozens of finished short stories, a smattering of novellas and novelettes, and even a couple of poems floating around. These were my stepping stones, my first tentative steps toward enlightenment, my awkward initiation into a larger world. Back then, writing was a chore, a nerve-wracking and embarrassing ordeal, like taking an exam that you hadn't studied for or having a conversation in a foreign language. Now it's like grabbing the tail of a runaway tiger—or a comet—and taking the ride of your life.
From here on out, the material I produce will continue to improve. I will tweak the stories I can tweak, abandon the ones I can't, and strive to climb higher up the ladder to the final stage. I aim to become an Arahant: a fully-awakened person. He has broken all ten fetters which bind souls to the cycle of rebirth, and will never be reborn into any plane or world again. These are the Faulkners, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Frosts. These are the guys who just get it. As a second- or third-level acolyte, I can only imagine what the fourth stage has in store for me, but I can hazard a guess. I think that it's nothing more than the ability to sit down in front of a keyboard with a notebook, a pen, a dictionary and a thesaurus, bang out a really good novel and whip it into publishable shape in a month or so. No distractions, no (major) frustrations, no ineptitude, no self-consciousness, no insecurity, no hack writing, no fear, no harm, no foul: just skill. Talent. Practice. Ability. Perseverance. And well-deserved triumph.
The Arahant writer is like a master potter: able to walk up to a wheel and, with his bare hands, muscle memory, and a lifetime of hard-won knowledge and wisdom in his head, create a masterpiece. He may turn out a few stinkers now and then, but he'll be consistently good. And sometimes he'll be damn near perfect.
It's July 1, and the day after tomorrow I'm boarding an airplane and flying back home. Not permanently, oh no. There's a family reunion in Iowa that I'll attend for five days, for to see all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Then it'll be three weeks in the desert. As so often happens, a multitude of emotions war within me. I feel excited by the thought of seeing my long-lost relations again (I haven't seen some of them in three years or more). I'm dreading the transcontinental flight (always a killer, that). I'm psyched for spending five days at a lakeside resort and the inevitable water sports that will ensue. I eagerly anticipate seeing that pack of reprobates (um, I mean my old pals) from the desert once more. Though flying is out of the question (I'm not current anymore and haven't the time or money to spend on a biennial flight review), I'd sure love to go shooting. I'm a tad forlorn at the thought of leaving Miss H here all alone while I'm gone, and doing without her for nearly a month. (Okay, I'm positively heartbroken.) But I'm pumped at the thought of seeing Japan (and possibly Mongolia, I haven't decided). Think about it: I'll finally be living like I've been meaning to live since I graduated high school. Footloose travel and all it entails. That warm, sunny, bubbly feeling of a dream being fulfilled—like sun tea brewing on a hot day—is welling up inside me.
But chief amongst those feelings warring for primacy in my innermost soul is...well, sheepishness.
Let me explain.
There's a particular street in a particular part of Seoul called Insadong. Insadong-gil, this street is called. Gil, as I understand it, means "lane" or "alley" (though some Korean alleys bear closer resemblance to the Snickelways of York).
Now, I'm not stupid.
Well, okay. Yes I am.
But I'm not a blithering idiot.
I can tell when someone's trying to fleece me.
But the merchants of Insadong-gil get me every time.
Here's the thing: Insadong is a tourist trap. It's a little neighborhood stuck somewhere east of Gwanghwamun (the main and largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace) and the Cheonggyecheon (a lovely low-lying landscaped stream that runs east-to-west through the downtown area) in the Jongno ward of Seoul. This street is filled with everything that is innately Korean—or rather, everything that foreigners think is innately Korean, and everything that savvy Koreans know that foreigners think is innately Korean. Catch my drift?
The winding lane is less than a quarter-mile long, but it's packed to bursting with quaint little tea houses filled with wood trim and farming equipment; one-room Korean restaurants tucked under latticed awnings or hidden in bamboo groves; and coffee shops and cafés that were probably avant-garde fifteen years ago. The lane's main feature, however, are the stores and street vendors peddling their multifarious wares: "traditional Korean snacks," jade necklaces and silver rings, handmade wooden puzzles (and other wood crafts like spoons, combs, toys, and statuettes), celadon pottery, metal works (such as bells, wind chimes and assorted sculptures), and oodles upon oodles of folding fans, pincushions, compacts, bookmarks, purses, clutches, handbags, letter openers, ballpoint pens, jewelry boxes, and figurines. Every item is decorated with customary and venerated Korean motifs: cranes, tigers, kings, cattails, women washing, scholars in their crenellated hats, children playing in hanbok, soldiers marching, misty mountains, red-gold suns and redoubtable warships.
Not my photo, but a dang good one.
A lot of it's junk and I know it. It's touristy stuff. You'd never find it anywhere but here. No self-respecting Korean has a little pewter figure of Admiral Yi on his bookshelf. The stuff looks pretty, and it was probably made by hand, and it would look jolly good in a cupboard or on a mantlepiece. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the merchandise is drop-dead gorgeous, delicately made, and encapsulates Korean culture to a beguiling extent.
But is it worth the money they're asking? Noooooooooooooo.
Do tourists pay the money they're asking? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Do I know better than that? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Do I know how to bargain? Noooooooooooooooo.
Do the vendors know that I don't know how to haggle? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Has that ever stopped me from buying something pretty for myself? Nooooooooooooooo.
The merchants probably know me on sight by now. I'll heave into view, marching around the corner from the subway station, and they'll exchange a look and make the habitual remarks.
"Look, here comes that saphead."
"Hey, the palooka in the blue T-shirt is back."
"Whaddya know, it's that pigeon who always drops a boatload of cash!"
"Bust out the compacts and the jewelry-boxes, Marge! Our favorite schnook's comin' down the street!"
Honestly, I might as well just get the word "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead. I was wearing a blue T-shirt today with the words Beginner in Korean, please speak slowly splashed across the front in Hangul. All the vendors loved it. They saw it, read it aloud, and burst into laughter. I knew why they were really laughing. They weren't charmed by my earnest attempt to learn their language and fit into their culture. They just knew they'd be able to snow me in two languages instead of just one.
If I was a bit better at Korean and knew how to haggle, I muttered to myself, things would be different, mark my words.
I mean, seriously: two thousand for a tarnished old Chinese coin the size of a silver dollar? Give me a break!
I shall cease my invective here. I'm sure you came here for other things, like my mouthwatering descriptions of food or the salaciously lovely photographs I put up. Tune in for more of that next time on...
I love it when I get to drop Marx Brothers references in my blog post titles, but this one is especially apt. I just came off the perfect weekend in Seoul, and it wasn't even a holiday. Yet.
Here's what happened on Saturday, . First, Miss H and I went on our first double-date. It was one of my best buds from Sejong University, whom I'll call Sam, and his girlfriend JB. We went to Seoul Racecourse Park and bet on the ponies:
I even included a video for you schmucks, 'cause I think that highly of you: this is the final stretch of the 7th heat:
I was slightly disappointed. This was my first horse race, but even though I'd known in advance that they only ever made one lap of the track, it still went by too quickly and ended too abruptly. On the other hand, the palpable excitement we felt when the racers rounded the final curve and went flat-out on the home stretch, with the Koreans yelling and stomping all around us, and their cheers and shouts gradually building to an inhuman roar, was something to experience.
Then we went to our favorite Uzbek restaurant in Seoul (yes, we have one): the Fortune Café. Left to right: lagman (lamb and noodle soup); shiz-biz (bits of mutton and onion over French fries); and manti (enormous meaty dumplings, boiled or steamed); and there were at least five varieties of Baltika beer to go with it. (No. 7 is my usual favorite.) A steady stream of Russian pop music videos on the TV set guaranteed that we were never at a loss for something to listen to when conversation waned.
The Fortune Café is in Dongdaemun, which is sort of the Russian district of Seoul. So we also stopped by one of the many tiny Russian markets in the vicinity. We walk into the first one and see this:
Holy cow, ain't nobody got a selection of vodka like that around here. I nabbed some Parliament-brand vodka and a bottle of Napoleon brandy (French stuff; I've heard it's excellent). Score!
Then we walked back outside into the dying evening light. And lo and behold, what did we see but a grand parade! It was the Lotus Day Parade, an early celebration of Buddha's Birthday, which would be coming the next weekend. Take a look! It was an amazing spectacle.
Each group of people represented a different Buddhist temple in the vicinity of Seoul, and each had different flags and lanterns of all shapes and hues. And it wasn't just Koreans, either: the Chinese and Tibetan diaspora were out in force as well, with the flags of their nations and their own brand of Buddhism on display.
After the temple-goers passed in review, we moseyed down the road in the direction of the Dongdaemun gate, viewing the floats and moving sculptures people had fabricated for the occasion. The elephant dipped its head...
...and the lotus flower opened and shut, giving birth to Siddhartha over and over again.
When we'd finished viewing the parade, we slid down an alley to a tent city filled with cheap merchandise and street food.
This is a mixture of noodles, onions, cabbage, spicy red sauce, and sundae (noodles wrapped in the lining of pig intestines, a Korean favorite). It was surprisingly good. We got ripped off, though; these two plates and the four cans of warm beer cost us 40,000 won, or roughly $36.
And then it was time for the evening's crowning glory: a gem of a place I had no idea existed anywhere in Seoul. It's called an LP bar:
This one was called the Sam Cooke, after the American soul singer. It's near Hyehwa Station, north of Dongdaemun, near Seoul University. These LP bars are the bee's knees. Sam Cooke was no exception. It was quite dark (as you can see from the photos) and the decor was eclectic: photos of the Beatles on the walls, cubist paintings behind the booths, an image of Che Guevara by the door. We walked in, sat down, and looked around. The shelves behind the bar were filled with vinyl records. There were two turntables on the counter just going like the clappers, and sound—a sound I'd not heard played in public for 15 months—was blasting out of the speakers.
Classic rock.
No joke! These LP bars sprang up back in the 1960s when Park Chung-hee outlawed listening to Western music. Enterprising bar owners sneaked onto American army bases and bought LPs off the G.I.s, secreting them in their establishments and playing them after dark for willing patrons. Now these LP bars are old and scuffed, just like the records they play, but they survive as novelties, places where oldsters can go to feel nostalgic and young 'uns can go to feel hip. And that's surely what we felt as we scribbled arcane requests on slips of paper, giving them to the barman up front. Our eyes widened and our souls soared as we heard the familiar tunes piping out of the speakers a few minutes later. It was downright psychadelic to sit there sipping beer in a dark wooden bar while the Doors' "The End" oozed serenely out of the speaker grilles. And that was just Saturday. On Sunday, our old friend Joanna, Miss H and I went to Myeong-dong to go shooting (in and out, no pictures), had some delectable Italian food and then went down to Gwacheon to hit up Seoul Zoo. Another full, lovely day in the third-largest city in the world!
I'll just leave you with this bear to keep you company until my next adventure-filled post.
As you've probably heard, North Korea has entered "Combat Posture One" and the South Korean military has promised "strong retaliation" for any encroachment or aggression. It seems like that's all we hear about Korea these days—the latest traded threats and propaganda. That, and the U.S. fought some kind of war there against marauding North Koreans with nodongs and their Chinese buddies. Oh, and Kim Yu-na:
But here are some things you probably didn't know. A couple of them are pretty badass.
Number One: In 1597, in the most desperate hour of the Imjin War, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, Korea's most celebrated naval commander, fought a glorious battle against the invading Japanese fleet. The Japanese had 333 ships. Yi had 13, the shattered remnants of the once-mighty Joseon Navy. Using a combination of strategy, trickery, home-field advantage, technological superiority, and balls-out badassery, Yi won. He defeated the overwhelming enemy force and sent 'em back to their mamas. It's generally agreed that Yi's victory at the Battle of Myeongnyang effectively broke the back of the Japanese war effort. It's also the reason that naval historians refer to Yi as "the Nelson of the East."
Number Two: Would you like to know where "the world's most comprehensive and oldest intact version of Buddhist canon in Hanja script [Chinese symbols], with no known errors or errata in the 52,382,960 characters which are organized in over 1496 titles and 6568 volumes" is?
Of course you would. It's in Korea. It's called the Tripitaka Koreana, and it's the Goryeo Dynasty's hand-made copy of the Buddhist scriptures. All of them. Korean monks painstakingly carved them, without a single error or omission, onto 81,258 wooden blocks in the 13th century. The blocks are stored at Haeinsa, a temple in South Gyeongsang Province, and are intact and whole even to this day. Think about that for a moment. Eighty-one thousand wooden blocks. Fifty-two million characters. That must have taken some doing.
Number Four: Historians across the globe disagree on precise dates, but evidence suggests that Korea invented woodblock printing and movable-type printing in the 13th century, many years before similar technology arose in Europe. Korea may have beaten Gutenberg to the punch!
Number Five: The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, is so logical, efficient and scientifically precise that it has been appropriated for use in cataloging and preserving unwritten and dying languages. With the addition of a few extra characters, of course:
Number Six: When South Koreans get to protesting, they don't kid around. Number six and number one in this article prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just look at those guys. Number six covers himself in 187,000 bees and the dudes in Busan go up against a police water cannon and win, and then start knocking over shipping containers with nothing but grappling hooks and upper-body strength. I don't even care what they're protesting about, that's badass.
Number Seven: Lifted straight from About.com: "Since the early 1960s, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth and integration into the high-tech modern world economy. Four decades ago GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia. In 2004, it joined the trillion dollar club of world economies. Today its GDP per capita is 14 times North Korea's and equal to the lesser economies of the European Union."
Of course, what isn't mentioned is that this amazing economic feat was kick-started by Park Chung-hee (the current president's father), a military man who seized power and ruled Korea as a political strongman until his eventual assassination. Park appointed all of his cronies to be heads of corporations, so that he could have what amounted to a nationalized economy with all the added benefits of free-market capitalism. Socialism in the guise of free enterprise. Oh well, it worked. South Korea went from a smoking crater to a trillion-dollar economy club member in the space of forty years. Boom.
Number Eight: The Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) had undercover cops. Seriously! They were called Amhaeng-eosa (암행어사), or "undercover royal inspectors." Their job was to go around disguised as beggars and make sure that the provincial governors were not abusing their power. They'd wander the peninsula, dirty and ragged like homeless vagabonds, keeping their eyes and ears open for citizens' complaints. Though the Amhaeng-eosa were
almost always young guys (the high'rups figured that younger men would
have a strong sense of justice), their authority exceeded that of the provincial
governors. They had the power to dismiss or arrest an official as they
saw fit.
But here's the coolest part: these inspector dudes had badges. Über top-secret ID badges! They were called mapae (마패), or "horse requisition tablets." They were big and round and made of bronze, with a figure of a horse stamped on them, usually. Amhaeng-eosa also carried letters of commission from the king, called bongseo (봉서). If he discovered evidence of corruption, bribery, graft, or human rights violations, a secret inspector would flash his papers and his badge, roust out the local garrison and arrest the offending official in broad daylight. Then he'd march him back to Seoul for the king to pass judgment on, and make recommendations about which upstanding and intelligent peasants back in the province would make a good replacement. Isn't that neat?
Number Nine: While I've never seen anything larger than roe deer in Korea (and that was just Jeju Island), the Korean peninsula was once home to Siberian tigers. Yes, that's right. Tigers. They played quite a part in the development of Korean culture. They figure highly in many Korean folk tales, usually as the ravenous, dissolute villain. They often show up in Korean period films, or evidence of them at least: tiger traps, or dire warnings to solitary travelers to build big fires and keep their weapons handy at night.
There's a hammy scene in the film The War of the Arrows where several of the evil Manchu raiders are slain by a conveniently large tiger on Korean soil. (What do you mean, it's not symbolic?)
There's not a single tiger in South Korea outside of a zoo now, but rumor has it they still roam along the North Korean-Russian border. There are, however, still supposed to be Asian black bears wandering around the mountains in South Korea's national parks...
Number Ten: Y'know how Japan is always called "the Land of the Rising Sun"? Well, Korea has a nickname too. It's called "the Land of the Morning Calm." On that same note, have you ever wondered where the name "Korea" came from? Arab traders, that's who. As I've mentioned elsewhere numerous times, Korea has gone through several periods of strife, division, war, and reunification. Kingdoms and dynasties have risen and fallen many times. Arab merchants first came to these shores during the reign of the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392), which also gave rise to the aforementioned Tripitaka Koreana. The Muslims inquired after the name of this fertile peninsula and were told that it was simply "Goryeo." The Arabs marked it on their maps as such, and the place eventually came to be known as "Korea" by the rest of the world. (If you're confused about how that happened, say the word "Goryeo," which sounds similar to "GORE-ya," six times fast. Makes sense now, right?)
There, that's all I could think of. You're now a little smarter. My work here is done. Good night!
Neither Miss H nor I had ever been to Seoul Tower by night. We decided that, on New Year's Eve (that's Western New Year's Eve, not Korean New Year; the latter is this weekend), we would go and look down upon the ocean of light which is Seoul by night. The view was spectacular, and if I wasn't a cruddy journalist who keeps forgetting his camera, I'd post a picture or two here. But I am, and I can't. So there. That's not what I want to talk to you about, though. I found this book in the gift shop:
EUREKA! Do you know long I've been trying to find something like this? I've wanted to read about Korean mythology for ages. I used to quiz my Korean friends and students whenever I got the chance, trying to find out more about the ancient legends. I met with varied success. But finally, just when I was least expecting it, a book appeared (in a gift shop, no less!) that enabled me to delve into the diverse pageant of peninsular fairy stories.
This is the best book I could have possibly found on the subject, too. It was written and published in 1952 by In-seop Jeong, a professor of Korean culture and history. He copiously collected these stories from all corners of the country, gleaning them from aged storytellers and childhood friends who remembered the old days of the Korean kingdom. Professor Jeong taught a course in Korean studies at Oxford University for many years, and was the first Korean man to make a deliberate effort to share his nation's culture with the world. He cleverly divided this book into sections: myths (which deal in the creation of the world and its pantheon of deities); legends (stories about human heroes which contain some historical facts); fairy tales (innocent stories for children); fables (which contain a moral); and old novels, which were autobiographies written by venerable ancient Koreans, and have become almost legendary in their own right. What I have found within this book is most incredible, and it has answered many of the questions I had about Korea in general—and even cleared up some of the mysteries of their culture.
The reason they like fart jokes so much, for example.
Seriously. Anything involving poop or passing gas sends Koreans, old or young, into paroxysms of mirth. (They were like this before the American cinematic juggernaut inundated the world with fatuous bathroom comedies, too.)
I just read one legend called "General Pumpkin" about a boy who loved pumpkins so much that he bankrupted his parents trying to feed him. Not only that, but he broke so much wind that they kicked him out of the house. He traveled the peninsula for many years, working odd jobs (for pumpkins) until he happened upon a prosperous Buddhist temple. The monks saw how big he was and figured he'd be a good guy to have around, for this temple was always getting robbed by bandits. The boy (now a man) agreed to help in exchange for all the pumpkins he could eat. When the bandits attacked that night, "General Pumpkin" bade all the monks hide in the corners of the compound with drums. The bandits swarmed over the walls, and then the monks started beating the drums. General Pumpkin passed gas for all he was worth. The noise and the stench threw the bandits into a panic, and the wall collapsed and killed them all as they tried to swarm back over it. Pumpkin lived the rest of his life at the temple, and eventually died by crapping himself to death.
This is actually one of the least disgusting stories I've read in this book.
In general, I've found that the tone of Korean folk tales is not so different from the Japanese or Chinese myths that I've read. (Some of them were even inspired by Chinese or Japanese tales, just as Korean tales inspired theirs; there was a lot of cross-pollination.) There's just more of an emphasis on, um, gross bodily functions. Generally speaking.
That's not what I wanted to tell you about, though. I'd like to reveal the most momentous discovery I've made by reading Korean Folk Tales. Are you ready?
Ever since I came to this land, something's been bugging me. It's the word "Seoul." Seoul is, of course, the name of Korea's capital city. But the name is different from any other Korean city name I've seen. It just sounds weird. Seo-ul. Very few Korean municipalities end with the -ul suffix. Common suffixes are -cheon, which means "river" (Bucheon, Incheon, Gwacheon); -san, which means "mountain" (Busan, Ulsan, Ilsan); -ju, which means "province" (Gyeongju, Gwangju, Jinju); or -won, which I'm guessing means "valley" (Suwon, Namwon, Changwon).
But what was "Seoul"? The meaning was a mystery. I knew the word "seo" in Korean meant "west." So maybe the meaning of Seoul's name was "Western" something? Wikipedia and the Internet proved unhelpful. They vaguely stated that "Seoul" was derived from a Chinese word (as many Korean words are) which meant "capital city." I was forced to swallow this half-baked explanation until a better one came along.
Well, a better one did. Right after the fart-heavy "General Pumpkin" story, I read a little tale called "The Castle of Seoul." And it told me everything I wanted to know. Listen to this:
Apparently there was this Buddhist monk called Doseon, from the Silla Kingdom. He had prophesied that "the king of Korea shall be Yi," and that the "capital will be moved to Hanyang."
There were two problems with this prophecy. First, the king was not named Yi. Second, the capital was in a town called Gaeseong (which now lies just north of the DMZ, and is the site of an industrial complex jointly administered by North and South). "Hanyang," just in case you're wondering, was Seoul's original name. It wasn't officially known as Seoul until 1882, near the end of the Joseon Dynasty. It was called Hanyang during Joseon times.
But lo and behold, the prophecy came to pass. A man named Yi deposed the king. However, the old king's loyalists made it warm for Yi in Gaeseong, so he enlisted the help of a Buddhist monk called Muhak to find a location to build a new capital.
Eventually Muhak found the perfect spot, with mountains on three sides and a broad river to the south. King Yi was delighted and moved his court and ministers there at once, and built a city. They couldn't decide where they wanted to build the king's castle, however.
Then it snowed one night. In the morning, the king's men found a perfect circle of snow ringing the area marked out for the castle, and decided to built the wall along this line. And so the capital was nicknamed Seoul, which is derived from two ancient Sino-Korean characters: seol, the Chinese word for snow, and ul, an original Korean word, meaning "fence."
I sat back when I finished reading this story, and stared out the window. I felt like Indiana Jones holding the Holy Grail. Finally. I'd finally found the answer I was looking for. Now I understood why Seoul's name was so different from every other Korean city. It was a nickname from an ancient legend. The word meant "snow-fence"! That's why it ended in "ul," because ul means "fence"! All the other Korean cities ended with "province" or "valley" or "mountain" or "river"! But only Seoul ended with "fence"!
I had a serious geek-out right then. And now I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy. To heck with you, Internet! You let me down. The True Way is to be found in books: real, tree-paper books. Thank you, King Yi. Thank you, Muhak. One mystery solved.
After living in a place for 18 months (soon to be three nonconsecutive years), you get to know it pretty well.
I'm not an authority, but I like to think I've observed the idiosyncrasies of Korean culture with a journalist's eye, and gleaned some insight therefrom.
Sometimes I feel like I'm not properly documenting those insights, though. I mean, I've posted plenty about the quirks of living in Korea. I've never actually stepped back and written a comprehensive treatise on the fundamental differences between Korea and the western world, however. After all, it's not easy to describe a country where vegetable gardens are squeezed into the meager margins between buildings and roads; where the two most beloved national heroes are remembered for inventing the Korean alphabet and whooping hell out of the Japanese Navy, respectively; where howling ambulances stop for red lights and city buses blow them; where pop songs are written and performed for the launch of new mobile phones (and frequently top the charts); where hordes of tiny schoolchildren in matching uniforms are herded about on field trips, attached at the waist by a running line; where trash bags are piled under trees on the sidewalk rather than in dumpsters or trash cans; where a tiny reading lamp costs fifty dollars; where a shop can increase its curb appeal by painting a pidgin English phrase on its front window; where the people sprinkle sugar on ham sandwiches and corn dogs; where neon swastikas are hung everywhere (being, as they originally were, Buddhist good-luck symbols); where the most popular pizza toppings are sweet potatoes and corn; where soccer and baseball are religions, not mere sports; where cans of Spam are given as luxury gift items, like flowers or wine bottles or fine chocolates; where things like limes and turkey are unheard-of exotics; and where one may find bread-flavored soda pop, aloe vera juice, canned guava, squid jerky, and red ginseng candies on any supermarket shelf.
Korea can be a weird place.
And yet it's not so different from back home. The skyscrapers look the same. The apartment buildings are a bit different than what we're used to, but they all conform to the same cookie-cutter design. People drive on the right side of the road. The stoplights and roadsigns are recognizable. One may easily find a McDonald's, Costco, Burger King, Chevrolet, Dunkin' Donuts, 7-11, Hyatt, Starbucks, Hilton, or Pizza Hut on any street corner. (There's even Taco Bell, Subway and Quizno's in places.) English is written everywhere, and spoken almost as much, particularly in the urban areas. There are toilets, running water, electricity, and so much free Wi-Fi that it makes one's head spin. Everybody, down to the last twelve-year-old child, knows who Maroon 5 is, and David Beckham, and Tom Cruise.
There are times when I can readily believe I'm living in a foreign country. Other days, it hardly seems apparent at all. Those are the days when that phrase I learned in college ("global village") hit me hard. The world truly is becoming one. That may be a good thing for international relations and cross-cultural understanding, but we may learn (too late) that it also erodes cultural boundaries. I'm sure no Korean from the 15th century would even recognize his home country these days. And for me, your humble correspondent, it hardly seems worthwhile to write florid travel articles and in-depth treatises about a place that's so highly Westernized.
I need to get out of here. Like Paul Gauguin, I feel the need to escape from "everything that is artificial and conventional." After I finish up my two years here, I'm going off the grid. I'm going someplace that's so drastically different from the U.S.A. that I won't know which way is up. The toilets will flush in the opposite direction—if indeed there are any flush toilets. I won't be able to read the alphabet; almost no part of the native tongue will owe its roots to English. The buildings and shopfronts will be strange, eldritch, alien, of unrecognizable architectural roots and filled with unknown purpose. People's clothes will be radically different, the local customs' functions almost unguessable. The food will be delicious but totally foreign. Western fast food chains and designer stores will not exist. Cars will be few and far between, and those dented and dusty. The roads will be narrow and hardly paved. Civilization will be younger, narrower, more old-fashioned, less quick, less harried, less pretentious.
I've survived life in urbanized East Asia. Now it's time for a breath of fresh air.
I finally waded through the last few nebulous chapters of the Zen-heavy Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyū Munenori. Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings was thickly pocked enough with Shinto and Zen Buddhism; there were times when I could barely understand it. With Munenori, I felt like I understood practically zilch.
That's unsurprising, seeing as how Munenori wrote that "Those who have not studied Zen will find this difficult to understand" about five pages before the end of the book.
Thanks, Yagyū. I'd pretty much figured that out already.
I won't summarize the book here, nor opine about it. I did that the last time. However, I do wish to amend my previous views on Munenori himself. I said before that I found him to be a shadowy reflection of Musashi, a spoiled, privileged drone of the shogunate. I take it back. Munenori earned his wings in combat, and was no less deserving of them than Musashi. It just took me a while to figure that out from the somewhat stilted way Munenori wrote.
For those who are unfamiliar with the topic of discussion, I've been reading a couple of books by medieval Japanese sword masters. These two works, The Book of Five Rings and The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War, are both heralded by competent authorities as quintessential works on the subject of Japanese swordsmanship. They blend practical advice and spiritual guidance seamlessly, in true Japanese style. Furthermore, the advice given is so straightforward and sensible that many today view these works as manuals on how to succeed in life and business, not merely martial arts. They are still read and reread all over the world, hundreds of years after they were written.
To put it bluntly, anyone wishing to learn more about Japanese culture, martial arts, or spiritual beliefs should read these books. With a little imagination, you can take what's presented in them and construe it as some no-nonsense counsel on how to live. Do as you will.
I've also finished Black Elk Speaks. Remember? It's an account of the multifaceted life of a holy man of the Oglala Sioux tribe, written by John G. Neihardt in 1932.
I just used the word "of" three times in one sentence. I rock.
I wrote before that this man, Black Elk, who grew up right in the middle of the Indian Wars, saw and did some amazing stuff. I was whistlin' Dixie. He fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn as a teenager. (He and his tribe refer to it as "the rubbing-out of Long Hair," Long Hair being the Indian nickname for George Custer.) He resisted the attacks and lies of the white men and the U.S. Army until the very end, even after Sitting Bull had fled to Canada and Crazy Horse had given himself up. All the while, he was discovering his spiritual powers.
Black Elk claims that he was visited with a vision when he was a very small boy, during which he fell into a twelve-day coma. (Worried his family sick, it did.) In this vision, he saw the Six Grandfathers which rule over the world, and all the animals and birds and people of the Indian nations. In him was placed messianic power: the Six Grandfathers told Black Elk that he would save his nation and lead them to peace and prosperity, free of white control.
It was only several years later, after he finally vouchsafed this vision to others (he kept it under wraps for a long time, worrying that people would think he was crazy if he revealed what he saw) that he became a shaman. He claims to have cured hundreds of sickness and injury, and to have been visited with many more visions, which he and the village elders acted out in ghost dances to transfer the power of the visions to the Sioux nation.
But, of course, you and I both know what happened. Despite Black Elk's appointment as the Messiah, despite the prophecy that was made, the Sioux nation was herded onto reservations and left to live in little square huts for the duration of their lives. When Neihardt found Black Elk, he was a withered, saddened, broken old man, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Black Elk had failed in his duties as a savior, and what's more, he knew it.
Yet as he relates his life story (the book is written in first person, as translated by Black Elk's son and transcribed by Neihardt), Black Elk does not come across as misguided, pretentious, arrogant, flaky, or otherwise untrustworthy. He narrates simply and straightforwardly (rather like Miyamoto Musashi, only not so starkly forceful). He tells you what he saw, and what he believes it was. He makes no claims as to its truth or falsity. He does not try to convert the reader to his religion, nor convince him or her that his visions took place, and the power he was granted was real. He simply describes it.
The book is tough to read. As time goes on, and it becomes less and less apparent that Black Elk will fulfill his destiny and bring victory and prosperity to a vanishing Indian nation, things just get sadder and sadder. Black Elk takes up arms again and fights during the massacre at Wounded Knee, but the memory of a frozen ditch lying full of the bodies of fleeing women and children scars him deeply.
He eventually joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, travels to England, meets the Queen, and befriends a little French girl, who takes him home to show her family.
That's quite some list of accomplishments for one old Indian. A titanic vision, shamanistic powers, journeys across the Western United States, Little Bighorn, Wounded Knee, England, the Queen...incredible. And a bit depressing, too. Though his time with Buffalo Bill abroad wasn't in itself unpleasant for Black Elk, watching this once-great shaman being reduced to an exhibit in a traveling circus was painful for me.
In the end, as Black Elk says, the nation's sacred hoop lies irreparably broken. The people are scattered, decimated, hopeless. Black Elk himself is nothing but a feeble old man in a log cabin a few miles from a post office, telling his tale to a white man, who will preserve it with paper and ink.
That's about all the man's life amounted to.
But at least that's something.
Black Elk was a good man. He never did a thing wrong in his life. Didn't have a mean bone in his body, either. If he killed our boys in the Indian Wars, it was only because he was trying to defend his people, his way of life, his home. He never wanted to kill the white men anyway, not until it became apparent that they couldn't be stopped otherwise. He just wanted his tribe to live like it always had, free, happy and unencumbered. I feel sorry for the guy. He told interesting stories, took his duty to nation and manhood seriously, and wasn't frivolous or stupid or greedy.
Anyway, onto cheerier matters. I've read about five chapters of Little Women, and things are getting interesting. Jo has met and chummed up with the "Laurence Boy," for one thing. I can't wait to see where that goes. The Christmas holiday has ended and the two older girls have gone back to work, and in the process we've learned a little more about their characters, and their load. I say "load," because all four of the little women (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy), and their mother, Mrs. March, all have a heavy load to carry. The man of the house is off at war, so the mother and older sisters have had to find employment. The two younger girls must focus on their studies and assist with housework or other duties. All of them are hard-pressed not to think about how nice things were before Mr. March lost his fortune, and they had nice things, and never wanted anything, and didn't have to decide which of their dresses was the least shabby.
I feel for the poor dears. That's about all I can say at the moment. I'm only a little ways in.
I haven't bought any new books lately because my funds are becoming tight. Bartender's school, Christmas shopping and three flying lessons per week will do that to you. However, I did the stupid thing once again and picked up a seven-dollar paperback from Barnes & Noble.
It's The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.
Don't know who that is? Shame on you. Isaac Asimov is one of the greatest science-fiction writers of all time, if not the greatest. He is renowned for his speculative works on artificial intelligence and automation. Robots, I mean. You know that awful Will Smith movie I, Robot that came out a while ago? Asimov wrote the book. The movie butchered the book, of course. Always happens. But the "Three Laws" mentioned in the film—the three cardinal rules that govern robot behavior absolutely—are Asimov's invention.
My first soul-watering taste of Asimov's genius originated from an excellent science-fiction anthology called The World Turned Upside Down. Asimov's short story, The Last Question, is contained within it. That piece is also a mind-boggling, life-changing glimpse into the potential evolution of artificial intelligence. It's incredibly, sinfully good. It's as warped as 2001: A Space Odyssey, but worth the pondering headache. Read it. It'll completely blow your mind.
That being said, however, The Last Question also made me realize that I am woefully behind on my Asimov. So I began to scout around for a convenient volume to obtain and digest. But I didn't know where to start. Asimov was a prolific writer. He wrote or edited hundreds of books, literally hundreds. Even Barnes & Noble, whose sci-fi selection is deplorable, has half a shelf devoted to his works. Given that Asimov wrote his stuff decades ago, that's saying something.
My buddy John and I were walking through B & N the other day and, of course, our first stop was the sci-fi section. John was scoping out a book by Orson Scott Card (another well-known and prolific writer). I mentioned my Asimov dilemma to him. John took a look at the shelves, and then said emphatically, "You know, I've heard that The Gods Themselves is an incredible book."
John has it on good authority. His father, an English teacher, has a massive book collection, which includes virtually every original printing of every novel by all of the great Golden Age science fiction writers: Heinlein, van Vogt, Campbell, and of course, Asimov.
So there you go. I plucked the book off the shelf, bought it, and brought it home, where it is now sitting pertly and seductively on my nightstand.
Here is what the synopsis on the back cover says:
In the twenty-second century Earth obtains limitless, free energy from a source science little understands: an exchange between Earth and a parallel universe, using a process devised by the aliens. But even free energy has a price. The transference process itself will eventually lead to the destruction of Earth's sun—and of Earth itself.
Only a few know the terrifying truth—an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun. They know the truth—but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy—but who will believe? These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth's survival.
Try and resist that build-up, I dare you.
Stay tuned...
