A Boris Karloff Christmas?

I was watching a Boris Karloff movie as I was eating breakfast this morning, a 1967 film called "The Sorcerers."  Not one of his more well-known movies, but it is one of the last he appeared in at the age of 79, and it got me pondering all sorts of things - about Christmas of all things, about late starts, about the ebb and flow of careers and lives, about the winters we endure, and the resiliency of people in general.  

Films often prompt this in me ...

Karloff, "The Sorcerers"
(image courtesy of The Spooky Isles)

Since I was a child, I've been fascinated with Karloff (who was most famous for playing the original Frankenstein Monster), and the other legendary classic horror actors, especially Bela Lugosi (to me, the most famous Dracula), Lon Chaney, Jr., the British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (who, at 90+ years of age, has just appeared in the latest Hobbit movie).  They are not household names to many; but they have left their mark and they feel like old friends to me.

30 and counting ...

Early this month, in Daejeon, South Korea, Tan and I moved into a compact two-bedroom apartment, named "Shineville," across the way from one of our favorite seafood restaurants in town. 

It was a relatively low-impact move, as moves go, from one high-rise building, where we were up on the 12th floor, to a third-floor apartment, just around the block.  It also marked the 13th time we've done this since 2002.  

Goodbye our first Daejeon apartment ... 

I'd like to say we're experts at moving, but every time we relocate, it puts a strain on our budget and stress levels.  I know we'd prefer to stay in one place, but jobs, budgetary considerations, international opportunities, and the desire to be near someone's family here and there keep us on the go.

Shifting Sand

There are certain things in this world that I return to visit, places and people I've seen, and ideas and concepts that I masticate anew with my Western-Eastern mind.

Sand mandala, the Tibetan-Buddhist impermanent art, is a good example.

If you haven't seen a mandala being created, the physical details are this - for several weeks, a group of Tibetan monks will carefully pour sand onto a floor or table space, creating a beautiful and intricate piece of art over a wide area. They work in shifts, starting in the center and working their way ever slowly outward until everything is complete. It can be quite transfixing to watch, this ancient artwork, the monks in teams carefully ticking sand via funnels onto a floorspace bit by bit.

The Recycling of Pain

I am truly fascinated with the Korean concept of “Han.”

This untranslatable word, which seems to permeate so much of this nation's psyche, shows up again and again in readings and random conversations. As far as I understand, “Han” signifies the great lamentation of the oft-invaded Koreans, a sort of angst-filled sense of endurance and yearning for revenge against injustice, steeped in sadness and broken-hearted melancholy.

There are examples, and internet links, to “Han” everywhere, and it would seem to influence everything from K-Horror to K-Drama, from the random fights one can see on the streets of my borrowed hometown of Daejeon to the aggrieved feelings of fans toward their national football team when it returned winless from the most recent World Cup. One article I read even referred to it and the sentiments of Korean-Americans during the1992 Los Angeles riots, as they watched their shops being looted and destroyed (accidental byproducts of others' anger).

One Month Check-In

Tan and I landed at Incheon International Airport on August 22^nd.

One month ago.

It feels strangely longer, like we've been in Daejeon, South Korea for a year or more. Bangkok, and Thailand, seem like a world away, but then I've always been kind of present-oriented, and this particular present has been very intense, with lots to do and with many things that I need to get up to speed on. I guess time moves slow when you're changing cultures.

We've settled into our rhythms, and are slowly expanding our awareness of Daejeon and what it has to offer. Over the Chuseok Fall Harvest holiday, we finally made it to the “old downtown” area of Daejeon, which consists mainly of the long-standing open-air Jungang market, and a more modern Euneungjeongi Cultural Street where all the teenagers of the city seem to congregate. There is a gigantic video screen towering overhead at the latter place, which flashes K-Pop stars who advertise various things and a cartoon undersea world among other things.

During the same holiday period, we also got in a tour bus ride to the Expo Science Park (which looked and felt like a deserted Star Trek filming location), the KAIST campus (one of the main technology institutes in this city), and the hot springs of Yuseong. The tour guide spoke no English but we had fun being carted around.

Day by Dae-jeon

Yesterday, I was hiking alone along a ridge line high above our new town of Daejeon, in South Korea, and I come upon a sign. The giant wooden billboard tells me something I hadn't realized before, that I can effectively circumnavigate the periphery of the entire town via mile after mile of forest trail.

The Trailhead - 15 minutes from our apartment

How had I not realized that before? Our new home is ringed by a natural walkway. I begin dreaming of walking for days, of making my way around Daejeon, step by step.

Two locals, a father and daughter, walk up to me and smile. They want to help. We talk in limited English, pointing to the sign and maps. I don't have my Thai language to fall back on now. It's English or nothing.

Our back-and-forth is so confusing, and even though our conversation is filled with “yes's” and “understand,” I'm barely better off than I was before, but at least they've confirmed a few things for me. I know where I am on the map, and I know the trail across the road leads to a major mountain overpass. I still don't know how to get to the lake down below.

It's about moving forward day by day. Putting all the little pieces together. Learning on the go.

Baby steps.

Goodbyes

What is the latest with you, Pimonrat?

Does anyone rest in the sala where we sat?

Is brother Ek the same - act and scream like a brat?

Can you still run like the wind, Pimonrat?

This is the beginning of a poem I wrote in 1996 (unpublished), when I was still working through my departure from Peace Corps and Thailand.  Entitled "Faces from the Past," it focused wistfully on six of my favorite students and my memories of them.  Amidst the snows and cold of the New Hampshire winter, I was having a hard time facing the idea that I might never return to Southeast Asia.  My two-year experience there had done wonders for me - it was like being reborn.

Nakhon Dee Dee

Look, and you will see ...

The pockets of heavenly light

dancing within the neat rows

of the rubber trees, that speak to the

hushed quiet at the center of things.

Turn, and you will hear ...

The cascading rhythm of the rivers

which flow from the mountains,

crashing and bounding inexorably

toward the Gulf of Thailand.

Raise your head, and you will behold ...

The looming majesty of the cliff walls

and secrets of Khaochumthong Mountain,

towering like a thumb-shaped

lighthouse over rice fields and dirt roads.

Look to the horizon, and you will sense ...

The flash of thunder in the distance

and the rustle of the wind through forest,

that warns everyone inside before

the deluge of southern rain.

Touch my chest and you will come to know ...

The rhythm of a heart beating

in unison with others, like the drums and cymbals

of late-night shadow play and country fairs,

enduring through the decades, strong and true.

Thai Railways: From Bad to Worse

I remember long ago, I used to have a sort of hazy, romantic illusion about the wheezing and aged State Railway of Thailand (SRT), as an overburdened transportation agency doing its best.

In that long ago age, twenty years ago specifically, as a Peace Corps volunteer, it was one of the few options for long-distance travel through a city choked with traffic jams, and about a country with only one overpriced domestic service flying out of Don Muang (this was well before the low-cost airline options came onto the scene).  My site was also located next to Khaochumthong Junction, which has the noteable distinction of having a song specifically written about it.

Old Tracks (Kanchanaburi)

Today, unfortunately, that romantic vision is long gone, and I mainly look upon the SRT with a mixture of disgust, disbelief, and sadness.  This is a bit sad.  I come from a "train-loving" family (my parents have sought out and gone on many a train trip around the world), and I generally seek out train transport, even in the United States. 

My feelings about Thai rail, of course, weren't at all improved last week, as I and the rest of the country absorbed the news about the sickening death of a 13-year-old girl, who was raped and killed, and thrown out of the window of the moving train, by a drunken baggage porter. 

Reality and Randomness

Yesterday, I was at the Gallery Drip Coffee in the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center, listening to some music on my laptop and watching the traffic crawl back and forth in front of MBK Center, all to the pleasant aroma of slow-drip, hand-poured coffee.


It was a peaceful afternoon.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Peaceful is needed. I am on the cusp of more big changes in my life, and am aware of the inexorable dislocation to come, the need to get things done before this big change, to meet up with people, and say my goodbyes yet again. What is it about this world and the frequency of goodbyes? Do departures mean as much anymore when everyone from Merriam Elementary School (my beginning) to Thammasat University (my latest job) are a click away on Facebook?


Well, they do to me, perhaps because I've been through so many of them (welcome to the expatriate lifestyle) especially the face-to-face ones - with the imperfect pauses, the need to say something but not knowing what exactly, the last hurried hugs, and the wakes left after one's departure ... it's a new globalized world, but we're all processing essentially the same stuff we always have been, the comings and goings that pepper our lives.

A Brave New "Working" World

I finally found a Filipino song I was looking for - Napakasakit Kuya Eddie, which came out in the early 80's.  It's a tragic song (untranslated into English as far as I know) about a remittence worker who has left his family behind in the Philippines and disappeared into the hot deserts of Arabia to find better work.

I know this much about the song: he's lonely, thinking of home, and his wife has taken up a new lover, and by the time he gets home, his kids are smoking marijuana, and everything has crashed and burned.  You can hear the plaintiveness in Raol Cortez's voice as he sings, even if you don't know the lyrics, and you can always pull up a version of it (there's a bunch of them) with a montage of photos of miserable people and hard lives.

Pain is universal, and multilingual.

Father's Day 2014: from Dan to Dad

How does the song "Sutter's Mill" lead all the way to memories of my dad, and of a board game played on winter nights?

Let me try to explain ... but I'll have to give you a tour of my messy brain, which works the way it does now in part because of the internet, the enabler of all information in this day and age.

So, this song, Dan Fogelberg's banjo-driven, country-westernish "Sutter's Mill" appears now and again in my aforementioned gray matter, darting through my synapses like a comet flashing through the sky.  The song comes unbidden, and leaves soon after it arrives.

The Endless Road

“The Americans have found the healing of God in a variety of things, the most pleasant of which is probably automobile drives.” ― William Saroyan, Short Drive, Sweet Chariot

There are souvenirs of memory from each and every road trip I've taken, slices of image and intensity that I carry about in my mind's eye, that remind me of the road, always the endless road ...

From my latest trip, only a week ago, these images are of flashes of lightning, on the horizon, that light up the Issan countryside, the low and distant grumble of thunder, and the pounding, ceaseless rain. It is the sensation I have of avoiding the left lane, where the puddles are forming so deep that they could cause us to hydroplane and throw us off the road.

And all along the way Tan and I are talking about family, and where we've grown up, the fights, the love, the feelings we've had, of growing up and going separate ways, of returning, of the ties that bind, as the rain pelts the windshield, as we surge deeper into the darkness.

Issan Map courtesy of The Isaan blog

Another flash of lightening illuminates the rice fields about us, and the low rumble of thunder follows some minutes later. We're not about to get hit anytime soon, but like any of heaven's fireworks displays, the threat is out there.

I feel like I've got to keep moving. Curfew, imposed by the military only that week, falls over the land at 10 p.m. All the 7-Elevens will be closed.

---

Interim

There are numerous songs about waiting.  Most of them are about love.

I know ... I've googled it.

Tom Petty sings "The waiting is the hardest part" ... he's most likely talking about love (see below).  "Wait" by the Beatles - telling a girl to "wait till I come back to your side."  (Lost love).  Foreigner sang "Waiting for a girl like you."  (Cheesy 80's love).

At least Billy Bragg wades through politics and hope while he waits for the Great Leap Forward.

The end of May will represent the seventh month of "waiting" for me, to see where I'm going to end up.  Having just completed a four-week intensive CELTA course (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults for those who hate annoying acronyms), I'm ready to find my next destination, paper in hand.  

Bangkok in 17 Syllables

 Inspired by the New York Time's recent Haiku contest for its readers, I'm offering up the following as today's poetic observations of Bangkok during the Thai summer.

Heat rises by 8 - 

Orange-vested taxi men

hide out in the shade

Too tired to capture

black mold on condo skyline - 

Must be hot season

Wonder about meat

storage during summer days -

Bangkok Veggie time?

What Thai pop song can

bring glory to the heat, like 

“18 Fon” for rain?

The long-tail boats

on the river boil like prawns.

Air-con hearts stay cool.

One Night (Bike) in Bangkok

I've explored Bangkok a lot, have been in and out of alleys and odd little shops and parks and temples here and there and everywhere, but yesterday I did something new ... and felt ... well, simply joyous, connected to what I love to do (biking and exploring) and reinvigorated a bit more toward this city which I call home.

My wife, Tan, and I were afforded this opportunity via a friend of ours (P'Jum) who invited us along on a trip with William Tuffin, the manager of Grasshopper Adventures.  Tuffin, along with one of his guides, Damri "Seen" Suwamin, was test-running a new "premier" route in the city, a 6-hour special, which began at 4 in the afternoon and circled back home (an office on Ratchadamnoen Avenue) by 10 p.m.  That's a pretty good amount of exercise in the city heat, but it was at a good moment in the day.

Now, let it be known that I have a cantankerous kind of

relationship with the Big Mango.  I have enjoyed the moments, mainly when I've been free of work responsibilities, when I've gotten to wander and explore and connect with all the personalities who wander in between the concrete and glass, but I rail now and again against the insufferable traffic, the heat, the often overwhelmed trash removal system, the crush of people (especially in certain key intersections) as well as the spiritless faces of the commuters who are usually buried in their I-Phones on the SkyTrain and aged buses.

Dates and Reminders

There are little clues everywhere to remind us of the passage of time, to remind us of how important it is to pay attention to the clock.


Yesterday, for example, was a busy day here in Bangkok ... early in the morning, I went to the Department of Land Transportation at the north end of the overhead SkyTrain and endured two hours of bureaucratic queuing and simple eye-hand coordination tests before I upgraded my temporary Thai driver's license to the new “permanent” license which will allow me to dodge motorcycles and Tuk Tuks until my birthday in 2019.


Later that evening, with that date still sticking in my head, I went to see The Lunchbox with my wife, Tan.

Image courtesy of reemsaleh.com

The Lunchbox is a quiet film, existentially circling about the big questions of life and the Mumbai landscape, asking its characters (the contemplative, world-weary Irrfan Khan and sad-eyed Nimrat Kaur) if they're happy to accept their fates, riding the remorseless conveyer belt of life, or if they can choose new courses of action. What is the meaning behind all this? Why do some people eat full-course lunches while others have to make do with a pair of bananas? For what reason do we pack like sardines into trains and buses day after day? These sorts of questions were what this enchanting and poignant new Indian realism were posing.

Always Take the Weather ... *

From freezing to sweating, 
Snow squalls to heat waves, 
Furnaces to air-con units ...

The changes I make my body go through ... some day, I'm going to live in a place where the environment doesn't play such a large role in my day-to-day planning.  Where is that?  San Diego?  New Zealand?

Ah, glorious snow

A little over a week ago, in New England and the mid-Atlantic areas of the U.S., I was in my "fight off the biting cold" routine, which I had adopted for five months ... this entailed:

* Finding heat sources (furnaces, fires, warm cat bodies, heated buses, libraries, etc.) so I could get work done.
* Layering up before heading outside to retain what body heat I could and fending off frost bite (t-shirt, main shirt, fleece, jacket, gloves, hat, scarf covering neck/throat), and trying not to let static "hat-head" frighten others.

Inner (and Outer) Cultures

It's probably not surprising that the idea of "culture" is swirling about my brain, especially as I have endured yet another gruelling odyssey over the International Date Line this week, nineteen hours of flight time from New York, via Taipei, all the way back to Bangkok.

But I guess it's a bit surprising that it's neither Thai nor American culture that has grabbed my attention, but rather the cultures of the Introvert and Extrovert as outlined by Susan Cain's wonderful book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a Word that Can't Stop Talking. 

Introvert Power!

I've only progressed through Part One, but it already has me cheering her engaging take on today's bombastic extrovert-created "Culture of Personality" (think multi-tasking, salesmanship, and self-promotion), which has given de facto power, influence, and a sense of entitlement to the aforementioned group (championing a "be all that you can be" message so long as the ultimate outcome is extroverted).  This imbalance is a more-recent-than-you-would-think change from the "Culture of Character," before the Turn into the 20th Century, which generally favored an introvert's measured, quieter approach.

That's So Poetic!

Over the course of my five-month "Winter of Flux," my wife Tan has sent me scores of articles to look at on-line - on entrepreneurship, writing, growing old, education, and even this interesting article that made me think of Joseph Conrad and the boundless sea.  It's one of the ways we've kept in touch, sharing inspiration ... 

The Poetry of the Winter of Flux

One of the articles that resonated with me the most was a bombastic "defense" and praise of poetry (I didn't know poetry needed to be defended but I'm glad someone has its back). 

The writer, Amy King, expressed herself beautifully, championing the great freedom and flux of poetry, and unshackling from it the constant meta-drive (in American society especially) that something has to be commercially successful to be considered viable or even important.

Lights in a Northern Town

“There are lights in the woods in which I played.”

A long, long time ago, when I was much younger, this first line (or perhaps title) of a potential poem floated into my mind. I wrote it down, and it has sat quietly in my files ever since, a bookmark of a theme I mull over time and again.

Church Street in Burlington, VT

It was interesting enough, a bit clunky, but it was the image (and corresponding emotions) that have remained with me through the years.

The image? My woods, in Acton, Massachusetts, not really a wilderness to any extent but a lovely forest to my youthful soul, were being torn into by builders and developed into houses and yards for future tenants. Through the trees, where I had once seen only darkness and mystery, I was now able to spot less-mysterious, twinkling porch lights.

It was inevitable. Acton is only 25 miles from Boston, a tempting suburban option for the commuters who head into the city every day, and our family was only an early wave of what was to come in town, a steady stream of people buying up available land and housing.

The emotions? I guess it was an early existential crisis for me, of seeing a treasured natural playground of my early years bulldozed and taken away, and of the enduring and inexorable pace of change in the world, and of nature under attack. If my childhood forest could be sold and trashed, was anything sacred?

Tidbits of History

There are tidbits of history all about, that wait for us to notice them and ponder ... or perhaps ... just enjoy them for what they are ... stand-alone reminders of events that have passed and of people who have gone before.


I keep notes all the time ... scribble things of interest that I see as I travel about (which over the past few months has been all over the New England area and south to Washington, D.C. in the United States).

Credits: Image of the Lower Trenton Bridge from www.thepolisblog.org

For instance, did you know the slogan of Trenton, New Jersey was “Trenton Makes, the World Takes?” Saw that on a bridge as I was rolling south on the SEPTA train to Philadelphia. Wrote it down at the top of my calendar. I enjoyed rolling that around in my mind, thinking of all the possible positive interpretations of that (Trenton produces/has produced a lot) and negatives (we make stuff and then get left behind) or Trenton got “taken” in the greater socio-economic context of affairs. Then, of course, you go on-line and find someone else has taken an interest in it.

This Must Be the Place

Where do you belong?

I like to focus on the subject of place. Perhaps it's part of my upbringing. New Englanders, I think, are a bit grounded in it, some might say suffocated, steeped in the broody atmosphere of history, hemmed in by trees and mountains, breathing in long days of winter air ... suffering for our spring.

California Childhood Dreaming 

And yet, I'm a bit of a transplanted New Englander. Born seven miles west of Boston, I moved when I was only three years old to Southern California, and lived there for four long years before relocating back to Acton, Massachusetts, to start a new life ... and elementary school.

And so, when I recall some of my earliest memories, they aren't filled with images of snow and brickyard mill towns, but rather the shock of the trap door spider that leapt at my face the first afternoon I crawled into our backyard in Poway, California. I also have vivid memories of stinging red ants, hot afternoons, and adobe housing in a scrub-grassed, terraced desert.

Two Movies, Two Reactions

Why do we go to the movies?

I've asked that question in classes before (when I've had a chance to talk about film) and it provokes the usual responses - to be entertained, to laugh, to be moved, to think ...

Image courtesy of www.reddit.com

The best movies, I think, do all of these things at one, or even take us somewhere new ... they leave us, as the credits roll, abuzz, slightly off-kilter, wondering what it was that just hit us like a psycho-spiritual 2 X 4.  The magic of the film, whispered to us in the darkness via flickering light and Dolby speakers, should resound even as we head back out into "reality."

I saw two films this week, Monuments Men and Her, and only the latter had that effect on me. I wish both had ...

Image courtesy of www.impawards.com

Monuments Men, a George Clooney-helmed drama based on a true story from World War II, about a band of soldiers dedicated to recovering art stolen by the Germans, left me largely indifferent, or unexcited, which was strange considering that I'm fascinated by the stories of that war, and was looking forward to it, but the sizable group of actors (some of whom are my favorites, like Bill Murray and John Goodman) moved about from scene to scene like lifeless pawns in a game. It was too bad, because the film was exploring ideas of the importance of art (amidst brutality), and those who would fight back against the “loss of our history.”

A Third Culture

I've been spending more than few hours at the Library of Congress, thumbing through loads of books as I've researched about expats.  One book I discovered, The Writer and the Overseas Childhood: The Third CultureLiterature of Kingsolver, McEwan and Others (yeah, I know it's a long title) delved into a world I hadn't yet grasped, of the "Third Culture Kid" (TCK).

Third Culture Kids are people who have grown up overseas, whether as children of diplomats, missionaries, military families, etc.    Why three cultures?  The first culture is where you were born, the second is where you find yourself living, and the third is the independent community of the expatriate, with its own little cliques and mores.

As the years have passed, the numbers of TCK's have only multiplied, even if their stories are hidden to a large extent from the public, and yet a simple google search discovered a trailer for a potential feature film (see below), an organization devoted to Third Culture Kids, and the obligatory "31 Signs You're A Third Culture Kid."

Year of the Horse (Day One)

Image courtesy of www.bridgemanart.com

Hello readers, writers, friends, family, former students, strangers ... 

Welcome to my blog.

Let me say right off the bat that I have resisted to a large extent doing a personal blog (I've contributed to blogs as a graduate student and I've used them as a teacher in class myself).  At times, it seems like the world is saturated with blogs and perhaps the sarcastic New England writer side of me bought too much into the attitude expressed in the snappy line uttered by a character in the movie Contagion that "blogging is not writing.  It's graffiti with punctuation."  

Naturally, other bloggers have already chewed over that  piece of dialogue.

But of course, I understand that it's more than that.  It's like anything else, really ... if done well, it's an art form all its own, and I've seen enough outstanding blogs over the years.