What can I tell you about Korea?

Got this new moleskin for my pocket and some square glasses with a red frame

I sweat on the subway I SWeat on the bus I SWeat in the classroom I SWeat & I SWeat

Got a package with new shirts and sweets from Tiffany

I am working on getting the bones back in my face

Got a package full of vitamins and fish oil

An Egyptian poet was delivered to my door

He speaks French and his name is Rami

Got an electric shaver for hectic mornings

I got and I got and I get and I get

Last night Rami and I ate fire chicken and cried

Last night I awoke early with a yearning for Mona

My new bathroom smells musty but my room is huge

I crave a Baltic mist, the cold sea, and the voice of a Russian woman

I am an alien but this is just UFO BULLSHIT

The yellow dust is blowing in from China

MILLIONS WEAR MASKS

I cannot see the sky

(Itaewon, South Korea, April 9^th 2006)

 

Itaewon is little America

 

Maybe security                        settles in boundaries.

Maybe security                        is a ship full of fish.

Maybe security                        is a port for the soul.

Maybe security                                    is cracked and caked.

Maybe security                        is a cruel joke.

Maybe security                        is precise but not in the way we expect.

Maybe security                                    cannot be locked in one spot.

 

Maybe America                      

holds its gas.

 

Maybe I am entertainment     

fucked.

 

Maybe it's all a bore.

 

Maybe my face                                   

splits down the middle.

(May 5th 2006)

 

Waiting for a bullet train I am heading to Pusan to see some Korean sea. It's overcast, dirty, dusty, and muggy. My shirt sticks to my body. It smells like shit and everyone is mumbling in staccato. Rush. Push. Bbali Bbali. An old Korean lady (ajima) wanted money. When I refused she slapped my ass.
 

 

 

"Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre."  — Walter Benjamin

 

My anger builds with the swarms. The swarms are businessmen who rule the streets of Gangnam. The loud honks jerk my chain. Jeom-sook keeps my centered. Jeom-sook centers me. My eyes are centered on Jeom-sook. Jeom-sook has long black hair. Her hair is on my floor and IN my eyes. Her neck is on my chest. I am leaving the Shame House. My memories are under the floorboards. I'm finding experience. Experience is IN Jeom-sook.

 

(Banghak, North Seoul May 20th 2006)

 

"We penetrate the mystery only to the degree we recognize it in the everyday world."

(Walter Bejamin)

 

Today I am in a clean clinic with an aerial view of the dentist's fingers. Mechanical devices surround me. I'm becoming part of the furniture. The scraping and molding of teeth. The drilling. The clean smell of bones. This is not a spinning barber pole full of cheap hookers. Not a bridge with businessmen in power suits. This is not a room full of westernized noses and westernized eyelids (in Korea plastic surgery is the norm). Korea hangs by a single thread over a violent ocean. Korea is Bbali Bbali and not knowing what shadows snake the corners.