salarymen, my version

in tokyo.

coffee shop, part 1

A group of girls in their early 20s walk in; the clack of 10 peep-toe zipper high heels across exposed concrete announce their arrival.  A parade of black leggings and bare knees, shorts, and short skirts stalk by. They are all rhythmless angles and the silence of thighs that don’t rub together, too thin or splayed too far apart by bowleggedness to touch each other. V-neck t-shirts modestly cover flat chests to make up for all those miles of leg. Like a rainbow made of uniform blocks they advance, sometimes disrupting the standard rectangle of plain shirt with a breast pocket, or the occasional tiny flower/fruit/animal print. 4 out of 5 have dyed and/or permed hair, shades of brown trending towards orange at the lightest end of the scale. 

The parade stops. Handbags are thrown on chairs, cellphones scattered across two wooden tables next to the plate glass window facing the street. Some legs beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom, others pick their way around chairs and booths to make the groups’ order at the counter. The high pitched squeal of the cashier, “뭐 드릴까요?!” is countered by a response I can’t hear. Minutes later the group reassembles, spitting out rapid 반말 gossip like watermelon seeds as they wait for their coffee.  A vibrating buzzer rattles against the table. With five identical, ice-blended, 5,500 won mocha-frappa-what-the-fuck coffees topped with five identical mounds of whip cream and chocolate sauce, two packs of cigarettes, and four fashion magazines covering the surface of their table, they finally appear ready. 

For what?

They sip. They smoke. They turn glossy pages; envious or indifferent, inspired or so utterly bored that they keep turning just to pass the time. Some take out folding mirrors big as paperback novels, set them on the table, and apply full faces of makeup. Others, made up in full before leaving home, hold their cellphones over head at just the right angle and take self portraits. Inevitably, some of these self portraits will also become the picture takers’ cell phone wallpaper.

The scene goes on for hours. Eventually the coffee runs out, or the batteries run out, or the pages have all been turned and their boredom gets the best of the them. They rise, in pursuit of something else to consume. Maybe food, maybe clothes or cheep accessories from any of the glittering costume jewelry stands that line the sidewalks in Hongdae, Sinchon, and Edae. I am left behind, attempting to consume some pages of my own, though of a decidedly less glossy variety. The cafe is quite again.

backlog 1: April 10, 2009

Sakura season... poetry growing on trees. I’m glad I observed its progression so diligently. Spring at five in the morning was how the first tight fists of blossoms seemed to me on the dwarf cherries in Kyoto. Existence was yawning, shaking off the stiffness of winter and inching out the door before dawn. The earliest moments offered only the faintest suggestion of the riot of color and rebirth to follow... a knot of pink or orange on a gnarled gray-brown branch, the first tentative shoots of green probing their way towards the blue of the brand-new sky.  Set against the slopes of shrine roofs and temple gates the metaphor expanded.

The earth is older and newer in every moment than all the monumental human constructions we erect and admire. We are small, our attempts at creating beauty amateurish. We toil, we pray, we plan and build and die, leaving behind the best of our efforts for those who are to come, for them to marvel at and praise. We labor under the illusion of linear progression.   

Cherry blossoms know the truth. Awakening, ambling gently through a few weeks of splendor and dying before the season is out... they know no anxiety, they will not be rushed if tourists mistakenly arrive at five in the morning expecting something greater. 

There's always next year, after all.

Fresh life mingled with, complemented, and mocked the centuries old wood with silent, steady growth.

I came home to the streets of Seoul just as they burst into parallel clusters of pink and white, beautiful in their own way juxtaposed against the flashing neon of the hofs and noraebongs in Sinchon. My father arrived at the perfect moment, right on time to see the flowers at their high noon.

We walked around 한강 공원 on a Saturday filled with families and couples, cameras always at the ready, hoping to capture some emblematic freeze frame of a time that that would surely pass before we’d even realized (Sakura season, but also the awfully short time we had to spend together before his return home.) 

Barely a week later individual petals started to fall like snowflakes, or autumn leaves (is there  anything that is shed or falls in summer? I guess the rain, during 장마.) More couples, more cameras. 

The trees were casting off their morning-forged crown of blossoms in preparation for the summer afternoon to come.