suyeon in nyc

2009-10-25T20:11:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, a novelist told me that non-fiction was dishonest. He said that his fiction is truer than non-fiction, because truth is imagined anyway, and that at least fiction writers own up to their artifice.

I told him about the prosecutor in Roman Polanski's case. Years after Polanski had led the country, the prosecutor gave a filmmaker a long interview, and in it he admitted that the DA had forged evidence in the case against Polanski. The filmmaker took the interview and put it in her movie, for anybody to see. But now that Polanski is in custody and might face trial again, the prosecutor recanted all the statements he made in the movie. He said he just made it all up!

This is a case where truth turned out to be fiction, maybe. Documentary films exist in a gray area somewhere between truth and fiction anyway. I guess any story that really hooks you in has got to be carefully constructed, even if it's made up of facts.

Professionals who tell true stories are like translators. Have you ever read two different translations of the same book? A book that can be clunky and dense in one version can be fluid and clean in the other. Translators have this power. So do journalists, or documentarians, or biographers.

Or anybody, for that matter, in the case of their own lives. Every conscious moment, I'm telling myself the story of how I've gotten to the present moment. It's how I remember anything. And depending on how I interpret my own history, that's who I am.

So you could just as easily say that the very idea of fiction is misleading, because it assumes the existence of its opposite - fact. But facts themselves are made up of presumptions, best-guesses, and our obscured views. So I don't mind if non-fiction tells only one truth, because one is better than none.

2009-10-14T16:50:00.003-04:00

So...

Today I walked down 72nd St. for a few minutes. I remembered that in high school I visited a special st. On the upper west side called Pomander Walk. Its a street surrounded by big brick apartment buildings. In the middle of it all, there's a metal gate that looks like it let's you into an alleyway. But you open it and walk into a tiny village street, lined with townhouses on both sides. I have a recollection that the roofs were bright red and green but that might be wishful thinking. Every house was different, and some had gardens in front, some had rock gardens.

Manhattan is full of strange places like that, places that are both public and private, if you just know who to ask. I think that's where I'd like to live, in a house where Im hidden and also just a door knock away.

2009-10-14T05:12:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite things is to get letters from my friends. I like hearing about how they feel and think about what their life is lately. Something about learning about the interior life of the people I care about makes me feel good. I think that no matter what, writing a letter is a hopeful act. It means that we think that we can make a connection, even when the news we have to share isn't all that good. Maybe it's because there's no news that's all bad. Even if we're talking about something very sad, like how much we miss someone who's gone, there's happiness mixed into it, because we're remembering something nice, and telling someone about it brings it back. I think that's something really confusing about being an adult - that it's the things that bring us joy that can also end up hurting us. So it's a relief to tell someone about it, and have them confirm that indeed, it doesn't make sense. That makes its own kind of sense.

2009-09-22T23:47:00.007-04:00

M said something that I want to remember. He's in LA, and he was feeding a strange cat while he was on the phone with me.

He said, "It’s like you forgot that the most important thing is to please yourself.”

i remembered

2009-09-18T08:32:00.002-04:00

I write because there are beautiful stories out there. The stories out there are the same as the stories we have inside. These stories are beautiful, but they're also scary and sad, and we don't like to think about them sometimes. But if we hear the story coming from the outside, then it can be easier to listen to the story inside.

2009-09-16T20:41:00.002-04:00

I looked up from writing a beat story today and I thought, this is boring. I had a paranoid thought.

"Only my third assignment for journalism school, and I'm already phoning it in."

Then, I had a truer and sadder thought.

"I've forgotten why I write."

I emailed the story, which probably isn't too bad, at 5 p.m. Still, since then I've been speculating about how this happened. How did I forget why I write and how can I remember my motives again?

It's been going something like this:

"So what do I like? What do I believe in?

I believe in human connections. I believe that when you can look at other people with empathy, you can see yourself, and feel at peace. I believe that people are generally good."

I had to stop here. I don't know if I'm good, or even generally good. Actually, I feel quite bad.

It's impossible to believe in human connections when I feel that I personally am not good. If I don't believe in human connections, well then, I'm lost.

Sigh. This must be resolved.

Let's talk about something else.

This morning, on my walk to the train I saw a nice photograph stapled to a parking meter. It said "Henry Thies for City Council" about and below a picture of a white man, looking kind and professional, with his arms crossed.

Isn't Thies a French name?

Then, I heart shouting ahead, and I thought it was a protester or a madwoman. I turned the corner and it turned out to be a woman scolding her little boy. He looked at her dumbfounded as she yelled, "...you do not fold it like that! That is FILTHY!"

I thought that little boy must think that's normal speaking volume, and that made me smile.

Then, as I was taking the train uptown, I remembered that a Korean-American girl I barely know once said that I wasn't really Korean, I was basically white. I was pissed off about that for at least five minutes.

koreans and golf

2009-09-03T20:22:00.002-04:00

It's a stereotype that Korean people love golf, but my parents never played when I was growing up. In the early nineties, my father went on a golfing tournament with his alumni association, and he came in last place and was given a bowling ball as a prize. He brought home a trophy that said, "Most Honest Golfer," and we left it the anteroom where we put on our shoes.

My dad said, "Golf is boring." He bought himself a leftie set of clubs for when my grandfather came to visit, around the same time as the alumni tournament. This was when I was in high school, living in the basement and being morose. My father used the clubs maybe once, and from then on they lived propped in the corner of the stairwell, facing the laundry room.

My grandfather was a smoker, a talker, and a golfer. There are thousands of photographs of him holding clubs, in the final moments of a full swing, a club parallel to the green behind his back. He won a big tournament in 1980, and I was photographed sitting inside the silver trophy, an alien in a giant soft boiled egg cup.

It's most likely that when my father said golf was boring, he really meant it was boring for someone like him who had no time to practice. In the past few years, now that my has started to be more comfortable, and less stressed, he's started to pick up the game. Now he goes twice a week to practice, during the week.

"He's excellent," says my grandmother. She's a golfer too, and she's visiting from Seoul for the first time since my grandfather died this February. My grandmother's hair is white because she stopped dying it, but her attitude is the same. She said, "I plan on living for at least another twenty years."

Now she calls my father "distinguished," even though thirty-five years ago, she and my grandfather were against the marriage, because he was broke. Last week, they both ate lobsters together, flanking my mom. All water under the bridge.

2009-08-12T23:08:00.003-04:00

tonight i met the first asian american mayor of cranston, rhode island. he's the first asian american mayor in rhode island, and he was just elected this past november, by a landslide. he ran and lost in 2006, by 69 votes. he ran on a platform of fiscal restraint in 2009 and won 70-30, against an Irish Catholic incumbent in a city that's eighty percent Irish Catholic. The mayor, whose name i never got, is Chinese and Protestant. His family owned a Chinese restaurant in Providence for many years. His deputy for constituent affairs is a broad and stout latino who likes steak and avoids the doctor, and who got his start in politics working for The Most Notorious Mayor in America, a rhode island mayor in the 90s who was so corrupt that a documentary by that name was made about him. But the deputy has emerged unscathed, it seems.

you can tell who are politicians in a room, because they have good posture, and they touch each other, almost hug, when introducing people.

a room full of journalists is pretty dull indeed. but that's ok, i'm happy to get more dull in my life.

2009-07-23T09:33:00.002-04:00

on my way to cagliari, in sardinia. yesterday, an italian in my photo class told me, I think it is the most beautiful beach in italy. swoon.

2009-07-20T12:17:00.002-04:00

While winding through the Italian countryside, with the blue sky and the white Alps facing us through the windshield, I told M, I’m going to write a book. Then, two days later back in New York, as I tried to process my cousin's tragic death, I remembered how he was the first person in my family to tell me that I should be a writer. I told my sister, and my other cousin, that I want to write a book, or a thousand words a day at least until I get to something book length.

That was over two weeks ago, and I’ve netted about three hundred words since then. This morning, I woke up feeling pretty foolish. Then I imagined myself, a hundred thousand words in, and looking at the mile of writing behind me with dread and not joy. I know the process will be hard, so I am demanding to know up front that it’s going to be good.

ummm, that's not going to work!

If you don’t trust, it won’t matter how much punishment you’re threatened with, or how bad you feel about it. Once I asked a journalism professor about which of his students did well in school. He said, the ones who work. One student of his told him once, “I need my ass kicked to get work done.” By the end of the semester, the student hadn’t produced any good work. He just got his ass kicked.

So in the end, the only engine that leads to discipline comes from inside the heart. For that, the heart has to be large, and strong, and full of good things. These good things, like joy, or beauty, or the love of others, fill us up so that we can be supple and fresh even while facing a little worldly deprivation. Then we can see discipline for what it is, which is simply love of our best selves.

anywayyyyyz, back to one thousand words.

2009-07-15T15:55:00.002-04:00

i am hungry again! but i tried to eat a larabar and i had to spit it back out. yick. the last thing i need in my stomach is ground up nuts and coconut.

the past two days have been busy. on monday, i ... ah, yes, I began the next level in my photo course. my new teacher is great, very thorough. he wears all black, which i've noticed is the law if you work in computers in some creative/professional context. he's also gigantic, in the pale nordic calvinist kind of way. last week my teacher was also gigantic, but in the haute couture african queen kind of way.

even though i think it's creepy to comment on the appearance of someone you know, i can't help but notice the parallels.

now you know. if you met them, you would totally think the same thing. so there.

2009-07-13T09:44:00.003-04:00

oh i am so hungry, but i am going to write this first, because I know how annoyed you get when i don't write at least once a day.

yesterday, i spent the afternoon at the waterfront park in my neighborhood. i sat with my friends, watched the water, and felt the wind. the sun was strong, and i wore a big hat.

i have two friends who are in love with each other. that is less dramatic than it sounds. I mean, they are in a relationship, and i am friends with them both. i have known the girl longer, because that is how i know the boy, but i wouldn't exactly say that i know her better. I feel like I know them equally.

yesterday, everyone left except these two. i watched them play a funny game with each other about what to eat. she says don't eat that. and he says, i want to eat that. then she says, no, you shouldn't eat that, but she starts going towards it anyway. and he says, yes, I want that, and you should have it too. and she says, no, i don't want to eat that, but i guess you can have a taste. and he says, you should eat that. she says, no way, ok, maybe just a taste. then just before they eat it, he says, i don't want to eat that. and she says, you should eat that. and he says, but you don't want to eat that. and she says, i do want to eat that. and he says, no i don't want to eat that.

so they don't eat it. they eat something else. but then, once they've finished eating, he says, I want to eat that. and it starts all over again.

i watched this happen for hours and I thought: there are so many different ways to make love to a person.

2009-07-12T10:53:00.004-04:00

i have a beauty mask on my face. but only the bottom half. that's my trouble half.

after a whole lot of this and that this week, i let my body do whatever yesterday, and I gamely trotted after.

it wanted to rest, i rest. it wanted to drink coffee and run around downtown manhattan, no problem. it wanted to go to an alexander wang sample sale, and i said amen. it saw a girl peeling litchi on the subway, and it wanted to go to to chinatown. I said, sure. Then, it wanted to eat alone at nyonya. i argued with it for a while, because the food can be a little heavy, but it won. it ordered hainanese chicken, and it ate the whole thing, even the chicken skin, which I was surprised by.

what a funny day.

ok, beauty mask done. time to start this lazy sunday, folks!

2009-07-10T10:34:00.004-04:00

todayyyyyyy

my photo class ended. i actually slept enough last night for the first time this whole week so it was so much more fun. we printed photos. my teacher was like, where did you find mountains in new york city?, because i barely bothered to do any of the assignments and instead brought my own stuff from my own time to print. i had stuff from the italian alps, the madrid airport, new zealand, babysitting babies in my apartment, my apartment period from a long time ago. those pictures from new zealand really stood out for me. it was lots of dirt, and beautiful people, and clams. Also, sky. These are all things i love.

then i went to norwood, a beautiful exclusive club on west 14th st. it is membership only. I asked the man at the door, what is the application like? He had white hair, was wearing a shirt with a scarf, and was very handsome. He said, It's very involved, and then gave me a card. I asked, when you say it's involved, what do you mean? He said again, oh, it's very involved.

then afterwards, before my feelings got too hurt, he came up to me while I was examining a bulletin board. He asked my name, introduced himself, and shook my hand. I thought, this is what it's like to be a member of an exclusive club, and i liked it.

ah, i'm still up

2009-07-09T01:52:00.004-04:00

these things happen.

again, i'm exhausted.

but somehow i just landed on my jizzkool homepage

things snowballed from there.

i'm looking into my future

and i'm seeing...

many continents

and a whole lot of faces, my friends.

2009-07-09T00:23:00.007-04:00

i am exhausted, but i am up. after having kimchi chigae with my mom in her kitchen at 11pm, I came upstairs to my sister's old room, where her pencil sketches of my parents in their pajamas, and her Ranma cartoon stickers, and the globe I bought for her a decade ago, are all sitting there, like she's still a fourteen-year old.

I took the LIRR home after my digital photo class. My phone was dead, so I used the phone belonging to the girl sitting next to me. Her name was Terry, and she was a cherubic twenty-five year old. She was so nice about letting me use her cherry colored LG Chocolate that I started a conversation with her. She used to be a legal recruiter and now dreams of being a wedding planner. I told her that twenty-five is so young, because at twenty-five, I couldn't have said where I'd be at thirty. But now that I'm thirty, I'm pretty sure where I'll be at thirty-five. That's aging for your. Less surprise.

For instance, the next time someone I love is killed in a tragic and unexpected way, I'll be less floored, and thus less fucked up.

On an unrelated note, Mauro took pictures of my VJ last week. He wanted to show me how it was lopsided. Truly I was astounded when I saw how one side was distinctly floppier than the other. I laughed and then forgot about it. This evening, while downloading images from my one memory card in class, the teaching assistant came to my computer just as seven color shots of my VJ froze on the screen. I said, "Whoops." She didn't say anything.

Now, four hours later, I'm almost amused.

2009-07-07T01:54:00.005-04:00

My cousin Matt died early Friday morning. He was three weeks from his thirtieth birthday. He was killed in a hit and run on 149th St. and Sanford Avenue, three blocks from his house. His body had to be identified by dental records.

I want to know more. I want to know how you can kill someone with your car so that you are “nearly decapitated,” as the New York Daily News put it. I want to know how long he was lying there before someone walking his dog at three am stumbled over the body.

I want to know why he had two IDs in his wallet. That’s why the police first approached the family. They thought the body was of the other guy, and they asked my uncle’s family if Matt knew a forty-one year old named Hyun Kim. Only six hours later did it occur to them that it might be the young one.

At the memorial service, Matt’s younger sister Julee cried over the coffin at the beginning of the ceremony, cried in her seat through the service, and then cried and held every mourner in the line. When the line dwindled and disappeared, she went back to Matt’s coffin and cried over it again until her father pulled her away. She said to my mom, “This isn’t real.”

I am mad about this most of all because now he will always stay twenty-nine, laughing Matt who turned out to be too good for this world. But he wasn’t a saint, he was a person, figuring it out along with the rest of us, with me.

I was born four months before him. There are many photos of us looking like twins during our first three years of life, before my parents moved to the United States, in 1982.

He and his family moved to the United States in 1995, when he was sixteen years old. They lived with us for several years. He liked Bryan Adams, I think because he thought he seemed All-American. He really didn’t have a fucking clue about America. He asked me, “Beverly Hills 90210” isn’t really how high school in America is, is it?

I proceeded to ignore him for several years. I was busy. He never complained, he was resourceful, he made friends. He might have been the most popular Korean American in the greater New York City area circa 2000.

But he struggled too. He studied at the New York Institute of Technology, but his dreams of becoming an architect couldn't compete with the money from waiting tables in Koreatown clubs, a job for which he was truly gifted. He played with enlisting in the Army, but couldn’t do it because his English wasn’t strong enough. Still, he never complained. He got jobs doing various things, because he was charming, and charismatic, and had a way with people. He never kept the jobs. He was young, he was handsome, he was free.

He lost interest in clubbing, and promoting parties, and switched over to a similar, but less lucrative track – being the president of his church’s youth group. It channeled his innate talent for helping others, his gift for being good. Driving a vanful of teenagers home from a praise retreat, he inspired them with his confidence, his good nature, and the sense that there was nothing in life he’d rather be doing than watching over them. He was figuring out how to be a charismatic grown-up.

When we hung out, when he drove out occasionally to see me in Williamsburg, he made fun of himself and the work he did at the church. He probably did it to make me comfortable, knowing that I didn’t share his faith. He had an instinctual barometer for being non-judgmental. It just wasn’t in his DNA to dislike things about a person.

But he was no boy scout. He had a scary streak. He liked to drink to the point that he lost control of everything but his most basic instincts. But even his basest fucking instincts were good. Once, after a long night out a bunch of us ended up at a diner. Slurring, he interrogated Mauro about his intentions with me. "You want to join our family, then you better listen up," he shouted, and made Mauro, thirteen years older, squirm in his seat like a little boy.

Now this angel of a man, this sweetheart, this stupid fucking idiot twenty-something, is dead. We were helping each other figure out how to live, slowly, a few months at a time. I feel like I was helping him. Or that I was about to help him. And now I can't. It is fucking over.

2009-07-05T15:00:00.003-04:00

the news is bad and i don't want to share it.

i am not sorry.

"never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation."

-- william zinsser, a kind old writing soul

2009-07-04T15:17:00.001-04:00

i'm back home. busy.

2009-06-29T15:58:00.003-04:00

Siamo arrivati a Roma! A protest is being staged outside my window, or a crowd of drunken people are singing on our street. Anyhow, local color.

We finally made it, if three hours late. Our plane spent over an hour taxi-ing around the Madrid runway, and then we were held up at baggage claim. It's just hard for fourteen musicians to get all their instruments and things, especially when there is a crowd of families waiting at the luggage belt like they're moshing - lots of elbows and shoulders to get through.

The Rome airport is nothing fancy, but did the job. A very effective barista made me an espresso in about eight seconds, and it was yum (is that not foodie language enough? i mean, it had a light head, and a fruitiness that didn't overwhelm the base). He made the guys at Oslo around the corner from me, whom i love, look like American amateurs.

Oh, it's my turn to shower! Allora, um momento.

2009-06-29T09:07:00.003-04:00

"Flower power, but very well organized." -- the bandleader Vittorio, describing Festival Med, in Loule, Portugal

the madrid airport has the best pillars. In pantone hues, they stretch across the terminal like the ribs of an abstract dinosaur.

i don't know what this says about portugal, but this is the best thing I've seen so far on our trip! loule, a town an hour from lisbon, where mauro played his first show, was a little resort town. It has a Moorish influence and seemed interesting, but we stayed at a hilton resort that might as well have been in vegas. then, we went straight to festival med, the five day festival where just four nights before, buena vista social club had played.

The festival featured cobbled streets, winding alleys covered with flowered fabric, and hippie artisans selling handcrafts.

The music is as follows. Take an indigenous Italian musical tradition with origins in shamanic ritual. Then add two drum kits, a soprano sax, and an electric violin. Top it off with a bandleader who happens to be the drummer from The Police. Yup, that's it.

(M's watch blending, chameleon-like, into the Madrid Airport)

2009-06-27T00:20:00.005-04:00

what do I, a world-weary book nerd with an asian face, have to do with a traveling Taranta ensemble? I've just started grappling with this question, as I'm celebrating the fourth of july by following an entourage of Italian gypsy musicians (and a Brazilian percussionist) through five european cities.

I hope things are not as grim as I fear. i've been telling myself that if all communication and interaction breaks down by day three, then I am allowed to be a horrible American, hide in my hotel room, and get my way by throwing currency at locals. Moreover, during performance days, I am allowed to sit in the green room drinking complimentary San Pellegrino, avoid eye contact with the musicians' whose food I'm eating, and spend the performance in a dark corner, napping.

Mauro won't care as long as I am pliant and offer sex after the shows. This, I can do. I LOVE hotel sex.

2009-06-26T12:53:00.005-04:00

look what i got in my inbox this morning:

i love it, except i would never marry a "mario"! I would only marry a Mauro.

everything else is true.

(minutes by jonathan seneris)

2009-06-24T07:58:00.004-04:00

voicemail i sent mauro this morning at 4:55 am Seattle time:

"Hey, it's me.
It's 7:55 in the morning
- mmm -
I wanted to wake you up.
and bother you.
even though i know you're sick...
- mmm -
okay...call me...
no, DON'T call me.
- mmm -
i think you're stupid.
...
(hang up)

note: M spent a fourteen hour overnight drive from Red Rock Colorado to Portland Oregon in his bunk not sleeping, but catching the bus driver's flu virus.

2009-06-23T08:36:00.010-04:00

Yesterday felt like summer for a change. While standing on 13th street, I ran into a friend from college who was visiting from Boston. We walked over to the the Czech café on Perry St. and drank watermelon juice.

We talked about: Japanese and Korean love suicides, whether Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author or an international author, the appearance of the city of Boston in Banana Yoshimoto's second novel, the static nature of Japanese storytelling, and Noh theatre.

This reminded me of college.

I took an East Asian Lit class in my first semester. For a while, the professor was also my advisor. She was tiny, had a dove white bob, and had been trained at Yale. She also smoked, even though she must have been about over fifty. I hadn't handed in my final paper in the course; I was starting my protracted hike towards eventual academic probation several years down the road.

The woman had me in for an advisor meeting. Her eyes were tired but concerned. If I recall, she had her own troubles with her own children. I sat in the wood chair next to her desk and looked morose. She observed, "I think you are acting self-destructively."

This is the beginning of the final paper I eventually wrote for her:

My Korean mother says Chinese people are dirty and rude. She also says that the Japanese are opportunistic and shallow. She reflects the attitude of most Koreans: their neighbors to their left are uncouth, while their neighbors to the right are parasitic. “Those people are so different from me,” they think, and of course, different usually means inferior.

My mother is speaking from one culture, looking at two other cultures which, though they may seem similar from a Western standpoint, are completely dissimilar. These outer differences lead my mother to assume that the people are inherently different as well. In the same fashion, it is easy to be staggered by differences when reading works from different cultures.

The Story of the Stone and The Tale of Genji come from very different authors with very distinct agendas, who existed in completely different nations and time periods, and operated under unique value systems. As representatives of their culture, the one and the other are as different as night and day, or at least seem so. Yet were these two citizens of different lands to take a good look at each other, they would see a familiar face.

Do you guys remember the word “inherently”? Ha ha haaaa.