Category Archives: Feelings

Family, Feelings, Sport, Travel

A Sweet and Wonderful Thing

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The real deal. Authenticity. The Ancient Brothers. Getting better. The Colorado/Colorado State game. The Rocky Mountain Showdown. A barn burner. The Marvel Universe. My son’s nerdiness. D.P. Songtan. The great recycling show on Sunday. Chicken noodle soup. Jewish penicillin. This time made by a Korean.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The body rallies

One brief shining: Sitting on the couch, really a futon bed/couch, in my son’s living room, both of us sneezing and coughing, he found the Colorado/Colorado State game on Youtube and we settled in together, two former Minnesota guys with Colorado tenure rooting for the Buffaloes.

 

You probably missed it. Mountain Time in the evening. A game that usually has resonance only in Colorado and even then for only the small number of folks who followed the non-legendary Buffaloes and Rams over the last couple of decades. Usually.

This  year though. Coach Prime on the sidelines. Two of his sons on the field. Two wins already in the bag. The first against the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs who lost the 2022 national championship game to the Georgia Bulldogs and ended the year ranked #2 in the nation. That got the sport’s worlds attention.

The Rocky Mountain Showdown however. Whoo, boy. Without a 98 yard touchdown drive in the literal final two minutes AND a two-point conversion for a tie the Buffaloes would have lost a game in which they looked out of sync and ineffective.

College football does overtime differently now than when I last tuned in several years ago. More like the soccer shootout. A coin toss. Winner of the toss gets to choose whether they want the ball first and choice of ends of the field. Both teams get the ball on the opposing teams 25 yard line. They maintain possession until they score, run out of downs, or there’s a takeover. Got that? In the second overtime both teams have to try for two points rather than kicking. Yeah, I know. Here’s a page that explains it all, sort of.

I say all this because the game went to two overtimes, both teams scoring in the first. In the second the Buffaloes scored, but managed a takeover against the Rams offense and the game was over. Whew. What a ride!

Later on my son and I watched Winter Soldier, a Captain America entry in the Marvel Universe. My son’s an athlete. A physics/astrophysics major in college. Now a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. We’re substantially different. Not an athlete. Philosophy/anthropology. Protester against the Vietnam War.

But. We’ve traveled a lot together. Since his plane landed on December 15th, 1981, he’s grown up and I’ve grown old. We not only love each other, we like each other, like spending time when it’s possible.

We share a love of comic books, Marvel comics especially. Football. Travel. Politics. Family.

It is a sweet and wonderful thing to have a strong relationship with a man whom I knew first as a four and a half pound baby, all thin arms and legs.

Asia, Cooking, Family, Feelings, Korea, Travel, World History

An often harsh culture

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Saturday gratefuls: The Grilled Fish shop. Mackerel. Salad with sesame seed dressing. Kimchi. Tofu soup. Pickled radish. Bean Sprouts. Friendship day between Korean Air Force controllers and US controllers. Barbecue with hamburgers and hot dogs. Bulgogi. My son’s care for the folks who work for him. Working out. Pain free. Slow and deliberate. Walking by Mr. Lee.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Korean Culture

One brief shining: The waitress, maybe 5 feet tall, brought out a wooden tray filled with side dishes and slid them into place with the ease of long practice, small covered tin bowls held Rice; she went away and came back with a flat wooden plank containing three whole grilled Fish, all Mackerel, which Seoah prized apart with the blunt end of her metal chopsticks.

 

The Grilled Fish House sits back from Songtan-ro next to a mechanics shop which never seems to have any cars in the bays. About a five minute walk from the apartment building.

A light Rain fell. Seoah had her umbrella up; but I carried mine unfurled, enjoying the sensation. Rain is no longer common for me in the Mountains. The day was warm.

A table full of working men drank beer and wielded their chopsticks click clack click. An aquarium at the front held three sullen looking fish, a desultory final home.

Seoah and I ate all three Mackerels. Thought it would be too much. It wasn’t. Over the meal we talked about Korean culture. I had collected two paper cups for water and put them top down on the table. No. Always this way. Cups up. Ah. Also. I’ve noticed you just put money down on the counter when paying. Yes? Korean people are sensitive. Think that means you disrespect them. Oh. How do I do it properly? Both hands on the money and hand it to them. I can do that.

This conversation segued into bullying. The intense competitive nature of Korean society manifest especially in the schools, the military, and business leads to constant maneuvering for positions of authority or power. The apparently weak or different suffer. Seoah confirmed this and shook her head. This country.

Korea has universal service so all Korean males go into the Republic of Korea armed service. The ROK. Between age 19 and age 28 a young man has to enlist  for a time period between 18 and 21 months depending on the branch selected. There are exemptions, but most end up doing at least alternative service.

The harshness of the service experience as displayed in D.P., Deserter Pursuer, seems to be common knowledge. Look at this article in the Washington Post.

Seoah confirmed that her brother had trouble when he served. It seems especially the intelligent and the artistic, the gay and the just different, experience brutal beatings and constant hazing. Seoah said she thought many of the episodes on D.P. drew on real stories. If so, OMG.

A similar dynamic occurs in schools. This is a culture’s way of enforcing its most conservative and ugly values. Not much different from racism and sexism.

Seoah said she prefers American culture because it recognizes boundaries between individuals. Not to say we don’t have our bullying and hazing.. We do. The difference seems to be the ubiquity of them in Korean culture.

Asia, Family, Feelings, Korea, Travel

Darker Notes

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Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. L’Shanah Tova. Opening the Book of Life. Chesbon nefesh. A time for accounting for our souls. 5784. Judaism. Israel. Conversion. D.P. My son and his compassion. Seoah and the fried chicken last night. Authentic life. A dog’s life. Rain in Songtan. My son’s cookout tonight with the ROK Air Force controllers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Accounting for our souls

One brief shining: Walked up Songtan-ro past the restaurant with the image of a man about to eat an uncooked fish, up past the sheet metal shop with grime on its windows and duct work stacked alongside a rarely used front door, past the apartment buildings with narrow parking lanes between them, past the draft beer joint with an official sign that read Draft Beer Hygiene, turned left and back into a residential neighborhood with a mix of low rise apartment buildings, the occasional single family home with a gate, a garden with squash and peppers and a couple of plants I didn’t recognize, left again now going downhill, a sleepy twenty-something came out of an apartment door, looked blearily at me as I continued toward Seoyang-ro, the small commercial area that serves the locals, once there my feet took me left and back toward the 15 building complex where I’m staying for the month of September.

 

And now for something darker. Long before my son and Seoah moved back to Korea for their four-year stay, I’d become enchanted with K-dramas. One of the things I love about Netflix. All the country specific shows. Turkish. South African. British. Japanese anime. Chinese movies. Israeli shows. Directed by natives and acted in by natives. Story lines peculiar to the sensibilities of other cultures than my own. It’s an unusual moment, being able to see the ordinary entertainment of people’s around the world. How I got to watching my first K-dramas.

Perhaps you’ve seen Vincenzo or Extraordinary Attorney Woo or the Hotel Luna, Stranger, Itaewon Class, Sky Castle. Perhaps not. I have. Yesterday I began to watch D.P. Yes, my misspent old age. I know. But I forgave myself for this habit a long time ago.

Particular themes critical of contemporary Koren culture begin to emerge. The tension between prosecutors and the National Police. Misplaced reverence for chaebol CEO’s. And two that have interested me especially. The punishing competitiveness of the Korean school system and the harmful affects of bullying in many sectors of Korean society.

Skycastle for example follows four families living in a gated community for the rich, powerful, and well-educated. Skycastle. Without spoilers its theme of hyper competitive students, but even more their hyper competitive, win-at-all costs parents, shows how such a system distorts family life, childhood development, and the culture of Korea itself. I asked Seoah and her sisters about this and they acknowledged that Skycastle accurately reflected a small segment of Korean society, like the cheating ring uncovered in 2019 that included actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin reflects a certain segment of ours.

Yes. Skycastle probably exaggerates. Yet. One of Seoah’s nephews, a bright young guy with a talent for the piano as well, often studies until midnight. Not because his mother pressures him but because the school system itself implies that’s the way to educate yourself.

Tomorrow we’ll look at bullying at schools and in the universal military service required of as the law states, all male genders.

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Korea, Travel

Korea II

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Lughnasa and the 2% crescent Korea Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Seoah feeling better. My son’s love. Murdoch’s, too. And, Seoah’s. Songtan. Working out aprés the flare. Hot wings. Writing. Seoul. An amazing and vibrant city. The Mountains of Songtang. The Rocky Mountains. The Apennines. The Atlas. The Himalayas. The Alps. The Dolomites. The Appalachians. The Smokies. The Sierra Nevada.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountains

One brief shining: With a cup of instant coffee in hand I look out the window from this twelfth floor apartment toward Seoul seeing Songtan below and the Tree covered Mountain that rises behind it, then how the city has engulfed and climbed not only this Mountain but others in its range, street and businesses and housing climbing, climbing.

 

Figuring out the logistics of getting into Seoul and the National Museum of Korea. We could take a bus, but the times were not convenient. At least going up. So, subway. The blue line to the orange line, transfer and four stops north. Between an hour and a half to two hours. After the museum we will take the bus home, perhaps a taxi from the museum to the bus. Just to make a trifecta of urban transportation. Might be my son and me. Depends on how Seoah’s feeling by Sunday.

I could go by myself. Though I don’t have as much stamina as I used to and my brain doesn’t compute the ways of the various modes of transportation as quickly and easily as it used to. Especially in a language that remains beyond my grasp. Not dementia, just the changing neurological capacities of the aging brain. Rapid processing is one of the things that diminishes in quality.

This visit though. With the still healing back. I’ll choose to go with family that can help. This will be trip three into Seoul. I wanted to focus on Seoul this trip and that’s what we’ve done.

We do have a trip planned on the 23rd to Jeonju, a village of 800 traditional Korean homes with restaurants, crafts people, and places to stay overnight. That will be the only outside Seoul experience (other than Songtan, of course) this time. Excepting the 70th birthday for Seoah’s mom in Gwangju and the overnight in Okwga at her parent’s village.

Every trip, my brother said, has its own rhythm. Yes to that. This one has had a slow deliberate rhythm, pauses often and long. The in depth Korean experience for me has come in Songtan. Hardly a tourist destination, it’s a working city with businesses and streets and transportation to serve its citizens, not the world of travelers. With the exception of the area around Osan AB. But where my son and Seoah live Songtan is an urban area for Koreans.

That has given me an unusual opportunity, as did Seoah’s mom’s 70th, to visit Korea as it is, not as it wishes to be seen or as tourists with shorter stays might ever encounter. The enforced slower strolling my sore back has occasioned has reminded me that I may have gone too quickly through the world in times past. There is much to see and learn at a slow walking pace.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Korea, Travel

A Songtan Flaneur

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seoah feeling better. My son with a sore throat. I’m ok for now. No longer immune compromised. The streets of Songtan. Grilled Fish place. So many restaurants. So many Koreans. Ha. Back still improving. Workout again today. My son’s very long days next week. The 1311 bus to the subway station in Songtan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Korea

One brief shining: Stood at an intersection yesterday and watched the light turn green, the digital timer with 20 seconds ticking down, thought for the first time if that was enough time to make it; it was.

 

Obvious. Signs in Hangul. Street signs. Restaurant signs. Plant shops. Grocery stores. Clothing stores. Hair salons. The street signs all have transliterations in the English alphabet. Some of the shops and restaurants may have a word or two in English. Most not. Seoah says English literacy declines steadily from Seoul on south. Makes sense. Fewer encounters with English speakers the further south you to. Like Gwanjiu where Seoah’s mom’s seventieth birthday was held. And her home village of Okwga.

Less obvious. Iron chopsticks. Long spoons for soups. The many, many restaurants with the shiny hanging powered vents over the  charcoal or gas cooking pit for every four chairs. The Orthopedic hospital on the second floor of a non-descript office building soon to have Screen Golf on the first floor. The efficient city bus and subway system. Good taxis if you speak Korean.

Even less obvious. The large number of fit Koreans, flexible in old age, limber and athletic when younger. Their work ethic. Honed I imagine in centuries of stoop labor where survival meant the rice crop had to come in. The children in their uniforms walking home after school.

The rolled up thin cuts of beef and pork in the butcher shops. For grilling. Or hot pot cooking. The restaurants with octopus signs. Where you can eat live octopus. The all crab restaurant with the aquariums out front, large crabs clawing and moving against the glass. The various sorts of kimchi. Cabbage. Cucumber. Pickled vegetables.  The multiple side dishes at every traditional meal.

Bowing. Calculating status by age. By wealth and clan. Complicated calculus likely opaque to even a seasoned Korean expat.I think I mentioned here a few weeks back that Seoah’s dad’s first question to me was, “How old are you?” He’s my elder by five years.

Something non-Korean speakers cannot parse is the difference between formal and casual language. If speaking to an elder, formal language is always used until the elder indicates casual language is all right. When meeting new people, formal language again is used and often doesn’t change if or until a friendship forms. I can’t parse this as non-Korean speaker so I don’t know much more about it.

Clans. Bongwans. Those with a common village of origin and paternal ancestor. Bongwans appear to be less important today due to the churn of modern society, but it seems they can still influence business networks and perhaps job seekers.

There’s more, but that’s the Songtan flaneur’s observations for today.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Korea, Memories, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Family First

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Seoah. My son. Their apartment and its twelfth floor view. Murdoch, asleep behind me. My Korean zodiac bracelet that Seoah bought me at the Bongeunsa gift shop. The Pig. Yesterday’s workout. Tiring but pain free. Bulgogi for dinner last night. The Korean National Museum. Songtan. Korea. Shadow Mountain. Kate, always Kate. Jon, may his memory be for a blessing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Spine

One brief shining: Thinking of Shadow Mountain the Lodgepoles and Aspens on Black Mountain the sudden change to a gold and green Mountainscape, cooler Air and blue Sky, Black Bears going into hyperphagia, Elks bugling for dominance and sex, Leaf peepers crowding the Mountain roads.

 

No, not homesick. But. I do love the Rockies. And I do miss being there as this change to fall happens. It’s a wonderful and special time. Wild neighbors preparing for Winter, many Plants finishing up their season of growth and heading toward dormancy, the surging energy I always experience then. I’ll not miss all of it. Glad for that.

 

Seoah’s got a cold. Hoarse, feeling fatigue. Overall crummy. My son has an especially long day today. Probably a quiet day. I may take myself out for lunch. Go for a walk. Exercise tomorrow.

 

Two weeks to go. Will head up to the Korean National Museum on Sunday. Begin to consolidate the learning I had from the Korean histories I read. Visual learning added to book learning. Going to buy gifts there, too. Three big gift shops. Hope they can mail them to me. Another Seoul train ride.

 

Murdoch sleeps at my feet right now. Where he stays for my son. Each morning as at home I get a cup of coffee, a glass of Water, a bowl of muselix, and sit down to write. This is a habit begun years and years ago. Writing first thing in the morning. Given over to Ancientrails now, but often including novels a few years ago. Will return to that longer version when I can.

 

Family first. An Air Force motto. And my son’s. Also a defining characteristic of Korean culture. Family comes first. Always. Here’s an example. When Jon died last year, my son and Seoah came to help. A lot of emotion of course, sometimes frayed nerves, but everybody helped, got through the first shocking weeks together.

After a while though Seoah began to ask questions. Why do you help them so much? To my son. In her definition neither Jon, nor Ruth and Gabe were family. Help, yes. Go all out? No. She wanted my son back home in Hawai’i. With his family.

This culturally inculcated strong family orientation has begun to fray as kids leave the home village, marry foreigners, as Seoah did, take jobs in China, as her brother did; however, the brother moved back to Korea and built their parents a new house, Seoah convinced my son to forego a plum assignment in NATO to return to Korea for four years to be close to her parents.

Culture has a conservative disposition, it changes slowly, sometimes not at all, and breaking from its received understandings can cause guilt and shame. Powerful, powerful motivators.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Korea, Painting, Travel

Seoul. Day 2.

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Seoul. Bongeunsa Temple. Coex Mall. The KiaF art show 2023. Shogun. Hotpot and barbecue. The subway. The bus. Songtan. Murdoch. My boy. Seoah and her brand new bag. Walking pain free. Healthy walk. Gangnam. A pleasant, Goldilocks day. The Silla Dynasty. The Joseon Dynasty. Deep history in the center of ultra modern Seoul.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Healing

One brief shining: Overhead hundreds of white lanterns each with a different prayer the noonday sun creating deep shadows beneath in regular lines as we walked up the path to Bongeunsa Temple.

 

Second day in Seoul. Caught the Seoul Train around 9:30 am yesterday. Snagged a seniors and pregnant women’s seat while my son and Seoah had to stand. Even in Songtan two hours or so from Seoul the light rail had already filled up.

Right here is the moment for my shout out to Korean medicine. On Tuesday of last week I saw the sharp toothed orthopod (as Kate would have called him). Got a diagnosis, some muscle relaxants, and an initial deep massage, shock wave therapy, electrotherapy, lumbar traction.

Still tender when I returned on Thursday for another round of massage and procedures. Saw the doc again. We agreed that Mr. Lee was really good and that he had hurt both of us in the interest of healing. Laughing. Doc said I could do some light jogging on Saturday.

I walked about six blocks on Friday, heel first, head up, stomach in. Did the hip rotation exercises and the spine stretching. Went out again that evening with my son and Murdoch. Tired by the time I got back, but not in pain.

These folks took what looked like a trip shrinking back and hip spasm and turned it around in a week. They gave me the  tools necessary to not only recover, but in fact walk better than I have in years. As long as I walk healthy as Mr. Lee wanted and get back to my core exercises, I will not return to the me before the hip pain, but will become a better me protecting my back and keeping it strong. Not bad for two sessions.

On Saturday my son, Seoah and I went to Gangnam. You might remember this neighborhood from the Gangnam dance moves made popular a few years ago. If you don’t, here’s a wiki with a how to do them lesson.

Gangnam harbors the Seoul fashionistas among whom I count my daughter-in-law Seoah. She lived and worked in Gangnam. She dresses and lives Gangnam style. An upmarket, brand conscious I can be more beautiful than you lifeway. Seoah walked out of the house this morning to go play golf with my son at an Army golf course on Camp Humphreys. She had on a short green skirt, like a tennis skirt, a white top with Malbon written on it. She carried her new Malbon leather golf bag. A golf diva.

She’s also a caring and thoughtful daughter-in-law, protective of my son, her father-in-law, and Murdoch. A delightful and happy person.

 

The three of us came up from the underground into the bright light of a Gangnam Saturday. We walked a block and were on the grounds of Bongeunsa Temple, founded in 794 during Korea’s three kingdoms period. Seoul and Bongeunsa were then in the Silla Kingdom.

Surrounded by glass and metal high rise apartment complexes and just across the cross walk from the fabled COEX mall Bongeunsa has not given up its peaceful and medieval feel. A large complex of temples, statuary, and monastic housing. Walking on its grounds transported me to a time before even Sejong the Great.

A monk walked into a small side temple and began chanting. His sonorous tones called out the Buddha spirit from tiled roofs, elaborate painted and decorated eves, the courtyards. Filled them with an ancient religiosity. In spite of the healing I mentioned above going uphill and stairs still proves difficult so I sat on the steps of this little temple as my son and Seoah explored. Listening to the monk my former brother-in-law Bob Merritt came back to me. Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. Something like that. Nichiren Soshu Buddhism.

What came next? COEX mall right across the street. And my first chance to do something art related. KiaF Seoul is underway in the mall’s large exhibition space. KiaF’s second year. This enormous show brings together galleries from Seoul, other cities in Korea, L.A., Paris and around the world focusing on Korean artists.

The purpose? Expose KiaF attendees to the broad range of Korean contemporary art and. Sell art. Galleries had bigger and smaller sized exhibition spaces, some as small as a cubicle, some as spacious as a gallery itself.

When visiting a gallery, the owners and their staff would brighten, ask questions. What do you like about that piece? Um. It’s religious iconography. And it’s fun. Breaking away before the pitch got more traction.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel

A Mountain Flaneur?

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Thursday gratefuls: My son’s leadership style. Gentle and nurturing. Clear. Seoah and the new golf bag. Her treats from Gangnam. Kaesong little donuts among them. A base pass for Osan. The BX. Becoming a Mountain flaneur. The Oriental House at the Osan golf course. Lunch there yesterday with Seoah and my son. Muscle relaxants. Learning to live with spinal stenosis.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The human journey from birth to death

One brief shining: In the base pass office at Osan men and women in desert camo, light tan high top boots, came in and out bearing small insignias saying where they stood in the Air Force hierarchy: a dark oak leaf my son wore-lieutenant colonel, a pair of wings, airman first class, a brown oak leaf-major instant placement in the highly ordered military social structure.

 

Got my base pass as a long term visitor. I can now come and go on Osan Air Base as a scrutinized civilian. Less important here in Songtan since my son and Seoah live off base but it does mean I can come and go when I need to without getting a day pass. No surrendering my driver’s license for the duration of my stay, then returning to the day pass office to retrieve it. Mary had a base pass at Hickam and used it a lot.

Another turn of Korean medicine today. See Doctor then the massage guy. A less intense visit though which should translate to cheaper. No x-ray, less time in the procedure’s area.

 

Random thoughts while figuring out to how live with slow walking as a lifestyle. First one. Here’s the rub about death. We spend our lives discovering and pursuing our passion, engaging life and its many gifts, struggles, then we let go of our passion for life and embrace the quiet moment. That’s a difficult transition to make emotionally. It’s not about fear but about doing the only thing you’ve even known, living, and exchanging it for a permanent experience of the unknown. Not at all like hitting the brakes more like switching from driving to floating.

Becoming a Mountain flaneur.* As I reflected on a literally slower pace to life, the first word that came to mind was flaneur. A very urban image, yes, but one I could adapt to Mountain living. Instead of hiking, strolling or sauntering on a Mountain trail. The flaneur is an observer, a patient and measured walker whose soul purpose lies in witnessing his world.

It may be that my body has declared itself a flaneur by default. If so, I’m fine with that. Not sure how one exercises in this situation, something to learn. Or, how I’m going to explore Korea and Israel. At a more relaxed pace, no doubt.

Though I refuse to let this change define me, I do have to recognize it may be a permanent limitation, one I’ll have to adapt to, rather than cure. My primary identity is not challenged, but my physical expression of my self may well be. Not unlike cancer. Can’t ignore it, can’t obsess about it.

 

 

*”Flâneur is a French noun referring to a person, literally meaning “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, or “loafer”, but with some nuanced additional meanings. Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations…Traditionally depicted as male, a flâneur is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of industrialized, contemporary life. ” wiki

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Korea, Travel

Military Good-byes

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My son’s 88 on the Osan golf course. Seoah. Their golf. Murdoch. Rodeo. The money funnel of Korean businesses right across the street from Osan Air Base. The Plaque Shop. That Philly cheese-steak spot. The Blue Opera. The sim card guy. Lifting the bollards. The Galbi place where my son, Seoah, Kate, and I ate in 2016. A general air of sleaziness. One spot with a sign: No Koreans.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: lunch with my son

One brief shining: Songtan streets (ro) filled with small businesses, no chain stores that I’ve seen, a  mechanics place with car lifts and old tires out front next to a grilled fish joint, the occasional shiny store selling phones, a coffee shop, a plant store, taxis and delivery guys, folks coming home from work on the streets, us slower folks walking the sidewalks where they exist, otherwise dodging in and out of traffic along with the vehicles.

 

The military takes good-byes seriously. There are going away dinners. Plaques get made. Even an entire photograph and position title sign taken down and framed. My son also had a banner made with his senior enlisted, Master Sergeant Rocket’s seven call signs. It fits on a stanchion. A challenge coin, too.

The Plaque store in the Rodeo has a plaque for every occasion. And specializes in personalization. There are window boxes with swords, models of various planes, maps of Korea, clocks, animals like tigers and cobras. A whole counter full of patches made into metal. A thriving business. The proprietoress found my son’s order, gave him a well used receipt book to sign, flipping through pages and pages of orders, finding his.

We stopped into the sim card store where my son paid his monthly bill for South Korea telecom. He went on to another store while I took photographs. One door read Welcome Thirsty People. Another place, the Blue Opera had gargoyles and other strange animals as part of an elaborate sign. Seemed to be an open air coffee shop. Couldn’t make out why the name or the sign made sense.

When my son came back, we went down a narrow street to a hole in the wall joint with booths and walls made of plywood varnished and polyurethaned, very basic. A short Korean man with a white paper fry cook’s hat took our orders, One with jalapenos no onions, one with onions no jalapenos? Yes. A bit later a hot Philly cheese steak and some fries. It was so nice to have lunch with my boy.

He and Seoah later went to the golf course on base to play 18 holes. I stayed home this time, fed Murdoch, read. Watched some TV. Resting my sore hip. Gonna see a doc today if Seoah can get me an appointment. The hip has begun to get in the way of sight seeing. Some temporary solution, I hope. See Kristin when I get home if it’s still a problem.

Want to find some way to deal with it since I go to Israel less than a month after I get back from Korea.

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Korea, Travel, Weather +Climate, World History

Seoul Time

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Monday gratefuls: Being in Monday, not Sunday. The Fish Market. Daniel. Diane. Seoah. My son. Sejong the Great. Inventor of Hangul. The Korean George Washington. His palace. The cultural and arts district around it. Yongsan, the heart of Seoul. Seoul. My son’s friends. Heat and humidity. Snow in the forecast for Conifer. Jon, may his memory be for a blessing. Kate, whose memory is a blessing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seoul, Korean megalopolis

One brief shining: The fish monger gaffed the sea bream and handed the gaff’s wooden handle to me so I could hold the fish as if I’d caught it instead of bought it, then he gaffed the other, whose name I’ve forgotten and gave it to my son and me to hold together, later in the restaurant above the market these two fish appeared as Korean cut sashimi and a soup made from their heads and the bones.

 

Yesterday we boarded the number 1 blue line at Songtan station and took the hour and forty-five minute ride into Seoul. Called a subway it was light rail on this route. We rode past clusters of apartment buildings, a few single houses, and the now routine rice paddies and thick plastic sheeting covered half moon long garden tents filled with vegetables.

All the way from Songtan the density of the housing remains high, the countryside far away in this populous urban corridor that extends to the south as well toward Daejong. Korea has a population of 51 million plus in an area the size of the state of Indiana. Over one-fifth of those live in Seoul.

Almost done with the novel Soil by Yi Kwang-Su written in 1932. Compared to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle it focuses on the plight of Korean farmers who made up 80% of the population but lived lives poor, miserable, and short essentially as serfs or tenant farmers for the wealthy who lived in Seoul. The ratio of Seoul’s population to the rest of Korea remains about the same.

Seoul is the cultural and political and economic heart of the country as it has been since the time of Sejong the Great in 1395. On a main thoroughfare which runs past Seoul city hall a bronze seated Sejong looks on modern traffic headed towards his palace grounds. The city hall  has two buildings, one built by the Japanese during their long occupation in the 20th century and the other an uber modern building by Korean architect Yoo Kerl.

The fish market. The Noryagin Fish Market has its own subway stop which was our destination. We came up from the tracks and onto a bright day, young Koreans in blue uniforms playing baseball just outside the subway’s door.

On the inside hawkers of various levels of intensity try to interest you in the various sea creatures on offer. Sea squirts. Sea urchins. Whelks. Mollusks of various kinds. Shrimp. Prawns. Eels. Many, many varieties of Fish. Large aquariums held Squid and Crabs, some trying to wander off.  Though its floor had water on it and the air high humidity the market did not smell fishy to me.

When we sat down to eat in the restaurant on the fifth floor of the market, I looked up and saw: Trump World. A big two tower building across the freeway from where we sat. Diane told me that the area we could see out the window was Korea’s Wall Street, so I suppose Trump Tower fit in as a monument  to financial malfeasance.

Daniel and Diane then took us in their KIA SUV across the Han River into Yongsan, the central downtown of Seoul. Past it we found Sejong the Great’s palace and folklore museum. Unfortunately it was hot, humid, and my hip had begun to get sore so we didn’t stay as long as I might have wanted though I think we stayed longer than anybody else wanted.

Built in 1395 and destroyed in the 19th century (I don’t recall  how), it was rebuilt in 1885 I think. Massive. The architecture of power and status.