25/30: Conversations With My Classmate-Professor Over Lunch in Cardiff

Of all the places, high street, of all the places on high street, a faux-mexican

chain with bad spellings and valleys accents. Here again for all the unpacking
at the logical end of the course we took together.
find ourselves comparing notes eight years from the day he said

so you’re also an American, and showed me the best seat

in the mini-cafe.

The years they have been kind?

Strange? About the same?

His kids are people now, big

laughs and so many transgressive

authors, Naked Lunch Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch and how the students

need

to be shaken

and twisted

and broken

you just keep writing and throwing it

out and keep writing and throwing it

out to the high street, he gestures,

something for the people, these

people they just go about their little

lives.

At some point in our thirties we just start looking the same

for a long time. We met when he was a year younger

than I am now, he’s lost a little weight, but aging only

shows in family pictures.

So many beat authors  and  pages full

of violence, his students complain, especially

the women, but people need to know

life’s not all gardens and shopping

and roses. he references Thoreau

and Ginsberg and Lydia so and so

and says something about guts

on the page. GUTS.

To break up the bland, pleasant

horror of domesticity.

What are we doing

here on the high street,

if we’re not picking  up tail

or telling rough truths?

He’s married. I’m not. He was married when we met.
I wasn’t. The Cardiff we meet in and the Cardiff

he lives in are different places even so.

The new book is meant to be

destroyed, because art is temporal.

I get a copy for free. He has to give

some of his students credit, they call him

on his shit. He’s got shit, like I’ve got shit

like they’ve got shit, but these

are his classes and

I learn more, here on high street

about Cardiff Uni Politics

than will

hopefully ever be useful.

Always used to joke to me to not get married, fuck around as

long as possible. Struck me as sad, and honest. A third weak

beer in and I remember three years ago, he sent a few links

for professor jobs in Cardiff, then one in Bellingham that

he’d thought about.

But you can’t uproot family. You, you could go anywhere.

He pulls a page out of his book and wraps his tip in it

things are going pretty well, he re-iterates, life is what it

is, just kicking against the long going

and I take another look down high street

contemplating curriculums for those who only

wish

their desperation could be

quiet.

Korea Trip 2011 Wrap - Up Party Program

Because if I do not write a trip-wrapping up post now, I likely will never do so, and thereby will disappoint myself and possibly others. So! In a convenient multi-list format, here are things about the trip I haven't yet mentioned:

Lies:

* I was not in Busan. For some reason I thought we would be in Busan, but we were not. I was either mistaken or misled or simply a spreader of lies to all I know. But the places I went were: Incheon, Suwon, Seoul, Hwaesong/Dongtan (like, a suburb of Suwon?) and Pyeongchang. Those were the places. Not one day, moment or second in Busan.

* The food was not weird. It was delicious. Some of it was unfamiliar, but I imagine I'll find myself at Korean Restaurants more often these days.

* Formality: maybe it was the camp format, or a concession to American Ways, but it really wasn't terribly formal. I've been in the houses of relatives where I felt less at ease.

Kids:

* as I believe I mentioned before, ten year old boys are ten year old boys no matter where you go. even if they are familiar with, know how to deal with and are well equipped to handle school, they would still rather put chairs on their heads and yell "Teacher! I am Transformer!"

* they love to catch Dragonflies, these kids.

* anna (many children used english names), a 10 year old girl who looked about seven, had braces and was generally quiet, comes up to me the day before departure: "teacher-- you go seattle tommorrow?"yes.
the next day she approaches me with a pen, rolls up my sleeve and writes "I love you. Bey! --anna"

Culture:

* Korea is very Korean. White people in Seattle love to talk about how very White Seattle is, but it's fricken' London compared to Seoul. 99% of Korea is Koreans. . .

. . . but that doesn't mean the city isn't international-capable. The country. Signs in Korean and English. German tv stations in the hotels. Parisian Baguettes. Etc. The whole culture has it's arms open. Which is maybe easier to do when you can present an obviously unified front? I dunno.

* The buildings are tall, but somehow I don't think I'd go insane living there. Maybe it's the inbuilt parks between apartment buildings or the fact that I know in the back of my head I don't speak the language and thereby a lot of the noise would be rendered useless to me, but I think I could do it.

* Not that I'm planning to move.

* There. Necessarily.

other things? maybe. maybe more pictures. maybe links. maybe k-pop videos. but I know how I work and how this blog is and I don't like making promises.

two photos(koreatrip #6)

we went on a walk up to some buddhist shrines. this is suzanne in a hollowed out log. because of blogger-in-hotel-lobby-shortcomings, this post has taken 20 minutes, and only two pictures instead of like, eight. also, I was posting blind (going only by th ephoto number.)



kids!

Pedagogy (koreatrip #5)

Day two of teaching went better than day one. This is always the case, you'd think, but it is not, in fact, always the case. (how's that for some bible-style obfuscation?) I'd rather day two be good and things get progressively better, than start good and fall flat.

I'm writing this from the Kensington Flora hotel lobby, which means this, too, shall be a short post. To prove I'm in korea: 아나댐; 나ㅓㅇ댜맺 쟈뎌개누

no idea.