down by the Yangjae Stream

There's a lovely little...ah, screw it. Just look at the dang pictures.

I see these occasionally in the broader areas of Daemosan Station or out here in the secluded shade of the Yangjae Stream: group exercise classes. Always elderly or middle-aged women and always with sugary American pop music playing in the background. 

Not only does Korea go to the trouble of landscaping all these marvelous stream- and riverbanks, but they stick up exercise equipment as well...completely for free! Even halfway up the sides of mountains!

from me to all the world

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

--- W.H. Auden

...and a Happy New Year. 

Zhongshan Garden

Not much needs to be said about this, either. Spotting a low gate in the wall of the Forbidden City, and disliking the look of the lines about the main entryway, Miss H, Miss J and I opted for the small door, thinking it might be a side entrance. We were wrong. It was Zhongshan Garden. It cost ¥6 (about a dollar) and was mighty beautiful. Take a peek:

Next? Our perfunctory venture inside THE FORBIDDEN CITY. Stay tuned...

the punsters were right

...Korea's got a lot of Seoul.

Okay, that was awful. I know. I'm not the first one to make that pun, either. And that's just my point.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm living in Korea's capital city. For the previous two years I was in the hinterlands. I was way down on the islands in 2008-2009, about as far from Seoul culturally as I was geographically. And in 2012 I was in Bucheon, which, even if it is part of the greater metropolitan area (barely), hardly counts as part of the big city. It was relatively quiet, laid-back and dull compared to this hoppin' metropolis.

Seems like everywhere I go in this town, every corner I turn, every street I walk down, every new neighborhood I explore, every event I attend, a new and surprising part of the Korean way of life jumps up and punches me in the nose.

Take the Sejong University Festival, for instance.

Technically it lasted from Tuesday to Thursday, May 14-16. I didn't get much of a glimpse on Tuesday because I had class all day, and I don't have any classes on Wednesday, so I wasn't even on campus. Thursday was my last shot. So after I finished up at two o'clock, I strolled around and snapped some photos.

 

  

 

 

Not much to speak of, right? Students were setting up tents and awnings. A few enterprising souls were already peddling cocktails for four bucks a pop. Some of the English department professors were rehearsing for their big show at 4:00 p.m. Knots of students were meandering here and there. Other than that, the campus was serene.

My friend and coworker Sam and his wife JB (whom I mentioned in my last post) invited Miss H and I to come back to campus at 9:00 and view the proceedings then. I didn't figure there'd be an appreciable difference, but I agreed. My girlfriend and I duly arrived at the appointed hour—halfway through it, anyway—and took a look around.

BOY, was there an appreciable difference.

Those awnings and tents that I had seen being set up earlier were packed with people—students. Soju, beer and cocktails flowed freely. Barbecue lines were everywhere. Snacks of every description were being fried and served to groups and couples at plastic chairs and tables. A famous female K-pop group was performing at the live stage in the middle of the dirt pitch, and dance music thumped from every speaker and amp on campus. Students danced in the streets and under the incandescent lights. Shouts, screams, and roars of laughter echoed and bounded from every darkened window and building. I tried to snap a few pictures, but nothing could encompass the joyous chaos. I'll leave that to your imagination. Sam, JB, Miss H and I sat and nibbled on fries for time, shooting soju, sipping beer from Dixie cups and taking the occasional gulp of baekseju, a Korean wine somewhere between potpourri and cough syrup. Then we got up and wandered around, snacking on chicken kebabs and having conversation when the noise level abated enough for us to be audible. We didn't stay on campus long, but we stayed long enough.

I remember being struck most of all by a feeling of gratitude. After riding my students like a slave master for nearly three months solid, it was nice to see them kicking back before a long four-day weekend. (I bumped into two of them during our wanderings through campus, and they looked like they were having fun.) But most of all, I was awed by the difference in the atmosphere. By day, Sejong University was a somber, venerable educational institution. During these few nights of festival week, however, it had donned a lighthearted and jovial guise, absolutely riotous, star-spangled and comical, infectious in its enthusiasm. A question occurred to me as we weaved through the happy milling crowd.

"Sam," I said, "what exactly is the point of this festival?"

This wasn't his first rodeo.

"It's like spring break," he replied, "but they don't go anywhere."

Well, there you have it. This was the Korean equivalent of spring break. With classes still on and nowhere to go, they threw a party on their school's own grounds. No wonder they were so enraptured. The weather had just turned lovely, the leaves were green and the flowers in bloom, summer was right around the corner, midterms were over and all was right with the world. I was catching a glimpse into a rare sight: Korean students kicking back in grand fashion during a lull in the academic war they'd been waging since grade school.

I felt ever so privileged to have that glimpse.

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...