Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Happy Chuseok

I just celebrated Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) this past weekend. It was a full moon, and I spent it with my grandmother and grandfather for the first time that I can remember... I must have been 2 or 3 years old the last time I spent Chuseok with them.

It makes me a little sad that the people who raised me when my parents first immigrated to America are so strange to me. I've seen all of the photographs and heard all of the stories of my own childhood, but I know nothing about my own grandparents. This weekend, I learned their names for the first time. Not "halmuni" and "harabuji" but Yang Soon Boon and Kim Jin Woo. Fifty years ago, Korea was poorer than Ghana. I learned that when my grandfather was young, he moved to China looking for work because there was not enough food to eat in his village. He labored in China, and when he felt he had a little money, he took half of it back to his village in Kyungsangdo and left half with a good friend, in case he should be robbed on the way back. His friend later made it back safely as well. With the money he had saved, he bought some farmland and was able to get an arranged marriage.

My grandmother did not care for him at first; he was eight years older than she and she thought him an old man. She was only 20, and 28 seemed so far away. Considering the life expectancy at the time was under 50 years, I suppose my grandfather was middle-aged. I saw an old black-and-white photograph from their wedding. I did not recognize my grandmother, although my grandfather still looks much like his younger self. They were solemn, unsmiling, two children who hardly knew each other and were about to be committed to one another for life. And here they are, half a century later, although the dynamics have changed.

When they were young, my grandfather was stern and unforgiving. My grandmother did exactly as she was told without any complaint. Now, my grandfather is mostly reticent, speaking only when absolutely necessary... mostly to tell my grandmother to stop nagging my uncle. My grandmother, perhaps from having been silent for so many years, is constantly speaking. Sometimes she is complaining, sometimes she is nagging, but mostly she is just happy to be with the rest of the family. I don't always understand what she is staying because she speaks with Kyungsangdo saturi, a countryside accent. It is often difficult for me to understand proper Korean, so the unfamiliar accent/ dialect is particularly straining. Still, I want to know her. When I look through her photo albums, I imagine the life she once led, and it is so deliciously foreign and antiquated. What was it like to grow up in a time of war? When did she realize she finally loved her husband? What must it feel like now to have seen Korea go from rags to (nouveau) riches, from villages to cities?

Maybe I will ask.

Follow through...

Monday, October 02, 2006

Paradise lost

"The only paradise is paradise lost." --Marcel Proust

Echoed by the ever-so-wise Janet Jackson, "On and on you seem to go, and you don't know what you've got till it's gone." Unfortunately, if we buy into this theory without reserve, we're all screwed because it suggests that there is no hope of ever being truly happy or fulfilled, at least not to the blissful degree of paradise.

I like to think that paradise exists prior to the moment when its loss is recognized. I want to believe that I could be perfectly happy, perfectly fulfilled at any given moment in time, albeit on a small and perhaps ephemeral scale. So I suppose it's simply a question of definition. Can paradise be confined to a moment in time?

According to Proust, the nature of paradise is one that is inherently temporary. In that sense, I agree with the quote. I believe in small paradises. Our lives are in constant flux and there is never a moment where not a single aspect of our lives could not be better. But on a smaller scale, if we take our love lives, for instance, I believe we are able to experience perfect happiness and fulfillment for short periods of time. But unlike Proust, I think it is possible to recognize paradise at the time of its experience, however fleeting. I refuse to believe that paradise can only exist in hindsight... that would be too depressing for me to bear! Why go on living if the only moments of true happiness exist perpetually in the past?

Some people are, in my opinion, more inclined to agree with Proust. Until they have been stripped of that which they did not realize was paradise, they were looking for paradise elsewhere. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that men are more inclined to fall into this category than are women in relationships. I don't really feel like I have any real justification for that statement... but I think men are more inclined to experience the regret of paradise lost because they simply didn't recognize how good they actually had it at the time.

When women are dumped by men we care about and we are not in the wrong (meaning we did not lie, cheat, or act crazy otherwise), our feelings run a certain course. First, surprise. Second, sadness/ hurt. Third, anger/ ill-will. Finally, apathy/ indifference. The second stage tends to last the longest and can overlap to some degree with the third stage. But I'd like to focus on the transitions from sadness to anger to indifference. After the initial pain of heartbreak, after exploring every possible what-could-I-have-done-differently, it may be concluded that he is simply an asshole (may is the operative word here, because not all breakups have to be anyone's fault). Especially if it's because he met another girl. The hurt subsides a bit as the anger sets in because you're spending less time thinking about how horrid you feel and more time thinking about what a whore the other girl is (and other such unfounded, vile thoughts) and how much you wish they would both disappear from the face of the earth. You think of all of the nice things you did for him and realize how unappreciative he was and hope that with every new girl he meets, he looks back at you and comes to see the error of his ways. That in you, he sees his paradise lost. And then, at some point, you start to hate yourself for even wasting so much of your time thinking about him or any of your precious tears crying over him, and you begin to just not care. Time passes, and you care less and less. The memory is preserved and sometimes it is hard to remember all the bad things, but you've finally healed.

Paradise may be temporary, but that doesn't mean we should stop seeking it. The moment in which it is had is a glorious one, especially if you are fortunate enough to recognize it before it has passed. But even after its passing, the remembrance of paradise can be heartwarming. We needn't be concerned about the impending loss of paradise because more often than not, it's a given. The true joy is in savoring each morsel of paradise before it turns to shit.

Follow through...