Oh, I've tried to do it four or five times now, but each time I get bogged down in all I have to say, making the classic mistake of trying to include everything rather than just saying one or two things and saying them well. I've never been particularly good at saying just one or two things, but if I'm ever going to blog again (and if you're reading this, there's a good chance I am) I've got to learn.
Recently I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, which is an outstanding book if you're the kind of introspective, philosophical fellow I am. Which I am. The book is an intense psychological journey across the American West mainly focusing around the relationship between the protagonist and his son, and there's a part where the son decides he wants to write a letter to his mother. He sits down with a pen and paper and stares at it for a while, then says he doesn't know what to write. His father suggests he make a list, which he does and he finally discovers that he actually has too much he wants to write, and that he can't think of where to start. Whereupon his father says, “Well, just write one thing and maybe the rest will come to you” (crude paraphrase). To his son, writing the letter had become not just one task but an amalgamation of many individual tasks culminating to something too big to conceive of all at once. The human mind is really only made to do one thing at a time – two at a stretch – and trying to cram all those things into one letter was stifling him even before he began.
That's what was happening to me recently in life. Blogging was just one manifestation of this problem. However, I am willing to try to change. Or at least try to try to change. So, armed with my new repository of motorcyclian wisdom and brashly determined to do one task at a time, here I am, much to either your delight or your chagrin, but I'll gamely guess delight because, hey, I'm feeling optimistic today.
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“You meeting sometime English speak.”
Pause. Shuffling of feet.
“Un-jay?” When?
“You meeting maht-euh” (mart) “sometime English speak Korean speak. Teaching,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the shop around her and looking meaningfully in a lot of directions that seemed pretty meaningless to me.
I stared at the shop owner's wife in bafflement, mind racing to throw my bank of around 100 Korean words together in a way that would help me make an important clarification. As usual, it failed miserably.
“Un-jay manna-yo oo-ri?” When meet us?
“Sometime,” she replied, followed by a string of unrecognizable Korean syllables I wildly guessed probably meant some more helpful clarification of “sometime.”
Ever so hesitantly, and with a wary half-smile on my face, I nodded slowly, buying time. I didn't know what she was trying to say, but I know what I wanted her not to be saying. I wanted her not to be saying, “Let's meet sometimes. You can teach me English and I can teach you Korean. We'll be pals, chums, get on famously, maybe throw a little soju (the local liquor, useful for getting uproariously drunk as well as cleaning drains or compost bins; seriously, I've seen it used for both) in for good measure, waddya say kid?”
I wanted language exchange partners, sure. But I felt uneasy at the idea of meeting in the middle of a neighborhood convenience store “sometimes” with a middle-aged woman. No doubt this unease was communicated all too clearly by the feral look of panic in my eyes as I stood stupidly at the cash register, other customers filtering in and throwing unsurreptitious looks at barbarously bearded waygook (foreigner) at the counter.
I considered my options. I could rely on the assumption of misunderstanding, smile, nod vigorously and go away, which was my usual course of action, but I thought in this situation that might be rude (you never can tell in Korea) and she was the only friendly shop owner in my neighborhood. The other ones made you feel about as welcome as snail on a freshly mopped floor, and dragging a polite “kam-sa-hab-ni-da” out of them was like getting Henry IV to swear fealty to the Pope. I went to E-Sense Mart a good five times a week and said “An-yang-ha-se-yo” (hello) to the owners every day of the week that ended in “day.” I'd rather not take the chance of committing a faux pas. I could also attempt to speak more Korean/English (affectionately known here as “Konglish”) in an effort to reach a clearer understanding, but over the course of five months you learn how foolish this kind of thinking is. It's like being stuck in quicksand: if you try to break free, you only sink faster. Better to just let the misunderstanding stay at its current level of confusing embarrassment before you go and make it worse.
I settled for a middle ground, a faked light of recognition coming to my eyes. “Ah, ok ok ok” (they say things many times here for emphasis: same-same, okay-okay-okay, mistake-mistake, sorry-sorry). “Sometime we meet here and study together.” 'Sometime' was not a particularly committal word, well-suited to provide both of us with a convenient excuse for not fulfilling our oral agreement at all.
She looked at me dubiously, not fully understanding but probably just as interested as I was in finding a way out of what was becoming a mutually arduous conversation. She smiled – it looked a bit forced – nodded, said “Bye bye!” in that overly enthusiastic was characteristic of Koreans speaking English to confused waygookin, and waved as I walked out the door with what I hoped was an inaudible sigh of relief.
Interactions like these are commonplace in Korea. The only kind of communication is miscommunication. I once read a postcard from a guy who was teaching English in Japan. It said, “Every day is awkward, difficult, embarrassing and perfect.” I couldn't agree more. From the awkward bows (does that guy look older than me? I'll give him a half-bow and avoid eye contact, and maybe throw in a wave for good measure...) to the quizzical looks that accompany any attempt to speak hangook-mal (Korean) to never knowing where lines start or end (they don't seem to matter anyway) to accidentally saying, “Let's go to the bathroom together” instead of “I'm going to go to the bathroom” to your female co-teacher, it's all confusion, all the time.
Here's an archetypical example of a conversation in Korean:
Walk into store. Smile and bow.
“An-yang-ha-say-yo.”
“An-yang-ha-say-yo.”
Muster up courage. Brace for embarrassment. “Dubu ee-seo-yo?” Do you have tofu?
Uncomprehending stare.
Try again. It always takes two times before they realize you're speaking Korean, not English. “Dubu ee-seo-yo?”
Radiant recognition and a smile like God when he first saw Eve naked and realized what a wonderful thing he'd created. “Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, dubu ee-seo-yo! Hangook mal jal hey-yo!” Yeeeeeeeeeeees, we have tofu! You speak Korean very well!
All great, all encouraging, all patented and predictable. Then the inevitable happens. Heartened by your exercise of a Korean vocabulary beyond “Hello” and “Thank you,” they unleash an unbroken chain of full-speed hangook-mal that fills you with the sickening surety that you will never, ever speak this language fluently.
After waiting for the onslaught to stop, I give a forlorn look and simply say, “Molayo.” I don't understand, accompanied by an innocent shrug of the shoulders and a not-even-slightly-faked look of helplessness.
They repeat themselves, again at full speed (but even half-speed wouldn't make an appreciable difference). And again. Before finally giving up with a warm smile and a small look of disappointment.
It's the little things in life, you know. You learn to settle for the little things. If, in the midst of this incomprehensible gibberish being thrown full-speed in my direction, I understand a few nouns or, God forbid, an actual verb, I consider it a stunning victory.
And I walk away with a smile on my face and a light-hearted chuckle, because fuck it, life is hilarious, and never more hilarious than for a man with the Western nose in Korea.
I'm reminded of it every day.
Now, some completely unrelated pictures spanning the past four months of bloglessness.
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