Can I get a hanok high-rise?

Seoul’s skyline is crowned by a jagged sweep of cranes. Many are employed in the construction or reconstruction of ugly, anonymous buildings designed for pure utility. These behemoth boxes of concrete have been thrown up overnight, every night, for more than fifty years. Within them thrive an incredible diversity and density of commercial, industrial, and residential life. Such practicality of form seems appropriate for chasing Miracles on the Han, but it doesn’t make for beautiful architecture.

Korean structures didn’t always sacrifice form for function. Traditional hanok houses were built to be both beautiful and practical. Constructed of stone, wood, paper, tile, and soil, these houses were designed not only to provide shelter but to subtly accommodate seasonal shift. Ondol heated floors in winter, cool shade and paper-shuttered windows thrown wide open in the summer; hanok architecture used natural materials and smart design to ensure comfort all year round.

Hanok are lovely. Outside they sweep and arch to nestle the horizon’s mountains, and inside they curl to hug sweet courtyards pond-wet and dark under kiwa roofs. Last week I toured one kept as a sort of hotel room for wealthy visitors.

I was charmed by the effortless union of old and new. Bronze cookware stood stacked on richly lacquered tables beside a miniature refrigerator and dishwasher. Storage space hid behind sliding rice paper panels concealed a vacuum cleaner and department store bags of swag.

Everything modern was tucked away or tastefully integrated into the ancient and traditional. I imagined the reverse, some quaint traditional handicrafts worked into a thoroughly contemporary complex of brushed nickel and glass, and the effect seemed no where near so pleasant.

I've seen similar juxtapositions feel forced or confused. I had the sensation that this place was self-assured, never boastful, and perfectly comfortable.

Does the Miracle still demand pure practicality? Korea is so advanced that beauty should be something architects can at last afford to remember.

#6/30 "Geumgang"

Air breathes easy off the gold river.

Dusted mountains hulk indifferent to us

fools in the valley below, killing

time at a rest stop on stilts

bestride a riverbank.

Cheerful enough,

an ajumma hums a wordless tune.

Her plastic tent and lawn chairs,

red-bitten-pink, sport Coke ads and

that dignity acquired in bald thrift.

She slaps the tent flap open,

swats hair (dyed black and permed tight

in the patriotic style of women her age)

from her forehead with a hand

like a brown spade.

Curious and cityslick,

biology animates me like a child.

I kneel before her tank of uninteresting fish

whispering “hello, pretty,”

to their gapemouthed, stupid faces.

Humming still, our proprietress gathers

baskets and a net. A small, sharp knife

flashes in her spade. It gleams an ode

to brute utility. She corners her catch:

three fat fluorescent Yellows

and a slippery, darting Black.

She lays the first electric Yellow

on a wooden plank.

Her indelicate but practiced spade

slices two rough cuts and takes

a wide triangle from the fish’s belly.

Guileless, I stand transfixed

before the pastoral carnage.

The fish flaps. Digging, she scrapes

wet organs from the gaping wound. Again,

and again; the disembowelment

of Yellows is inexact; half

a ruptured heart left in one,

much billowing white intestine in another.

Black puts up a fight.

In a gesture nearly sweet, the ajumma

slaps it weakly on the head

with the handle of the knife.

No luck. Un-stunned, it’s likewise gutted

and thrown into the basket

From a hose at her feet,

she rinses the blade

before her hands.

Passed under water,

the eviscerated fish

heave for a last wet breath.

I wonder at this organless lost cause.

She tips the basket into a metal pan and

fills it with scalding broth.

One fat Yellow squirms in vivid agony.

She clucks at it once as if to say,

“Be still now, empty thing.

Die as you are meant to.”

When the pan quiets,

she takes up her song again.

#3/30 "Sunday"

Handsome anchor,

I am happy to be planted

in your shallow nail beds.

Let’s read and write the news

while under our windows

Chinese women sing in argument,

a scaffold rattles

apart, and spring

breaks like a wave.

#2/30 "On the Subway"

Cake-faced concoctions

coated in leather and bows,

clucking staccato parabolas into the

vectors of disparate hustle underground:

I am trying to contain myself but I want to run my hand

up your stocking-clad thighs, you clank-heeled girls,

and squeeze, hard, the flesh that arches

delicately from your femurs.

What are you made of?

Where are you going in all this sprawling chrome?

Can I rummage through the pockets of your tailored coats?;

I am looking for something I lost or never had.

Catch my irascible eye; I want to

fuck you with it like a man.

You are not the object

of my ire, but you’re pinned to it

like a taxidermied butterfly

or an errant bit of lace

inherited by accident.

I apologize for

glaring, so.

Mention the Weather

At all exits we announce the weather, verifying expectation and aligning perception; each utterance a well-worn habit’s slip.

It’s a national tic; months ago we lamented the wall of sweat simmering off the asphalt, each in turn: the heat, the heat, the heat. Now, half an ellipse through the dark we clip in kind with sharp shudders: the cold, the cold, the cold.

At the uncompromising sky’s behest, platitudes move like intention’s lingua franca. Not so long ago we knew each other; our hearts did not need to learn these words under the greased hand of polite adulthood. Our habits are the same, but we are new. We are bundles of disparate momentum.

(kimchi poem #1)