Parsing Patriotism

Main Entry: pa·tri·ot

Pronunciation: \ˈpā-trē-ət, -ˌät, chiefly British ˈpa-trē-ət\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle French patriote compatriot, from Late Latin patriota, from Greek patriōtēs, from patria lineage, from patr-, patēr father

Date: 1605

: one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests

Patriotism is a lightening rod of a word to about the degree that Mount Rushmore is big and made out of rock. To mention it at a bar or party is to tap a fount of human passion -- some positive, some negative, some whimsically indifferent. War. Love of land and landscape. Freedom. Ethnic strife. History. Shared suffering. Indigenous industry. Folk music. Oppression. Food and drink. Fashion. All these things are connected to national identity, which is inseparably linked to patriotism. Each is a canvas on which the human spirit has been sketched. Thus, patriotism is intrinsic to civilized human identity because most of the things we think of as quintessentially civilized are intrinsically bound up with patriotism. That said, patriotism also seems to be a driving force behind virtually every act of barbarism from the dawn of history to now. With all this in mind, what then can we say about patriotism? Is being a patriot a good thing or not?

***

I am an American living in Korea -- a country thirteen time zones from my home. The far side of the world. Geographically, ethnically, and culturally, it is hard to get more un-Western than this. Now and then I need a break from all the kimchi and komapsamniddas. I become intensely conscious of the fact that where I am from makes me who I am, makes me different from everybody who is from here. The wave of brown hair in the tide of black. The guy who claims to "get" banjo music and doesn't flip over 2PM or The Wondergirls. The only person who isn't programmed from birth to bow to his elders, accept drinks with two hands, and carry toilet paper with him when he travels. All this makes me the perpetual outsider. It reminds me that place makes a person, and the place I am from is very far from here. It makes me feel that my American-ness has, for once, become something precious, small, and slightly under threat.

"What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?" Lin Yutang, a Chinese author, asks.

If, as Mr. Lin and the first part of Webster's definition assert, to be patriotic is to love your homeland and its culture, then I think that living overseas draws out the cornbread-mandolin patriot in me. Makes me conscious of this side of myself in a way that I am not back home.

And, from this angle, patriotism does not seem an evil thing at all.

***

But what about the 'supporting your country's interests' part of the definition? Especially when some of your country's interests are dangerous, immoral, or at least one-sided? To live in South Korea today is to be constantly reminded of the flesh-blood-and-razorwire consequences of American foreign policy. Compare Seoul -- a glass-and-chrome hornet’s nest of life, commerce, and ultraconsumerism -- to Pyongyang -- with its famine-ravaged Stalinist chic. Patriotism is without question one of the reasons why the two Korean capitals are such different places.

Amongst Koreans, the range of opinion about the United States is wide. Old men I've never met before often ask to shake my hand simply because I'm American. I can’t fathom this. Faces tanned to rawhide, vice-like handshakes. They smile broadly, give me thumbs up, tell me "Americans are gentleman." Sixty years later, MacArthur is still a rock star in Korea. Other people, usually younger, say that they hate America because of the misdeeds of our soldiers and the inflammatory effect American diplomacy has had on North Korea.

Almost every day, I hear the roar of American or South Korean jets tearing across the hazy blue sky on patrol. A few weeks ago, a U.S./Korean armada including the supercarrier George Washington ran war-games in the Sea of Japan -- despite North Korean threats of war. More such exercises were scheduled for the Yellow Sea. Nuclear poker is an everyday thing here.

Even living in Hapduk -- backwater of Korean backwaters -- fatigue-clad Korean Army personnel are omnipresent. All my students -- pimple faced boys who can barely grow a mustache -- know that after graduation they must serve twenty-one months in the military. My coteacher's little brother just started his service this summer. She says she fears for him. Given the tension between North Korea and the West after the Cheonan sinking, I can understand this. One the surface, few seem worried, but many are nervous.

All of this is inescapably a consequence of the second, "supporting-its-interests" part of Webster's definition of patriotism. Neoliberal, free-trade patriotism. Nuclear-powered patriotism. Guns-and-butter patriotism.

Tolstoy draws a bead on this strain of patriotism when he writes in Christianity and Patriotism:

Patriotism […] for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. […] Patriotism is slavery.

Balances of power and deterrence and all that usual necessary-evil type jazz notwithstanding, such patriotism seems does seem pretty evil indeed.

***

Propaganda, past and present, has worked on many levels that you can pretty much unequivocally denounce. Oversimplification of conflicts that are just not simple. Dehumanization of people who are just as human as us. Obfuscation of important-but-inconvenient details. These are easy targets. The basic implicit premise of most propaganda, though, is not so easy to condemn. Virtually all such appeals imply that the things its audience loves -- home, culture, identity as a person -- are under threat. The “under threat” part usually is not true. But the part about loving one's home/culture/identity is absolutely true. If it wasn't, all the oversimplifying/dehumanizing/lying that propaganda does would not work. So, in a weird sort of way, the very-human food-and-music part of patriotism actuates the nuclear-poker parts that dehumanize other people and us through the acts of violence we commit against them. Thus, patriotism is not two disparate sentiments shoehorned into the same word, but rather a microcosm of dualistic human nature itself. A paradox – beautiful-but-damned. The best thing about us, and the worst. Pascale's scum and glory of the universe in miniature. 

Here's to the scum, and the glory that is woven into it.

Edge of the Map

Originally Posted August 11, 2010

Visiting the DMZ is a surreal experience. It is a surreal place, and excites a cocktail of strong-but-difficult-to-parse emotion. I traveled there last weekend, and my writing this is the latest in a series of attempts to sort out what it all means to me.

***

A rather po-dunk carnival awaits at visitors at Imjingang, the pick-up point for the tour busses, and the northern-most place tourists are allowed to travel on their own. Vacationers from every corner of Asia are in evidence here the day I visit, as well as a few Westerners. English speaking tours with the USO are often booked up three weeks in advance. Apparently this is quite a popular tourist draw. To me, this seems vaguely sadistic, and perhaps masochistic as well. Fifteen minutes drive from here, people are living in a Stalinist-style dictatorship -- a famine-ravaged, nuclear-armed military state, pariah to the rest of the world, where trivial acts of self-expression are punished with forced labor and death. And this is a tourist attraction? But I am here too, unable to resist the attraction of -- I can't quite say what -- the guy who can't look away from the train wreck.

Everyone crowds around the ticket booth, passport in hand (you can't get in without it), and then stands around killing time until the next tour. Nearby, a row of shops tempt us with fake North Korean souvenirs, including the obligatory hard alcohol and knurled wooden canes. Circus tents and merry-go-rounds offer to separate you from your tourist won in other ways. A giant clock pendulum supposed to resemble a sailing ship is the alpha male of the ride-wolf pack. Its name is "The Super Viking," even though its gunwales seem more inspired by a turtle ship and its figurehead is clutching a scimitar. Finally, the bus arrives and we all pile inside. The bus drives maybe five minutes before reaching a bridge across the Han River. Fences capped with razor wire line the banks. South Korean guards in military fatigues board the bus and check passports a second time. The bus crosses the bridge, passing an army barracks where more soldiers armed with automatic rifles patrol. A feeling of anticipation begins. Like being at the zoo, with the bears' cage just a little further away.

The first stop is Dorasan Train Station, a modern glass-and-chrome facility which provides the only train tracks to North Korea, although these days there is no traffic between the two countries. A sign over the ticket counter points the way to Pyongyang. According to a map, whenever train travel through North Korea becomes possible again, it will be possible to travel by train all the way from Busan to Bordeaux -- from one end of Asia to the other end of Europe. A note of longing is plainly evident in this, despite the less-than-grammatically sound nature of the sign's English. We get back on the bus and take off. The suspense builds as the bus wends its way up a forested hill. We are getting close to something.

Next stop is the DMZ museum. Various East Bloc small arms sit in glass cases, along with digging equipment recovered from the four discovered tunnels North Korea has dug under the border since the armistice. Signs announce that up to thirty thousand troops an hour could pass through the largest of these -- and that there are probably more which have not been discovered yet. Decades of border tensions, occasional commando raids against Seoul, and a bizarre incident involving the axe-murder of some UN troops over the cutting down of a poplar tree are related through more signage.

After a few minutes, we take our leave of the museum in favor of one of the aforementioned tunnels, now the centerpiece of the DMZ's tourist exhibition. This turns out to be one of the coolest parts of the DMZ -- a circular gash, maybe 5'6" in diameter, blasted through solid granite one hundred forty meters below the surface. The air is stale and the walls are moist. Drops of water fall occasionally. It is claustrophobic, and if the lights suddenly went out I wouldlose my mind. I walk for maybe one hundred fifty meters or so and eventually arrive at more razor wire and a steel blast door. A slit window allows no hint of what lies on the other side. Beyond that door lies ... something. Touching the passage's rock walls somehow brings home the fact that the Korean War, a bloody conflict which killed roughly 6 million people, is not over. And this is a tourist attraction. Whoa.

Back to the surface. The final stop on the tour is the Dorasan Observatory. The bus ascends the steep blacktop in mountain gear,inching towards the summit, climbing and climbing until suddenly we are there. Two minutes walk, and there is a wall with large, pay-to-use binoculars. Beyondit lies four kilometers of jungle, deserted, except for the numerous wild animals that live there. Endangered species including Asiatic black bear, several types of crane, and the Amur leopard find a bizarre safe haven inside this death strip. Signs announce the presence of the millions of land mines that lurk unseen. And, finally, mountains, a road, and a rather normal looking North Korean village lie off to our northeast. I shell out 500 won and peer through the binoculars towards the village. Busses make their routes. Cars pass. Leaves flutter. I cannot see people. It's super surreal, because on the one hand, this is supposed to be the edge of the map beyond which there be monsters -- and yet all this kind of looks normal. I have been told repeatedly that North Korea works hard to put a facade of modernization and nonchalance near the border, that if you travel far inland, it all goes to rack and ruin real fast. Despite this, though, the fact that there are still fields and houses and roads -- the trappings of people, that, though citizens of an isolated and enigmatic country, still apparently have some of the same basic desires as me comes as sort of a shock. I am embarrassed to say it, but I guess all the official static from both sides of this border made me believe, if only subconsciously, that I would look over this wall and see Martians engaged in unfathomable work, pursuing unintelligible goals. Instead, I look over the wall, and see the evidence of people doing things not that different from the rest of us. Strange people, for sure. Dangerous people, maybe. But people. And I find this a comforting thought. I hope that someday very soon this border will open, that by a grace no one seems to imagine possible now, the two Koreas end this holdover from the Cold War.

Here's to a United Korea. Dae Ha-Min-Gook!

Internship Gong Show

Originally Posted June 15, 2010

Picture a montage of Korean teenagers. Navy blazers and lots of pimples. Plastic framed glasses which look very seventies. Most are nervous; a few are knees-knocking terrified. A few have faces which twist and contort as they struggle to remember the words in their memorized scripts.

"I am positiv-uh person..."

"Electricity dangerous but interesting..."

"I very much like-a to weld..."

Now picture three very bored Westerners trapped behind a long table across from the current sufferer. Brad, middle-aged, ex-Peace Corps. Neatly-parted hair cropped close. Tired eyes. Cedrick, South African, mustached and wears a tie that has ostriches on it. And me. Little old me, who knows that most of these kids desire to go on the internship is matched only by their complete inability to speak English properly. Knows this, and feels vaguely guilty because it's up to us three to decide these kids fates. All this process needed to achieve its full Kafka-esque potential was a talent segment -- although the thought of one of the poor, terrified Food Science Girls from trying to make water glasses sing or do a tap dance seems too barbarous even for Korean English instruction.

"Can you tell me your major?"

"Describe your character."

"Why should we accept you for this internship?"

It is necessary to be efficient, since there are over fifty kids here to interview. At five minutes apiece and no bathroom breaks ever that would still keep us busy for four hours. It is also necessary to be humane -- to sit patiently through the awkward gaps in the memorized litanies, to radiate confidence to kids whose throats constrict with fear, to recognize that most of them sweat blood to make their bad English as good as it is. Recognize this and respect it -- even as we fight to maintain our own sanity in the face of the fourth rendition of the "Dangerous electricity interesting" spiel. Judging quickly begins to feel oh-so-arbitrary, even though for the kids it incredibly consequential.

"I want to go Australia. I think Australia beautiful country."

"After internship, I hope my own welding company have."

"I want Korean culture the world to share."

There are some bright spots. A precious few of the students spoke English so well we all marveled at it. Listening to them was refreshing beyond refreshing. Pop songs and TV shows and Hollywood movies apparently are good for something after all. In the vast majority of cases, though, the question that seems to matter most is when to say "That's enough, stop please," make a few savage flicks of the pencil, and summon the next terrified Korean teenager. Brad summed up the atmosphere at Internship Exams best when he called it the "Internship Gong Show." I like this description. Wearisome. Savage-seeming. Endless, painfully-likable contestants who are just not good at what they need to be good at.

Internship Gong Show it is.

The Ballad of Mr. Lee

Originally Posted June 9, 2010

Mr. Lee wore gold rimmed, Soviet-issue glasses, a rice farmer's tan, and plastic shin guards to protect himself from snakebite while hiking. He was deathly scared of snakes. Mr. Lee's otherwise-impassive face featured the squint of Clint Eastwood, reincarnated as a middle-aged Korean. He knew more about English grammar than me -- no mean feat -- and when he wrote on the blackboard, his script was like something you'd expect to see chiseled onto a monument somewhere. His face was a taciturn mask. When he spoke -- he didn't do so more than was absolutely necessary -- his voice was akin to the low growling of the Huskies many Koreans chain to their houses. Smiles seemed to split his face, as though his flesh were unaccustomed to the expression -- and when he did smile it was usually out of defiance or despair rather than joy. 

It was Mr. Lee's misfortune to be transferred from a girls' foreign language middle school to a boys' vocational high school. He hated his students, and they hated him right back. Much of this was the students fault -- since most of the senior class at Hapdeok Jaychil are of the slouch-and-drool variety, and thus notoriously contemptuous of the notion that they need to learn English. To be fair, though, some of the responsibility also rests with Mr. Lee, who I think had recently had two sad realizations -- the first being that he was suddently 55, and the second that students in 2010 suck just as much as they did 30 years ago. As a result, when I saw him he was almost perpetually hung over from the previous evening's soju. He also chain-smoked on school property, even though this was strictly forbidden. Skirmishes between him and the students were a daily occurrence. Once a huge senior smarted off and Mr. Lee picked the kid up by his shirt front and shoved him to the floor. He then sent me back to the teachers' office, obviously intent on getting medieval on his senior pals. Say what you want about what I should have done -- in retrospect, I will agree with all of it. At that moment, though, being the new kid on the very foreign block, I was glad to go. 

My first clue that there was some tension between Mr. Lee and the school's brass was when he and the Vice Principal traded broadsides for something like ten minutes straight smack in the middle of the teacher's office. I sat fifteen feet away, pretending to be deaf as all the carnage unfolded. Everyone in the office could hear them. Yelling and shaking fists and stamping the floor. Eyes blazing with rage. It was awful -- and I bit my tongue to keep from laughing out loud at the horrible awkwardness of it all. I don't care what culture you're from -- any time you and your boss have a full-blown shouting match in front of all your coworkers, it is not a good sign. I never found out what they were fighting about. Mr. Lee tried to explain once, but for reasons of subterfuge or simple lack of vocabulary, all he told me was that his bosses "force me to do something I don't want to do," and that they blamed him for the disciplinary problems. To Mr. Lee, this was grounds for a blood feud. 

"What do you think of principal and vice principal?" He asked, speaking in a subversive growl. 

I hemmed and hawed, fearing the absolute power my feudal lords in the high school kingdom wielded. 

"I think they are bad guys," he said, every word forged from cold hard menace. 

One time Mr. Lee insisted on taking me out to dinner. We ate samgibsal, greasy-but-delicious bacon-like grilled pork. In between bites, Mr. Lee slugged down glasses of somaek -- the Korean version of a boilermaker. He told me about his sons, both of whom were studying at university -- and on whose account he couldn't quit his job. Not yet, anyway. Not just yet. His eyes shone with pride as he talked about his sons. I asked him about his wife, and a cloud seemed to pass in front of his face. He wouldn't say much about her. Apparently he had married very young, to a girl he scarcely knew -- their union the handwork of a matchmaker. I can still hear the sound of the words in Mr. Lee's bitter Korean brogue -- all the "Rs" ground out and the consonant clusters thick with menace. 

"Matchmaker." 

I felt sorry for Mr. Lee. Despite his bad temper and obvious drinking problem, he had worked hard and had a real gift for languages. None of this could save him from the fate the tides of Korean life had condemned him to. Hordes of lazy, insolent students, an obtuse academic bureaucracy, and, to add insult to injury, matchmakers. Mr. Lee seemed to sense this tenderness of feeling, and decided to play upon it. 

"Hey Erik," he said, eyes thick with beer fog, "May I stay at your home today? I want to get really drunk." 

And again, call me cold, heartless, anything else you like -- but, at that point, I decided that matchmaker or no, the thought of Mr. Lee, drunk out of his mind and inside my apartment was just not appealing. 

"Uh, not this time, okay?" I said, "Let me help you find the bus station." 

After that, things happened fast. First, Mr. Lee called a meeting of all the teachers to present his grievances with the Principal and Vice Principal and demand an apology. Apparently, word of the Mr. Lee/Principal War had reached the ears of the coordinator of foreign teachers for Chungnam Province, who had given specific instructions that I not be around for this particular bloodbath. As a result, when Mr. Lee showed up that morning, Grace rushed me off to another room where I surfed the internet and waited for Mr. Lee's storm to pass. 

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Lee told me that he was filing a lawsuit against the school brass. I am not sure what offense he claimed they had committed against him, but I do remember the vindictive set of his unshaven jaw as he pushed the neatly folded complaint papers into an envelope. There could be no going back after he filed them. From then on, I knew his fate was all but etched in granite. A few days later, Mr. Lee left Hapdeok Jaychil on "extended medical leave," leaving me to teach the senior English class on my own until a replacement Korean teacher could be found. Given that Hapdeok is remote and considered a bad place to teach, we are now two replacements down the road and praying that the current one, Young Hee, decides to stay. I'm not sure I would if I were her. 

As frustrated as I am by this situation, I have not been able to get angry at Mr. Lee. Maybe this is because, as little as we spoke, I felt like I understood Mr. Lee better than most of the other people I know here. Understood, and pitied -- loneliness and disappointment and pain transcend language. Between his sons leaving for college, his strained (or nonexistent) relationship with his wife, and his pariah status at school, Mr. Lee seemed terribly alone. Given the ultracommunal nature of Korean culture, I suspect he may have felt even more lonely than he seemed. I hope that the overlords of the Korean educational system will deal kindly with him in his next assignment after medical leave ends. I hope that he manages to find much more happiness than he seems to have now. Most of all, I hope that he manages to negotiate some mutually agreeable truce with the sometimes Kafka-esque strictures of life as a Korean. 

"Matchmakers..."

Of Spas and Singing Rooms

Two of the rites-of-passage of life as a foreigner in Korea are the first trip to Jimjilbaeng and Noraebang (spa and karaoke bar, respectively). For better or worse, your correspondent has finally had both of them. Both were by turns memorable, fun, and incredibly alien experiences which offer tantalizing-albeit-marginally-intelligible glimpses into the Korean psyche. 

*** 

Johan describes Jimjilbaeng as sort of an evolutionary throwback to a Dark Ages inn. Jimjilbaeng provide ultracheap, sleep-on -the-floor accommodations for travelers as well as a built-in public bath. Every wide spot in the road in Korea has one. Like about everything in this country, the vibe of a Jimjilbaeng is profoundly communal -- which is probably why going there was so off-putting to my American individualist's psyche. At least at first, anyway. 

Johan and I went to the Jimjilbaeng in Dangjin, an angular, steel-and-granite hulk located at the end of a narrow, neon-lit warren. Standard operating procedure at this one is to trade your shoes in for orange, jailsuit-type garb (your sleepwear, if you stay the night). In Dangjin, spa and sleeping mat together cost you less than the equivalent of $15, which makes the Jimjilbaeng one of Korea's most affordable fun things to go do. 

Sleeping rooms are found one the third floor. Most buildings in Korea are equipped with ondol, a gas-powered underfloor heating system, and the Jimjilbaeng is no exception. The sleep setup is kind of like an Asian take on a youth hostel, meaning it's minus the bunk beds and actually quiet enough to sleep. Whole familes curl up together on thin mats sitting on the ondol. I didn't stay the night, but next time I go someplace overnight in Korea I am definitely going to avail myself of the Jimjilbaeng setup. 

Two floors up, you find the two spas (one for men and one for women) -- a collection of hot and cold pools where everyone soaks, chews the fat, and hangs out together naked. And yes, I did say NAKED -- as in. stark, utterly, not-a-stitch on you naked. Normally, this would totally bug out a stiff Protestant character such as your correspondent -- and it still did some -- but after a Spaghetti-Western moment's consideration, I shrugged, doffed my boxers, and did as the Koreans do. 

Another of the jimjilbaeng's SOPs is the shower. Everybody takes one in full view of the soaking pools. This is done as a kind of a good faith gesture to everybody else that you aren't filthy when you hop in next to them. The hot pools range between 34 and 44 degrees Celsius in temperature. The combination of the heat and the jacuzzi jets built into the walls and floor of some of them work wonders on sore muscles and chapped skin. An occasional trip into a (relatively) cold, 18-degree pool chills and refreshes. 

All around us, Korean teenagers gave each other touchy showers and feely back-rubs that looked, shall we say, eyebrow-raising, to my American mind. Suffice to say, though, that same-sex tactile interactions that would be either tooth-grindingly awkward or incredibly sexual for a Westerner just aren't that way here. Being an American, I have not seen any of my close male friends naked -- let alone most strangers. Here friend and stranger alike hang out naked as a matter of course. And it's all good in the hood. Moments like these make you realize how far east you actually are living in Korea. 

*** 

My first time at Noraebang was kind of like my first kiss – clumsy, surreal, embarrassing-in-retrospect, but fun all the same. Koreans like to hit up such singing rooms after a night out drinking. Hapdeok, the farming village where I live, is a town of maybe ten thousand that has at least ten Noraebang, which should tell you something about the popularity of singing rooms here. Maekju (beer), soju (a sugary vodka, usually about 19% alcohol), and makoli (rice beer) all flow freely at any social occasion, so by the time everyone stumbles into Noraebang spirits are high. Once at Noraebang, they drink more and very quickly, often going from completely sober to under the table and dreaming in about two hours. Every Korean I meet tells me about how getting drunk and singing together strengthens friendships. Even relatively light drinkers such as pastor's-daughter Grace espouse this view as if it were a Korean national mantra. They seem determined to get wrecked on schedule, so that they can rush home on schedule, so that they can then get up and go to work on schedule, since such revelry often takes place on weeknights. I went to the "Oh Korea" Noraebang located in Hapdeok's tiny downtown quarter. "Oh Korea" was a maze of polished marble and imitation wood-paneling bathed in a blue neon glow. Numerous sound-proofed rooms sat off the main hall so that the establishment's various guests did not disturb each other. 

Once inside, events progressed along predetermined lines. Korean beer was available in abundance and the lyrics to American Top 100 tunes and K-Pop scrolled across the room's LED screens. Teachers of the same gender held sweaty hands, stared deep into each other's eyes, and sang American love songs into the karaoke machine's mics with a fervor that had me gnawing my lip to keep from laughing out loud. Many of the Koreans seemed to take the singing very seriously and would have had good voices if they weren't about to pass out. Several weeks later, the traumatic-but-hilarious memory of all this is -- mercifully -- beginning to fade -- but I doubt if I will ever be able to listen to the BeeGees in quite the same way. Perhaps more frightening than the singing itself is the fact that the original meaning and sexual context of such songs seem completely lost on them. Korean affinity and esteem for English words are equalled only by their lack of understanding of their meanings. 

After several rounds of such songs and much peer pressure to "sing something," I decided it was time to put a stop to all the pop-iness, and dialed up "Back In Black" on the room's computer. Between all the booze and the excitement of the moment, I remember only flashes of what transpired next, but, since that night, nervous laughter and expressions of complete and abject horror will appear instantly on the faces of anyone at Hapdeok Steel High School if you so much as whisper that Erik Osburn might sing again. 

Shortly thereafter, Grace decided it was time for me to go home, and I was hustled out of the bar and into her gray Hyundai. My last memory of my first night of Noraebang is of me trying to define the word "pantheon" for Grace, so that I could explain how, in the Pantheon of Drunkenness, I really wasn't that high up Mount Olympus. Hermes perhaps, Apollo, maybe -- Zeus, no way. Apparently she couldn't understand my rather slurred explanation of all this, which, I am told, kind of served to disprove my point.

Word Blues

Originally Posted May 4, 2010


The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote at length about the power language has over reality. According to Foucault, language has the power to make and unmake the world insofar as people who use language perceive it. Thus, language is the mechanism by which the powers that be regulate what can and cannot exist. You cannot imagine what you lack the words to describe. If you cannot imagine something, as far as you and your experience of reality are concerned, it cannot exist. To have the power to control what words mean becomes the ultimate power to dominate. Language, according to Foucault, is a prison for the mind. It can also be the means to escape this bondage. 

Hopefully I haven't completely lost you with all the one-hand-clapping and dreams-that-stuff is made of. 

Anyway, as you might expect, Foucault's ideas have been applied to lots and lots of political situations, both historic and contemporary. The Holocaust is possible only if the powerful can define –- through language –- who is and is not a person. Correspondingly, genocide cannot exist in a world where the words everyone uses to describe mass murder are not "mass" and "murder." In a similar vein, Orwell's totalitarian government in 1984 suppresses its citizens primarily through language. Vacuous, machine-produced pop songs, an ever-shrinking dictionary of colorless words, and a relentless censorship campaign directed against any thought that runs contrary to those of the Party – taken together, these three things make up Big Brother's strategy for staying in control. Even the Bible talks about the power of language. Before the building of the famed Tower of Babel, Genesis 11 says that all people spoke one language. This passage implies that this civilization’s unity of language is the source of its rulers’ limitless power. 

Truth be told, though, language has the power to oppress us, even if this oppression is not being conducted by a government or for political ends. I become aware of this fact when I live in places where people do not speak English as their mother-tongue. My working as a language teacher –- an engineer of reality –- at the moment makes me even more acutely sensitive to language's capacity to cause us pain. 

My hosts here in Korea have been more than hospitable. Their kindness speaks all languages – transcends them in its warmth. And yet, there is still the inescapable feeling of distance, of separation, of being the outsider in this place of sames. When I speak with them, we all grope for the right words. They handle my language the way I wield a pair of chopsticks –- awkwardly – grasping with great effort and difficulty at those slippery grains of rice. And I can't speak their language at all. Nuance, subtlety – all these things evade us. It hurts. My coteacher and her friends converse in Korean's lilting sing-song, laughter often bubbles up at some joke they all share, but I cannot fathom. Or some emotion unmistakable-but-inscrutable flashes across my coteacher's mask of a face. Words to describe it, to join in the conversation, to laugh out loud with them, and to know what is in her mind when she makes that face -– they are always on the tip of my tongue and just out of reach all at the same time. 

Their language, from what little bit I've been able to gather, is light-years different from ours. It is nearly impossible to get my students to speak in full sentences. If, as a teacher, you can get them to put a noun and a verb together, that really is something to drink a toast to. Aaron, the long-timer American who teaches at the private school in Hapdeok, tried to explain this to me once. Apparently, Korean is more verb-oriented than English, so a sentence like "You are obstructing the way," would be rendered something like, "You're obstructing," or maybe just "Obstructing," in Korean. Insane levels of detail can be rendered through the verbs. How this effects the way the culture thinks I can't say – although the impact must be profound. Sometimes it all just becomes too much, and I duck around the corners of Hapdeok's plastic-and-plaster landscape to avoid people I know. Anything to avoid speaking English with these people –- at least for right now. Anything to avoid being reminded exactly how out of place I really am here. Other times we manage, for the blink of an eye, to fight our way through all the language that separates us. These moments are as dazzling as they are rare –- like sunshine slipping through a thunderhead. Like when I explained the concept of something being "High Mileage." Mr. Chang's smile was miles wide, his salt-and-pepper hair wobbling as he convulsed with laughter. For this instant, we understood each other – and it was like shooting stars in the void. Other times, the difficulty with which we communicate can almost be a merciful thing. 

Running into another American here often reminds me of this. All the things I could say to such a person, if only I knew what to say. All the things I usually do end up saying, most of which I don't intend. It's so easy to make meaning that it’s easy to get lost in that ease and forget to say anything of substance. I don't have to think about what they are saying to understand, which means I can feel all manner of embarrassed and creeped out and worried by every little nuance of every little word and expression – and it all shows because I understand so easily that I don't have time to make my face lie. 

Don't get me wrong –- I love talking to Koreans and I love speaking English. Maybe what I really mean to say here is just that life as a human being –- making meaning, whether it is easy or difficult or somewhere in between –- is a difficult thing, whether you can speak the language of the people around you or not. Longing and loneliness –- trying to read Grace-whose-name-is-not-Grace's expressive-but-alien face. Losing myself in the hedge maze of another pointless conversation about Tarantino's dialogue with some English-speaker I meet at a party. Sometimes it is all just too much. I am lonely and alone in the prison for my mind that is my language. Foucault's word blues. Every once in a while, though, mercifully, by a grace I don't understand, lightning strikes. 

"High Mileage."

On Odysseys

Originally Posted April 25, 2010


Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story 

of [...] the wanderer, harried for years on end, 

after he plundered the proud height of Troy [...] 

til he came ashore at last 

on his own land. 

Homer, The Odyssey 

Robert Fitzgerald, Translator

***

So begins the great journey, taproot of Western literature, to which all our modern tales of adventure owe some kernel of inspiration. This is the big one, the lode stone of Western stories. Despite constant opposition from adversaries divine and mortal, Odysseus manages to come home from exile. Allegory of human potential and entertainment par excellence -- this story has it all. While I am living overseas, I study it in order to better understand what stories ought to be. Perhaps this story can also shed some light on another story -- my own -- in which I am far away from home and trying, in some sense, to get back again.

***

I have been in Korea working as a high school English teacher for almost a month now. To be honest, I never particularly wanted to teach and I am not very good at it. I took this job because it meant I could leave Indiana, even though I love my home state. I came to Korea because I feel compelled to wander, but can't really say why. Unbidden-but-unignorable, like a stone inside my stomach, wanderlust drove me here. Ever since I came back from a year spent studying in the Dreiländereck of Germany, I knew I had to leave home again. My family has lived in Indiana for at least five generations, and I feel a deep kinship with the people and deeply at home in the state's landscapes. The way people stretch their vowels (wash to warsh, fish to feesh). The molten iron of the August sun slipping beneath the dancing ripples of cornfields. Something inside drove me to forsake these places and people I know and love. In a way, I suppose it is because I know and love them that I had to go. 

*** 

On the surface of things, Odysseus's journey home in the Odyssey and my journey out to Korea couldn't be more different. The essence of Odysseus's character is his desire to return home. 

Odysseus [...] 

sat apart, as a thousand times before 

and racked his own heart groaning, his eyes wet 

scanning the bare horizon of the sea [...] 

such desire [was] in him 

merely to see the hearthsmoke leaping upward 

from his own island, that he long[ed] to die 

The essence of my character at the moment is my desire to wander. Odysseus journeys back, even as I head out. Upon closer examination, however, perhaps our two journeys have more in common than what is immediately obvious. 

*** 

Because I love my home I had to leave it. By forsaking the familiar-beloved, I hope to find it afresh. By becoming familiar with people and places utterly alien to me "in glance and gesture" as Rilke puts it, I hope to discover new territory within myself. Who are they, and who am I really, and how are we different, and how are all people everywhere the same -- or are they even? What does it really mean to be American? How is this different than being Korean, or German, or any other nationality? Is it possible to really love your country without hating the others? I journey farther outwards in order to travel further inwards. I leave my place to become more myself. 

*** 

It is Odysseus's destiny, we are told, to go home. Destiny. Purpose. The achievement his character strives toward. It is not that his home is the absolute perfect place. Kalypso, the nymph who holds him prisoner, is more desirable than Penelope his wife. It is hard to imagine that life at home will be more comfortable than the life he is so desperate to escape in exile. In spite of this, Ithaka is the place to which Odysseus belongs. He fits into this place, and the place fits with him. To go home is to make himself whole. For better or worse, Odysseus becomes most fully himself when he is in Ithaka. 

*** 

Before the homecoming comes the journey, though. The obstacles and enemies that Odysseus overcomes prove his cunning, prove his character. Odysseus, Master of Strategies, always harried on every side -- but also always unconquered. The perils he faces force him to flex the muscles of his essence. Whether he is stopping his ears with candlewax to escape the Sirens' sweet voices or using a wooden horse to capture an unassailable fortress, Odysseus's cunning is his greatest asset and most defining trait. The ability to adapt, by contrast, is mine. Adapting to life as a stranger in what is often an utterly strange land forces me to search for the things which Koreans and Americans share. Erik, Indiana farmboy, raised on banjo music and wagons-west American myth, exiled to a world of rice paddies and hive culture and technicolor neon night. And yet I can – I will – adapt even to this. Opposition really is a forge for character. Journeys exercise the human spirit, and it is because of this that they are worth making. 

Thus, I voyage ever outward in order to really get inward. Further away from home, in order to come home finally. Odysseus voyages homeward and in the process moves inward. Closer to home, and in doing so, ever closer to becoming the person he is destined to be. And they are one and the same, these two journeys. 

Outward and homeward, inward and onward -- all these bleed together and become indistinguishable -- separate streams flowing together into the great ocean of travel we are both trying so hard to cross.

Four Snapshots

Originally Posted April 13, 2010


Whenever I travel I always meet colorful folks. This trip has been no exception.

That American Boy 

Standing in line at O'Hare, I struck up a conversation with Steve, a Minnesotan who was on his way to Phnom Penh to meet a girl. Steve was the caricature of the American tourist. He wore a blue safari shirt and cargo pants. He was also taking anti-malarial pills and a dozen other exotic meds, because that's what American tourists going to Cambodia were supposed to do. Middle-aged, clean-cut, and very bald, Steve gravely explained in Fargo-Don'tcha-Know-lilt how he had always wanted to find a nice, conservative Christian girl. The sort of person who would have dinner cooked and on the table when he came back from work, you know? After a straight-laced but lonely life, Steve hoped he had finally met such a person in Judy, a woman who a Cambodian coworker of his at ConAgra had set him up with. They had never met, but had spoken often over the phone. The line was going nowhere, so, to pass the time, Steve pulled out a calling card and carefully dialed a mile-long string of numbers to call Judy. Judy, Steve was surprised to learn, was sleeping, because it was night on that side of the world. Steve apologized, told her he loved her, and let her get back to bed. He showed me her picture on the display of his cell phone. She was attractive, and looked like she was significantly younger than Steve. I wondered what Judy and Steve would think of each other when they finally met, and whether Judy was even the name this woman normally went by off in far away Phnom Penh. 

The Wayfarer 

Jaime sat to the right of me during the fourteen hours of Korean Air Lines Flight 38's journey from O’Hare to Incheon International. Jaime was stick-skinny and weathered looking. His sandy hair was thining. His toothy, yellowed grin was crooked and a few of his teeth had bits of black at their corners. His laugh -- part cackle and part wheeze -- was the laugh of the trickster and the roustabout. It held notes of wandering and desperation and the absurdity of life. He said he had traveled to seventy-seven countries during the course of his life, often with little more than the shirt on his back. Tales of his journeys flowed freely. Outside of Africa, there was almost nowhere he had not been. He'd dodged immigration as illegal help on an Australian fruit farm. He'd slept in the public parks of Tokyo. He'd lived with girls from Sweden and Switzerland. He'd nearly died of pneumonia in rural China. He'd had his passport stolen on the beaches at Tel Aviv. He'd rode the trains from Vladivostok to Moscow. If half the stories were true, this guy had been everywhere and done everything. He also was on his way from Seoul further on to Phnom Penh to visit a friend of his who was teaching English out in the Cambodian Countryside. I really liked talking to the guy, which is probably part of why I made sure to tuck my passport and credit cards into my underwear before I slept. When we parted ways in Seoul, he told me to have fun teaching English, and then seemed to fade into the corridors of the airport like a phantasm of the endless road. 

The Schoolmarm 

I met my coteacher, Lee Eun Hye, or Grace Lee as she prefers to be called, in Daejon, the day after I arrived in Korea. I spent the night at the Motel Pharos in Daejon -- one highrise among a forest of others -- all blossoming with neon and sitting on the edge of a rice paddy. Jason, my recruiter, told me that the motel was a favorite for married people having affairs. Among other amenities, it featured a special curtain over the garage door to hide the license tags of vehicles inside. The decor reeked of intrigue. Everything was mood lit and floral patterned and painted blood red. After a mostly sleepless night spent on top of the motel's not-quite-cloth sheets, I had just gotten dressed when Jason walked in followed by a slight, dark haired woman, Korean, with pale skin and a heart-shaped face. Dressed in carefully tailored jeans and a dark woolen coat, everything about Grace was scrubbed clean and starched and thoroughly out of place in Motel Pharos. She spoke good English. She was the daughter of a Baptist pastor (a rarity in this country) who had recently made the pilgrimage to Texas to collect his PhD from a theological seminary there. Now, anytime I see her, her expression and cadence suggest she is the kind of hardworking, idealistic, clean-nosed person who is bound to be underwhelmed by the mediocre realities of life. Particularly when she faces down a classroom of noisy seniors, all slouches and vacant stares in tweed uniform blazers, none of whom give a rip about their English homework. She often works later hours than other teachers. When she has free time, she likes to indulge the twin passions of the young Korean with money to spend -- eating foreign food and shopping. 

"Girls like department stores," she tells me as her friends and I ride back from a supper of Korean not-pizza. "Actually we love it."  

The Expat 

I met Johan the South African toward the end of my first week teaching at Hapdeok Steel High School. I was sitting at my desk in the teachers' office, listening my coworkers jabber while making Korean not-coffee when he burst through the door. He bowed, and rattled off a greeting to the teachers in Korean, with what sounded like a very English accent. They smiled and bowed back. For a long, spaghetti-western moment, I stared at him. I hadn't seen a Westerner since I got off the plane to Seoul. 

"You are not from here," I managed. 

"Yeah," he said, "And I imagine you are the only Westerner in Hapdeok." 

I was still in shock. Another white face. Whoa. 

"I've got to teach a class now, but I will be back at four," he went on. "I can show you the bus to Dangjin then if you like. There are a lot of us there. This place can fuck with your head. You should check it out." 

Later that afternoon we rode the bus into Dangjin. The bus was crammed with the boarding school crowd -- giggling, rough-housing teenage boys in tweed blazers and stained brown slacks -- all headed home for the weekend. Some half-bowed, showing respect, as we pushed our way into the bus's sweaty interior. I started to bow back. 

"Don't do that," Johan hissed, staring down a particularly wild group who had stopped fighting for a seat to stare at us. "It screws with Confucius. And you *really* don't want to screw with Confucius in this place." 

We arrived in Dangjin, an ultra-rich little city, bustling, filled with plastic highrises, golf courses, imported German cars, and neon. Everywhere neon. An anthropologist by training, Johan seemed to have the inside track on much of the beautiful, perplexing, super-saturated insanity that is life in South Korea. As we walked under the rainbow of signage, he explained how advertising here rarely touted the actual merits of a product, but instead played up the brand's appeal as a way of showing the consumer's personality. You buy a Samsung TV set because Samsung's values are your values. Western brands -- Calvin Klein, Levis, Dunkin Donuts, and the odd KFC -- were also at work in this teeming cauldron. The whole place seemed like the illustrated version of a Theodor Adorno thesis. 

Listening to him talk, for some reason I thought of Apocalypse Now. Johan was Martin Sheen’s character – drawn, for better or worse, ever up the river even though much of what he finds along the way disturbs him. 

"Go with the flow," Johan said. "Bow, eat the rice, play the foreigner, say gahm-sahm-nee-dah at every opportunity, and you'll be just fine here."

Electric Night

Originally Posted April 8, 2010


...electric night of a new Asia..." 

-- William Gibson, “New Rose Hotel” 

Korea is the embodiment of the postmodern. Image occludes -- and at times supersedes -- reality here. Branding hangs like fog in the very air you breathe. Lighted signs for Hyundai and SK and Lotte Mart and other titans of Korean industry burn bright in the darkness where they are suspended from plastic skyscrapers. A younger, more photoshopped version of Rick Deckard from "Blade Runner" would fit right in. Corporations get epically huge here -- Hyundai, for instance, is involved in steel production, manufacturing, construction, and textiles. And this is the rule rather than the exception. The local brands vie for supremacy with Western brands. Dunkin Donuts, Jack Daniels, Levis, and a hundered others are out in force here, too. Media is omnipresent, and seems very Westernized and very alien at the same time. Televised advertising is eye-poppingly cinematic. English is displayed constantly for show in advertising and packaging, but the phrases are often meaningless and absurd. Form overwhelms content. And the landscape is rife with the ironic and the incongruous. Everything new here seems to be made from ornamental brick or imitation wood. Crumbling plaster buildings with mildewed walls stand next door to gleaming glass-and-chrome highrises. The world's fastest internet is transmitted through a primeval countryside of forests and mountains. Hyperconsumerism and poverty lie cheek to jowl. Gleaming BMWs and Calvin Klein jeans stand right next to sunburnt farmers grubbing in the mud of their fields. Zoning is non-existent and rice paddies stand right next door to tall buildings. Almost nothing seems to have been constructed more than twenty years ago. Korea is a country with even less architectural past than the U.S. -- a place suffused with a vibe of ultrasaturated artificiality that you can't quite put into words, but which you feel always, like a weight pressing down on you.