Last week an old friend asked me, “What’s going on over there? You’ve stopped writing.” Well, that’s both true and untrue. I’ll lay it out for you straight. I have no talent for fiction. Still, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This Winter saw a lot of boredom in [...]
It’s hard to write about Hamdeok. Hamdeok is heaven. How do you describe heaven? It was more like hell at first. I guess that’s what Korea is to me, hell become heaven. In Shelby County, going East on interstate 40, there is an underpass just before Exit 20. The bridge above is, in my mind [...]
Jongdal is the town. Chodo means “Elementary.” Hakyeo means “school.” Every weekday between 11:45 and 12:10 I step off the outskirts bus, the one that circles the entire island. I say “Komapsimnida” to the driver, walk past this blue arrow, and eat lunch with the teachers and children of Jongdal. The sounds of the lunchroom [...]
Once more it has been quite some time since my last post, but with reason. Not long after the hospitalization, civil trials, rock shows, and cross-country journeys, I became a statistic of the economic downturn. I was laid off, and fewer things more fortunate have occurred in my young life. Luck has been with me. [...]
