Milk is Best When Cycled Through the Sinuses

My mom decided to pick up tennis again, so I packed a tennis racket and brought it to Korea.  Our first day using the racket involved sneaking into a high school while school was in session.  We just ambled in like we were a part of the staff.  I wanted to try some goalie reflex drills I’ve seen Ryan Miller do on some training video, although I never played goalie, and I think goalies are deviant silent-types who do things like the drill below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ410r-y-_o

So here I go, fantasizing about hoisting the Stanley Cup, and suddenly a wet black explosion enters my face.  I fall to a knee.  My nose is running, and I’m tearing, and behind me is my mother in paroxysm of laughter, grabbing her belly because she can’t help how ridiculous this situation was.

I exaggerated my pain and told my mom she needs to be more careful, but pretty soon I was laughing.  On our way back, PE was starting for these high school kids, and we were cutting right through the track.  My mom yells at some of the boys, “Hey!  How come you let these girls beat you?  What kind of students are you?”  She laughed, and they stared at her in silence, just blank stares. 

When we got home, she was eager to talk to her friends about her wicked forehand shot to my nose.  I poured her some milk, and as she was recounting her shot, milk exploded out of her nostrils, and again, convulsions of laughter. This has nothing to do with the travails of writing, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to remember this moment for the rest of my life.   

Why I Tell My Students I Hated High School

Nabokov mentions that the lowest form of art is a sort of literary tourism, leaning the value of art on exoticizing categories, including culture, turning a novel into a double-decker bus tour, with the writer holding a bull horn saying, “Look!  Characters wearing smocks!”  What if the writer exoticizing the culture is from both cultures of the foreign characters and the “western” readers?  Like me!   I somehow feel expectations from all sides, mainly because I’m writing in English.  I have a feeling this could be a 1,100 page thesis on translation studies, so I’ll keep it to my own, biased struggles with my writing.

I’ll give you an example. What novels or stories can you think of that start with a lush description of a spicy dish, loading up the scene with rich sensory details a-la-Flannery O’ Connor’s 3/5 senses rule?  Just think coriander.  There are already 3 well known books with this opening move from the past 5 years, and many of these books also have some sort of sister story involved that span across a couple of generations (thanks, Mark Sarvas for showing me an entire genre of this). 

The folks who have known me since high school think I’m just embittered because I was never fully accepted by the Korean Pride Kids and not fully by the Surfer Kids, and now that I’m 35 I’m playing out this schism in my writing.  I played ice hockey and was on the surf team.  I defy stereotypes, and that defiance is in a way a stereotype, as the 86 Asian American clubs from college can say about my banal cries of individuality.  So why do I feel a bit seditious as I refuse the convention of italicizing foreign words?  Is this the older Tommy Kim going back to High School after training with Royce Gracie for 20 years in an MMA compound, ready to crack some craniums? 

My writing project (I dare not call it anything else for the sake of my fragile confidence) tries to depict two very foreign worlds, to me at least.  Boyle Height and Korea during the early 1950’s. I know this creation of another world (or defamiliarization of the familiar world) is a prerequisite in any art, but I’m running into the problem of feeling like a sell-out, or an inaccurate guide that will feel the wrath of my people, or worst, from the “other” people that buy it as the authentic version of reality when maybe I'm just a fraud.  Wait, putting it this way, I'm just getting harangued from all sides, so I might as well just write the thing and hope my vision is worthy of being shared.  Josh: I feel a type of paralysis here that I’m trying to fix with my typical methods in dealing with any delicate situation in life.  Just yank the tablecloth and if the pitchers and glasses tumble to the ground, at least I have a clear table.  

PS: Why do I say "exploitive" as if I have a neurological malfunction?  

My Oma

My oma. 

Welcome back, fellas.  We are bringing this blog back to the world, and what better way to do so than having my mom chop and strike to clear some space for us.  This clip was taken almost a year and a half ago, December of 2011.  It was right after she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer.  Yes, right after being diagnosed, she performs disco-karate.  This is my oma.  So much has happened since our last blog post.  Babies were born, adults reborn.  I’m sure our artistic lives have also gone through some changes.  We’ll get to all that later.  I just wanted to let y’all know that I’m happy to be here with you. 

I’ll be posting from Busan.  My mom is living in Korea because they have a type of “targeted therapy” that works by a matched DNA process, which allows for much stronger treatment without the side effects of chemo.  They don’t have this drug in the states. I know this blog was supposed to be about writing, but what is writing without the ballast of experience?  Without experience, without loss or joy or the incomprehension of the stars, our words grow out of themselves, which is fine for some folks.  I can’t operate on words alone.  I’m not that smart, and my vocabulary is impoverished, like a literary ghetto compared to you guys, you GENIUSES!  So here’s to the lived life.  We are food writers, too, but first we must eat.  I’m looking forward to some good convos.  Even though we’re not sitting in a Saturn in the Asheville heat, slapping headrests and center consoles with every exciting idea about writing, this blog is just as good.  I mean, I can see Seth’s gorgeous picture to the right of the post.  Alex, you’re hot, too.  Josh…please reveal your male beauty!  Love to all.  Let’s talk soon.

Tommy