let not dreams be your master

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim...

                                                                               --- Rudyard Kipling, "If" 
       

Would you like to hear a funny story (and by "funny" I mean "relevant to my career, and yours too if you're a writer")? 

My hobby is trapshooting. It's where five people get together in a line and stand a set distance away from a small mound. Beneath this mound is a mechanical launcher which, at the first shooters' word, slings small discs made of frangible clay into the air in different directions and trajectories. The first shooter puts on his shooting glasses and earplugs, raises his gun to his shoulder, and shouts "Pull!" The scorekeeper, typically seated on a chair behind the shooters, presses a button and activates the launcher, which throws a random bird out from beneath the mound and into the line of fire. The first shooter does his best to blow the little target out of the air with a shotgun blast. If he or she hits it, then the fragile disc disintegrates into a million tiny pieces and falls to earth in forlorn fragments. If the shot was a miss, the disc wings off into the distance and shatters on impact with the ground. Then the second shooter raises his gun to his shoulder, shouts "Pull!" and the whole process kicks off again, and continues until each of the five shooters has shot at 25 "birds." 

It looks kind of like this:

I've done this dozens of times, and I've never gotten a perfect 25. 

Why?

Because I always psych myself out. I get to 24, and then I start to sweat and grit my teeth and clench my gut and think of that lovely "25" patch I could sew onto my shooting vest, and I invariably jerk the trigger too hard and miss the final bird. 

Sloppy. Eager. Shaky. 

Too much speed and too much noise.

Today I realized that I have been approaching my writing in the same way.

Most of you guys know by now that I'm a science fiction guy, but I do fantasize about mainstream fiction occasionally. One of my favorite books is The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. It paints a dynamic and emotionally moving portrait of the life of a simple machinist's mate Jake Holman, who serves aboard the U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo. The vessel and her dedicated crew of "Sand Pebbles" patrol the Yangtze River in China, mostly a dog-and-pony show to intimidate bandits and warlords who are keen to rough up American businessmen and missionaries in the area. The book also brings to life the grand scale, social mores, political upheavals, and intimidating personalities at work in China in the 1920's. The action takes place right on the eve of Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, and the Kuomintang and the unification of China are central themes. More than a simple novel of an ignorant country boy at sea amid the oppressive hostility of the Orient, however, The Sand Pebbles is also an insightful commentary on the human condition: the raw power (and irrationality) of love, the madness and chaos of war, the eternal struggle of old traditions and new ideas. 

It's precisely the kind of historical fiction I wanted to write. So, in 2012, between penning the first and second novels of my epic sci-fi series, I did NaNoWriMo. What I wrote was a 52,000-word piece called Mugunghwa (the rose-of-Sharon, Korea's national flower). Apart from a few lackadaisical edits here and there, I haven't touched the manuscript since. 

Then, just recently, I picked up Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong. Not historical fiction by any means—it was published in 1997, the same year that the U.K. handed over Hong Kong to mainland China. This handover, while merely a peripheral event in Theroux's novel, nonetheless forms the catalyst for much of the action. I'll give you the Wikipedia summary: "Kowloon Tong is a novel by Paul Theroux about Neville "Bunt" Mullard, an English mummy's boy born and raised in Hong Kong. The story is set in the days leading up to the handover to China of Hong Kong from the British. Bunt is made an offer for his textile factory by the shady Mr. Hung from the People's Republic of China, and has no choice but to accept, when it is made clear that Mr. Hung knows all about the part of Bunt's life that he has kept secret from his mother Betty, namely his frequenting of the 'blue hotels' of Kowloon Tong and furtive sex with one of his workers, Mei-Ping."

Sounds quite tawdry and sinister, don't it? And it is, certainly. But more than that, it does precisely what The Sand Pebbles (published in 1962) managed to do: paint a vivid picture of a time, a place, and a savage cultural clash. I'm halfway through it and I can't put it down. The backdrop of Hong Kong is enticingly exotic (and lewd) and the characters simply sizzle off the page like bacon fat jumping from an overheated skillet: the weak-chinned Bunt, his overbearing mother Betty, the vicious Mr. Hung, the shy and vulnerable Mei-Ping, the slimy lawyer Monty, and the lascivious Filipino prostitute Baby ("Let we make fuppies!"). Here is yet another type of mainstream novel I should like to write: one set in a foreign country (an Asiatic one), concerning a culture utterly foreign to the reader, and yet which manages to faithfully portray the nitty-gritty details of that culture with beautiful, vivid detail—with a pressing social issue as its canvas and inborn human nature its paints. 

So I came up with a timely idea which I could write about: the plight of North Korean girls who decide to escape to China and the promise of work and income, only to be coerced into slavery by unscrupulous Chinese and sold to rural farmers in the northeastern provinces, and there sexually abused and worked like cattle.

Whatever. The idea isn't what's important.

What's important is the undue stress which reading Kowloon Tong caused me. 

I am a weak, insecure, spiteful, and needy man. I put too much pressure on myself. I read something good and I immediately want to emulate it. No, not just emulate it—surpass it. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but I go to extremes. I tell myself that I'm a failure if I don't manage to write something at least as good. I question my own worth and talent. I rail at myself that I'm not as keen an observer of culture and linguistic subtleties as I should be. Moreover, I'm usually in an all-fired hurry to complete the work. Paul Theroux wrote a damn good book, and I need to produce something similar now, NOW, d'you hear me, or my life as a writer is fucking over. This, or something very like it, is the loud, insistent, humbling message which my id splatters all over my craven ego. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

I've written three books and am halfway through another. (One of those books—the complete manuscript—is currently under review by the editors at Ace Science Fiction, an imprint of the Penguin Group.) I've penned dozens of short stories. But I remain unpublished. And that, to my mind, is simply not good enough. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

Now that one of my books is under review by a major publishing house, I feel an insistent need to edit the sequel into a refined state of readiness, while simultaneously finishing and editing the third installment and even the fourth. And these aren't short books, either: both the first and the second novel manuscripts turned out to be about 110,000-115,000 words each.

I put WAY too much pressure on myself. 

But I've been in a slump lately. I haven't written anything new since my appendectomy last May. I haven't touched my second novel manuscript; the writer's block just won't go away. 

And then I realized that it wasn't writer's block. It was that pressure. It was the background noise. It was me thinking about leaving Korea, moving to Las Vegas, missing Miss H, getting published by Penguin (or worse, not getting published by Penguin), winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards (or worse, not winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards), feeling inferior to Paul Theroux, wondering if I was even capable of writing something as good as Kowloon Tong or The Sand Pebbles, wondering, wishing, waiting, worrying. 

Enough. Enough already. 

I was taking notes on my new idea (about enslaved North Korean women) and I realized something. There was a feeling in my chest like a great big ship's boiler, overheated and ready to burst. My veins felt like cracked valves and my head was constantly pounding. To my shock, I discovered that this wasn't a new sensation: that knot of roiling, boiling pressure had been there for weeks. No matter how many bike rides I took along the Han River or the Yangjae Stream, no matter how many walks through Ttukseom Resort or Seoul Forest, no matter how many of my students wrote perfect descriptive paragraphs because I'm an awesome teacher, I was still stressed out. I was going to bed stressed and waking up stressed, stressing out with every word of every great author's that I read. And I was about to commence writing a fifth book with that lump in my chest. I was about to write it the same way I've been writing every short story and editing every novel manuscript: too quickly, too eagerly, and with too much background noise in my head. 

No more. 

The dam broke this morning. Something snapped inside me. My stress washed away, my head cleared, and I caught myself before I fell. I looked down at my notes and an inarticulate thought trickled into my skull, like sunshine after a rain shower. 

"Even if this isn't as good as anyone else's, it'll still be fun to write, won't it? I should just focus on having fun."

I don't know why it took me so long to remember that. Writing is supposed to be fun, you know. Even when it isn't. Even when it's agonizing and painful, like childbirth, or humdrum and dull, almost like work. It's still cathartic. It's still an escape. It's still a kick in the pants. Somewhere along the line I forgot that. I put too much pressure on myself to write a lot and write it well, better than anyone else. As an egocentric male, and as a human being who wants to leave this world richer than he found it, I stressed myself out trying to succeed on the first try. And predictably, my creativity suffered. I have to remember —and something tells me that I will from now on—that writing is not (just) about the destination. It's about the journey. 

Writing is like driving. You have to do it often to stay in practice. If you're only doing it to get paid and eat, it's no fun. It's nice to just take a quiet, pleasurable Sunday drive and see where you wind up. But not too fast: if you keep stomping the accelerator, you'll get frustrated and sloppy. You'll probably burn out your engine, too. Oh, and turn that radio down. It's good to listen to the sounds of the road. Too much background noise and you can't concentrate on what's important. If the engine starts acting up and you slow down, then it's time to take that baby to the repair shop—maybe even trade it in for a newer model. Get the picture?

Long story short, writing is an act of creation. And any act of creation, be it sculpture, oil-on-canvas, sand castles, babies, or fictitious worlds, should be a pleasurable one. 

Revelation over. 

Insadong gets me every time

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...

THE (SWINDLED) VAUNTER

a day at the races

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.

Stay tuned...

recommended reading

Life's more fun when you own up to having bad taste. Or better yet, glory in it. Indulging in strange or antediluvian books, movies, clothes and décor is one of life's greatest and rarest pleasures. I had a pretty darn good day yesterday, not just because I spent most of it with a special lady, but because I know what I like and am secure enough to partake of it without shame. We went shooting in the morning. We had a Beretta semi-automatic, a .22-caliber Ruger target pistol, a big .45 M1911, and the pièce de résistance, an 1873 Colt single-action Army revolver. It's one of my father's reproduction cowboy firearms, and has served both of us well in many a competition. It's a surreal thing, just to see it and hold it: polished walnut grips, case-hardened frame, barrel and cylinder cold black steel, grit personified. It's a piece of history, this gun. Nothing satisfies the scholarly mind or itchy fingers like loading a few massive .45 slugs into it, spinning the cylinder flippantly, and driving six giant holes through a paper bulls-eye. Some people are too caught up in your modern, plastic firearms like Glocks and M-16s. They don't appreciate the worth of a classic six-shooter. But I do. Then we went to the Old 247 Café and laid waste to the cheeseburger special. Burger, fries, and a medium Coke for $4.60 apiece. Where else in the country can you still find that kind of deal? And it was delicious, let me tell you. Diets and veggie burgers and protein shakes can go hang themselves. There's no denying the decadence of a good old-fashioned hamburger, packed with lettuce, tomatoes and pickles and dripping ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise onto the grease-bound fries. But the spiritual center of the Postman's brand of arcana—the place where I really let my horrible taste and singular cravings run loose—is the used book store. I found a science fiction novel by some guy I've never heard of (James White), called The Escape Orbit. It's about a bunch of human prisoners-of-war who, taken captive by the instectoid race humanity has warred with for 60 years, get dumped on a wild planet filled with carnivorous alien monsters. How cool is that? Yeah, yeah, I know. It's not Twain or Brontë or Dostoevsky. But it's fun, all right? I don't care if people say I have questionable taste in books. I don't care if Dad rolled his eyes when I excitedly explained the book's premise. I think it's neat. I mean, come on: if I liked (the original) Clash of the Titans, where you've got a bunch of guys fighting fantastic monsters with swords and bows...well, shoot! How is this any different? The monsters just happen to be giant green elephants with six legs, two trunks and shark teeth. I've delved into the first chapter already, and I must say that White does an excellent job of not clogging up the beginning with too much description or background. He just gets the story started, introduces some of the characters, and lets the context seep in where it seems logical. I need to work on that. I stand to learn a lot from this novel, especially since there's quite a few monster-fighting scenes in my own series. I could probably use some tutoring on how to do them properly. Just to make sure they keep the tension going and don't drag on endlessly, you know? Now let's see, what else do I have to report? Did I ever render a verdict on The Reivers (William Faulkner)? I don't think I did. I also haven't told you much about Race to the Pole (Sir Ranulph Fiennes). I finished it. And I've started in on my cousin's Western romance novel, Blue Mist Rising. So let me give you the skinny on those three and then we'll be all caught up on our monthly book reviews. THE REIVERS: In 1905 Mississippi, half-breed Indian Boon steals his boss's new car and, in the company of Ned, the family's giggly black retainer, and Lucius, the boss's eleven-year-old grandson, embarks on a long-haul joyride to Memphis, Tennessee, getting into all kinds of messes along the way. I liked the book. Faulkner is one hell of a yarn-spinner, and manages to create an entire world, filled with characters of every stamp, and scrapes and plot-twists of every conceivable caliber. Despite using some admirably long sentences and an incredible amount of parentheticals, he doesn't waste a single word. The scenery is rich, the humor ribald, the voice matter-of-fact, the tone bleak and weary at times, wistful and almost jovial at others. I got the sense that Faulkner, in his declining years, and having witnessed the brutalities and absurdities of human existence and the hypocrisy, grandstanding, bombast and foolishness that accompany them, wrote this book to show all of it up. The author was rueful of men's idiosyncratic idiocy, and yet still able to jibe about it, probably because he realized that no one can honestly expect people not to behave like animals. At times his author's voice suggests a learned species of resigned acceptance. The trials and trammels of humanity in the modern age—greed, bigotry, mendacity, pettiness, fear, corruption, anger, and lust—are lambasted in this novel, often to humorous effect. Lucius, the eleven-year-old protagonist, begins as a naïve chump, and loses quite a bit of innocence over the course of the book. In the end, he comes to understand the basic principles of rape, extortion, whoring, horse-racing, horse-trading, misuse of power, political corruption, theft, dishonesty, and sexual exploitation, and even, to an advanced degree, the reason behind them. (And in only three days to boot!) This is, as you may imagine, a traumatic process. Faulkner demonstrates his brilliance in both analyzing the human condition and translating it into words when he writes that Lucius, "having no receptacle" to put these new and confusing experiences in, and not having the maturity or wisdom to muster up some perspective, nearly breaks down with horror and chagrin as his worldview is assaulted. But with precocious rationality, Lucius refuses to let himself be corrupted completely, even if he willingly abetted the original sin (the theft of his grandfather's car and the start of the trip to Memphis) and many that followed. He takes in the unpleasantness he's witnessed, absorbs it without allowing it to consume him. (Of course, the cup does brim over at times; but whose doesn't?) Lucius's character serves as a sort of everyman, with whom the audience can identify and learn: we may observe depravity, and even partake of it, but we must never fall wholly victim to it. With good reasoning and a little maturity, we may process the information and be on guard against temptation. Failing this, we risk being lampooned as a minor character in a Faulkner novel. RACE TO THE POLE: Renowned polar explorer and O.B.E. recipient Ranulph Fiennes, the first man to transect Antarctica on foot (and who also ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days) takes pen in hand to debunk the myths and pernicious rumors surrounding Robert F. Scott's second and final expedition to the South Pole in 1912. This was also quite an interesting read. According to Sir Fiennes, Scott has been infamously and unfairly treated by the critics and the history books. Many of the mistakes that were made during the fatal endeavor (Scott and four companions died of starvation and exposure on the way back from the Pole, to which Roald Amundsen had beaten them by over a month) were the result of ignorance and circumstance, Fiennes alleges. For example, 1912 turned out to be the worst year possible for such work. It was the most freakishly cold summer in decades, according to data collected by the expedition itself and latter-day meteorologists. Being the first expeditionary force to push so far into the Antarctic wastes, Scott and his party also suffered from a profound lack of knowledge about conditions, particularly where nutrition was concerned: Fiennes's research reveals that neither Scott nor his men were consuming enough calories to keep them going, leading to a gradual loss of stamina, body fat and muscle mass, which eventually resulted in hypothermia and exhaustion. Sir Fiennes also hoists the English flag above Scott's icy grave, insisting that the only reason Amundsen made the pole first was his inherent sneakiness. He deceived the world, fooling both Norway and England into believing he was making a push for the North Pole, changed plans at the last second, bought up all the best Greenland sled dogs, rushed southward, and mounted his own expedition in opposition to Scott's. Since Scott's work was scientific in nature and Amundsen's was not, the Norwegian was able to make far better time and devote every ounce of energy to movement instead of data-collection. This may seem like fair play in the modern age, but in the old days Amundsen's actions were nothing short of barbaric. The English were hopping mad. Even Norway disowned him in embarrassment. Nonetheless, Amundsen rose to eternal glory as the first man to reach the South Pole. If you want an interesting and well-written treatise on Antarctic exploration, scientific diligence, and the limits of human endurance (plus an engaging account of both of Scott's harrowing polar expeditions), pick up this book. It's got everything: killer whale attacks, breaking ice floes, wooden sailing ships, ferocious storms, hellish blizzards, deadly cliffhangers, and enough seal-blubber soup to choke a sled dog. BLUE MIST RISING: Romance novelist (and my own second cousin) Jacqueline Franklin spins an erotic tale of danger, romance, and intrigue as Grady, a half-Indian gunslinger, returns to his Arizona hometown to save his lady-love Kaylee from the clutches of his mean and ugly arch-nemesis Dade. I haven't read much of this yet, and (if you've read even half of this blog post) you know that I'm not much into romance novels. But Cousin Jax did me a great service by reading my manuscript, which, as a fledgling piece of science and historical fiction, must've been as repulsive to her as erotic romance novels are to me. But I'm going to finish it. And I must say, Jax sets a scene pretty well. Two chapters in and we've already been introduced to all the major players and their wants, desires, and dislikes. I'll let you know more when I've read more. So that's what's on my plate right now, The Escape Orbit and Blue Mist Rising. And what am I going to read when I get through with these? You remember that special girl I mentioned earlier? Well, she has lent me a book. That book is Moby-Dick. Yes, the massive Melville classic. That's right, folks. I'm going into the breach again. Another attempt to scale the mountain will soon be under way. Let's see if I can get through the whole thing this time. I knocked off twenty chapters a few years ago and then completely ran out of steam. Melville is a pretty dry writer, even if the stuff he wrote about would make the average person pee their pants. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then...stay tuned.

S.A.S.S. and the city

Dad and I are both members of the Single Action Shooting Society, also known as S.A.S.S. It's a large national club wherein members choose a cool Old-West alias, get all dolled up in some Western duds, grab some reproduction 19th-century firearms and go target shooting every weekend. It's great fun. Some of the aliases people come up with are funny too. You can pick something normal like "Tex" or "Slim" or "Red," but a lot of people make puns and plays on words. I've seen names like "Deathrow Bodine," "Jed I. Knight," "Dirty Sally" (you know, a feminine portmanteau of Dirty Harry and When Harry Met Sally), and a bunch of others. Dad's S.A.S.S. name is "Nevada Jones," a combination of "Indiana Jones" and "Nevada Smith" (Pop really likes Steve McQueen movies). My S.A.S.S. name is "Painless Potter." This one's a bit esoteric. There's this really excellent Bob Hope movie (with Jane Russell as Calamity Jane, va-va-va-VOOM) called The Paleface. Bob plays a hopelessly inept dentist who somehow gets suckered into going west with a wagon train. Along the way, the protagonist bumbles through through a hilarious heap of hijinks. Hope's character, called "Painless Potter," after his dental practice, saves the wagon train from Indians, bandits, and a host of other dangers. And he gets the girl at the end, too. No wonder I admire the guy. (I love Bob Hope, just so you know; one of the funniest men alive, and a true patriot.) Anyway, Dad found out about a S.A.S.S. shoot in Tombstone, just 30 miles from Benson, where we'd be staying in Arizona. So we decided to go check it out. That was why we needed an SUV; those "bulky items" I mentioned before were Dad's gun cart, ammunition boxes, and guns. Pop's got a couple of 1873 Colt Single Action Army .45-caliber revolvers; a nine-shot 1892 Winchester lever-action rifle; and a Winchester model 1897 pump-action shotgun. Hell yes. So we rose at 6:30 or something (again) to get ready and go to this shoot. Dad and I got all duded up, and then we all piled into the Hummer and got on the road for Tombstone. We found the range with little difficulty; Tombstone's not a big town and you can see a long way in Arizona, anyhow. The shoot went well. We gathered 'round, listened to the mandatory safety meeting (which takes place before every match), then split up into posses. See, cowboy action shooting (as this type of shooting event is known) is done in stages. There are 6-8 different shooting ranges set up, each with its own set of props. These include things like rail fences, barrels, boxes, wagons, horse troughs, even the façades of shops and barns and stables. It is, really, like being in the Old West. Anyway, there's usually too large a group for everybody to be using one stage at once, so people get split up into groups of about 15 people, nicknamed "posses" in keeping with the flavor of the affair. Posse 1 went to Stage 1 and started shooting. Posse 2 (my group) went to Stage 4. Picture three high berms, forming the walls of the stage. Put a rail fence between the two side berms. On the far side of this fence are the targets: black and gray cast-iron panels on supports. (The shotgun targets have ropes attached to them so they can be pulled back upright after a shooter finishes blasting them.) On the near side of the fence (left to right) are a livery stable, a wagon, and a water trough. (The livery stable is just the building front, completely open in back to allow access to the targets; and the wagon is nothing more than a frame resting on the ground without wheels. But the illusion is achieved.) Here's Pop shooting... This is the other cool thing about CAS (Cowboy Action Shooting). You don't just pick up your guns and blaze away. Things are a good deal more intricate than that. For this first stage, our instructions were as follows. When the buzzer sounded, the shooter would, from inside the livery stable, draw his or her first pistol and fire off four shots at the first two pistol targets, alternating, landing the fifth shot on the third target. (For safety purposes, only five shots are loaded into the six-shot revolvers.) Then he would draw the second pistol and fire four shots at the last two pistol targets, landing the last shot on the third target, as before. Holstering the pistol, the shooter would dash to the wagon, grab a rifle, and fire off all ten rounds at the five rifle targets, double-tapping each one. He'd then put the rifle down, move to the front of the wagon, grab the shotgun, and blast the six shotgun targets one by one. Imagine the targets are all desperadoes, and you've got the makings of a damn fine shootout right there. Lots of shooters train hard to get fast. There were some competitors there that day who fired off rifle rounds as quickly as though they were firing a semiautomatic rifle. Keep in mind that they were using lever-action rifles, meaning they had to work a lever after every shot to chamber the next round. That's fast. This was one of the shooters who exemplified speed. His Winchester sounded more like a Gatling gun. This was only my second S.A.S.S. shoot, so I didn't hurry. I took my time, made sure of every shot, and did pretty well. I practice the "duelist" style of CAS, where you hold the pistol with one hand instead of two. Just to add a bit of flair to the whole thing I usually put my other arm behind my back, like I would if I was actually fighting a duel. Here's me on the first stage... I only got to do about four stages or so before noon rolled around and it was time to head back into Tombstone with Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb and see the sights. Poor Dad got disqualified in the first stage; he let a round go over the berm. That's a safety issue, and an automatic match disqualification. He wasn't pleased with himself, but he took a lesson from it. That darned 1892 of his keeps locking up; as he was working the lever to try to clear it, finger still on the trigger, the round went off. The rifle was pointing up, so the round went over the berm. Oh well. We both had fun while it lasted. The plus side to this was, though, that Dad and I got to walk down the mean streets of Tombstone, Arizona, in full cowboy array. Tombstone was small, and kind of a letdown. It was just all shops and restaurants. Sure, they had reenactments going on, and you could take stagecoach rides and sit in the saloons with dancing girls and self-proclaimed "half-ass piano players," but that's about all there was to it. We walked up and down, looking for the jewelry store that Mom and Pop had been to when they were here last. We didn't find it. I did get myself a rather groovy Tombstone sweatshirt (okay, okay, I'll call it a "hoodie"; are you satisfied?). Then we left. Next stop? Bisbee. Bisbee used to be a mining town. Founded a year after Tombstone (in the 1880s), it's splattered all over the sides and floor of a narrow, twisting valley. It's practically within shouting distance of Mexico, in fact. It's also become sort of a hippie venue. No sooner did we pull into town than we passed the town square, where were parked three jauntily-painted, faded buses with peace symbols scrawled all over them. A gaggle of scrawny, scruffy-looking youngsters, bearded (in the case of the men) and dread-locked (the women), sat in lawn chairs in a circle outside these buses, wearing grubby clothes, smoking and talking. Wherever they were planning to go, I'll bet it was neat. Whatever they were smoking, I'll bet it was fun. Whatever was going through their heads, I'll bet it was probably hopeless liberal horseshit. Bisbee itself was pretty. We meandered through the meandering streets, searching for a gem shop, but found none. The populace looked like a pretty laid-back bunch; lots of guys had ponytails and lots of women were pseudo-Goth, but there were a few normal-looking people here and there. The town itself looked like it had lots to offer in the way of museums and eats, too. The place was worth a look, and not much else. So we went back to Tombstone. We had a date on Boot Hill. Yep, the infamous graveyard where all of Tombstone's desperadoes, thugs, outlaws and even a few poor townsfolk were buried. This is what it looked like: We wandered up and down the rows, investigating graves, some of them famous... Some of them obscure... All of them with a rather pretty view of the desert. It was amazing. To see these people's names, the names of actual people who lived in this town over a hundred years ago, living and dying and making their way...it stimulated an almost physical sensation of awe. Some people had committed suicide, waiting for their lovers; some had been killed in accidents; many in gun battles or shootouts. There were maybe one or two "natural deaths." The year 1882, in fact ,was the worst. There were more headstones with that year on Boot Hill than any other: two "Chinamen," killed in a gunfight; a little boy who died "with a spasm" after falling off his stilts; a man killed by Indians as he returned to town with a wagon-load of firewood; a woman who killed herself waiting for her husband to return from the mines; an Englishman killed by a ruptured water line in Bisbee; the list went on and on. (They gave you a brochure at the gate with the names, dates, causes of death, and a little personal history about each stiff.) We bought some root beer fudge at the gift store (absolutely fab-u-lous) and departed back to the trailer. Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb came over in the evening with the makings for sloppy joes, and we had a delightful dinner party on the trailer porch, with the red Arizona sunset limning the distant Dragoon Mountains. Every minute spent outside and awake in the American Southwest, it seems, is a good minute.

Busan: the last shout

I wrote some time ago about the grand send-off we gave to Andy Smith in Busan. We elected to do the same with me. Our master plan was to go to Busan for the weekend, as we'd done several times before, and spend a couple days raising hell. We had quite a grand scheme as far as that was concerned, what's more. We were determined to go shooting, a rarity in Korea, a country that outlaws private gun ownership. Jeff had located a gun club in central Busan, however...conveniently located right next door to the all-you-can-drink bar. They had an evening special, six to eleven on Saturdays, where you could have as many beers as you wanted for ₩12,000 per person. After that we didn't know what we'd do. Go dancing, mayhap.

 After meeting up outside the shady chicken place (which re-fries its chicken I don't know how many times; it's run by a leather-faced lady who's openly suspicious of foreigners) at 7:00, we hailed a cab, waltzed into the bus station, secured tickets for the Busan Express, and then spent the next two and a half hours stuffed into a cramped, airless, hot, lurching sardine can. The bus ride was only ₩13,000 and that STILL wasn't worth it. I resolved, stepping out of that torture chamber, never to set foot on another intercity bus as long as I lived, at least one without the benefit of opening windows. We stopped off at McDonald's (I was too queasy to get anything), then headed into the subway. We resolved not to waste time traveling across the city and back to Haeundae to get our rooms immediately; we'd explore a little, dump our stuff off, and then go shooting and drinking around dinnertime.

For the early afternoon, however, we elected to hit up Jagalchi, the massive Busan fish market spread over half the harbor. I was elated; it was on my to-do list but I thought I'd never get the time to see it over all the other stuff I wanted to get done. Now was our chance, and we took full advantage of it. The market was a bit gloomy under the overcast skies and the air was admittedly odoriferous, but the profusion of sea life was intoxicating nonetheless. Jagged rows of stalls and booths, overhung with shabby tarps and gaudy-colored umbrellas, sprawled in every direction. Everywhere we looked, there were vendors frying unidentifiable foods; enormous fish laid out on trays of ice, white underbellies gleaming invitingly; squid and octopus draped over crates and planks, tentacles dangling; and utterly amorphous chunks of sliced seafood and entrails stacked in heaps. One fellow we passed was shaving rinds from one such block (it was shark, we discovered) and handing them out as free samples to the crowd, inviting them to sit down and try a full dish for only man won (₩10,000).

Off the streets the sights and scents didn't diminish. If anything, they increased. We passed into one of the gigantic warehouse-esque buildings that thrust itself out of the center of the open-air market; it was likewise filled with vendors, immaculate in yellow and pink rubber aprons and gloves, surrounded by glass and plastic tanks of their wares, oxygen bubbles concealing their slimy, piscine contents. Unable to restrain myself at the sight of a live octopus the size of my head, squirming its way around its submerged colander (and the insistent urgings of its owner) I caved and ordered sannakji once again. In five minutes (and ten thousand won) a majestically writhing pile of tentacles, seasoned with sesame oil and sliced onions, was brought to our table. I partook with gusto, having regained the appetite I lost on the lurching bus journey. Even Adam and Jeff pitched in a bit. This was real sannakji; I could feel it sucking on to my cheeks, tongue, teeth and gums, its suckers like little tiny hooks. I devoured the plate, thanked the proprietor and moved on.

Two warehouses down I was overcome with a burst of gluttony once again; I ordered a couple of strings of giant abalone for fifteen thousand (about twelve bucks), and munched them raw as we sauntered out of the fish market and into the souvenir market and tourist mall beyond. It would have been better with ssamjang, but I was content to slurp the shellfish down as they were. I had to leave the last two, though; I got full. I felt bad, forking over money only to waste it and some fisherman's hard work. I couldn't have saved them, though...they were already beginning to turn in the hot sun. I'll know better next time.

 I washed my hands in yet another McDonald's (Adam, Elaine and Jeff hit that place at least five times in three days), and then we headed out into the souvenir market. We wandered here and there, looking in the shops, the clothing stalls, the tiny seamstresses' cubbyholes, the western clothing chains, the fast food joints, and the actual souvenir boutiques themselves. We stopped at one (real tourist trap) and I purchased a Korean fan for my mother and an emblazoned business card box for my father. It may have been a tourist-trap shop, but I think Mum 'n' Dad will appreciate the gifts nonetheless. We also stopped off at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and polished off a box of a dozen between the four of us. They were nice, but blander than I recall (I haven't had a doughnut in a year, remember). It would have been better with some milk. If I hadn't been so fixated on getting some chocolate in my system, I might have had the courage to try one of the oddball Korean doughnuts with green tea icing.

Done with Jagalchi and the markets, we headed back to the subway, rode thirty minutes to Haeundae, checked into our usual love motel (wonderfully inexpensive at ₩35,000 per night, or about $28), relaxed at the beach for a bit, and...well, it was at the beach that the real surprise of the whole weekend came, one that totally made my month. Adam and Jeff slid off to get drinks (non-alcoholic; we weren't going to drink before shooting, no way). I should've known they were up to something, 'cause it took them a long time...long enough to be lost. Elaine went on the cell phone and directed them to our location on the boardwalk. The first I knew that they had, all three of them, tricked me, was when the Papa John's large pepperoni pizza with a side order of cheese sticks plopped down on the grass behind me. It was a plot. Adam and Jeff had sneaked away on a prearranged scheme, and Elaine had stealthily covered for them over the phone, like a seasoned black ops pro. I had not the slightest inkling of their intentions. I was struck speechless. For a moment my mind would not even comprehend what I was seeing, as my brain tried to force my body and face into expressions of nonchalance. It didn't work. Soon as my teeth sank into that first cheese stick, I was gone. I poured out disjointed words of gratitude, not nearly enough, while I chewed and swallowed. I will never be able to thank those three enough for ending my deprivation. Having stood my complaints about the lack of Papa John's in Korea all year, my three friends had graciously, thoughtfully, generously, wonderfully concocted this covert operation and carried it off without a hitch. That alone made it the best send-off ever. I am truly blessed with true companions (and pizza, munch munch munch).

 Anyway, we carried the leftovers (what little there were) back to the hotel, showered, changed, and then boarded the subway for Seomyeon and the center of town. We wandered around a little, taking in the sights and smells of this new corner of the city (only Jeff had ever been here before). The streets were narrower, the buildings somewhat dingier, but the streets were lively and full of all sorts of people, and the sidewalks were jammed with tiny shops and food vendors giving off delicious odors.

We wandered about for a time until Jeff's nose kicked in and we discovered the Seomyeon Gun Club, tucked away on the second floor of a glass-fronted building at a small three-way intersection. We ascended the steep, dark staircase and received an effusive greeting from a young, thickset Korean fellow in glasses.

"Shooting?" he asked. "Come this way!"

The waiting room resembled my family doctor's, only with more toy guns. It was sparsely decorated, but the couches were soft and the small coffee tables arranged pleasantly. There was a long, L-shaped counter at one side of the room, on which a pleasant-looking, skinny woman leaned and smiled at us. There were some empty water-cooler bottles lying about. The targets of previous shooters, pocked with bullet holes, were hung on the walls. A few copies of American gun magazines were on the tables and couches. One entire wall of the room, however, was taken up with an enormous color poster with photographs of the available firearms, their names, and for the most part their calibers as well. The jovial, thickset proprietor directed our attention to this and then stood by eagerly with a notepad and pen.

Elaine and Jeff were a little nervous (it was their first time shooting real guns), but I did my best to put their minds at ease. I selected weapons and calibers that I thought would be best suited to their tastes, which our host jotted down on his notepad. Selections completed, he ushered us through a door and into the actual range itself, which resembled any indoor range in the States: booths with targets set up on lines. From a gun cabinet at the rear the man produced our weapons and ammunition. I was first. The proprietor had me demonstrate checking the gun for cartridges, and then had me dry-fire. Satisfied, he let me go ahead. I originally opted for the Desert Eagle; but they didn't have it. I was going to go for a .44 Magnum next...but they didn't have that, either. So I went with the .357 Mag. That was a fun little number, and made quite a bang.

In the next booth, the man was attempting to explain to Jeff how to use the sights and so forth, but his English was not up to the task. So after I was finished, the man brought me over and asked me to explain. I told Jeff the rudiments of using handgun sights, and then Jeff went ahead with shooting, steady as a rock. We had ear protection but not eye protection, which turned out to be a bit hard on Jeff, because he was in the last booth down and the shell casings ejected from his nine-millimeter Beretta kept bouncing off the wall and came close to hitting him. One actually did smack him on the tip of his nose. Jeff finished all of his rounds, however, and scored 74%, which I can assure you is excellent for a first-timer. (Most people can't even hit the target at all.)

Elaine and Adam were next. Elaine was using a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. The proprietor asked me to show her how to cock it. I did, and Elaine just took over from there. She was phenomenal. Her aim was steady, her form was flawless and her scores reflected it: 82 percent. She even got two rounds through the same hole, Robin Hood style. She said herself that after the initial shock of the first round going off, she settled right down and got into it. I think she had fun, to say the least.

 Poor Adam was in a bit of difficulty, which was all my fault. I'd picked a .45 Colt for him, but the stupid thing kept jamming, so the Korean proprietor had swapped it out for a different forty-five semiauto. It fired better, but still kept jamming. Also, the kickback gave Adam some problems...forty-five slugs are heavy buggers. Nonetheless Adam's hand was steady. He jerked the trigger a bit at the outset but once he started squeezing his aim improved considerably, and he scored 75%. He enjoyed it, he said...he even grabbed two of the Magnum revolvers and posed for a picture with them, reminiscent of Clint Eastwood on the movie poster for The Outlaw Josey Wales. Matter of fact, we all grabbed a gun (Elaine with a .44 Mag, Jeff with a Walther, and myself with my trusty nine-millimeter Beretta) and posed for a gunslinger-style shot.

The proprietor tallied up our scores, rolled up our precious targets with holes rendered by our own hands, and bowed us out of the shop. My .44 cost ₩50,000 to shoot; Elaine's revolver and Jeff's automatic, ₩40,000 apiece; and Adam's .45 was another fifty grand, I'm reasonably certain, total cost therefore being ₩180,000. Expensive though it may be, nothing replaces the thrill of shooting, particularly since I'd been separated from it for so long. Adam enjoyed it, Jeff is coming around and Elaine, I think, is hooked. I'll have to open up the gun cabinets for all of 'em when they come visit me in the States...

Then we went drinking. The place still had the sign over the door reading Dojima; but it's since been changed, if Lonely Planet is to be believed, to the Barony Brauhaus. (German-themed drinking establishments are quite popular in Korea; there's a couple on this island, even.) We opted for the all-you-can-drink option, knowing we were in it for the long haul, and then sat through the next four hours sipping beer. I say "sipping" because the glasses that we were given didn't really lend themselves to chugging. They were much smaller than even the standard beer mugs we get at the Local in Gohyeon. Skinnier, too. Now that I think back on it, such tableware is probably insurance. They know people can and will go hog-wild with this liquid buffet, so they serve it up piecemeal, in very small increments. We arrogantly thought, as the dutiful waiter shuffled back and forth to our table every five minutes, that we'd tire him out with our pace and force him into granting us more capacious drinking vessels...but no such luck.

The atmosphere in Dojima (or whatever) is fine; recessed lighting, dark wood furnishings, and a decent view of the city streets out one wall of windows. The establishment also boasts something known as "the Beerzooka," a plastic tube about six feet high and graduated with measurement markings; large parties can order "one foot" or "two feet" or the whole "six feet" of beer and spend the rest of the evening slowly lowering the levels from a tap at the contraptions base. It was more economical for us to take the option we did, but had we been pressed for time or not so hard up for cash we probably would've tried it. "Beerzooka," indeed...the name still makes me chuckle. Who thinks up this stuff anyway?

Well, we were in fine shape when we departed. I'm afraid I don't remember what the bill was but it must have been just, for no fights broke out over it. (We've had our fill of fights over drinking bills; did I tell you about the street fight we got into yet?) We caught the subway over to Sinchon, the swingin' university district. We danced our shoes off at a couple of clubs, most notably Vinyl Underground, famous throughout Korea. The staff was fluent in English, there was no cover charge, drinks were plentiful and the music wasn't half bad. I was up on the stage quite a bit, too. (Insert embarrassed grin here.) After this, we got some Turkish food at a stall outside, then got a cab back to Haeundae. I was dead beat. I opted out of Adam and Elaine's plans to sit on the beach awhile with some more beer and snacks, and collapsed into bed.

There remains yet little to tell. I woke up with a pretty decent hangover, but a couple of ibuprofen tablets, a liter of water and an hour in a dark room got me out of it cleanly. We recovered, freshened up, paid the bill and went out and sat on the beach. It was a gray, overcast sort of day, as it unfortunately always is whenever we go to Haeundae Beach to swim. Meteorological racism, that's what it is. Those darn Korean clouds won't let any sunshine fall on non-Koreans at the beach. After a brief splodge (Geordie lingo for "wade"), we discoursed about our plans. A, E, and J were all for sticking around in Busan to go see Terminator: Salvation. I wasn't too keen on it; I was still a bit beat, and wanted to have a bit of time at home to relax...plus I didn't want to take the bus back, no matter if my good friends were on it. I'd beaten my hangover but there was no sense in tempting fate. So we split up on the subway at Seomyeon; I rode to the coastal ferry terminal and caught the Pegasus for Gohyeon (₩21,500), while my three cohorts rode on and saw the movie. I spent the rest of that Sunday on my bed, chillaxin'.

And that was the last weekend in Busan.