Shades of Glad

There are so many "glads" but the best is transient and never witnessed by anyone other than yourself. It is the warm glad, that makes you smile, look off to the distance, never needing words (could there really be any words?). I wonder how many people in the world, albeit never happy out loud, never smiling and laughing, have a million of these little secret glad moments. Technically, these moments compiled would make them mysteriously happy people. Maybe that is the vibe I get from certain people who look very grumpy but have a certain underlying humor about their character. Anyhow, what are all these words out there? And what do they mean? And is there the PERFECT word? If there is, please leave me a note. I shall be tickled pink.

Somewhere, maybe someday, maybe somewhere far away

Coffee grounds

During a busy day, the minute/second intervals here and there find the soul caked with black coffee grounds.
The puppet of Shun-kin probably had cleaner veins.

This is to beliefs and thank you FGTorres

Today, I walked into a pole.  (This seems to happen often when I am speaking to good friends.)  Later, when the same friend and I were munching on cheesy goldfish and yogurt at 12am in the Family Mart, (꾸이꾸이 and 맥주 for her for 추석) an odd young man came in, plopped right next to me, and ate his hamburger and orange juice box--five minutes of chattering to self and happy chewing...

Later, thinking away the seconds, walking and waiting for cabs, crickets and the parking lot and more remembering----remembering that I can't stop believing (but sometimes one needs art so it can pour this unspoken energy out to you and you can blurt out your "whatever-it-is-inside-you-that-is-just-an-emotional-higgledypiggledy" and everything meets in the middle, and it is in that space you feel there is the answer and there are no limits).

And so, tonight, I'm looking at Felix Gonzales-Torres again.  (I feel like I must have posted this before) His art resonates so pure.  I couldn't need his artwork more than I do right now. Two people, from the outside, look generic---but there is always more to two special people.  Anyhow, I don't know what I am saying...but thinking about FGTorres...(here comes the sap, oh boy) 

Maybe, the best love is the kind that remembers the wonderful things about people, even when they go back to being generic clocks out there somewhere...because for a special time, they ticked with you and no one can take that away from a memory. (I can only believe)

미소

Viewed at 5 am at our studio in the World Cup Stadium, in the company of a good friend.
Definitely inverted some frowns---in the wee hours of the morning. About time!

<insert Arvo Part clip from Sounds and Silence>

Flickering

What am I doing here?

Wind Ripples

How things seem to repeat themselves. Autumn approaches --- or so the winds seem to say.  A time for reflection, the day submerged in the amygdala---a barrage of fragmentary images of people that remind me of jellybeans, ceviche I've eaten under a cerulean sky, Wordsworthian daffodils, etc. Does the wind have little fingers that push the replay buttons in our heads?

Free as a Bird

people(can)make the sun look beautiful

Things that never get old (Part I)

French Fries - to go with a good song

Looking up to see stars---to say (sigh), "oh look at the stars"
Grey foggy days that make you feel like you are in Gotham City

Witching Hours - the BFG might come around...

Cool pillows in summer (Rotate your head polyface farm style for efficient continuous cooling)

Certain songs that warp the spaces around you exactly the same delicious way each time...

Some gifts for students and goodbyes

Quoth Miss Read.
Today, bought two books for two students...Love in the Time of Cholera for a passionate and romantic student from Japan and Demian for a young philosopher.

I peeked into Demian and read the intro and a few words made me think of one who was dear to me.

In remembrance of you, sir C.

'My story is a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.'

Site Specific

From Wiki and David Sylvian's website:

"The composition is site specific.  In fact Sylvian has said that the work isn't really complete until the sounds of the town of Honmura are incorporated into the listening experience."

This makes me think of a conversation I had a long time ago with a friend who majored in Architecture; he had written his thesis about the architectural space of a club---or at least, how the electronic music wasn't complete without the experience of the space that was created by the individual.

I guess technically, many things are emotion specific?
In any case, I'd like to visit Honmura to hear what this may be in full.

Bravery

You jump over hills, run away from home, go far far away from what you were, (but still are)

and then, the true test:

you come back to what you are. 

It's okay

These days, I have been so busy that I felt quite satiated by my schedule: working on two albums, helping students, spending time with my band members, etc.  And then, a really good friend of mine from Japan emailed me, and I emailed him back a semi-long excited letter about this and that, life being exciting, who I'd seen...etc. The split second that I pressed the send button, I knew something was off. Had I really been there in that letter?
And then, forgot about it.

And now, a few weeks later, (and I'll revert again), for five minutes or so, I see glowing shards inside me, a fragmentation that still shines, but not meeting as a whole.

But, at the same time, I feel that it is okay. And as simple as it sounds, I think it is important to let yourself be happy the way you want to be. And this includes looking at the leaves and seeing how pretty they are, and looking at the sky and how the clouds look like things that only you can see...and just how pretty are icicles, and how soft is that breeze, and yes, that breeze was there for you---anyhow, all these things.  

Hendrix

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to."

Ode to Pax

 4:17 am...after having seen Sigur Ros and having had my heart explode into the universe on a trampoline with super bounce, I have just one small insignificant thought.  (Isn't that how it always is?  Buzz buzz, this and thats, and then silence...a single phrase, a word)
This thought is right there! Do you see it?  I can almost reach it and grab it.  But even though it is right in front of me, I miss it.  One microsecond passes to say, "doh!"  But hey, let's recalibrate.  (Or else suffer from emotional/mental hemophilia ---DUM DUM DUM!!!) Maybe the thought was banana.  Now I am really trying to remember.  The world goes round and round and round and round...

*sidenote: now i remember why i wrote this.  ah haha, how far we have gone off tangent.  (And how is this even possible...this entry is so short!?  Do YOU daydream between conjunctions too??? :P) i wrote this because i cherish the people i work with, mainly, the folks in Loro's.  I guess this isn't really insignificant, but the thought/emotion ends up becoming a single word.  I wish words could shoot rainbows so they glowed what they really were meant to mean.  Oh jelly beans! (couldn't resist the rhyme.) 

Ever increasing doors before you

For every day that you live, it is yet an another day full of emotions and sentiments that are just minutely unique to that day---like an endless piano keyboard that grows day to day by microtones, intervals, white keys and black keys. You'd think the wonder of adolescence ends with age...but how we alter each day--- and how those combinations can be so versatile! Each time, the jumps are.bigger, the yellows become ochre, green, a luscious vermillion. New doors--new doors!

Which door will it be today?

Brothers

thank god for them.

"hey, slow down there, Baudelaire..existential crisis is no joke and it seems you are having one right now.  i don't know what is gnawing away at you, so please tell me.  your e-mail although poetical requires some additional explanation...by you...to me.."

The balance of things

to do it all over again...i said this a while back to myself--or rather, I say this to myself at various points in my life--in love with the Gatsby in all of us that wants to stop time, accidentally push the clock off the table.

AND YET...I am pulled forward by this equally intense positivity (that drives me crazy at times, especially when I am drowning in some sort of meta-thinking of everything...yay, thank you Amherst College)

Gosh, there is that balance that is created in aromatic hydrocarbons, or the contrasting spins of electrons, or the moonlight created by the sun, even though both are always there, or the sweetness of silence after the greatest sounds...somewhere in the middle of all those doubles (that aren't always double...) THAT's where I'd like to be.

Maybe in that space, it'll just be like the after hours of a long night out...the quiet mornings sipping resuscitating soup, everyone in murmurs, tired but happily sore...and then the real day begins again. 

Heart locked in a Gran Turino

The world is nothing more than all the tiny things you left behind...

i am a plant because i like the sun

Plant-self: All in all, I am free.  No place or clothes or money defines                 me. I trust in you because you are free to be.

Self: cool~

Self-Self: yeesh

Self-Self-Self: meh

Self-Self-Self-Self: Gumpos Gooferamus

Rumblefish

There is a Francis Ford Coppola film I really liked in high school called Rumblefish. Then, I think I liked beta fish--you know---that they fight only in captivity being so poetic and all. Pathos resonates from the film.

so it is all about rumblefish...maybe.  (insert ten minute pause here as I stare at the screen, knowing what to say but it looks like a blob and to write, my pencil is a carrot).

this is a blog..(insert another ten minute pause...a sigh) and i didn't want to post on twitter. because I'd know that more people would chance to see it.  the irony.  here i write for public something i don't want to publicize.  but i think it's because i want to scream and this apartment in Gangnam has walls that are too thin. i wonder how many people behind thin walls must be wishing the same thing...

the other day, it was not this; i walked around Sinsa, and Plaid's White's Dream from the Tekkonkinkreet soundtrack on repeat. Looked at the moon and tweeted some nonsensical babble about how the moon is always there.  But what I felt then was complete and utter gratitude---that even when things were going to shit, I could look up at the night sky and see something so beautiful and seemingly serene.

In any case, I suppose the solution to this want for tears is just to go outside and look at the moon again and maybe cry a little...  I would like to call my mom or my brother..but i know they'd just worry more. Rumblefish. rumblefish.

Interlude.

went outside and the moon was not there. or sleeping with a grey blanket. wanted to wake it, but didn't want to seem so needy. so what now?  back to the mantra --- the moon within, the moon within?

rumblefish.

a scream was here.

Replay

At a table---to sit. The sun is shining in through sheer curtains.
The butterflies continue to flutter within.  Water drenches parched throats.  Soft cotton towels insulate the skin. Reflections of conversations on the tabletops.  

The Doppelgänger's Bath

Slash and menace at a doppelgänger---
you can.
(She listens and absorbs)

Long ago and far away,
the original remained intact,
for you.
(Listen to her and absorb)

That is how it is, love.
Without hate, without pain,
the doppelgänger bathes its wounds.
(Cleansed by belief)

A ticket to the heart is a nonrefundable jewel,
and lies waiting for its chosen hand.
(Carbon dated by memories)
.

Jelly Beans

With jellybeans, there are sometimes too many colors and too many combinations.
But without jellybeans, it is sometimes hard to smile.

Taste bursts from Jeju

A while back, I received a tangerine from Jeju Island.  It was in my fridge for a few days, and the other day, I decided to eat it, thinking it would taste like an ordinary tangerine.  I don't know why I am prompted to write about how sweet and juicy this tangerine was, but it left its taste imprint in my mouth the whole day.  I walked outside to find that the winter clouds had disappeared and there was sunlight everywhere.  So many coincidences that give us signs and symbols.  In any case, I guess, in the end, while I ate this tangerine, I thought to myself, if I had another tangerine, I would give it to someone else to try.

(Excerpt from Yann Martel's "Beatrice and Virgil")
VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand.  You would rather be alone than in company.  You would rather have silence than music.  All your senses but taste fall inactive.  You see nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing---or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like... (He struggles.  He gives up with a shrug.)  I don't know.  I can't put it into words.  A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly)  I wish you had a pear.

VIRGIL: And if I had one, I would give it to you.

(Silence.)

Oh help me find that cerulean blue..

In the midst this electric shock inducing cold, I pine for the blues to wipe away the winter blues.

Look around, see the cityscapes; nullifies the amazing grace....

I seek to find, but I cannot obey---me or the world what I wanted to say..

Oh help me find that cerulean blue---Oh look to find that cerulean blue...

sigh...