Long time no see! 오래만이에요!

I suppose I haven't made a post in a very, very long time.

Delaying it at first eventually made it seem impossible to resume with something trivial. But whatdyaknow, here's another entry.

I used a lot of pictures because words are hard for me.

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★☆☆

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Outside of my window there used to be a big, wide, green space. Now construction and winter have begun, so it's mostly dirt and brown grass. They're building what appears to be a road on the right hand side of the picture. I'm going to buy some binoculars because I want to take a closer look at their progress. ʘ‿ʘ

However, my aloe vera had two children and some random green stuff started growing in its soil

and I scored some flowers randomly this week from a car vendor. I suppose that this somehow counteracts the developments outside my window. Maybe.

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★★☆

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In other good news, I got a second piercing on one of my ears. As of this week it has just about fully healed. I wore a temporary, small earring to work and no one seemed to really mind. I won't wear an earring to work anymore since it's healed, but, because of their non-reaction I decided to let my hair grow long now.

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★★★

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I filled up my fourth journal today. I have three other journals I've filled since I came to Korea. I keep my doodles, finances, ideas, plans, and stuff in order in them. They're so haphazard and disorganized, but I think of this as a form of encryption. Like my personal blog, they help me keep my thoughts in order and keep my focused on my short and long term goals. Having a notebook always with me allows me to work on my own style which is, "make something that looks nice and ruin it until it looks tortured and nice once more." You might call it "well-intentioned train wreck."

I recently developed a new hobby and it is fiddling around with Adobe Creative Suite programs when I'm at work. I set my first project to be a Korean business card. I keep changing my layout/logo since I'm still exploring my options, but this is my favorite version so far. I intend to buy my own laptop someday soon, so maybe that will facilitate my work some. 

My Korean studies have been progressing slowly but surely. I feel a little more confident in everyday situations. I don't feel scared about offending people or causing too much trouble, either. I took a 6 week night class this fall that recently. I passed, but I don't know my score yet. I will take the second half of the course again in the spring.

After my night class finished I started going to a calligraphy school after work 3 or 4 days a week. There I am learning Chinese poetry. So far I've learned 28 different couplets. I'm learning their interpretation in Korean, so it's a challenge, but my teacher is very kindhearted and patient with me. The poems are mostly based on Confucian philosophy, so, sometimes they're a bit moralizing, but at other times they're esoteric and neat. This is an example page from my study book.

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I'll try to post more often with more words and less pictures.

t.

encountering art—in museums

For the past month I've been encountering a lot of art, on the street and in museums and subways.

I guess I started in earnest last month when I went to the Korean National History Museum. The calligraphy section was rather small and not very popular, but there were some gems.

This is some calligraphy by Ahn Jung-geun (he assassinated Japanese resident-general of Korea, cut off left hand's ring finger when setting his intention to help Korea... A pretty intense guy!)

The style of this one is really fluid (called 草書 literally "grass style"). I didn't get the exact details on this one...

I've also been to the Seoul Calligraphy Museum twice. The first time was to see an exhibit by the Buddhist artist Jung Kwang.

There were many different pictures of Bodhidharma!

This one was titled 돌 (Dol, stone).

I think this is a bunch of curse words/vulgarities! and 佛, Buddha.

The second time I went to the Seoul Calligraphy Museum there was the Seoul Typography Biennale. Even though it's a "biennale," it's the first one they've held in ten years. It was titled some "Fire Flower of East Asia" and focused on the shared Chinese character culture between Japan, Korea, and China. So, it had typographers and artists from all three countries, which gave the exhibit a really good, diverse feeling! Most of the work was about pushing the readability of Chinese characters (and Hangul and Kana) to their limits. The logo for the biennale was rather cool, too:

It's read from top right to bottom counter-clockwise. I had to ask Aram to ask a person to explain it. The basic three letters in the logo are ㅅ,ㅌ, andㅂ. The ㅅ on the right starts, "Seoul" 서울; the ㅌ on the left starts "Typography" 타이포그래피; and the ㅂ at the bottom starts 비앤날레 "Biennale."

This one was pushing the limits of readability of Chinese characters (at least for me...)

This is 3-d Hangul! After the first few lines it becomes very difficult to decipher.

This represents various groups (and stereotypes) in Korea, such as English teachers, migrant laborers, old people... They're all saying something with a frank, kind of weird tone. The gray faced man in the middle is saying "I couldn't make any money in Korea..."

This is the name of the president (for life, dictator) of Korea during the 1960's and 1970's, 박정희 Park Chung-hee. My working interpretation of this is that it's an ironic statement. First, Park is credited with the rapid economic growth of Korea during his rule at the expense of political and civil liberties. So, I'm thinking that overcoming those economic difficulties is where the blue pole vaulting guy comes in. But, the subtle irony is that the guy is vaulting over Park Chung-hee's name. So, he's actually overcoming Park Chung-hee. I guess I make this interpretation because I hope people are still making subtle/witty critiques of authoritarian power. I also feel compelled to make a palatable interpretation because the composition is so good in the picture, so I can only hope it's not dictator praise!...

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the museums in Seoul so far. I will definitely be checking out the Seoul Calligraphy Museum each month as the exhibits change. It's such a treat that there's a museum dedicated to experimentation with words. 

(All these pictures were taken with my phone~, so excuse the quality. Larger sizes on Flickr►http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaiiuueeoo/sets/72157627130551233/).

encountering art—in subways and on the street

Even though I prefer it to going to a museum for aesthetic enjoying, finding art on the streets of Seoul can be difficult. Most places I go, such as Gangnam or Jamsil, are pretty clean and have no graffiti whatsoever. However, I've been able to find a few places that do have a lot of graffiti. They are the areas called Hongdae and Itaewon. I've also found a little bit of graffiti in Incheon, too.

I sometimes find stuff in the subway, too.

This is inside Jamsil Station and I suppose it's actually regular "art." However, it resembles a useful bench so well that they felt compelled to put a permanent black and yellow sign on it that says, "Do not sit here! This is a work of art." I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity. Perhaps the artist should've made their work less functional...

And now for some graffiti.

I forgot what subway station this was in. It's on the side of a vending machine. This sort of thing is pretty uncommon, a lot less common than I'd expect it to be in a city with the population of Seoul.

This is in Itaewon, AKA "the foreigner-packed district." Most of the graffiti in Itaewon is pretty rudimentary, thin-lined signatures without much variation, as pictured on the left. But this Communist-inspired poster was pretty witty.

This is in Hongdae, which is an area with a well-known art college. While it's somewhat similar to Itaewon in that it's "fashionable" and "kind of seedy," there are less American/European/Middle Eastern people and more Japanese people here (and art students). The shops are pretty tasteful and inexpensive, too. There's also lots of graffiti to choose from.

Hongdae, also.

In Hongdae I also saw this little cat, whose name I assume is LFW, in many different places. One thing neat about Hongdae is that some walls aren't technically covered in graffiti. They're canvases on houses that the artists change regularly. It helps blur the line between graffiti and sanctioned, legal art, which I think is the impetus behind Hongdae's graffiti culture.

I hope you've enjoyed some of the things I enjoyed!

(All these pictures were taken with my phone~, so excuse the quality. Larger sizes on Flickr►http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaiiuueeoo/sets/72157627130551233/).

I really like hanging around Incheon. It feels much more like a home than Seoul. There's trash everywhere most days (even though one of the slogans you see a lot is "Clean Incheon"). Also, the city's scale isn't incomprehensible and I never really wonder where I am. There are little touches, such as graffiti or open stoves of coals, that are missing from most areas of Seoul.

Yesterday we went to a big park.We rode a double bike (which was really old and rickety). There was also a cactus greenhouse. That was really beautiful and dry inside.

My past few days in pictures

I went to Incheon on Thursday night. It was rainy and I was really tired, but I like to get away from Seoul at least twice a week. We had burgers at a restaurant named BM Factory. I know, that name seems rather odd for a food place and not a colon cleansing place. The day before I bought a peephole (as in a peephole for doors) to make taking pictures with my old camera a little more interesting.

The next day, on Friday, I met Aram for an hour before her hanja (Chinese characters) class. After that I went to eat at TGIF with some friends. This was the ceiling at the place where Aram and I met.

Today, Saturday, Aram and I ate at a handmade dumpling place, Jihasonmandu, and drank some nice hand-drip coffee at Club Espresso, both in Buamdong in Northern Seoul. We walked a ton! In Buamdong we happened upon a museum devoted to the artist Whanki (whose name I didn't know before today). He makes really cute and thoughtful designs, simple, but with an underlying pattern. (I stole this apt description from Aram.) There were also some touching exhibits using Hangul and cuneiform and Minoan B. No pictures were allowed inside the museum, but I pretended to not be aware of that fact. The first picture is of something amazing, but I couldn't capture its amazingness. It is a bunch of Hangul floating in the air in a room with pulsating light. The Hangul reflect the light and project little shimmering fish bodies onto the opposite wall, sometimes making a recognizable Hangul-shape. It was pleasant.

 

On the way to the dumpling restaurant, a spray painted word for honey, 꿀, but it's been done twice in close proximity, so, 꿀꿀, which is also the sound a pig makes when it snorts. A Tyler sort-of-joke.

A mimosa tree, reminder of home.

Fin

Last week a student said to me,

I found one of your hairs in the school. I knew it was yours because your hair is different.

It took me a minute to understand.

Lunch today

Taken by ⓣⓨⓁⓔⓡ～＊ http://www.flickr.com/photos/21381396@N05/5861823949

Sent from my iPhone