Monthly Archives: January 2012

Social Fail

Posted on January 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

It felt like absolutely nothing could drag me down. I was with my friend Kaley* driving around a bustling New York City on a cool, summer evening. Just a couple weeks prior I had received my bachelor’s degree, and I was still riding high on the euphoria graduation leaves in its wake. With seminary still months away, I knew the intervening summer would be filled with long naps, road trips through breathtaking landscapes, and late evenings of carefree conversations over drinks and pizza. While coasting along one of the avenues and with Erasure playing in the background, I felt a lightness that comes with knowing that I could toss all my cares to the wind. In fact, as I rolled down the window to take in the nostalgic smell of the city, I knew I actually didn’t have a care in the world. The world is my oyster, I thought. And I’m going to use this summer to crack it wide open. The worst case of senioritis can’t hold a candle to this.

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Posted in Humor, Life

Memories of Racism, Memories of Grace – My First Racist Encounter

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 3 Comments

That’s me in the middle.

Besides almost dying from cholera when I was one and getting my hand crushed by a large, steel door when I was three, the rest of my early childhood in Korea was mostly a time of innocence and fun. I do have that one memory where my mom is pumping breast milk for my sister into what seemed to me at the time a large basin, but I’m still not really sure what to make of that image, whether it traumatized me or simply surprised me. But other than that, it’s hard to recall anything remotely negative. All I see is a skinny, Korean boy playing in the stream trying to catch frogs and tadpoles; hiking and exploring the hillsides and woods (we visited the shigol [countryside] often); waiting around the corner, listening for the man with the pull cart to ring his bell so that I could buy and devour a newspaper cone full of bundaegi (roasted silk worm pupae), which, at the time, was by far the most delicious thing on the planet (today, I can’t go near the stuff); feeding cute, fluffy, yellow chicks with rice grains; throwing a hammer at my grandfather’s head; and running away from my three uncles after pouring a bucketful of soapy water into the well, our main source of drinking water (they had to empty the entire well and wait for the next rain to replenish the supply). Of course, I only remember bits and pieces, but from those fragments and the stories my folks share with me, it seems that I really was a rambunctious, happy, little kid who, unlike the current me, actually loved to dance. Continue reading →

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Posted in Family, Life, Psychology, Racism

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Smelling with Words

Posted on January 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

This was initially supposed to be a Facebook post, but it simply got too long. Several years ago, I started reading Perfume by Patrick Süskind. I wasn’t expecting much—maybe a twisted thriller or a simple, mass market murder mystery with “scent forensics” as the unifying thread. The last thing I was expecting was a work of art. Indeed, it was slow going at the front end, but I kept reading simply because of the sheer artistry of the writing. Eventually, however, the story picked up, and I finished the book because of the compelling, albeit perverse, plot. But, again, it was the writing that made this book brilliant. And I’m not speaking simply about vocabulary, which, by the way, I felt was not the least bit pretentious. And while certainly the style is both unique and pristine, I believe it was Süskind’s descriptive prowess that made the book a masterpiece. To be able to capture scent with words in a way that the reader can almost smell it emanating from the book—that’s remarkable. Continue reading →

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Posted in Literature

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