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on k-pop...some thoughts after “perfect blue”

indeed, k-pop/j-pop idols are the perfect votive statues for the contemporary capitalistic regime. Like one is consuming something that never was real yet nevertheless persists on itself being real. Yet precisely because it is comprised first of discernible bodies, and then of personalities in its maturity, the fiction is so believable... Somehow, moreover, both Japanese and Korean industries found a way to re-justify the age-old economy of the (young) female body -- I think the Anglicans called it "chastity" -- by intensifying it, and with a foucaultian irony they promote an insatiable lust for the body by strip-teasing personalities, sexual visualities, etc. the initiating psychology of the industry is a Lolita complex...

And no, it is not about female choice, nor about re-claiming female sexuality. to co-opt a neoliberalist rhetoric in supporting the industry is perhaps as sinister and as precocious as the image of young girls scouted and then marched into rooms and halls and salons wherein they are taught how best they can realize their sexual potential, their sexual appeal, such that we may, in our lethargic gazes, continue to look, look, look.

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Thoughts 3.1.2018

This morning I remembered you, 누나, you who had bore the brunt of a nation’s pain, you from whom the hope of freedom and democracy was borne, you who they made the Sister of a Nation, the Joan of Arc, a figure, a symbol, you became a signification, a myth, a legend, the paragon of femininity as much a paragon of a patriot...

It saddens me, however, as much as it makes me rejoice, as much it has me made me puzzled by your martyrdom -- for though your sacrifice has alighted the embers of my secret love for a nation of which I was never a citizen, for though it has affirmed to me that the tiger’s blood -- which carries the crude brutal elegance of its undying ferocity, the din of drums, the clangs and the reed-sound -- pulses wildly in the veins of every Korean, I know that you had done so for a sign, a symbol, an imaginary construction. For what is a nation but the abstraction of a collectivity? You laid down your body for God and country...but I refuse to see your death as some justification for arbitrary concepts but that which reifies you as the most passionate lover, the greatest hero, my hero...your only cause for me was the expression of an extraordinary, extraordinary heart. My pilgrim words suffice little, no, none at all, to even claim to describe your feat. 

And so I forget the politics, the implications, the moralities -- I will only remember your pain in my heart, your courage in my mind. For you deserve not the mutation into images of national pride but the sole memory of your burning love, your cries.

Because today, you had sparked a conversation about unification between the North and the South (how ridiculous this must sound to you, 누나, who had thought she died for one nation, not a segment!), its economic, philosophic, political quandaries...how silly all this is 누나, as you watch from above. How filthy geopolitics, blank the intellectualisms, frail the mere cries for divine intervention...all excuses for avoiding the exigencies of the time -- for what exigency? Essentially meaningless, but that which was necessary for the people to eat, for the people to cease dying in troves, for the people, for the people...again, 누나, you died, your death, your sadness -- those are what I will keep to my breast today...

Whereas I was troubled, there was a great pouring of rain today. It was one of those rare rainfalls in Berkeley where, after the clouds had endured themselves for most of the indistinguishable seasons, the sky sobbed with such violence that one identifies with Noah when he hurried into his ark as he scampers to his apartment. But I walked slowly, I let the rain fill the weight of my shoes and socks, I tasted it, I stretched my hand out, my legs were chilled by the wind and water...and I felt, as I watched the rain quickening in tempo and rhythm and rigor, as I saw rivers streaming down the sides of the curb, the world shrouded in the shower of rain, I laughed, and laughed, and laughed; I was seized with an uncontrollable joy. Forgive me, 누나, but I had forgotten you in that moment; I had only seen and remembered and lived in the baptism of the sky, the utter washing of the Earth, and I dreamed that I could be flooded along the outpour that thundered on the ground, and I died with the collected dust of sin that rested on the world.

Or perhaps, 누나, perhaps, you had sent the tears of the rain to help me remember that my happiness is only a product of your terrible struggle. You had died in order for all of us to forget, to enjoy ignorance. Thank you, 누나, thank you...I love you with my deepest love.

R.I.P. 유관순 Yoo Guan-Soon (1903-1920).

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Thoughts 2.27.2018

My love for you is like the dandelion, the daisy weed, the ragwort -- it is some imitation of something beautiful, profound; it is commonly mistaken for a real flower, one that blows like a real one, and you know, because I plucked one for you under the cold sun of a blue sky, that it is one, it is the expression of health, of art that can develop from a fertile soil... But feel its dwarfed stem, its stickiness like old sweets; notice its pygmy length, its petals which will not wither but will not spread beyond its radius -- you know at that moment, when your mind is now enlightened to my darkness, and after the knowledge of which you had allowed it to fall below the armrest of the chair, and you say, to my dismay, that “I can pluck another one later,” you know that it is corrosive, artifice of an essential ugliness, unwanted, destroyed, dismissed, replaceable, blown, trampled upon -- my love for you is a bastard of that which might be called love. Oh yes, and I am the father, I have tended to it, I ignored its abnormality, I let it grow even when I knew its roots. Yes, its roots...they are now un-removable from my heart. 

Would you ever accept a bouquet of dandelions? They are all that I can offer. That I will offer. That you will refuse. Meanwhile, they will remain in their dogged way, they will resist the weathering of the seasons, they will be as crude as they will be strong. Oh, I am dreaming the daisy weed dream! That someday you will mistake me for a white daisy, and weave me within the black threads of your hair; that I will be carried with you as you move throughout this world, that I will see the things you see, experience what you experience, and that, when my head petrifies into a white wool of seeds, which will signify my readied death, you will blow me softly into an irretrievable dispersion, like how the wind brushes stars into the night, and I can have had to say, finally, that yes, really, my true love has sighed me away.      

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Thoughts 9.1.2017

I do not know whether the feeling that lingers inside of me is loneliness or some strange sadness. I would think it easy to classify it, but before I think about said feeling I most intuitively know that I am lonely; only when I begin to merge language and that inexplicable movement of my soul do I find myself in the most limbic of quandaries.

I do not miss Minjung, but what I do miss, or what perhaps I most want now, or what I would like to distract me from the void, is her expressions of felicity to me, those images and gestures that instantiated herself in the universe of those who would commit beyond themselves for me. I think that it is such that finalizes me as ethically immoral -- sure, carnality isolates itself from God, as the other infelicities do, but I now realize even more fully that I was in love not with her but with the outlines of her movements, her personality. Her parting curse was a series of images that I cannot separate from the idea of love, a language through which I might comprehend what I may not have ever again. When I make love to another woman, will the memory of her body clinging to mine echo silently in the mutuality of our reverberations. Will I move differently.

But it is not love that I lack -- merely its semantics. Or perhaps I do. I think friendship would suffice. Or perhaps it doesn't. I know that when (if) I have one or the other or both I will always prefer to be alone. Perhaps I enjoy only the real possibility of such people, lover and friends. I have a nice family. They sleep early, however. My brother does not answer my calls. He is tired often, I think. What I would like is to speak with someone that does not already have the underlying obligation to listen. To have found someone in the great expanse of somewhere. Not anyone, though. I am a shallow beggar, but a miserable one.

School is sometimes difficult and some days that is all I think about. So do I about wealth. But most days I have requisite self-esteem, as well as a consistent optimism about my future. I know that I am intelligent (is that wrong?) and I know I have charm. But I do not let it show except to the closest people. I expect others to notice some special quality about me. It has worked out in the smallest settings where people are forced to notice the existence of others but in the situations in which people move by each other as inconsequentially as tectonic plates I am resigned to him, he, they, or perhaps pronouns do not even find me in the ephemeral records of memory.

I would like an older brother, at most two years older than I. I have not established myself as of yet to desire a younger brother. But in my idealism, he would take me out to meet girls. Or I would play football with him. Or drink. But I think a friend closer to my age would be better. I would like to, for once, feel that I am developing progressively in life and experiencing sensations through which another individual is attempting to shape themselves as well as I. I would like to sweat and play sports roughly with a friend. But I would not like an older sister. Or worse, a sister inferior in age. I always misconstrue female friendliness as a motion toward more intimate engagements.

I am the dash between Korean and American. The ethnic class to which I belong is a misnomer. The East and West negates each other in me, I am the force of repulsion that resounds between the two. I want to abandon my American. Every time I hear Korean being uttered my entire focus shifts itself to the direction of its sound. When I hear it outside my window I dash to it and look for its source in the central courtyard. If I cannot figure a body from whom I may hear that wondrous language I let it fill my ear canals greedily, I shiver in pathetic pleasure in imagining that I too could be one of them. But I am not. I have gone to a karoake bar with a Korean club and I have sat somberly looking at the prettier females while feeling, amid the endless cacaphony of inexhaustible drinking games and idle chatter, that I not am. So did I experience when that one night I heard a soft conversation between two males sharing smokes on a veranda on the far opposite side, and I lied in bed listening attentively like an anxious rat, and from their distance their sounds could not translate into intelligibility.

That it is excessively easy and natural that I can interact with those who speak English makes me hate myself. But that I can only have the idea of what I want to express in Korean and that I can only quiver my lips into dumb utterances of the wrong grammar and the inflection of one who has memorized the distinct sounds of ends and beginnings of expressions but has never learned to parrot them in their fullness makes me hate myself even more for approaching that intellectual project. I negate myself. I am the force of repulsion between the East and West. I hate Korean-Americans who cannot speak Korean, or do not know Korean culture. I hate them because they are me. English is the greatest power in the world. I owe my allegiance to American country. My fellow democrats. But my heart sings at a higher pitch at the Korean anthem. I have been to Korea once. That was the only time I had been mugged. The last images I have of that time include my uncle storming out with a newspaper rolled in his hand while I cried with blue eyes and wet my diaper; my very mature cousins dangling pieces of candy in front of my face, cooing; my brother giving me supposedly a very expensive toy (he had told me this when he discovered its mangled corpse in a neglected drawer much years later, when he lived with me) to appease my crying in a hotel. Oh, and when I went to my brother's home, and I sat on a bamboo covering while I made his frail dog dance on his hind legs and played with his RC car.

God, if I could wrap my arms around a girl and in the most juvenile manner rest my head on her soft chest! Many times I have diagnosed my fears and wants as Freudian. I do not have sexual thoughts about my mother, but I know I want the qualities of a mother in a girl. I would like to be both boy and man in her presence. When I am scared I would like to force her to say it will be okay. I cannot tell if I am progressive or aggressively traditional. I am more comfortable with talkative girls but my mother's accustomed lack of words makes me believe intuitively that silence is a canon of virtue in a wife. I would like a wife. Some permanence. A wife that would exchange sexual advances with me frequently without discussing it so as to have the impression of quiet sanctity. I would like so dearly to have someone pray fervently alongside me.  

I feel as if in these fragments I have revealed nothing more than the conventional thoughts that torrent every young man that reads too many books or read books to escape into dreams. I have lied many times regarding why I like books. But the best books I have ever read has never implied some intellectual premeditation nor had really expressed a new philosophical value to be added to literature. I derive the same pleasure in books that same way anyone derives pleasure in a nice dream. I cannot say to you that I know how to read. Every time I read a drama I always miss the tropes. I am lost to their dramatic allures. My mind is weak to the movements that repeat themselves over and over in front of me. Books are a puzzle that I always miss. I am really quite dumb. I become lost in the multitude of tiny things that do not matter in the breadth of larger things. So is my approach to literature, if that is even an approach to literature. The best books that I have read have confined themselves to conventions. And I never expect them.

And so I would like to be famous, accomplished. So that people will notice me and hold me in awe. So that people will look at me in the street or will regard me in bowing reverence when I acknowledge them. So I can have the possibility of acknowledgment without ever entering into it. Though this will probably make me even more miserable, that people forever miss my mortality through the immortality of my achievements. Which is why I would like a wife instead, along with a few close friends. Though I will probably never end desiring something of a value of impossible height and depth. So instead I would like to die soon, and be with God. Though in front of God I will probably have to hold on with all my strength not to be obliterated by His overwhelming righteousness. You see, I have not prayed properly (that is, with tears of blood) for the repentance of my sin, which is that I have watched pornography and masturbated barely acknowledging the weight of my sins. So I would like to collapse into the sleep of Stephen right after the retreat next week, so that I am sure that I have been convicted, at least internally, of my reconciliation with God through Christ. But then again, after the retreat I will perhaps open these fragments and delete them in the fervor of a refreshed spirituality, and I will thereafter take extreme measures to stave off everything that threatens my sanctification. Which is why -- no, how -- I had broken up with Minjung. So sometimes I would simply like to become dust for worms and the earth and never be cognizant again. So that I would cease to know happiness to cease to know sadness, and vice versa. But the immeasurable fear of such a thing is what keeps me alive. Perhaps that is also the engine of my faith. No, not perhaps -- it is so. So lately the word aporia chants itself in my mind like a religious mantra: aporia, aporia, aporia. I am dancing the cosmic dance. Tomorrow will be better. I thank God for sleep.

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Would

It is on such days that I'd like the soft bone of A female shoulder up- On which to rest my head, Or else embrace her waist.

I would like to breathe Her breath, the breath of Life and forms of warmth That thickens the cadaver; She is spirit, shell I am.

Nearest her womb I am Less than am; I am be But envy nothing. So I am but a splin- Ter of a larger woods.  

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Simul Justus Et Peccator

Non-word groanings churn Inside my belly -- I want to Fall and let my knees Thump the lineoleum, I want to make raspy voice And claim the angel's tongue; I want to sweat tears of blood On a cold day with a white sun, And to sit like a dog, and with My hands gripped in one fist And my eyes clinched and Open lips to cry to sky:

Pass the cup pass the cup Pass the cup pass the cup Pass the cup pass the cup Pass the cup pass the cup...

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(INCOMPLETE) Revelation #77

Break me like a colt, Fear you with fear of thunder That cracks through the dark heavens, Swallow my pride in a whirlwind, Siphon my strength by the Arms of an angel; command Violence to my soul and Exhaust me with fever: gaze At me, gaze at me! So that No shadow besides that great Looming plain of night in which I may hide To avoid your mortal brilliance May shroud shrewd attempts To live without fear nor awe Nor mutual cognizance.

The Ghost fills my bare ribs But the phantom of Christ Haunts me to daily obeisance, And the blade of true conviction Pierces sharply through the Thickets and mires under which My heart trembles with vain hatred, Fear of self and silence of God. Sin is amnesia: no memory Makes one nil, rendering the Heart irreverent and thankless, Yet to exist in times not now, To neglect our mind and soul and strength In the gift of opportunity of life

Epic vocabulary cannot contain But at best defers to the Greatness of He; nor are [...]

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Inertia

While the world whirls spinning My cognizance trails revolutions Behind -- indeed I have become History; I am wound with A past that prophesied Falsely of the future, so I've Known a liar, a fool, and a Heretic embroiled in religion Wicked, cruel, and untrue.

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Quiet

What have you when the music ends? When the picture's cut? When the voice is lost? If the engine spurs, The birds cease singing, the buzz Sizzles, the winds without breath, When the foots stop trampling, when The sound is death, we are deaf but Not blind, for the mystery of life Then stares at us with its somber eyes.

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Untitled, 4/20

Today, I read all day long of poems By sad poets and let the words Become music; I walked in a Wide pasture with white shoes and Felt pygmy weeds biting my ankle. My feet sunk into that red Uneven earth under which I will rest My bones rattled of life; I reached a Mound, trying to invoke the spirits Silent and hidden. There is life here, Humans strewn under the magnificent Sun like ogres stitched in rock doldrum. Within the breast of this field, Whose grasses are combed by the Fingers of the wind, with my song And soul expanded to the size of the Sky, I no longer wish to be More than God, and am content to Be the seed whose fruits die in the tomb.

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Her III

Well yes, I must and will For you ease into Nothingness: a second In a minute, an hour In a day, a day in a Year –

Good God! Our lives are Long galleries depicting Portraits of suffering, Of anguish, of sadness And fear, and we with Ease forget the Nothingnesses We should keep ever dear.

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The Poet

I am a masochist; my wounds I cut gaily, and I love the pain That burns and I love the public Shame; a show of bloodspurt And gash, a flurry of death That proclaims my mortality:

A savagery of metaphor for The mass, for the bookend, For the night, or first light, For the sleepless, for the dim, For the lonesome, for me, For all to pick up, and to read.

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Her II

The anchor of sleep has lifted And my mind drifts to a sail; Where it goes I know not, And all pleasures I’ve known The lightless deep has wrought From my memory; so much so I’ve forgotten shapes and lines, Measures of myself and the world – But I’ve strength no more to row.

Tower beacon I am at your mercy, Give me your ray and guidance; I’ve on me nothing but the mimicry Of ripples of dark waves with which I am now most intimate; I have become A bane. Quickly: her image, her smile, The sun of her eyes is fast descending, And the night will swallow those whole, And I've strength no more to row.

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Her I

How swiftly I became a thrall! In a transient glimmer, a bare Brilliant shot in the breadth of My life, she became an iota Which feathered into dusk…

My heart thumps the bed, Fictions and chance roll My head, and my breath weighs Heavy – I am chained to dread.

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Inquiries

How does one endure Small sewer flies on The wall when Trying to masturbate In solitude? Or the musk of Cigarettes in your hair, Your fingers, your coat, That last the lifetime Of a mayfly? Or when you're pining Her image but on The windowpane there's A horrid moth with Wings lusting for Lamplight? Or how quickly  The day evades Your hands, like The damn dancing Housefly?

I hate small vermin and Legs exceeding four, And I hate their Indignation, their thirst For life, and The filth, the humility, By which they are.

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Lamentations

Vainly hiding from God's great glare, You wallow in Hatred, watching The day melt, merging To the next. You See no difference: Night comes and goes with Her image, which You soon forget.

It's a game, you think, One you won’t win Today, but perhaps Tomorrow? if not, a Week? A year? So you ask, to no-one Really, but all  The while you go Spin the same sins, Sinning, Spinning.

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Portrait of a Lullaby

(Inspired by Michelangeli's interpretation of Chopin's Berceuse)

Berceuse by day, In dazzling light, And white sand, Soft and warm. Ivory streets, Glowing, Gumball motors, Groaning.

Berceuse by night, In heavy sheets, Cold drafts whisper. Deep and mellow, Spire of keys, Tumbling; Lukewarm dread, Trickling.