it’s almost 5:30am on a Friday morning and i find myself in front of the computer finishing up a presentation packet for the King’s Crown Leadership Awards, for which KSA [my beloved Korean Students Association], has been nominated for four awards. of course, nominations, based on online student surveys, do not mean much, but for some inspired reason, i feel (and many in my club feel the same way) that we are worthy of at least one of these awards. and hence, the work being put in last second to make a sincere attempt.

in a few minutes, i’ll be walking over to john jay to wake sei-wook up. wook has been my trusty partner in preparing the necessary materials for numerous KSA occasions. just a few weeks ago at yale, where we were attending kascon, i remember us running with laptops open in our arms, to the nearest kinko in order to print out presentation packets for the KSA expo. it’s a shame we didn’t win, but the experience was definitely worth the hours spent inside the hotel room, arranging photos and writing descriptions of our events.

i had a picture on my website sophomore year, shortly after becoming ksa president, of john jung sitting next to a pile of ksa culture show t-shirts with a hand-written sign that advertised its $3 price. the caption i wrote for that picture was “oh, the things we do for our club.” someone once told me that it was important to do what i love, and as cliche as that may sound, i feel like being involved with ksa this year has been such a blissful time because it has allowed me to do something i love over and over again. what exactly is it that i ‘love’? spreading cultural awareness, like our mission statement says? creating bonds with the people i work with? testing my limits in leadership? working to build a proud history? it may be a little bit of everything, but whatever it is, i’m grateful i’ve been a part of it.

village copier – 24 hours, presentation in less than 4 hours.

-pk

i remember my first hurdles race in high school. it was of the 55 meter variety during winter track season, and i had known how to hurdle for less than a month. it was outdoors at my school’s track. i had the last lane – i think the sixth. the race started and i wasn’t too far behind everyone and even ahead some of the slower kids. my technique was terrible and my 5-stepping did not help. the worst happened after the third hurdle, when i landed off-balance and ran off the track and onto the grass. i watched everyone else whiz by and finish the race. i shook my head and put on a smile of self-pity as i walked towards the finish line. my teammates snickered at the unathletic display. i practiced more and got better, eventually learning to 3-step and compete with our relay team at counties and states, but i always remember my humble beginnings when i felt like my groins were going to rip and the space between each hurdle seemed miles away.

i woke up this morning and read an email that immediately threw me into a state of anxiety. it was from the Minority Advertising Internship Program with the following message:

Final decisions will be made on April 19. If you have other offers please consider those. Being a MAIP finalist does not necessarily mean that you will be placed.

talk about having the rug pulled from under you! my summer dreams suddenly became frozen like a terrorist’s bank account, and visions of idleness or the possibility of working retail clouded my mind. but in keeping with the spirit of jesus week (sorry, i need to milk this) i decided that a greater power had only thrown a few hurdles my way to challenge me. with this attitude, i did a jay-z shoulder brush and went on with my day. (*not really. i was down all day and it really sucked. i called my dad though, and he told me not to worry. and harry still doesn’t have a job, so we even talked about working together at menlo and playing tennis during the day.)

i look at myself in the mirror and see that i’ve let my hair grow more than the usual length. i’ve been shaving my head since junior year of high school (four years!), and have not let it grow back for more than three weeks’ length in all these years. i was tempted to grow my hair out just to surprise people and draw attention to myself, but seeing myself in this awkward state – looking like i need a haircut, but not having hair long enough to style – i have decided to give up on any plans to sport a new ‘do.’ as i have noted in my previous writings, i cut my hair in high school to look more athletic at track meets, where i lined up against clean-shaven black kids. in the process of having a shaved head, i was able to create for myself a sense of masculinity and distinction from other asian american males who stand in front of the mirror each morning applying their various hair care products. i also became a fan of shorter showers and that fuzzy peach feeling i get when i run my hand across my scalp.

i need to figure out how to construct a breach of incomprehensibility in my writing so i can be cool and post-modern. i think sometimes i experience it when i’m thinking and then all of a sudden an idea forms but it is expressed in korean. my korean is pretty weak, but the words that i do know can sometimes be the more effective language like when i woke up this morning and it was shibal jehsoo up ssuh right from the start. just kidding, that was contrived. i just said damn, that blows, and stayed silent. but u get what i mean? i swear, it happens sometimes ya beh go pa? gaht chee mug ul leh? but since korean is not a romance language, it looks pretty out of place and even more incomprehensible, even to a person who knows korean. is that big enough a breach? damn, i want to eat a kimbab.

one last thought before i give up on today’s pitiful attempt. i was sitting in english class again and i thought about my motivations for writing. i jotted this down:

how do i escape the feeling of pretention that hounds me when i engage in the practice of independent writing? i think the sadness lies in my commercial aspirations and self-glorification that i expect from these sessions. you know, like paul auster and his undergraduate crap that got published.

indeed – money, or the desire for some, is the underlying theme of my life. as much as i recognize the ignoble practice of valuing money so much, having it does open new doors. i paid off one of my credit card bills (note: “one of”) and i currently have single-digit sums in my entire checking and savings account. i had a few bucks in cash to spare, so i treated myself to a cafe latte at starbucks – tall – and wondered how sweet it would be to treat myself to a grande cafe latte each morning instead of the more economical coffee of the day. perhaps asking for too much luxury. and also, a sad sad reflection of how much my self-worth has degenerated that the cup of coffee i carry is my sole mark of dignity. i’m going to buy milk and use my coffee maker again. thrift! it’s a christian virtue! or wait, was that a chinese one?

the trifling and the trivial. i’m 21. beer in my fridge. goodnite.

-pk

“our concern with history… is a concern with preformed images already imprinted in our brains, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered.” (from Austerliz by W.G. Sebald)

i’ve been trying to do some of the research for my history paper on carpetbaggers, and it’s incredible how much you have to read in order to extract a nugget of constructive knowledge that can be used for an argument. i’ve noticed that, on the whole, i enjoy the reading process, but the only thing that keeps me from excelling is my poor eyesight. after an hour or two of intensive reading, my eyes usually give out and become too tired to continue. i don’t know if this is a normal thing or if i am just weak. maybe it is time to re-up my prescription, but of course, that means money that i don’t have must be spent. bleh – even the unmonitored, self-driven education has its price.

i woke up early, with much confusion due to the resuming of standard time (moving one hour forward), and forced myself to the gym, a place very much absent from my life this year. lifting alone in a relatively empty 2nd level weightroom allowed me to reflect on various things, most notably on my personal history of lifting. i remember the summer after my freshman year of high school. i had modest success as a running back my first year, and my hope was to continue as a JV running back. for the first few weeks of summer, i had slacked off and stayed at home watching television all day. when i found out that my teammates had grown more muscular and stronger, i grew alarmed at my personal delay and decided to make up for lost time. i began to ride the bicycle two miles uphill each day to school an hour before everyone else was supposed to get there. i was usually the only one there, and one of the coaches would help spot me on the bench. i remember lifting with 25 lbs weights on each side and steadily seeing that number increase to 45lbs and eventually to 45lbs and 25lbs together on each side. sometimes, i found one of the rising seniors, khalid, lifting alone before me. khalid was a tall, muscular black running back and safety who reminded me of that black polo model. i often wondered if i would ever get as strong as him or play the running back spot he occupied on the varsity team. when he went for heavy weights, somewhere around the 300lbs range, he would ask me to spot him. it was inspiring to see him lift, and it made me want to try that much harder. one thing that khalid did before benching was to pull his head up to the bar and line up his eyes. i never really knew what this did, but i began to imitate it, and to this day, i do the same thing every time i bench. i never really became as diesel or strong as khalid, but i blame that more on my genetic composition than on my lack of effort. if anything, i was a better running back than he was (he was a much more accomplished defensive player), and this gave me enough satisfaction. but this image of myself, skinny and somewhat intimidated, lifting with the confident, well-defined black athlete, informs me of my personal history and weightlifting.

one thing i have noticed is the tyranny of time. i read in austerlitz (i have a tendency to idolize every book of the moment) about how time is such an arbitrary thing and that it’s based on something as imprecise and random as the rotation of the earth around the sun. i remember learning about the creation of the transcontinental railroad in the united states and how it finally prompted the standardization of time and time zones. and just to point out the relevancy to my changing of clocks today, i guess that’s where we get daylight savings and standard time. i do feel the pressure of time each day, whether it’s the time devoted to extra-curricular activities, homework, or talking with friends or if it’s a marking on my outlook calendar of an interview or RA meeting. and then there are deadlines of days, weeks, months, and the consistent birthdays of friends and family that remind me of time passing. i guess there is no real point in discussing time in this manner because it is shallow and pointless at best – but i am sure that it is a subject that everyone can relate to in one way or another.

speaking of time, i have had more to myself in the past few days, which has been a most pleasant feeling. after a draining month of KSA culture show and ccsc elections (the first one of tremendous success, the second one of bitter defeat), i’ve enjoyed the first few days of april with a slow return to a life on my terms. what i mean by this is that i’ve had the freedom to go to the gym and to sit here and write in this blog without any pressure to be doing something else. of course, i should constantly be studying, but at this point in my academic career, i’ve failed to make studying a centerpiece of my lifestyle. then again, i lie. while i do feel a greater sense of liberty with my time, i am always conscious of the deadlines and commitments that loom over me, and with it, a sense of guilt for indulging, with so much pleasure, in this writing exercise.

john jung, a character who will probably appear many more times in this blog, asked me who my interlocutor was. i did not know the term, so he asked who it was that i was writing for. i didn’t really know the answer, so i guessed, in a half-humorous manner, that it was for all the girls who i wished would read it. to be completely honest, i guess there is a desire to attract, or at least to make an impression, on a girl with my writing. but how conscious i am of this when i actually engage in writing, i am not too sure. i sometimes hope to elicit comments from close friends, strangers, intellectuals, critics, etc. — or maybe it’s for me, not the person i am right now, but for myself in the future, a week from now, a few months, maybe a year or two. i don’t know – does that count as a valid ‘interlocutor’? perhaps the concept is too sophisticated for my simple mind.

just to connect the last paragraph – i compiled a mutli-volume (in those marble-patterned composition notebooks) collection of journal entries written over a span of three years in elementary school only to lose them forever while moving to another town. i do remember a few things about the content and quality of the writing. it was an unreflective journal for the most part – i remember entries that read something like: “today i woke up and went to school. it sucked. came back and practiced saxophone. it was a boring day.” but on some occasions i would write about people, mostly to remark how ‘stupid’ they were or how much i ‘hated’ them. i do remember one particular entry in detail – it was the first time my Pee Wee (Pop Warner) football team won in fourth grade. i scored two touchdowns – once on a toss sweep and the second time on a punt return – to lead our team to a 12-0 victory. i wrote a very long entry and even reserved a page for a sketch of myself shedding defenders and heading straight for the endzone. that must have been the most glorious moment recorded in my journal because i don’t remember any other entries being as elaborate.

i am being incredibly verbose and spending a lot of time on these entries. i wonder if the proliferation of my writing collection will sustain itself, or, like many of my life’s endeavors, it will fade out and become neglected. i think the beauty of a blog is that the technology makes it easy enough for me to create an entry without spending time on editing html/uploading/etc. with that, i hope i’ll find time, or rather, i will neglect time, and give myself an opportunity to continue writing. and i leave you with the image of myself, sitting in front of my 20-inch LCD monitor, a stoic face, legs outstretched against the back of the desk – a position repeated countless times in my life over thousands and thousands of hours. is there any truth to be found in that?

-pk