Happily Ensconced in Málaga

Howdy, folks! Hope all is well. It's quite late, about 1 a.m., but Noelle and I have rented this crazy little doohickey that keeps us connected to the internet until tomorrow morning, and I don't want to waste too much time.

We're here in Málaga, a town of 25,000 perched in a valley high up in the Sierra Occidental. We're staying with the mother of a friend of ours. It goes like this: Noelle went to University with Cara, who taught in Colombia two years, and is engaged to Sergio, both of whom have moved to the U.S. for the time being. Sergio is from Málaga, and spoke to his mother, Alba, who was happy to have us drop by. So we've been having a lovely time, making arepas, walking to nearby pueblitos, trying desperately to carry on intelligent conversation in Spanish. We are set for a walk to San Jose de Miranda on Sunday, to meet Alba's father; however on Saturday night we are slated to belt our pipes out at a new Karaoke bar, and we may not be in top form the following day. We're also looking at riding mules around a glacier next week. Doesn't that sound like a hoot?

It was a nice trip here, from Santa Marta, and the Ciudad Perdida, albeit not without its difficulties. I certainly hope you're peeking at Noelle's flickr site, where we're uploading scads of pictures. Two notable points of interest in between Santa Marta and Málaga are the small cities of Aracataca, (A Rock-a Talk-a?) the childhood home of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mompós, stuck between rivers, notoriously difficult to reach, and the city to which Simon Bolivar claims to owe his glory.

We began looking into visiting Aracataca when we heard there might be a train there from Santa Marta. We asked around, and some folks at the Ethnological museum in Santa Marta, while of no help whatsoever, expended quite a bit of energy trying to find information for us. One of the curators, who spoke extremely rapidly with a bit of an impediment, told us (in the midst of about 600 other words) to call him if we went to Aracataca. We didn't call. But we did run into him in the middle of main street just a couple of hours after arriving in town. We treated him to dinner, at a restaurant of his choice. He, among other things, used to work with the famous Colombian photographer Leo Matiz. He ordered for us. Water a la Leo Matiz. Plaintains and chicken a la Leo Matiz. And to top it off, when he spoke to the cook he used his friend's name as some sort of invocation, as well. "Leomatiz!"

When he found out that I'm a violinist, he was on the phone inside of a minute trying to get me a spot in a concert scheduled for later that evening. We said goodbye to the cook, "Leomatiz!", walked across town, and met a musical group called Soncataca. I played a few songs for them (I chose poorly), and it was agreed I would play a bit in the concert, for some good old-fashioned intercambio cultural. We walked back to the hotel to change, (stopping for a couple of beers, and some antique Vallenato music by an Aracataqueño composer Lucho Bermudez) agreeing to meet later in the evening. It was halloween, and all the kids had come out by this time; Superman costumes, traditional Colombian garb in miniature. The ice-cream sellers were out in droves, as well as a strange man with a raffle set-up that included a big flatscreen TV showing video of people being tossed and gored by angry bulls.

The concert was to start at 8. We arrived a little after 8. There was no crowd. Then slowly, there was a small crowd. Then the band continued to wait UNTIL TEN FORTY-FIVE to begin playing. We stuck around for the first set, congratulated the band (who did sound great!), ducked out of my commitment to play (who knows when that would have been), and made arrangements to have lunch with our host and the lead singer the next day. When the next day came, we demonstrated our knowledge of Colombian culture by not showing up. We had heard that sometimes Colombians will make an appointment they can't keep; we saw it happen in Aracataca. Our party-animal host

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nols/3008470316/in/set-72157609032359237/

was leaving early for Santa Marta, yet agreed to lunch with us. The lead singer was the center of attention, and drinking heavily early into the morning, yet lunching with us? A strange cultural convention, although it does allow one to leave graciously, the promise of a lunch that will never come...

We also had a spectacular time getting to (Bus, bus, van, van, boat, van, motorcycle) Mompós, and spending the evening of the Day of the Dead in a traditional cemetary, lighting candles for departed friends and relatives. And for the record, Mompós does feel like the Colombian version of Faulkner's Mississippi.

We are now trying to keep from second guessing our host here in Málaga. I'll let you know how it turns out. Leomatiz!

Lost Blog Heads for Lost City

Well, folks, my apologies for waiting SEVEN months to write anything at all.

There. I've said it, I'm not going to dwell on my negligence, or feel bad about it for too long. But golly, it's been ages. Noelle and I have left Korea. It was difficult, and bittersweet; Our dear friend Yun Seon-gyeong accompanied us to the airport for a tearful goodbye, a free bump up to first class, and a surprise sighting of a famous Sumo wrestler. For the last month and a half, we were in the United States, visiting family and friends. It was fun, memorable, expensive, and exhausting. So now, we've come to Colombia, and are leaving tomorrow on a six-day trek to the lost city of the Tayronas, Teyuna. It also promises to be fun, memorable, expensive, and exhausting. So much so that I'm still stressing about whether or not it's a good idea to go. ¡But damn! I can't remember the last time I saw a lost city, so I'm pretty sure this is a rare opportunity.

We've been in Colombia for a week now, and we're still finding our feet. A lot of our rusty Spanish has come back, we're learning new words, but the quality that we lack is the endurance to speak (or try to speak) for minutes, much less hours at a stretch. As weird as it sounds, I miss Korean. I think that both of us, after two solid years of meaningful cultural exchange, grow a bit tired when faced with confusing or overly enthusiastic greetings coming from a culture we don't understand yet. There's also the difficulty of knowing exactly what is or isn't safe. In Korea, we'd hear all the time that what we were planning to do (or more often, what we did last weekend) was unsafe. We didn't have contacts in the area, we were going to sleep outside; had our supervisors known we camped illegally through our week in Japan, they probably would have had coronaries. And we laughed off their warnings because we felt that we could rely on some fundamental observations we made about Asian culture: not a lot of touting, very little theft, polite strangers. But here, we have the touts, rumors of theft, a lot of barred windows, a lot of folks who clearly have little more that what they're wearing; but for the most part, nobody bothers us. It feels a lot like India, except we get more warnings from proprietors, folks (and guidebooks) not to do this, go there, etc etc. In any case it hasn't been especially eye-opening so far, but extremely fun, if a bit too hot.

My favorite experience so far is a bus ride that Noelle and I took with one of the proprietors at Casa Viena, out hotel in Cartagena. We wanted to get our yellow fever vaccination, but were told at the administrative office that the mobile vaccinating unit was in a barrio called Boston, quite a ways outside of the city. Upon asking our proprietor how to catch a bus to Boston, she interrogated the the cleaning lady (who apparently knows the suburbs well) in very rapid Spanish about Boston's safety, and decided to accompany us. Within ten minutes we were on a bumpy, loud, vallentano-music filled bus moving approximately the same speed as pedestrians, with sellers jumping on and off, offering us cokes, fruit, candy; we drove through the central market, which was absolute chaos. Unfortunately, once we reached the medical center, we were sent elsewhere, and once we reached elsewhere we were instructed to go much farther out into the countryside, and we gave up. But we got a authentic Colombian experience, and coupled with a beautiful plaza called Samtisima Trinidad, made for a memorable Cartagena.

But I have to go. A South Korean guy just showed up! I hope I can still talk!

six years? are you serious?

I've gotta write fast, as fast as I can. I'm reworking the web site at the moment (lots of cool new widgets out there on the internet for free these days, thank God, 'cause some of us can barely code) which always prompts a heavy degree of wistfulness as I'm forced to wade through almost six! years of archives and whatnot. And the biggest thing that gets me down is that six years ago,working away at a group home in Watertown, MA, riding my new XJ-750 there and back every day, planning for the bike trip, I was not nearly as worried about making mistakes or planning especially well. In fact, I feel as though I've grown so cautious of late that I've got to keep hammering out the words here just to keep from editing on the fly and sucking any hope of real current I might otherwise generate. I sure f*ing hope that this isn't what growing older is about; closing in on yourself until an intricately sculpted tower of things you're afraid to alter replaces the cruddy, rough, ready-to-adapt mindset of youth. I've had to go through the last number of years' worth of music too; I'm proud of it, by and large, but I can't help noticing the trend that as I learn more about production and performance, I also grow more afraid to do the wrong thing, or maybe just too picky about doing the right thing. Crap. I guess I need to resign myself to changing the way I'm going to change, but at the moment, part of me is rebelling for sure. Let's hope that dragging the ol' fiddle down to the Amazon, or some dirty bar in the southern reaches of Buenos Aires works to remind me of priorities I may have supplanted.

In other news, the semester has started again, and things are a bit weird but OK. We've had two days of class so far, and I made a fundamental miscalculation in preparing the curriculum this time around: I thought the little buggers wanted to learn! The dang sixth graders have completely given up, for the most part. Urgh. I've got what I think is a very fun and humorous way to drill the simple present, and I've got all these fantastic books to read, when the rugrats are willing to pay attention! No memorizing boring dialogs! Please! We must learn how to intuit at least a little bit of English structure!

It looks like I'm going to Cheongju this coming weekend with my friend Hyeong-gyu, theastronomer from the nearby Seomjingang Observatory, a small but excellent fixture not so far from our house.

Nols and I are kind-of planning our upcoming trip through Central and South America, and I sure as hell hope that a little day-to-day discomfort will get me writing again, maybe even with a little indignance. Wouldn't that be nice...

Check out the new kipjones.net if you get a chance.

Even though it's too damn cautious.

Hope you enjoyed my translations of Korean poetry.

from "Sky, Wind, Stars, and Poems" by Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945)


Instead of a Foreword

Looking to the sky until the day I die
without one speck of shame
the wind in the space between the leaves
troubles me.
With a heart that sings the stars
I must love everything that's going to die
and then the path given to me
must be crossed.

Tonight, as well, the stars are grazed by the wind.

* * * * *

Boy

Everywhere, as maple leaves, a sad autumn drips and falls. Each bared seat from which the leaves have fallen prepares for spring, and the sky is spread out above the tree branches. About to look tacitly into the sky, his eyebrows take on a blue pigment. When he sweeps his warm cheeks with two hands, the pigment appears and stains his palms as well. He looks into his palms again. In the lines there, clear river water flows, clear river water flows; in the river water a face sad like love - a beautiful innocent's face, childlike. Fascinated, the boy closes his eyes. Even so, in the clear flowing water, a face sad like love - a beautiful innocent's face, childlike.

* * * * *

from "The Love of a One-eyed Fish" by Ryu Shi Hwa (1958- )


Salt

salt
is the sea's wound
not many know it
salt
is the sea's pain
not many know it
on every dining table in the world
like white snow
when salt is shaken and falls
it's the sea's tears
not many
know it
these tears exist
for everything in this world
to bring out its flavor

* * * * *

Bread


There is bread in front of me
a well-baked loaf
received adequate fire
equally done from front-to-back.
Ever since it was young wheat
Head hardening in the heat of the sun,
its immature sentiments
Were made excessive by the blowing wind.
And again the mill machine sets up
its obstinacies to be crushed, one by one.
I have lived leaned over on one side
in thinking only of myself
I have had no time to properly mature.

There is bread in front of me
All the way through
a well-baked loaf

* * * * *

윤동주시인 - 하늘과 바람과 변과 詩 - 序詩, 少年
류시화시인 - 외눈박이 물고기의 사랑 - 소금, 빵

만약에 읽으실때 실수를 찾으면 연락해 주세요. 시를 번역하기 대단히 어렵습니다!

WHOA--he updated his blog--is he dying?

Actually, his left eye does hurt a bit, but he's nowhere near death, he admits that shirking the blog for FOUR MONTHS is a bit long, and vows to try never again to maybe wait quite so long. The above picture is stolen from the Hyundai Heavy Industries website. This morning I learned that in Ulsan, we have the world's largest shipyard. This afternoon, I sent in a tour application, so I hope my next blog entry is a report on what an amazing experience the tour was. I distinctly remember trying in vain for a full day to be allowed into the harbor in Chennai, so I sent my application in Korean, using the kiss-ass verb tense all the way through.



I got married since the last time I typed anything here! The beautiful Noelle Elizabeth Myers accepted her fate, and my last name, about two months ago. Life is better now, a little more confusing, (and I can't seem to sleep for seven hours without waking up, now) and a lot more interesting. We got all set up in this great apartment, got just the right furniture, put up some great decorations, and learned last week that we have to move to an apartment WITH NO HOT WATER IN THE WINTERTIME. Which is not so important right now, the weather being relatively warm, but in two short months it will be the difference between a happy wife and a mad (or possibly dirty) one. Hm. The two of us also took a very nice 5-day ferry-and-motorcycle trip to the island of Jeju, which cleared up its weather expressly for our arrival. We got extremely sunburned climbing up Hallasan, South Korea's highest mountain.

If you're waiting for your thank you note from our wedding I swear we're writing them! Actually, Nols is done with hers and I keep putting it off like an idiot. That's the whole story.


I have a new job now, at the English Town, a sort of boring, white-collar version of Mr. Rogers' land of make believe. Students recite dialogs in mock-ups of movie theaters, airports, stores, etc. I pull teeth to get them excited while they change money at the bank. I also give a presentation every morning in which I try to cover why learning English is important. In the beginning of this presentation, I ask the students why they think we learn English. This morning, one bright (and sometimes annoying) girl answered in Korean, "To make us look good to other countries". It's funny 'cause it's true!
Sometimes I'm really surprised at Korean students' inability to make abstract inferences, or more specifically, to think independently of each other. (I admit, for the record, that I might not be priming them especially well, although I do try.) For the most part, in any group of students, there's one creative thinker and one kid who's good at English, and they team up to answer questions; the rest of the group is happy to hang on to their shirttails. One of the first frames of the presentation is a map of the world; the Korean peninsula is red, as well as a few isolated dots in China, Japan, Los Angeles, Toronto, Australia, etc. I ask the class what connects the colored areas. It's the rare group that can reason their way to "places in the world where I can speak Korean" without major help from the teachers. Every so often, though, some kid figures it out halfway, and shouts "Kimchi!"



In other news, Noelle and I have learned the Korean equivalent (in gambling ferocity) of Texas Hold 'Em, called Go-Stop. It arrived with the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s, and is played with Hwat'u, lovely cards grouped four to a month, with a different flower for each month (no numbers, no words; really attractive). We have been playing quite a bit this last week and a half, and at the end of our games usually one of us feels bad. The game seems to have uniquely long losing streaks; our friend Seon-kyeong played with us for two and a half hours, and didn't win a single hand. We went at it again the following evening, adding Chi-won to the mix, and this time Seon-kyeong killed everybody for almost an hour straight.

In other other news, I have made a lot of new songs, some little, some dumb; I have been uploading them only to facebook, which is lame. Now, I've also put them on my homepage. When I returned from the States, I brought with me an Mbox2, a nifty hardcover book-sized I/O interface for recording music into our laptop. It's great!

Best wishes for October. I'll see if I can get to the Hyundai Shipyard; if I can, I'll let you know about it.

I guess I must admit

that teaching is rewarding.