sorting through my dvds

I currently have the pleasure of sorting through my dvd collection…. in an attempt to get rid of as many dvds as possible (need more space!). There are a lot of dvds that I can’t easily part with–The Lord of the Rings box set, for example. There are the dvds that you would think I could get rid of easily, but I pause: Johnny To’s “Running on Karma”, which features Andy Lau in a Big man suit? But, actually, a great, entertaining movie.

Then there are the indefensibles, the dvds that are still shrink wrapped, that I purchased but never watched.

For example, the DVD pictured below, a look at the cover and you already know what the movie is–a Bollywood rich playboy meets family obligations, I mean, girl, and then slapstick rollercoaster to the wedding at the end. Except that it probably isn’t–I don’t know, I haven’t watched it yet.

But after closer inspection, the purchase isn’t entirely indefensible. I am guessing that I was moved to buy this after reading the copy on the back:

“The story opens with Vijay returning from the USA, to join his family business. The only son of a widower industrialist, Vijay carries home with him the attitude of the western world, some good, like equality of man and woman in a relaxtionship [sic], and some bad, like failure to recognise marriage as an institution.”

An inexplicable part of my dvd collection

purpose in work?

i’m not sure quite where this happened, but my thinking has gotten older. some would say matured. when or where this happened isn’t obvious. it didn’t happen overnight. but it did happen.

what is this “older thinking”? well, it is a less idealistic, much more pragmatic. it has to do with my attitude towards work and life and love. but primarily work. my expectations of the work-world are that it will be a slog, a fight, that it will never be what it should be. “do your job, keep your nose down, get it done” but not to expect it to be all roses because “it is a job. if you loved it, it wouldn’t be work.”

this attitude runs counter to my experience and my job when i was much younger. but now that i am a bit older i think—maybe it wasnt the job. maybe it was just me, and my idealism, and love of work, that got me through that situation. i wonder if, given the same situation, how i would be do now–with my “older thinking” in place.

a discussion over the weekend–is it truly possible to find a job that you love? the conclusion was “no, that is why it is called work”. a bit depressing, but probably true. a columnist from the financial times was quoted, in response to complaints about “lack of meaning in work”, that being able to feed your family is reason enough to work, and should provide satisfaction. we are so far up Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy that our concerns about self-fullfillment in our work is a bit ludicrous in comparison to the vast numbers of people in the world who suffer.

still–we have these concerns, and we have to live our own lives. i wonder if a re-reading of alain de botton here might not do me some good. i know that i have some dissatisfaction with where i am, career-wise, and am trying to sort that out.

i am not particularly happy with the idea that i just need to settle for a job that will support my family. i would like to think i could do better. but i look around, even at my most successful friends, and i do not see much self-fulfillment in work.

for the moment, i will leave this question open.

Loro’s at bbang

Wow.

So, I found myself in Seoul, S. Korea last Saturday night, and my friend took me to a great little venue near Shinchon called Cafe Bbang, the prototypical artists/musicians basement painted in bright colors and with a great quilted backdrop to the stage area. We got seats in the back corne and sat down to enjoy the show.

All the bands were great, but the headliner, Loro’s, was amazing. A 5 piece band, playing mostly instrumental music with occasional lyrics, they produce a multi-layered soundscape that builds from pianamissimo interludes to huge banging drum and guitar pieces. The band includes a cellist/vocalist, two guitars, keyboard/vocalist, and an awesome drummer. I don’t know how to describe the sound–kind of like the Album Leaf, but with more expansive and dramatic highs.

I could go on, but you’ll just have to wait to hear the real thing when they release their first album in February.

loros-2007-12-b

Holiday Music

A new holiday tradition for me is to check the website of Tight Ship Records. The owner, Barry Phipps, gets his friends together every year to record some holiday music–which is also the name of their band. You can buy their music from the website, or you can just download it for free.

Holiday Music is great for when you are tired of the same old carols, but want something festive. This year there’s even a song with lyrics, “Wrapper’s Delight”.

Enjoy! and happy holidays.

remembering my father

Next week it will be twenty three years since my father died.
That’s a long time.

I want to think about two things: what I remember of my dad, and how I feel about him today. Maybe also how life has been without a father. So, three things. I don’t think I’ll get through all of them today.

My father was a stern looking guy. He had classic male-pattern baldness, with a super high hairline, but hair along the sides of his head. He wore thick black plastic bifocal glasses. He took us to church, and went to a Bible College, and so I remember him wearing suits and ties a lot. He was slim, wiry. He was a forceful speaker, and his broken English took on a weight that made people take him seriously. I guess he was a serious person. I don’t remember him laughing much, though he did have a great smile when he did smile.

My earliest memory of my dad was in Chicago. We moved to Chicago from Seoul, where I was born, arriving in America on New Year’s Day, 1974. (We lived in a high rise apartment building, which I can’t remember, but which was featured in a recurring childhood dream, a cartoon landscape where the building flooded and crocodiles came into the apartment; not a nightmare, but a fantasy, which I can still see clearly to this day.) My mom told me this part: that he had gotten a job, and my mom too, and they were making money, the American dream–and that he bought a car. I don’t remember what kind of car, but I remember it being blue, and big, and shiny. So here’s the memory: I’m sitting in the back seat, with my sister, and my dad is driving–my mom is away, maybe at work. And there is a sound, a crunch, and the sound of brakes slamming. And being tossed forward. And then my dad turned to the back, and he looked at me, and maybe said “Are you okay?” (my memory of this is in English, but he probably said it in Korean) and as he looked at my sister and I in the back seat, a trickle of blood was running down his forhead, where he had hit the windshield.

I seem to recall that he rear-ended a UPS truck, but I could be wrong on that. Memory plays tricks on you. Anyway, he totalled the new car, but we were all okay, and (as my mom tells it) that’s when my dad realized that he wasn’t in America to pursue the American dream, but to do the Lord’s work, and so we packed up and moved to Wisconsin, where my dad attended a Bible college.

So my next memories of my father are in Wisconsin, from the house on the west side of the western-most subdivision, where I could walk down the gravel driveway and look at the setting sun, and see the fields of alfalfa stretching out in front of me. My dad went to college part time, and my mom worked, and my sister and I went to Sunday school and church and parochial school.

In the summer time, my father would take care of us while my mom was at work. I don’t know what he did, but I would go out and play. I do remember having a garden, and pulling lettuce up from the garden to eat with lunch. I remember my dad wearing a white tshirt during the hot summer months, and sandals; and his voice when he’d step out on the porch in the evenings and yell my name, to get me to come home. I remember him taking me to the Boy Blue ice cream shop, after he’d pick me up from preschool, and getting a ice cream bar dipped in chocolate.

Those are pretty decent memories.

-/-

But, I can recall my dad going into a rage. I remember playing a board game together (Survive!) with my parents and my sister, and my dad getting upset at one point and sweeping the board off the table and onto the carpet. I remember hiding in my room with the door shut and waiting for a fight between my mom and dad, or more and more frequently as we got older, between my sister and my dad, to blow over.

When my dad was finished with school, suddenly he was a missionary, “to Korean people living in the U.S.” It didn’t occur to me how strange this was, until much later. His slide show was of Korea–fighting during the Korean war, families in colorful customs for New Year’s–but he wanted to minister to Koreans in the U.S. Didn’t make much sense, but neither did much else, at the time. It was important that this country, Korea, probably the most evangelical of all the Asian countries, be cleansed of the errors of, well, not being exactly like my dad’s church. The slide show ended with a gruesome guilt trip: a quotation from a Bible passage along the lines of “if you don’t help those who need it, then their blood is on your hands” super-imposed on a slide of blood-drenched hands. The lights would come up, and the pastor would shuffle to the pulpit, and ask the congregation to open their hymnals. And they’d sing “Amazing Grace” as if they had all been kicked in the stomach.

My dad did not spare the rod, and I remember getting walloped in the downstairs bathroom (after we moved back to Chicago, when I was ten) for telling a dirty joke at school (yeah, I went to a school where you could get in trouble for telling a dirty joke). There was a moral element to the beating–I broke a rule, I did a bad thing. But there was also: you caused me shame. Humilation. And my dad would take it out on us, the family. Mostly on my sister.

Where did the anger come from? I don’t know.

I remember my dad driving like a madman, not stopping to ask for directions when lost, being incredibly, incredibly stubborn. Speeding. Petal to the metal. I remember his sonorous voice as he spoke from the pulpit of a church we were visiting. He’d pray in Korean before every meal at home. Same tone. The “I’m talking to God now” voice.

-/-

My father dying. Hepatitis C. That last year was terrible. He was taking iron pills for his liver; drinking carrot juice and drinking distilled water. Skin yellowed. Things were so bad that it was already after dinner when I realized that it was my twelfth birthday, and there were no presents or celebration, and that not only had everyone forgotten about it, but I had as well.

At the end, he was up in a hospice in Wisconsin. I remember driving up there with my mom one weekend. I was bored, reading a book. The book was a a shelter, a shield. I sat outside while my mom sat in the room with my dad. He asked to see me. I went in, but didn’t say much. Anxious to get back to the book. He let me go. That night, we stayed at a friend’s house in Wisconsin. I split the guestroom bed with my mom. She cried all night.

We drove back to Chicago. It was a Sunday. My mom was barely keeping it together, and then the car was full of steam. The hose on the radiator was leaking. We stopped to get a fix. December in the Midwest is hell on cars, especially on radiator hoses. I popped the hood. I was 13. We got to a service area, got some radiator fluid. Home.

The next day I went to school as usual. Somehow they brought my dad down from the hospice to the hospital. I went home. It was dark. The next morning, made my lunch and went to school. The there was the announcement. Come to the school office. My sister was there. The principal. Very serious. A woman from the church was going to drive us to the hospital. I-55. The Dan Ryan Expressway. Cold, dark clouds. Serious.

When we got to the hospital, we sat down in the hallway, my mom came and told us he was gone.

Tuesday, December 13th, 1983.

-/-

I’m thirty-six. Next year I’ll be the same age as when my dad was when I was born.

I haven’t thought about my dad much. When he was alive, there was so much tension that I just tried to stay out of the way. After he died, it was too painful, and mostly I was just trying to figure out how to grow up on my own. (My biggest worry actually, was that no one would teach my how to shave when the time came. I figured it out on my own.)

Now, I think about becoming a father myself. So there are questions about where my dad came from. Who his friends were. When was his first kiss. How did he feel about the future. How did he feel about his dad. What made him so angry. What things in myself do I get from him?

-/-

I went to visit his grave a couple summers ago, in Chicago. He’s buried in the Clarendon Hills cemetery, 6900 Cass Ave., Darien, IL. I wasn’t sure if I could find the gravesite, but it was easy. Enter the main gate, take the first right. Go about 3/5 of the way down the drive, before the curve, and look on the left-hand side (not the street side). The headstone is set flush into the ground, kind of a reddish color, and it reads:

CHARLES CHANGSIK SUH
1934-1983
Father – Husband

inside your head

they say that you live your life inside your head.

your feelings, thoughts, ideas, expectations, desires are all in your head.
no two people react to the same circumstances the same way.

let’s assume this is true.
i believe that it is.
life is lived inside your head.
your happiness, your choices, your loves and hates,
your preferences and your obligations.

so what does it mean?
if you want to change your life, change your head.

change what you think.
change what you know.
change what you feel.

practically, how can this be done?

broaden the pallette of your experience.
read for new ideas, and new templates of human feeling.
write, to clarify your thinking and to test ideas.
watch movies, to visit places you will never go.
observe the mass of humanity around you with humility and understanding.
observe yourself.

(love as many people as you can.
it is difficult to love.
it is work.
we cannot love everyone, but we learn from those we try to love and fail to love.
we learn from those we love and who do not return that love.
we accept those that we love and do not ask for anything in return.)

make the head you live in bigger and wiser.
expand your feelings,
imagine new thoughts,
play with other ideas,
invert your expectations,
change your desires.

that is how you break the prison of your mind.
rebuild the walls.
reform the structure.
if life inside your own head is painful or boring or severe or frustrating,
make it a better place to live.

thinking

some things i want to think more about:

  • challenge bad ideas – I’m inspired a bit by Sam Harris here.
  • what country i want to live in
  • good things about america – I tend to focus on the negative, politically and in terms of pop culture. But America is a great country, and it’s worth underlining that in conversations I have with people here and abroad.

the joy of crappy camera phone photos

one thing i like about my crappy cameraphone's photos:it makes it obvious how different the photo and the experience are. a photo can be art in and of itself, but it is not the same as seeing. it's a differ…

one thing i like about my crappy cameraphone's photos:

it makes it obvious how different the photo and the experience are. a photo can be art in and of itself, but it is not the same as seeing. it's a different thing. so when i post a photo, i'm saying: here is a marker, a reminder, of an experience. but it's not the same thing.

i think when the photo quality is so good, it's hard to remember that it's not the  same thing as the experience of seeing.

some examples: i tried to take two photos recently, but because of my crappy camera i couldn't get them.

i was walking to the bus stop the other morning, and i walked past someone's door, and there was a travel mug of hot, steaming coffee on the doorstep. it smelled so good, and it was a really cold morning so you could see the steam. i tried to get a photo, but the light was bad and the doorway was shadowed, and the pic i took really didn't get the steam very well. so i skipped that photo.

driving a car on a damp, foggy evening, i had to wipe the inside windshield with my fingers. the oil from my fingertips left clear, faintly rainbow-haloed streaks across the windshield. the headlights of oncoming cars would light up these crazy paths on the glass, and it was strange and beautiful. my camera couldn't catch that light, though, and the streaks didn't show on the photo i took.

Have we gone too far?

that’s what a poster on BART asks.

In reference to laws about the woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

This morning on BART I saw a asian woman in her late twenties or early thirties fiercely responding point by point on the poster with her pen.

A guy watching said: “tear it down.” She replied that it was better to educate.

Hurray for her, and for laws that protect a woman’s right to choose.

I understand that there are many who are deeply opposed to abortion. I once was, as well. I could not understand how anyone could justify what I considered t that time to be outright killing.

As I got older, I started to understand how much life changes when a woman bears a child, and what a big responsibility it is. As a teacher I started to understand the comfort of parental support and the cruelty of parental neglect.

Some argue for the fetus: we are taking away its right to live. I do not deny that it is so. There is potential being denied at the very start. But that is what life is: we deny one future so that another may prosper. I read the paper at the expense of… I help my son with his homework instead of … I leave one lover for…. I quit a promising career to… I end this pregnancy and start …

Life denies potential every moment, so that it can nurture another potential. Animals are driven by instinct, but humans can shape their potential and their lives. To deny women the right to choose is a denial of their humanity.

(Human desire, that rebuking of the hungers of instinct, has raised us up from caves and into temples, up from the sea and out to the stars. It constantly dreams and invents a better future–and it always does it while denying some potentialities in favor of others.)