with a bullet

I had a dream last night that I was shot in the chest. I spent the rest of the dream-evening trying to get myself to an emergency room, but first had to deal with, I believe, some very serious party planning. I woke up before reaching a hospital, seeing the party come to fruition, or bleeding out.

list of desirable attributes

great sense of humor

ability to make lists

delight in idiosyncrasy

likes to make breakfast in bed. coffee drinker. fiction reader.

understands the sexiness of the Golden Ratio

(making breakfast in bed is HARD! I think you ought to relent on that one. Maybe making it in the kitchen and eating it in bed...?)

(good call. thus amended.)

easy to finish, good pay, few complications

pro-repetition, pro-abstraction

goes to bed without fuss, puts the lid down

lanterns. shadows. dancing.

action, reaction, and full stillness, still fullness

yes make-believe, no pretending

plays well with others

smooth, soft, strong, resilient, easily repaired

stimulating, cost-effective

fascinated

cheap, well-worn

ace at cleaning up spilled milk and spilled marbles

(thank you to Lacey and Charles)

all the food, drink, and indie rock you could ask for

Hongdae is the Bedford of Seoul. (This will only make sense to about 0.05% of you.) Plus it smells like Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire on the street where my favorite bar is located.

On Writing, Part 1

I was having a discussion with some friends the other day about online presence. They were telling me that after a bit of a snafu involving a picture taken out of context and some public parental admonishing, they have begun to carefully monitor what they write and post, on Facebook and blogs, personally and for their mixed media Arts company.

I can understand having a professional face, especially when presenting oneself as a public figure. However, their cleaning up of the rough edges seems not to be for their professional lives so much as for the comfort of their parents. They told me that it has gone far enough that they feel like their online presence totally misrepresents them as people.

I think I just find it frustrating that people I know to be intelligent, creative, and extremely charitable should have to put up such a screen. They have no intention of running for office, they don't have jobs they're going to get fired from for writing about them online, nor do they have things to say that extremely inflammatory in any way.

On my end of the conversation, I talked with them about a chat I had with my parents about this. Over the years, I have learned to be more and more forthcoming with my parents, as they have been with me. Any secrets I may have ever kept were always due to embarrassment rather that they might be disappointed in me as a human being. I know that this makes me one of a lucky few.

So, when my dad first asked for my blog address, sometime when I was living in New York, I gladly gave it to him. He then asked if it made me uncomfortable for him to read it, if I thought it might change the way that I wrote or what I wrote about. I decided that if he didn't feel uncomfortable, then I would just go about my business and he could read all he wanted. (This, I believe, was around the time I wrote a post about throwing up on the subway. We all have moments to be proud of, and ones that we hope other people will learn from or at least laugh at. I think my father, knowing some of his stories, probably got a good laugh from that one.)

Now, this subject came up again recently, as I've moved to the far end of the world and more people have been invited to read. I'm not really dealing with a huge readership, nor do I feel professionally in jeopardy at any time; I don't have my real name connected to the blog in an obvious way, so you'd have to take at least 2 whole minutes to figure out who I was if you didn't already know ... also, while I may find reason to complain about this and that, I don't feel that I complain enough about my employment to get anyone in a twist.

(Being confident and cavalier in this respect may come back to bite me at any time. I am aware of this.)

Anyway, it came up again because of two new groups of readers: 1. A friend's parents, whom I adore and get on with very well, but who don't really know me as an artist or outside the context of their home, where I tend to be less irreverent than in other parts of my life or in my writing. They are reading, I think, mostly to find out about my adventures abroad. Also, as supplementary material to their own child's information. 2. My Grandma. Hi, Grandma!

I was talking with my parents when my mom told me that one of my cousins had showed Grandma how to get to my blog so that she could read it while I'm away. It's pretty cool that my Grandma is that technologically savvy - she's been using computers about a decade longer than my mom. However, when my mom told me that, I got a little nervous. Grandma is a cool lady (you are, Grandma!), but should I tone it down a notch to save her some sweat?

My parent's immediate reaction was to make me PROMISE that I wouldn't let this development effect the tone or style of my writing AT ALL. They basically insisted that I keep writing about whatever is on my mind. The song stuck in my head, my broken heart, my trip to Timbuktu, or a post about being naked with a bunch of Koreans followed directly by a post about my boobs. With whatever colorful language I feel is necessary. And more often, if possible.

I don't know that I have any real conclusion to this line of thought, but that I'm feeling thankful to be supported in that way by the people closest to me. Especially knowing that not everyone is so lucky. Occasionally I pick up a new reader, but I'm hardly in a place where I'm collecting a readership of people who don't already know me. For those who know me well, surely you can hear my voice in the way that I write here, surely you can see me grin or burst into tears. I feel like one of the skills I continue to cultivate as a writer is to balance eloquence with rhythm in a way that marries the way I think with the way that I speak with the way that I write. For those that don't know me well, I feel as though you really might begin to see the complexities in my character that you might miss if we only interact quietly, personally, reverently.

I am a respectful person, but I seek to combine the reverent and the irreverent, a classy elegance with a youthful abandon, loquaciousness with succinctness, for as long as I can put one foot in front of the other, one word after another. I don't ever want to be just one thing, and I don't ever just want to be who you think I am, who you think I should be. (This is important for me to state and restate, as it can sometimes be lost. I lost it for awhile recently, but luckily I'd just misplaced it.)

Thank you and thank you and thank you.

Your this! They wiggle!

Today I went to see several teachers teaching some wee little ones, in order to prepare for the possibility of a pre-school teaching gig at my campus come March. We got to know a little bit about the curriculum, which includes reading from GIANT books together and singing songs and coloring and a little bit of dancing and singing.

In Cherry class, a little boy wouldn't come inside because he thought I was there to replace his teacher. So much crying.

In Peach class, everyone could read!

In Mango class, they busted out some serious phonics, Thomas and Jade helped me make a picture that turned out to be a boat and a fire fish fighting a water fish. At first, the fire fish was totally winning, but at the last second, the water fish put the smack down.

My favorite part of the day, though, was Claire from Mango. She was pretty sassy, and whenever she blinked it was like she blinked with her whole face. It made her cheeks bob and her forehead scrunch, so she seemed constantly to be blinking, because it was so apparent. While we were coloring, she started laughing hysterically, and when I asked her what was funny, she couldn't breathe well enough to tell me.

Later, while everyone was dancing and singing to The Wiggles (terrifying but understandably awesome for ESL pre-schoolers), she made a point to tell me what had made her laugh.

"Teacher! When you color! Your this! They wiggle!"

My what?

Oooooooh.

My boobs.

"Well, Claire, I love to color."

She then proceeded to tell me the same thing verbatim between every song they sang (so about 19 times), sometimes grabbing my boobs, sometimes gesturing to where hers will be in about 14 years.

And thaaaaaat pretty much made the whole day worth it.

Update: The very next day I got asked the following question by a student:

"Teacher! Why you are not married and these are so big?"

If you can figure out the appropriate interpretation of that question, please let me know.