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.

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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...

Pie chart theory

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about how the most beautiful people tend to be the craziest girlfriends or the biggest asshole boyfriends. I mean, let's be honest: all girls have a little bit of crazy in them, and all guys are at least part-asshole. But we all know that there are (unspoken & poorly delineated) limits to how crazy you can be or how big a jerk you can be within the confines of social acceptability. And sure enough, the premium placed on aesthetically pleasing outward appearance has led to the amplification of craziness and jerk-iness in ridiculously good-looking people. I'm not talking about moderately good-looking folks here. I'm talking about the turn-your-head-to-look-three-times-in-awe-slash-lust-as-you-walk-down-the-street folks. I'm of the opinion that they become more crazy over time because they get away with increasingly crazy behavior with each successive relationship that would otherwise not be tolerated if it were exhibited by less good-looking people.

But God giveth not with both hands. My roomies and I have formulated a Pie Chart Theory for simple (if superficial) categorization of people into neat little boxes (and by "neat" we mean "expandable"). Let's suppose that every person can be broken down into three basic components: looks, brains, and personality. (Yes, we could make this more complicated but for the sake of brevity, let's limit this to three components). Let's also suppose that everyone has a pie chart. We've all met people whose pie charts are askew. Let's examine some exaggerated examples. Note: We, the Pie Chart Goddesses, (a) use gender interchangeably in the following examples and (b) are grossly skeptical that a true 0% or 100% could actually exist, so these figures are for illustrative purposes only.

Type A: 100% looks, 0% brains, 0% personality. Really, really ridiculously good-looking with shit for brains and no personality to speak of. It's not that he's a bad guy. And he sure is purdy to look at. It's just that he's really kind of... dumb. And he's not a whole heck of a lot of fun to hang out with one-on-one because he simply doesn't have anything interesting to say. Sometimes he forgets he told you a story already, and when you remind him, it's a little awkward because it's not that you mind hearing a good story twice; it's because you mind hearing his story any more times than you have to.

Type B: 50% looks, 50% brains, 0% personality. The good-looking nerd with zero social skills. She gets excited when she talks about how she was able to manipulate the genes of overweight lab rats but she is so abrasive and annoying that despite whatever interest that particular topic might hold for you, you are overwhelmed by a wave of nausea followed by an intense desire to punch her in the nose. You consider making out with her, but only on the condition that she does not speak.

Type C: 50% looks, 0% brains, 50% personality. He's really hot and you can't stop laughing when you're around him because he always has the best stories to tell. It's a shame this is the sixth year he's been a senior college. It's not just that he is a complete idiot, it's that he's not THAT bright and he lacks motivation... it's that he realizes he could leave school and be an MTV VJ because everyone likes to look at him and listen to him talk.

Type D: 0% looks, 50% brains, 50% personality. She's sharp, she's clever, she's witty, she's sweet. But she is NOT cute. At. All. You read her profile on your internet dating website and pretty much fell in love. You see her pic, and she looks awesome. You meet her in person and you think to yourself, "Oh, geez. She looks nothing like her picture. Her picture was way hotter." You wait for your friend's exit call, make up an excuse about a car accident or something, and bail out, never to call the poor girl again. It's the sad, painful truth. Don't lie, Shallow Hal.

Type E: 0% looks, 100% brains, 0% personality. He's not attractive. He's socially awkward and eccentric and maybe even a little bit creepy or inappropriate, but it's only because he's such a friggin' genius that his oversized brain does not leave enough room for the proper processing of data for petty social interactions and this foreign concept of so-called normalcy.

Type F: 0% looks, 0% brains, 100% personality. She's not terribly cute and she's a bit of a ditz, but she is one of the funniest ditzes you know; she is a loyal friend; and while she can't seem to concentrate in any of her classes, she's got a wicked wit. Oftentimes confused with Type D, the only difference here is that Type Fs aren't as booksmart as Type Ds. At a party, when booksmarts don't exactly come into the forefront of conversation, Type Ds and Fs may not be readily discernible from one another. They typically play the role of wingwoman or cockblocker, depending on the signals from the friend in need.

Type G: 1/3 looks, 1/3 brains, 1/3 personality. Can be both a blessing and a curse. If your pie is a small one... well... you could end up being average or worse. If your pie is larger, however, maybe you're just extremely well-balanced. Mmm...

This pie chart concept becomes more complicated when you try to compare one person's pie chart to another. In order to compare, you would have to allot a certain number of points to each candidate because, clearly, a deaf blind mute would probably exhibit less personality, looks, and brains to the common outsider vs say someone you believed to be extremely good-looking, smart, and witty, though in equal parts. Same breakdown in pie chart persona, but entirely different in terms of level of competition. So let's be frank: some people just got a bigger pie. Take , for instance. Let's say said person is allotted a total pie point count of 1000. Let's suppose that someone less impressive only has 600 points. And that someone totally unimpressive only gets 300 points. Each person's pie points are divvied up according to his gifts. So a moderately good-looking person who has shit for brains might have 300 points, all in looks, whereas a ridiculously good-looking person with shit for brains might have 600 points, all in looks. And a ridiculously good-looking person who is moderately intelligent might have 900 points, 600 in looks and 300 in brains.

So goes the Pie Chart Theory.

Questions, class? Follow through...

Peeves

I am not a tidy person. Not even close. But strangely enough, I am pretty anal about two things in my bathroom. One, I hate it when someone uses my toothpaste and squeezes from some random spot in the middle. Can't you tell that I have meticulously been squeezing from the bottom up? And if you borrow my toothpaste or anything else of mine, like condiments, please do not leave a sticky mess on the cap, and if you do leave a sticky mess, please don't wipe it off with your finger because God only knows where that was last. Two, I don't like it when the toilet paper roll is replaced and it's positioned so the tp comes out underneath the roll, as opposed to coming out over the roll. Follow through...

One of the boys

I pride myself on being the kind of girl who can be one of the boys. As a senior in high school, I was determined to jump off of a cliff in Great Falls with the rest of my guy friends. The girls were mostly just laying out on the rocks surrounding the pool of water the boys were jumping into, and I wanted to be the girl who could do what the boys did. You had to clear this little ledge of rocks where the water was shallow (maybe two feet) before you got to the deep part of the pool, where it was safe to jump. At the last minute, I got scared and decided not to jump, but the momentum I had worked up from the little run to the edge of the cliff was enough to send me over, so down I went into two feet of water, landing square on my heels on rocks. I ended up with internal bleeding on both of my heels and a large gash on my left heel that has left a scar to this day. The boys had to piggyback me two miles to get back to the car.

Life hasn't really changed much for me. I've been out of high school for almost six years now. I find that I'm still constantly chasing after the boys, trying to keep up with them in this futile battle to prove... what? I don't even know anymore. That I'm a really cool girl? That I can be one of the guys? That I'm just as capable as any of them? What the heck am I trying to prove?

I work in a testosterone-overloaded commodity brokerage house with fifty-some guys and seven chicks (though there are only three female brokers). It's an environment few women can handle, much less appreciate. Imagine being trapped in a locker room with a football team ten hours a day, five days a week. My office is the post-grad equivalent of a college football team locker room. I wouldn't go as far as calling it an NFL locker room because I suspect that NFL guys are used to having female reporters or trainers around from time to time. The guys I work with? Not so much. I think they're not sure what to make of me: I'm a closer. (Or an opener... I never really understood why when you close someone, it really means you've managed to get them to open an account with you. Why don't they call it opening? I digress.) I open more accounts than most guys at the firm. I am privy to an inordinate amount of information pertaining to my coworkers' private lives. I know intimate things about their wives, girlfriends, flings, and one-night stands. Things I don't want to know. At all. At times, I have been implicated in their private lives. (Let's be honest; many have fallen prey to the temptation that is inter-office canoodling. Plus, the boys at my work aren't half bad. Looks-wise, that is.) We're all entitled to make mistakes, right? Riiiight. Anyway, the boys' favorite topic of conversation (aside from work and market talk) is girl talk. Generally speaking, when they're talking about women, it's not exactly respectful. But I've heard them on the phone with their significant others, and it's amazing how quickly they turn into these huge mushballs, telling their gals how much they love and miss them. There's something about putting a bunch of alpha males into a room together that brings out the worst in them. Get them one on one, and they're actually thinking, feeling human beings.

My roommates and I are also very close to this group of guys who live a couple of blocks away from us. My roommate Meaghan went to college with a couple of guys from Bangor, Maine. Adam, who is her best guy friend from college, pretty much grew up with all of the guys he lives with; some from the age of four, others from junior and senior high. They're like brothers. Adam convinced Ned and Matt to move out here after he'd been here a while, and they then convinced Drew and Ryan to move out here as well. Drew and Ryan have set up residence on the couches for the time being. So the five boys, collectively, are known as our Bangor Boys. We spend most of our spare time with them in some capacity or another. Eating, hiking, partying, watching tv, or wiping out (well, that's just Ryan and me since we're trying to learn how to surf)... we do it together! It's strange to see more than two days go by without seeing a Bangor Boy. Their conversation is not so much centered around how much game they have or the chicks they bagged the other night, but we talk about pretty much everything all around. A few of us went out to eat Indian food the other day and a comparison was drawn between the saag (spinach curry) and a dookie. First of all, if your dookie is that green, it should definitely not be discussed at the dinner table. Second of all, I like saag! I don't like comparisons being drawn between the food I am eating and whatever it is that's in your toilet bowl. Apparently, the boys have an ongoing contest as to who can produce the longest turd. And they take pictures on camera phones and send it to each other. Gross. I will not say which of the boys participate in this venture in the interest of shielding them from shame.

After a rowdy Cinco de Mayo party, I went on a spur of the moment surfing/ camping trip with some guy friends from UVA to Salsipuerdes, Mexico. My little bro Nate was in town this weekend to hang out and surf, and Dave was in town working. (The two of them, by a strange twist of fate, are in Nicaragua right now on a surfing trip, and they surfed together all that weekend.) I hadn't planned on doing anything crazy that weekend because I figured I'd be a wreck after Cinco, but that was not the case at all. I had a minor headache and no plans, so I decided to go to Baja with Nate, Dave, and Dave's friends Rob and Colin. I'll dedicate an entire entry to this trip later on, but for the purposes of this entry, let's talk about nudity. I have never met anyone who likes being naked as much as Nate and Dave like being naked. LOVE being naked. I understand that when a guy puts his wetsuit on, he's usually naked underneath it. I appreciate that it is a liberating feeling to be able to get naked. But really, there are limits to a woman's desire to see butt cracks and penises. In some way, I felt insulted that they were so nonchalant about changing in front of me. I couldn't feign the same degree of nonchalance. I had to avert my eyes. This trip cemented my relationship with Nate and Dave as a strictly platonic one. I might as well have been a dude, for all they cared. And while I was strangely flattered that they thought of me as "one of the boys," I felt almost a little insulted. Am I not a woman? Have I not a vagina?!?!

When Dave woke up from napping by Colin's pool and he had to tuck his semi-hardon into the waistband of his board shorts and the tip fell out, I decided I needed to detox from boys for a little while. An overwhelming urge to reclaim my femininity swept over me and I resolved to overcompensate for all of the boy time I'd had by engaging in over-the-top girly activities. Like watching chick flicks and giving myself a facial and painting my toenails and dressing up and wearing red lipstick. Unfortunately, my chick flick partner bailed on me and I didn't get around to giving myself a facial or painting my toenails, so I settled for red lipstick and a night out in mixed company.

In conclusion, boys are gross, but I like them anyway. However, let it be noted that I am ecstatic about being female. Although I may not be the prototype for a proper lady, I like being treated like one from time to time, and sometimes I'll even play the part. But only sometimes. Follow through...