The Journal

"I never know what I think about someting until I read what I've written on it."
-William Faulkner

There has been times, I felt out of place, alienated from the world especially as a child growing up. I certainly have felt this way here in Korea since most of the time I don't understand what people are saying around me. Life can be a series of puzzels in which no answers are possible.

I was on the bus in Daejeon today and it was a pleasant ride other then the fact I was holding on for dear life as usual. The bus driver, a young and seemingly pleasant man, got up while the bus was stopped for a red light and said something very harsh to this lady sitting a few seats behind me. She answered him back as if to defend herself. The bus was was not full but there were a few people. She had several black bags on the floor in front of her. He sat down and then got up and said a few things angerly to her again. The young ladies behind me giggled. She was about 50 years old and I have no idea what that was about. I will never know for I left the bus a short time later.

I have been yelled at on several occasions in which I still don't know why. I don't even know the things that were said to me. It took two months to get my first paycheck and I was scared that I would faint for not having enough food. I had my journal and wrote about how I was feeling and what I felt about the people yelling at me. I love classical music and I missed hearing music for what seemed to me a very long time and I wrote about that. I wrote about not having anything to read as my Sony Reader could not be re-charged since I did not have a laptop. I can look up and see those journals sitting on top of the shelf above this laptop where I am typing this into this blog.

I did not feel I belonged anywhere. I would just sit around people who would be talking around me in Korean and think about going home. I take out my journal and start to write and then I would feel right at home. Then I would not feel so lonely afterall.

Things are better now, but I still have my problems. I still don't understand what is going on around me but I am better in guessing. I feel real affection for certain people especially my landlady who is just a little younger than me but must be superwoman in disquise. Everytime I see her she is working, walking and is always cheerful and then helps me carry my packages up the stairs. She has a huge Victory Garden in the back that is doing well and gives me some produce every so often. Her husband says she is a stuntwoman and is never still. He is very nice too. The other day, he was on the top floor watching the Internet people repair the lines and I told him I wanted to pay my rent. He thought I said I needed some money. He came down to give me some. I said no, I needed to give him some. They keep asking if I want a taxi when I said no because I need to walk otherwise I won't lose weight.

Writing in my journal helps me formulate what I think about things and people. Sometimes, I think one way but after I write in my journal I find out I have different ideas. Then I quote myself in class or in a conversation. Sometimes, I am scared and feel very alone; but after I am writing for awhile I don't feel that way at all.

I know a concert violinist in the United States who has concerts half the year but practices every single day. He told me that when he first started the violin as a kid, his teacher said he was a so-so violinist. He kept practicing everyday and his next teacher was the one who informed him that he had the markings of a concert violinist. He thought the best he could do was play in a good orchestra. Now, he even makes recordings. The journal for me is my practice sessions. I write in it every single day both electronically and by hand. I like the one by hand because I can draw it in as well. I, too, was told that I was a so-so writer. Now, people tell me differently.

There are two things a writer must do all of the time without exception: write and read. The journal is an essential part of the writing when you are warming up to do your writing on whatever project is at hand. Reading is looking at what other writers have done and getting ideas and inspiration for your own work. Both are fun too.

Everything in Life is Writable

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
Sylvia Plath

I remember a story that an art history professor told in class that as an young man he went to Italy with a bunch of fellow art students, with back backs, and they hiked around the Italian countryside since the art professor was Italian-American and could speak Italian looking at all of the sights. They came across a shepherd with his flock of sheep and asked him what the shepherd thought about living around all of the beauty.

"Beauty? There is nothing here to see, " said the shepherd dumbfounded.

The art students looked equally dumbfounded as they looked up at the ancient Roman aquaduct above them and the ancient Roman ruins that his sheep were grazing in. The shepherd never saw what was around him.

This weekend, a friend and I took a day trip to a small town on the Korean coast. We got off the train (which by the way was extremely pleasant and I highly recommend the Korean trains) and got in a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a restaurant near the beach that was nice. He assured us that there was nothing to look at in that small coastal town but we went. This was a refrain that we were to hear over and over again.

The restaurant was located within walking distance from the beach and a long strand of trees and a walk that was in excellent condition. There were no people in the restaurant, but we were early. She said that we had time to take a walk and we did and she prepared us a meal although my friend and I turned around to see some poor chicken running for his life. As Buddhists, this was not what we bargained for and I have never been in this situation before. We turned to the beach and the chicken was in his next life. The meal was excellent. The beach was famous for his sand baths and I tried not to think about that poor chicken.

The tide was out and I could tell there were working fishermen in the area and the boats were sitting on the beach. There were campers and some very well maintained camping areas along with kids playing games.

We finished lunch and found out that the taxi driver was a Buddhist. We asked him whether or not there other places to go. No, he assured us there was nothing to see. He did take us to an amusement park and we walked across the street to see a large river that was flowing toward the sea. The park was nice but no one was there. We tried to find a taxi again but a nice family took us to a coffee house that they recommended that was one of the nicest coffee houses I have ever been to that had an astonishing view of the sea with boats on the mud and out in the water. I wanted a sketch pad. It was beautiful. We had some great coffee and some munchies and stayed for a while. Then we caught another taxi with the same refrain to the downtown area as there was nothing to see or do.

We walked down the downtown area lined with small shops, full of friendly people and wonderful things to look at. It was unlike Daejon or Seoul. There were no traffic lights as the town was so small but very nice. Then we went into a shop that was crammed full of pots, pans, cups, saucers, bowls and I bought a set of cups and saucers and the price was very low and they were bone china from Korea. We walked through a farmers' market of sorts full of fruits, vegetables and people. It was time to get back to the train station.

Then we noticed that the train station itself looked like one big yellow smiling chetshire cat. We each took pictures. It was quite an adventure. We turned some seats around on the train and my friend looked at where we were going and I looked at where we had been. There was plenty to see in the town where there was nothing to see. Everything in life is an adventure.

Changing The Main Character

"The only way to change your story is to change what you believe about yourself. Every time you change the main character of your story, the whole story changes to adopt to the new main character."
-Don Miguel Ruiz

I got the above quote from a church bulletin that was meant to tell people that it was alright to change their life. Being a writer, I saw something else. I looked Don Miguel Ruiz up and found some interesting things. Please excuse me, reader, for I did not know who he was. Don Miguel Angel Ruiz was born in 1952 and is a Mexican author of New Age spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. His most famous and influential work, "The Four Agreements", was published in 1997.

The Four Agreements are:
1.) Be Impeccable With Your Word.
2.) Don't Take Anything Personally.
3.) Don't Make Assumptions.
4.) Always Do Your Best.
(Source Wikipedia)

In creative writing, the writer writes a story about someone and if that someone changes for some reason then it changes the entire piece one is working on. That goes without saying, however I don't know how many times I am reading a book or a short story and the main character or villain does something that is totally unexplainable and the author does absolutely nothing to explain it. As I reader all I can do is say: huh? And after some checking, put the story down.

That does not mean there can't be some hints in the story and I have to do some work to look for it. That can be fun. In some of James Joyce's stories, one does have to look and read between the lines to figure out why some of the characters do what they do in his stories; but the point is the information is in the stories. Joyce provides enough flesh on the bones to give the necessary information and for me it is enjoyable and very satisfying.

I trust some writers to put the necessary information in their work in the first place. Those writers have earned my trust by my reading them in the past. I always look first before discarding a story or even a poem. Things have to fit and I have to have enough to understand and to form a complete image in a piece of art although it may not be what is in the writer's or poet's mind. One of the most beautiful short stories I ever read was "The Dead" by James Joyce because there were so many layers to explore in that story. At every reading, I get more and more out of it because of that factor.

It is enough in one's own life to see the changes that happen and to play detective in trying to figure out what is going on with the people around you and one's own reactions to it. All of us do change. We change moment to moment, day to day, month to month and year to year. It is what life is all about. That is why I love journals because I can go back to the old journals and see how much I have changed over the course of the years. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. There are many who don't believe that. I had a friendship that broke up over that many years ago. He did not think it was a good idea to enquire too much into one's own life. A writer has to ask and question why a character does this and not that and when change happens, why?

Building a Dialogue with the Self

I have a post card that is a gift from someone that has a picture of the Contemplative Bodhisattiva from the Three Kingdoms Periods 7th century and is Korea's National Treasure No. 83. He looks like he is deep in meditation and not thinking of anything. He has one leg crossed over another as he sits on a chair of some sort. His elbow rests gracefully on his crossed kneee. His face shows a sense of peace.

Before he got to be a Bodhisattiva, before he became skillful enough to achieve such a deep level of meditation, this man must have discarded all aspects of his ego and that is not an easy thing to do. Many people worship such symbols of Buddhism as dieties centuries later but Buddha Gautama stated so many years ago that he was just a man. The man in this statue had to create a level of communication with his real and true self. He had to accept who he was, warts and all. He had to love the self as he really was, accept the things he did along the way and detach from them. He had to see all of himself as he was and is. The fact that he was able to do it after committing all of the mistakes and errors we all make, made him a Bodhisattiva.

The most fascinting and interesting person we will meet in our lives is ourselves. We know this as children but are shamed out of this knowledge. When we can accept this fact again, love the self again, we can then go on and discover those around us. So many people criticise this view as selfish, vain and even disturbing and some even call those who profess this belief as the "me generation"; yet this way of looking at the self and the world was created out of the Hindu religion by a man in 600 B.C.

I am not trying to convince anyone to become a Buddhist, but in the benefits in building a bridge, a dialogue with the self that can be very important to writers. I know when I was working in a job that often had scholarships that would pay for new careers, the biggest problem was that many people did not know what they wanted to do for a living and had no way of discovering this.

The only way I know to build a dialogue with the self is with writing meditation and with the use of the journal. Of course, some communication is done when we write essays, poetry, short stories, novels and non-fiction. I think it is so important for all writers to maintain a journal and to write in it every single day. Even when I had huge writer's blocks, I would write in my journal about what was happening to me and the fact that I had this huge writer's block.

Sometimes, I commit the sin of wordiness. This particular post is probably full of it. Maybe, I might end up deleting it. I am definitely thinking about it. I am trying to figure out what I am going to do since writing about the fact why I am in Korea seems about exhausted. I can't read books and get ideas since getting books in English is very hard to do. I should do what I am telling others to do. Build a dialogue with myself. Maybe, that is another reason that I am in Korea. Heaven knows, I have plenty of ego to discard.

Not Losing the Days

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over her fellows: he or she catches the changes of her mind on the hop. "
-Vita Sackville-West

When I decided to come to Korea, some of my friends thought it was to make a few extra dollars as a college professor, become a English teacher to an extraordinary student, to lose some weight and regain my health. The real truth was that I stopped working at a 40 hour, five days a week grind to finally put in a full time writing dream. From March 2002 to March 2010, I found a million reasons not to do it.

I bought a new television to take advantage of the change over from regular broadcasting to digital, I found a terrific second-hand bookstore and bought all of the new books that I have been wanting to read and proceeded to do just that. I saw my grandchildren often and took them to places they wanted to go and went on adventures with them. I went to England. I had to have major surgery. I did not lose the weight I was going to lose. I did not take the art classes I always meant to take because they were no longer being offered. I bought the books instead but they gathered dust. I let the moments go, ungathered and the opportunities to write unwritten. Soon I would wake in the morning and see the days evaporate off the calendar.

I wrote in my journal and asked my spiritual guardians for help. Well, help did come. I no longer have a television set, nor do I have a second-hand bookstore to buy books and just read after I slept in. I don't have a car to drive around to the different stores. I have to walk everywhere and if I am lucky take the bus. Be careful what you wish or ask for. You could get it. I certainly did.

Now, my greatest joy is to wake up on a day in which I can do some writing before I go to class. I am on a semester break. I can't watch television for I don't have a set. I have a few books in English and I am reading them slowly. I can't order them for they are expensive. I have to work on getting my Sony Reader to work. I wiped out the memory accidently. It is during the monsoon weather cycle so rain is a common occurance so staying at home is something I can do.

As for the writer's block that I had so much trouble with? Well, I don't really have a writer's block anymore. Today I have to go to the store because I need a few things. They could wait, but I need to do some walking. I am going to use the bus to go to the store. It is an excuse to do that. It is not raining at the moment and I want to stretch my legs.

When I do some writing, it slows things down and I don't feel as if I wasted the day. I know I can watch some movies on the Internet although not many as even Netflex does not work here in Korea. I am glad it doesn't. I don't worry about yesterday and I am certainly not going to worry about tomorrow. What I am going to do is enjoy the opportunity life has given me and write because that is what I really want to do.

Expect the Best

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.."
-W. Somerset Maugham

I remember years ago when I was writing I often felt my material, whatever I was working on, was often beyond my control. It was an wild, , twisting and uncontrolable monster that I would yearn to finish just to get it out of my sight. I did not have the confidence to control my own creations and much of what was published did not reflect my best work. I would hear criticism of those pieces and crawl into a corner someplace and lick my wounds. I felt anger for my inability to produce good and credible work and shame for those who would print it. I would not even use a blog like this one because it does not have a decent spell check. I am still a lousy speller.

Then my confidence in myself began to grow and in myself as a writer. I refused to accept anything but the best I could do; if someone did not like what I wrote then I shrugged it off. What surprised me was not only did I like what I created but so did many others. If what I was writing was not the best I could do, I worked on it until it became what I wanted to represent me.

There are some writers who can sit down and write good prose, poetry, non-fiction and fiction without even editing or at least they say they don't. I am not one of those. Editing is part of the creative process and so is the daily writing I do both in my notebook, journal and of course the blogs. I don't do twitter as yet. It does not appeal to me. What has changed through the years is that I expect the best from myself. And, surprise, I get it at least for me I think I do.

I had a college professor many years ago tell me that I was a so so writer. No one tells me that anymore. Now, people often tell me that I have real talent. I write every day, rain or shine whether in mood or weather, I write.

I did not expect the best from me until I had the confidence in myself that I could do it. I still have the monkey mind on my shoulder as all writers do telling me that I am no good and will never be any good but now I have the presence of mind to tell it to shut the heck up.

New Printer

I needed to download some information for my students in one of my classes and the office sent me to the first floor and then they sent me back to the office. Then they said I needed some money for an ID in order to print some things from the Internet. At that point I was sent somewhere else to download what I wanted from someone computer and printed it. I was asked how many pages did I intend to print? I was getting frustrated.

Then I have been asking all week for the third book of English Instruction for my special student. I was told to wait for permission next week although the office knew I was to teach him this weekend in Seoul. My special student is considered a genus and already went through the second book. I knew I needed to download some lesson plans from the Internet. At this point I am pulling my hair out of my head.

I asked a fellow professor to help me buy a printer. I saw no other way of getting around it. We went to Home Plus, a store in Daejeon and he helped me buy an Epson that was not expensive. I downloaded the needed material for the students in the evening class and the needed lesson plans from the BBC for the special student for this weekend. For 10,000 wons or about $10.00 they delivered the printer and hooked it up for me to my lap top that I have at home. I have the Internet at home. The university will give me an office but no Internet. Since I live across the street from the university, I work from home. The printer costs 162,000 wons or about 162 dollars or a bit less. It is an ink jet. I was puzelled that the Samsong printers did not have better prices and the sales man said they did not sell their inkjets at the store. Samsong owns the store along with a British company. I had intended to buy a Samsong printer. The store would also not install it. I decided on the Epson since they did install it and I had an Epson years ago and I loved it.

Sometimes, when I am writing a story or a poem, I need to just print it and make corrections by hand. I will be able to do that now. It doesn't happen very often, but it happens now and then. When I leave Korea, I will be leaving the printer behind as I will be leaving my furniture, dishes and other odds and ends. It is a shame that I had to go this length to do my job.