2.17.98

Hey - Day before yesterday I referred to Dave as a Type 1, but forgot to link it to a description. Bet you all (as if there were many of you) were really racking your brains. Hahaa!

Maybe I’m being a little too angry lately. I’ve decided I’m gonna just try and go with the flow - let things slide off my back, take it easy - particularly where Korean culture is concerned. I don’t know why the culture is pissing me off so much now. The rage comes and goes. I thought long about this today on the bus, wondering where the anger comes from. I’m getting comfortable in my daily life, actually, so I’m surprised at all the loathing. There is always Dave’s job to be angry at. In fact, the kind of anger I feel about his boss and his company is the kind schizoid embolisms are made of. (Remember Total Recall?) I try to avoid discussing or thinking about his job at all costs. The topic usually comes up at least once a day and I just try to bail on it because the tension and rage that rises in immediate response is just too evil to endure for any lengthy period. It’s not fair to Dave, I know; he has to live that hell most of each day and even longer when he can’t release the experience when he gets home. In fact, his job is the "fundamental loathing". I suppose if all the hate attached to it were gone, I wouldn’t feel nearly as much annoyance and anger at everything else. And believe me, I’m angry at everything, even things I have absolutely no reason to feel anything negative about. I got some kind of chip slung over my shoulder. So, I’m gonna try to let that go…by recognizing that the fundamental loathing is infectious and destructive to my entire experience. But then I want to be careful not to dismiss all the anger. Many things happen that justify an angry response and I have every right to feel and affect anger. Sometimes it seems like anger is the only thing that isn’t legitimate to express. People can be clinically depressed but Tao forbid they show anger. Maybe because anger is associated with violence? With hate? Better to be hung so low and "helpless" than defiant and righteous about injustice or unfortunate events. Nevertheless, the anger seething just below the surface wears me out, makes me feel ill if it gets too close to consciousness. I hope I can let the little things slide free and recognize the machinations of the fundamental loathing. I want to remember the good things. (Hmm, a lot of big words. Maybe I read too many articles today.) I stopped at Namdaemun market before going to Ewha today. I wanted to pick up a Korean kettle for Catherine as a going-away present. I like the markets, their crowds, the filth; I will miss their character. Up in the third floor of a building that is adjacent to a building housing a flower market, I found stalls upon stalls of Korean kitchenware. Getting there, I went up into the 3rd floor of the building with the flowers and crossed over on a narrow bridge connecting it to the building with the pots and pans. Every time I walk across that bridge I wish I had my camera. From up there you can look down upon the alleyway below that looks like a heavily clogged artery with stalls lining each side, people and items for sale stacked in front of each one, and then single persons laboring to pass through the narrow passage, barely open, right down the center. (And another cardiovascular reference.) The ajuma where I bought the kettle was friendly. The sun was out and it was unseasonably warm. Walking from the market to the subway was nice in the Spring-like breeze. It was so easy. I know central Seoul and walk the streets with the comfort afforded city-dwellers. The woman at the place where I always get hot chocolate at Ewha recognized me and smiled. I must be a regular now. The proofs are back from the publisher, so the editing was tedious and mostly focused on typographical errors. Blaaaaaah. An Australian woman showed up at the women’s center while I was there to chat with some Korean friends of hers. She spoke Korean with them - quite good Korean. We introduced ourselves and I found that she is studying the "white woman" experience in Korea, specifically that of white missionaries who started schools here at the end of the last century. She was really on the ball with theory and other abstractions. My brain was sluggish. Gawd, I was afraid of that. When I took the Strong Interest Inventory a few years ago, when I was still in college, I remember thinking that taking too long a break from school would be a total mistake. My comfort level with academics was high then. Now, I’m sure it’s shot. (The SII measures your likely career interests, abilities, one measurement of which is your comfort level with academics.) But then I thought that maybe she was just totally tootin’ her own horn too much and I was letting her intimidate me. Problem is, I’m always attracted to those kinds of people who seem to "be" what I want to be, which is smart, motivated, with acute critical thinking abilities. Seems, though, that those people are also manipulative and judgmental and I usually always feel like crap around them. It creates this funky circle where I want to be like them, but it’s always out of reach because they implicitly let me know I can never be them, and I feel like crap, which makes me want to improve myself in their image. Fucking warped. Gotta stay away from those kinds of people. I think people like that become presidents. Speaking of which: I really hope the US doesn’t bomb Iraq. I keep hearing that the public support in the US is quite high and, you know, it’s just stupid. Is Iraq really a threat? Why bomb when the desired results are not 100% guaranteed? At the most fundamental level, how can one nation with a huge arsenal of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons tell another country that they aren’t allowed to produce them? Even if the agreement with Iraq is part of the terms of surrender of the Gulf War, it still doesn’t make logical sense. And in the eyes of the world - and this is important - it all just looks like another big enforcement of US hegemony. I don’t know what we Americans believe. Do we all think our country promotes peace around the world and that our nation is the best because we are peaceful, we are kind, we make others richer with our investment? That may be stretching the most positive aspects, but we are naïve if we fail to see how the government and corporations have harmed other people acting without citizens’ knowledge - indeed, counting on citizens’ ignorance. Maybe we don’t care because our lives are easy and the rest of the world is so far removed and we have this over-inflated sense of superiority despite all of our egalitarian rhetoric. Mala was saying a month or so ago that the US just doesn’t have the global support to do it. And it’s true ‘cause look at all those US honchos lobbying foreign countries for support and even now trying to woo the citizens for it. That’s just the most basic thing and it’s just like when you’re shopping with your friend and you ask should I get this? Or not? And you’re friend is like, it’s up to you. But you’re like, well, what do you think? See, the powers-that-be don’t want to look like they were alone a few years down the road when the world says bombing Iraq was a mistake. They want others to share the blame.

future past index