A Poetry Reading (formerly titled "thoughts on Art")

I expect you to read the following with the assumption that you're presently living in Seattle, and perhaps you're interested in art, or Art, as they say. Of course, you don't actually have to be living in Seattle presently to do this. Perhaps you live thirty miles north east of Seattle, or perhaps you once lived there, but you don't any longer. Or maybe you hate Seattle. Or maybe you hate art, or Art. But in any case, as a reader, I know for certain that you're capable of that wonderful thing we know as the suspension of disbelief and to aid you in the process, to add a little verisimilitude to your experience, I'm going to blow some sparkly dust on you that I found just laying about these here interwebs. Don't worry, it's all going to help guide you in the experience. Ready? One. Two. Three.....

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Now, you find yourself on the corner of E Pine Street and Melrose Avenue, walking straight towards a dilapidated brick apartment building standing sentinel at the end of Melrose Avenue. The night sky is clear and it’s unseasonably warm for spring. You smile and nudge your companion, an old friend, a new friend, at this point, these titles don’t matter. When the two of you arrive at the building’s wide oak doors, you realize that the building is, indeed, threatening to tumble over at any moment. Earlier in the week, you had read a newspaper article about a poetry reading inside an art gallery and the directions you wrote down for yourself lead you here, to this place. But is there really an art gallery inside the apartment building? Is it on the lower floor? You can’t tell.The doors are covered in yellow construction tape and Do Not Enter signs. And there’s no way in, but then a man in a sweater vest and a bowtie at the corner of the building beckons you over with a wave of his hand, he’s practically standing in the alley.

        Are you looking for Vignettes? he asks. You turn and look over at your friend. You both nod, yes.

        Well, he says, the door is broken. I don’t know what kind of door gets broken but this one is. Go in and around and if you run into the landlord, just tell him you’re going to a party. I’m Graham, he says. And you both shake his hand and walk in through the back door.

The skeleton of a Murphy bed stands bolted to the peeling wallpaper in the green carpeted hallway. It smells like vintage cigarette smoke. Or cat piss. Or both, mingling in the air right above the over-polished hardwood banisters. On the fourth floor, you both step out of the elevator confused. Only one door has a doorbell and there’s the sound of a loud party coming from the other side. But there’s no sign, and you’re only on the fourth floor in the first place because of some vague inkling you had had. Neither of you had listened to Graham’s instructions. The back of your neck is hot.

        Is this the poetry reading? You exchange a look with your friend, you put your hand on the door knob and then pull away. She’s not committed to just walking in on something that could be something other than what you signed up for, you can see THAT it in her eyes. So this is the girl who went to school in LA and lived in the “ghetto”? you think to yourself. Just then, as they say, the elevator doors open and five frolicking hipsters tumble out and beeline towards the door knob out of which comes all the laughter.

        Hey, your friend addresses one of the guys, Are you guys just partying or is there a poetry reading going on in there? she asks.

        He shoots her a dirty look.

        We don’t differentiate between the two, he says. And you think you would have said the same thing, maybe, if you were in his position.

        You slide in between endless flannel sleeves and vintage lace and polka-dot dresses and bare arms linked to young hands holding cans of Pabst Ribbon Blue and Rainier beer. Everyone knows each other.  They’re laughing and huddled together and although this is an apartment, it’s also, for tonight at least, an art gallery. And it isn’t just an art gallery filled with work made with some bored/retired Microsoft workers who have taken up watercolor to fill up their time. No, this is an art gallery belonging to the young, the working class. This is a gallery belonging to your generation of artists. You find yourself looking for Gertrude Stein. Obviously, this is the one night of the year when the salon is open to accepting new members, and you had no idea. You thought it was just a poetry reading.

I’m dressed all wrong, your friend whispers to you. Why didn’t you mention the dress code? she asks.

I had no idea there was one, you say. But you’re glad that you’re wearing flannel all the same, though you wish you could inconspicuously tear a hole in your shirt.

You find a back wall. You find a place for yourself and your friend on that wall. You exchange glances, and, in a few moments, it begins.

A thin, spectacled man begins to weave his way through the crowd to a corner and it doesn’t take long since the apartment is tiny and now, he’s not seven feet from where you’re standing. He motions for everyone, except for those on the wall, to sit down where they are on the hardwood floors. Everyone sort-of lowers themselves, grappling for a spot and you realize, you’re stuck because there’s no more space on the hardwood, you’re surrounded by bodies and tight, origami-folded legs. You can’t shuffle your feet anymore, you simply have to stay planted, standing, awkwardly propping yourself up with the wall.

As carefully as a gawky baby heron in a swamp, a woman picks and steps her way through the throng to the corner by the window, which has been designated as the front of the room. You realize who she is, she’s the poet, the poet that you’ve all come to see. She’s all clavicles and thin fabric and unkempt flowing hair. When she speaks, her voice is rough, like a science nerd who has finally gotten the nerve to talk. She stands small above her tiny, paper crane congregation and you notice now that many of those on the floor are cradling thrift-store tea mugs filled with a dark red elixir.

You wish you had a tea mug filled with dark red elixir, too. But instead, you listen to the girl.

The poet is now explaining that seven different artists were asked to respond to six of her poems by creating artwork of their own. A few sketches have been scotch-taped to the wall, they're all in pencil or pen, torn out of spiral notebooks, maybe. There’s another, a mixed media piece that includes a boarding pass and a manila envelope, folded into a triangle and glued to blue construction paper. Somebody painted a handsaw white and hung it on the wall. Then there’s a piece that stands about four-feet high, it’s three hot pink tubes that have been duct taped together into something resembling a half-ass version of the Space Needle. Next to it is a similar piece that resembles a giant boa made out of link sausages. They’re supposed to go together. You have no idea how.

Her poems are all very self-referential. And ironic.

Some of the poems are stories, but they point to nothing. You imagine that this is the sort of poetry a young child might write. If they were on acid.

You listen more. The audience is rapt. They laugh at her self-conscious jokes, but you know, and they know, and she knows, that she isn’t self-conscious at all. This is all very serious, after all. This is art. And you’re all standing in the apartment belonging to Seattle’s own Gertrude Stein, a young woman, a curator, as they say, which magazines have called one of the 50 most influential people in Seattle. You can see her now, actually, standing behind some French doors, cradling her cat, and watching the poet as a room full of her closest friends and strangers are drinking wine from her tea mugs. Her bed has been lost under a mountain of satchels, purses, and camera bags. Meanwhile, you’re trying to figure out if the echolalia in the poet’s poems is pointing to something larger, or if it’s just there for the cadence of the poem, which reads like a radio broadcast where half the verbs are covered by static. You decide that you can’t decide.

And you also can’t help but wonder what would happen if you showed up to your own Writer’s Workshop with poems like this. The thought is enough to make you smirk, that is, if you didn’t find the incomprehensibility of it all so terribly maddening.

Now, she’s reading a poem called “Acorn Duly Crushed,”

        Dear stupid forest.

Dear patently retarded forest.

Dear beautiful ugly stupid forest

full of nightingales

why won’t you shut up.

What do you want from me.

A train is too expensive.

A clerk will fall asleep.

Dear bitchy stupendous forest.

Trade seats with me.

The poet goes on, but you’re not listening anymore. Instead, you’re noticing that all the tattoo-covered bare-arms read like a sticker book from some long-forgotten childhood, when you used to keep sticker books, though of course, you never did because the commitment was too much to handle. After all, once you stick a sticker, it’s there forever, permanent. But here you are, surrounded by kids who never faced such life-altering dilemmas. And they have covered themselves with the adult-version of stickers: tattoos, cheap, ubiquitous, trendy. A blue-eyed kitten HERE: lopsided on the back of an elbow, a Band-Aid HERE: on the inside of a wrist, an envelope HERE: on the outside of a wrist, a cupcake HERE: on the crown of a shoulder, an Otter Pop HERE: on somebody’s left calf, and too many anchors to count. Small, portable pieces of artwork, counterfeits of the originals, some which were only meant as advertising ploys, literally etched onto the bodies of their hosts, and for what reason? #YOLO

After twenty-five minutes, the poetry reading ends.

Outside, the amber light from a street lamp pours through cherry blossoms, and you look up into a cloud of now sepia-toned sakura. You walk with your friend to a nearby coffee house, order an Americano, and retire to a secluded booth.  

Can we talk about this? she laughs quietly. You notice that she’s holding an Italian soda, you wince, just a little.

Who was that girl? you ask.

She teaches at Sarah Lawrence. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, your friend says. I looked it up, she says.

But, you hear yourself begin to stammer, But it was terrible, wasn’t it? Those poems, those poems were not really good, you say.

Of course they weren’t good! your friend laughs. But that’s the style. It’s like, this new sort of impressionism in poetry. The idea is to be ironic, she says, or something like that, she says.

You look at your friend, your friend who, this year, has been rejected from twenty-seven different Creative Writing programs across the country and abroad. Your friend who's a lesbian and who's was a Gender Studies major and she's supposed to know things.

I’m tired of shit passing as art, you say. I really am. I mean, what was that? you ask.

That? she repeats the word softly, like a mother to a toddler, or a teacher to a student. That was a poetry reading, she says.

These pictures are not mine, they belong to this website.

The Skills I Do, and Do Not Have: A Post About Quilting

Quilting is a discipline that takes lots of exact measuring, mathematical skills and planning ahead, right down to the minutest detail. It’s safe to say that at these three things, I’m pretty much inept. However, I’ve thankfully been endowed with an excessive amount of stubbornness and that is what I used the last few weeks to make my very own memory (my mother’s term) quilt.

Now, this dream, like most dreams, has been a long time in the realizing. I’m quite certain that I was 19 years old when I first started stuffing my old Jansport backpack with squares of t-shirts and old skirts that I wanted to someday make into a quilt. This should come as no surprise to you, but I’m actually a terribly nostalgic person (*cough* generation...). I’ve been nostalgic since before I ever had anything to be nostalgic about. When I first started thinking about making a quilt, I was at the time planning on going to a university in Virginia (thank God I didn’t do that or none of you would be reading this blog) and I knew that I couldn’t take everything and everyone with me, so the idea for a quilt kind of just sprang up in my mind.  I suppose I thought that it would make me feel better about being hundreds of miles away from the people I love. As a side-note, I’ve always been a little bit weird about the blankets I sleep under, meaning, I’ve always slept under the same kitten-covered white blanket (with a down comforter for added warmth) that I’ve had since I was very, very small. The blanket originally belonged to the ex-wife of one of my older brothers. I have no idea how it came to be in my possession, but the kittens were all given names when I was quite young, and once you name a kitten, it becomes hard to part with it, even if it is just a pattern on a blanket. Buying a patterned or nice comforter from the store has always seemed a bit weird to me, it would be like sleeping under a stranger. Not literally. But, you know.

Anyways, the idea for a quilt was born. And, once an idea is born inside of me, I generally have a very hard time shaking it off. So, the Jansport backpack has traveled with me from house to house, bedroom to bedroom, a dream literally in patches locked away in a dark closet, waiting for me to get around to feeling like I finally had time to deal with it. The thing is, I’ve always had better things to do. Books to read, Japanese to study, long ago, it was Bible studies to lead and this and that. So, the quilt waited until I finally had my JET interview a few weeks ago and realized, I have absolutely nothing left to do but wait until I get the results (which, by the way, won’t be until the end of March at the earliest. So please, stop asking).

So, recently, I brought out all the patches to my quilt, and I got out my mom’s sewing machine and set it up in the dinning room, and I started working on my quilt. The first thing I realized was that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, so I did what I do best, and I used Google. However, the quilting websites I found all used Quiltenese, which I found to be more inscrutable than Japanese and more insular than Christianese. I quickly deduced how long it would take before I understood the quilting websites, closed that tab, and went back to surfing facebook for another twenty minutes before I could face the dinning room again and the 156, 6x6” square patches that awaited me there, strewn about the floor.

Now, I’m going to spare you the details of my quilting methods for two reasons. 1.) if you actually do want to learn how to quilt, you probably don’t want to learn from me, and 2.) when I explained my method to my mother, she literally laughed so hard she turned purple. It was like we’d been watching American’s Funniest Home videos, except, we hadn’t. It was just me, me and my imperfect quilt.

Needless to say, I got it done. And I’m pleased. Halfway through the process, I knew that it was never going to be perfect and to be honest, the thought was really depressing to me. But then I remembered that the whole purpose of a quilt is to keep one warm, and if that’s that, than that could be accomplished even if I was just laying under a pile of scrap fabric. And then I thought of baby Jesus who was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and I shrugged off all my fear and just got to sewing. I know, you think I’m kidding, but quilting is hard work and I was using whatever desperate thoughts I could think of to keep myself going. If Jesus was fine with being wrapped in swaddling clothes, then I’d be fine if I ended up with a tangled mess of a pile of mismatched fabric patches.

Here’s the finished product:  

Since this is a quilt that's made from my own clothes, and since most of the clothes are somewhat important to me, I figured I'd include a colour key.

Colour key:

Peach/Pink Squares with Navy Lettering: These are from an Angkor Wat shirt that I bought at a market in Phnom Penh. I went to Cambodia in February 2006 on a mission trip with my church. I left for Cambodia less than a month after my sister had passed away, so a lot of my memoires of Cambodia are sort of a blur, but I do remember the markets. I didn't actually get to go to Angkor Wat while I was in Cambodia, which is one of the main reasons why I'd like to go back.

Bright Red Squares: These are from this ridiculous shirt I used to wear that had a seal on it and it said in white letters, Sleepy in Seattle. The entire thing is rather embarrassing but I did preach my second sermon while wearing this t-shirt in front of about 500 University of Washington students. I think I would have better fashion sense now, but what can I say? I was 20, people do stupid things when they're 20.... 

Light Green Squares: When I went to the Ukraine in 2005, we were told to pack a lot of skirts because it's a rather conservative culture. We were also told to pack light. I went to Ukraine, Poland and Hungary with one backpack filled with skirts and shirts and other lightweight clothes. This was super helpful, since I then had two hands free to help other people on the trip who had not managed to pack so lightly. Anyways, the light green squares are from a skirt that I wore a lot while I was in Ukraine.

Bright Yellow Batman squares: I have a picture of me somewhere holding a puppy that's licking my face, in the picture, I'm wearing this bright yellow batman shirt which I love, love, loved at the time. Somewhere around 2005. 

Green Squares: I worked for Starbucks for almost 5 years and I worked an average of about 30 hours a week for most of that time while I was an intern, while I went to Bellevue College, and for my first year at Northwest University. People can say what they want, and I know Starbucks isn't considered the best coffee in Seattle, but it was an excellent company to work for and I spent a good portion of my life during those years wearing that green apron.

Purple Squares: Just another t-shirt that I wore often for a period of time. Wore that one a lot in Ukraine.

Virginia is for Lovers: I used to wear this shirt often. It was sort of a reminder to myself that I was supposed to go to Virginia for school. What can I say? People make mistakes. Maybe I'll go to grad school in Virginia... 

Word Search Squares: I really did have a t-shirt that was one big word search with all sorts of animals hidden in it. It had the phrase "sex panther" on it numerous times, and I have a distinct memory of my friends at the time constantly searching for that phrase in particular.

I'm Endangered! Light Yellow Squares: This was, I think, my first ever graphic shirt. It had an owl flying away and said "I'm Endangered!" and I loved, loved this shirt.

Orange Squares: From an old orange sweatshirt which I really thought twice about before cutting up to make it into patches for the quilt. However, I needed it for the colour scheme and really, I've only been sleeping in that sweatshirt for years now, so it seemed like it was time for it to go.

Purple Shirt, Orphanage in Ukraine, 2005

Batman Shirt, and a puppy, 2005

Scooby-Doo Shirt, Cambodia, 2006 (that's a tiny bird in my hand)

Angkor Wat shirt, yes, that's a fried tarantula, no, I did not eat it. Cambodia, 2006

I'm Endangered! Shirt, Cambodia, 2006

Word Search shirt, with old roomie, Robyn. December 2010

What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading

          

        About a month ago, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite from Amazon. In a display of goodwill, and to prove that my love of real books was still very much alive and well, I also bought a paperback memoir on the same order. Alright, to be honest, I bought the memoir in paper-form because it isn’t available on Kindle. And, also, because it was only 99 cents. The book in question is Hokkaido Highway Blues. A few chapters into Hokkaido Highway Blues, I knew two things: I knew that I wanted to write about it, even if it was just a quick review, and I knew I wanted all my friends to read it. Well, at least the ones presently living overseas.

 I’d like to set the scene for you. I presently live in Seattle (okay, the Seattle-area). I’m not currently an expat, although I have all the dreams and hopes and aspirations of a future expat, I am not presently that myself. To be honest, I feel a little like someone who’s been sitting in the plastic chairs at the DMV for twenty-minutes too long. You know the feeling? Things have delayed my departure. My number hasn’t been called. Shifty things have been going on behind the Plexiglas  walls that separate me from the government workers, I can hear them whispering and I see them casting furtive glances my way. Paperwork and discrepancies and this and that. Others have had their names called, they’ve come and gone, and in the meantime, I’ve been rifling through the waiting room literature. The waiting room literature, by the way, for one setting out on so specific a journey as teaching English in Japan, well, it’s sort of limited. There’s one pamphlet stuck into many different plastic shelves and on most coffee tables and side tables, the same thing over and over again, that pamphlet is Hokkaido Highway Blues.

Most of my Japan-minded friends say that they have seen this book, but none of them have read it. This is really frustrating to me because a.) this book is the best thing I’ve ever read about the experience of living as a foreigner in Japan and b.) I generally always discuss what I’m presently reading with my friends, and if I can, I get them to read what I’m reading so that we can discuss it even further. The more my mind interacts with another person’s mind on the same subject, the better I understand it. This is why I love my English major friends, because my relationships with them open up my mind to see so much more of what I’m already experiencing. When I asked my friends why they have not read this famous expat memoir, some of them simply shrugged and cited things like not having enough time, and some have flat-out baulked at the idea. The basic consensus among them has been, “I live in Japan (Asia). My life is this book. Why would I want to read something that simply states what I could already say?” It wasn’t until Jessie posted about my constant prodding her about the book that I understood why she’s been baulking. You see, it all comes down to why we read what we read and I’m just now realizing how rare it is that we talk about this.

I read to answer my own questions. To figure things out. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that that’s the primary purpose of the majority of the books on my shelf. I read to answer my questions about God, prayer, friends, grief , and writing (and writing, and writing, and writing).  I sometimes I read for entertainment, and to experience new things, but that’s not really the main reason why I read. I believe that the best way to understand life and things and people and ideas and heartache, is through stories. So, I read.

 I love Ferguson’s memoir because he’s so fair in regard to Japanese culture and people.  Sadly, I sometimes find that’s rare for expats in Asia. Ferguson has lived for five years in Japan when he sets out on his epic hitchhiking adventure, and he’s still trying to understand things and get a firm grasp on the Eastern mindset. And despite how much talking and blog reading and thinking I’ve done about Japan, and I’ve done it for a while (I lived in a Japanese house for 8 months in college, and spent two months in Tokyo in 2010, although I’ve never been an official “expat” the isolation and frustrations of being a Westerner surrounded by Japanese ideas is not foreign to me), despite my experiences and previous knowledge, I still found that Ferguson had new things to say to me, and new wisdom to impart, and dammit, he did his homework on Japanese culture and that, well, I think that’s admirable.

       Ferguson also actually knows how to write, and how to write well. For a travel writer, and even for a memoirist, that’s sometimes a really rare find. Creative Nonfiction is a relatively new genre (you could argue this, oh, I know you’re tempted to argue this), but it’s one of the fastest growing genres out there. The problem with that, of course, is that now everyone who feels like they’ve experienced anything feels that they have the God-given obligation to write a book about it. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you’re not obligated. With a market so glutted with poorly written memoirs, I celebrate the few instances when I find a memoir that’s well written, thoughtful, and unique, and I feel like Ferguson’s memoir is all three. 
      So, why did I read it? Why did I find Ferguson's memoir so worthwhile? Surely there are other books to read, and surely Ferguson is only going to say what I'm constantly hearing from my friends. But here's the thing, what if it's not the same. What if, God forbid, he has something (even slightly) new to say? Isaac Newton is quoted as having once said, If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. 
       I guess I read because I'd rather not make the same mistakes that were made by the ones who went before me. I read because life is hard enough on it's own, why go at it alone and unprepared when maybe there's someone who went before me, someone who I can learn from. And isn't it by stories that we learn? And isn't there even just a slight bit of hubris in saying that nobody could possibly experience a situation differently or more profoundly than you? 

         By the way, I have the unfortunate habit of nearly-always never reading the forward or prologue of a book. Because of this, I’ve actually just this morning discovered that the version of Hokkaido Highway Blues that I read is actually the abridged edition. The original edition was published in 1998, and it’s 90 pages longer than the edition that I read.

The way she taught me.

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother involves prayer. And, it's indicative of how she would go on to teach me for the rest of her life.

It's simple, really. One weekend, my grandmother had come to stay with us. Usually, when she was in the States, she lived far away in Olympia with her brother, Hubert. When she didn't live with him, she was often halfway around the world, in the Philippines, at the orphanage she was building. That weekend, she must have been planning on speaking at some churches in our area, and that was probably why she'd come to stay with us. On Saturday morning, I woke up especially early to a noise coming from our living room, the room we never went in, unless we had guests. I found my grandmother there, on her knees, with her hands clasped in front of her, praying. She asked me if I wanted to join her and, to be polite, I joined her on my knees. I was asleep within minutes, I'm sure. I can't remember the rest of the story, I can only remember the sight of my grandmother's silhouette in the just-happening morning light, the sound of her whispered prayers, the pain it brought to my knees, just to look at her.

I was young then. Not older than seven years old, and that was the way she taught me; by showing.

the art of memory: a short post

I don’t typically work early morning shifts, but I’m covering for another barista today because, well, even most baristas would rather not work on December 26th. Catching the 522 bus at 4:55A.M isn’t necessarily what I would call “fun” but the upside is that now I work for a coffee house where I can make and consume all the espresso I want. And, it’s quiet here. I can turn on Edith Piaf or Emiliana Torrini and read Lewis or Lee; or, I can skype with Korea. That’s what I did this early this morning while most of Seattle was still asleep and the Christmas lights on 6th Avenue were still shinning in the black, I skyped with my friend Michelle. I even made her a latte. A long distance latte, which I consequently had to consume myself. 

Later today, I’ll meet up with J. Fast at The Crumpet Shop in Pikeplace. The only complaint I have about today is that I’ve somehow left my analogue camera at my other coffee house and I’m without even my little digital. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll have time to pick up my camera later, but if not, I’ll make use of the one thing my fathertried 
to teach me: 

the art of memory.

All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once.

I've recently rekindled my love for C.S. Lewis. While I was sitting on the bus on the way to work recently, I read the following from Letters to Malcolm and it really touched me. I thought it was worth sharing. 

It seems to me that we often, almost sulkiley, reject the good that God offers us because, at the moment, we expected some other good. Do you know what I mean? On  every level of our life- in our religious experienc, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social experience- we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depricating all other occcasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselfs open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we're still looking for the old one. And of coruse we don't get that. You can't, at the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for the first time. But what you do get can be in it's own way as good.

This applies especially to the devotional life. Many religious people lament that the first fervours of their conversion have died away. They think- sometimes rightly, but not, I believe, always- that their sins account for this. They may even try by pitiful efforts of will to revive what now seem to have been the golden days. But were those fervours- the perative word is those- ever intended to last?

It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest canidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore. And how should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once. 

And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are contenct to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down ina  past which we do not mersably try to conjure back, they will send up exquistie growths. Leave the blubs alone, and the new flowers will come up....

North Korea.

(Copied from my tumblr.

On facebook, I follow this guy named Shin Dong-hyuk. He’s famous for having escaped from the North Korean prison camp where he was born. His story is tragic and heartbreaking. He often tours with the memoir he wrote about his escape and his time in a North Korean camp. I have not yet read his book, but I’ve watched a few documentaries  on him and his life. 

Today, North Korea launched a long-distance missile over Okinawa. They say it was part of a “space program” but everyone, including Japan and South Korea, are saying it was nothing of the sort. Mr. Dong-hyuk has been on facebook today and he is sort of freaking out. Nobody can blame him for that because his heart is in North Korea. Nobody has seen the inside like he has. Nobody knows how bad it is like he does.

I’ve been shocked and surprised at some of the responses I’ve seen to Mr. Dong-hyuk on facebook. He posted a status earlier that said “Crazy NK dictator. I am so very much angry”  and in response, somebody said to him “Care to discuss? We are your friends and we are here for you. But you must admit, this is a proud moment for Korean people everywhere!” What is even more surprising, is that this comment seems to be coming from an ex-pat living in South Korea.

How could anyone think what is going on in North Korea is something to be proud of? And, if this person is a follower of Mr. Dong-hyuk, how could they be so insensitive as to not see the situation from his point of view? AND WHY WOULD AN EX-PAT THINK HE COULD INCLUDE NORTH and SOUTH KOREANS INTO THE SAME GROUP? They are not the same. They once were, but they’re quite different. Ignorance makes me really upset. 

Mr. Dong-hyuk posted another status, “NK one missiles to $ 1.3 billion/ Crazy crazy crazy/ North Korean citizens starve to death.” And in response, somebody commented “I don’t mean to disturb you, but even America, to a degree, is like this.”

I know America spends a ridiculous amount of money on things it doesn’t need. But we’re not launching military missiles over Canada in the guise of a space program while most of our people are starving to death. What’s going on inside of North Korea is nothing short of genocide and to compare that to what is happening in America, that’s ignorance, too. 

The problem is that the majority of people don’t really know what is happening in North Korea. We don’t see it. Maybe because we’re not looking. Maybe because those of us who DO see it, we don’t want to muddle up the facebook feeds of our friends by posting depressing, doomsday posts about North Korea. That doesn’t fit with the holiday atmosphere. I know I don’t really like it when people get political. I can’t imagine that my friends want me to be reminding them of all the terrible atrocities happening in North Korea. 

But if I don’t do it. Who will? The news? No. We’re talking about the fiscal cliff on American news. 

I love Shin Dong-hyuk’s posts. Other things he said recently include “North Korea missile launch. Idiots” and “Forgiveness? Too tough words.” I love his posts because he’s an ESL learner. An adult learner at that, because, as you can imagine, they don’t teach English in North Korean prison camps. I love how his simple use of words conveys so much emotion. That’s part of what I’ve always loved about tutoring and helping ESL students, they don’t have many words, but they always use them beautifully. I love his posts because he has hope, heart, and anger about what’s going on in North Korea. I think he’s a light. An ambassader. 

I’m worried about my generation. I’m worried about the fact that we’re ignoring what is going on in other parts of the world. What is happening right now in North Korea isn’t any different from what happened in Nazi Germany. The difference is what? The fact that the problem seems to be contained to small country in Asia? Is it really political? Is that why the UN continues to let North Korea do as they please? I read somewhere that maybe the powers of the UN let North Korea continue to be a threat, because with their threatening presence, we Westerners have a reason to have a huge military presence in South Korea and Japan. Without that threat, our presence would become increasingly unwelcome. Is that it? Are we letting people starve to death because of politics? Is that the country I live in? And the starving to death, that’s just the beginning. Brutal, brutal things go on every day in North Korean prison camps. Things too dark for tumblr. 

I grew up reading about the famine that wreaked havoc in North Korea in the 1990’s. I remember the pictures, they made an indelible impression in my mind. Around that time is when I first became really interested in documentary photography. Although I love photography as art, I think the camera is most powerful when it’s telling a story, especially if that story is for a person who can’t speak for themselves. Documenting the tragedy in North Korea is one of my oldest, most deeply rooted ideas. (I can’t say “desire” or “dream” here, because it isn’t like that. Those are the wrong words).  I don’t know if I’ll ever do it, or if I even want to do it, but it’s still there, in my mind. America needs to know what’s really going on in North Korea. We can’t use ignorance as an excuse anymore. Not when the information is right there, on our facebook feeds. We’re not sitting idle because of a lack of information. We’re doing it because we’ve turned our faces away from what is going on in North Korea and there’s nothing more shameful than that. 

I don’t know what to do. I feel completely helpless when it comes to these things. But for Shin Dong-hyuk, for all the millions of others still prisoned in North Korea, I do the only thing I really know how to do: I pray. For now, that isn’t a cop out  and it isn’t cliche and it isn’t being lazy. North Korea is closed to private citizens like me. I can’t go there now. And until I can, the only thing, the best thing I can do, is pray. 

-Tasha Swinney, 12/12/2012.