http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1939

Part 1

I’m in the middle of a dozen small tasks when the phone rings: explaining to W why he needs to leave spaces between words, timing M’s next trip to the potty, sorting the laundry, performing triage on my inbox. I check the caller ID: it is T. So he’s not dead. That’s good.

T is a translator and he’s coming to work in Seoul for the summer. T is also bipolar. Once a brilliant gay rights activist, his psychological instability lost him friends and followers. I begin to pace, weighing the phone in my hand, trying to be open and ready. For what I don’t know. I answer the call.

On the phone he speaks calmly and cheerfully. He doesn’t ask about me — he never does. He announces that he has been seeing the ghost of his dead sister for the last ten years and thinks we should have a gut — a shamanist ritual — to help her spirit pass. This is the first I’ve heard of any ghosts. As he talks I am running through a mental checklist, looking for the signs, but they are not there. His pacing is normal. He responds to my questions. He’s been sleeping regularly. He doesn’t mention spending a lot of money. He seems logical. Except for the ghosts, of course. Is he manic?

I call E, my best friend and a clinical psychologist. “Is he hearing voices?” She asks. “Ghosts are not ... well... culturally inappropriate. But are the ghosts telling him to do something? Is he taking his meds? You need to be careful. If he’s manic you know this could get a lot worse. Lots of people kill themselves during manic stages... And he’s coming next week? Is there any way to delay?” But there is no way to delay.

* * *

A month later, the ghosts have multiplied. Some of them speak to him in what he thinks is Mongolian, including the mother of Ghenghis Khan, who gives him instructions that will enable his family line to prosper and become powerful again. He visits his ancestral lands and unearths old documents, tracing his family tree back through the generations to royalty. T tells me that he hasn’t taken his medication for a long time. His system rejected the pills, he says, they’d just come out in diarrhea. He has been reading up on shamanism and tells me that this is the mark of a true shaman. When he first arrived he seemed exasperated by the ghosts, asking for the gut so that he could have some peace. But after we agreed to try to find someone to perform the ritual he began to backpedal, saying that the ghosts were helping him make money and bringing him luck.

He tells us that whenever he tries to see a shaman “something” prevents him. “I was in a taxi on my way there and all the sudden the driver started yelling at me. He kicked me out of the car. And when I got out I was standing in front of my old house, and there was a little girl skipping rope in front of it, and she was singing the same song my sister and I used to sing.... That’s when I knew it was real, that she was really there.” Tears run down his face and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away.

Once he thought of himself as the failure of the family — the one who couldn’t hold a job, who always needed money, who couldn’t finish grad school, who would never have children. But the appearance of the ghosts have made him appreciate his gifts; the ghosts will, he claims, bring him money and luck. After decades of feeling dependent and ashamed he has found a way to serve the family by becoming the voice of the ancestors lost. He is the gatekeeper for the past and present. As the only one who can communicate with them he has gained authority without responsibility. He opens a personal investigation into his sister’s death. He criticizes his brother and father, not as the son who seeks the seeds of his problems in his troubled childhood, but as the omniscient speaker for the dead.

“How should I deliver this message to my aunt?” he asks. “ I have to tell her someone close to her is dead. Some translators deliver their messages flat, monotone. Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. Like that. Some try to mimic the tone of voice as well as the gestures. How should I tell her?”

At home I call E and update her. “The ghosts are multiplying. He had asked us to find a Shaman or something to help get rid of the ghosts so we spent all this time trying to find someone but now it seems like he doesn’t want help, he doesn’t want to get rid of the ghosts. This is the guy who always lives in the past, who always wants to dredge up the past for blame or excuses about why his life hasn’t turned out the way he thinks it should have, and now he has free reign to talk about the past, to say whatever, to deliver his ‘messages’ without any responsibility for the content. But... he sounds logical, he is sleeping, he is eating... he doesn’t have all the symptoms of mania.”

“He’s crazy. He’s grandiose. He’s experiencing psychosis. He can say the sky is green but that doesn’t mean it’s really green.”

* * *

He finally agrees to see a dosa, a master in a brand of breathing and meditation similar to qigong. The dosa is a cherubic-looking man, probably in his 50s. I admit I was expecting an old man with a wispy grey beard and an atmosphere of mysticism, but this man just seemed (except for his perfect skin) like a normal, very cheerful guy.

We sit down and K performs the introductions. The others make small talk. I am quiet, too nervous to talk, wondering how to broach the subject of ghosts, curious about what will happen, unsure whether this is the right way to go.

After ordering some food, K leans into the table and clears his throat. “So... we’re here today... because T is having some problems...” T explodes in English, “You ruin everything! Why did you have to say that? I told you, I told you not to say that, or how else would I know what is real? You just have to ruin everything, don’t you?” He’s talking loudly, and people at neighboring tables turn to look. I am afraid K will explode back; he looks like he might punch T. The dosa seems nonplussed. I feel like I should say something to him as they continue to fight, but I have no idea what to say.

“So... did you come far?” I ask, feeling like a complete asshole, thinking, We’re wasting your time. All this was for nothing, and at the very best we’re going to sit here and talk about nothing for the rest of the meal. He answers lightly, telling me where he lives. I continue to ask him about what mode of transportation he came on, about traffic in this area, how he likes the area he lives in, whatever else I can think of. K and T have lapsed into silence. K’s face is like granite, but I can feel the explosive energy radiating from him. He refuses to look at me or anyone else. I wish I was sitting next to him so I could take his hand. But instead I just sit there, back straight, feeling helplessly idiotic, unable to think of any more small talk. T sits and looks at the table and eats, pissed but seeming not to care about the moods of the rest of us.

The dosa seems oblivious, talking about this and that, about his business, on and on, until I start to think he must be kind of stupid. T is making comments here and there: “Oh, is that right?” “Oh, really?” “Wow, that’s so interesting” with such an obviously false sense of interest that is completely insulting to the dosa and everyone else at the table. I feel sorry for the dosa but he doesn’t seem to notice or react in any way. He talks on and on as if we are all really interested in his software business and in breathing techniques. K gradually joins in, though I can see that he is still very, very angry. All the sudden T gets up and goes to the bathroom. I relax a little; the three of us talk about the food. K apologizes for T’s behavior. The dosa says, “Oh, don’t worry about it, just give him some time.”

T comes back and abruptly begins talking about his ghosts. He is talking quickly, nonstop, not pausing to let anyone comment or to wait for any reaction. “When I go to the doctor, they tell me I’m crazy, they give me pills. And I take them! Because it makes the doctors feel better. They go right through my body, they don’t affect me at all. When I talk to Christians they say I’m possessed by spirits. They sprinkle water on me and bless me. I let them. I let them because it makes them feel better! It doesn’t affect me. I don’t know what do it!” He shrugs and laughs. He talks with such force that spit sprays from his mouth. “Everybody has an opinion. When I talk to the shamanists they say I am a shaman.”
The dosa smiles and nods, agreeing quietly with everything T says, encouraging him.

“So the thing is that when I talk to other people about this, they don’t try to help me, they ask me for help. I think I must be more powerful than they are. I see ghosts, all sorts of ghosts, and some of them help me make money. I make more money than my brother now.”

“But sometimes there are nasty spirits, spirits I don’t like, they throw things and slam doors. They scare me. But then there are nice ghosts too.”

The dosa tells him, “Yes, there are nasty spirits. But, you can ignore them. Tell them to go away. Tell them this is my body [he moves his arms along his chest], and you are dead. Go away. Don’t bother me. Then they don’t have any power.”

They continue like this for quiet some time, T talking on and on, words running from his mouth, the dosa adding this and that, sharing his own experiences here and there.

Finally, spent, T says, “It’s nice to meet someone who knows. Who doesn’t think I’m this or that. My family, they don’t listen, they just get mad because I talk like a girl, like such a queer, or because I don’t act the way he thinks I should act. She [pointing to me] listens me, but she probably thinks I’m really weird.”

After dinner K and the dosa head off to have coffee together and I walk towards my apartment with T. He seems relaxed, happy. He says again that its nice to talk to someone who actually listens to what he says instead of just criticizing the way he talks. I tell him carefully, “You do the same thing, you can’t stand the way your brother and your father speak to you in informal language, the way they command you. It’s just the way they talk, you know. Your brother spends all day commanding people at work, he’s older than you, its just his way of trying to be helpful, by giving you advice. You react to the way he talks, not to the message.” T agrees. We part, both relieved.

The dosa tells K that he didn’t see any ghosts around T, and that T is not as powerful as he thinks he is. “I moved some qi to him to calm him down and make him talk,” the dosa tells K.

On the phone with E she warms me that although I’m on his good side now, T may turn on me, as he has in the past. “You need to protect yourself. Think of him like a drug addict. You need to keep him at a distance.”

I assure her that I am fine, that I am keeping myself emotionally removed and that I am interested in the movement back and forth — from the vocabulary of mental illness to spiritual possession to shamanistic talent. I feel a quiet sympathy for this man who once campaigned for the rights of the group, whose every claim is now met with distrust, disbelief, and sometimes disgust. Ghosts or no ghosts he has been ill for our entire acquaintance, but it is hard to detach the illness of his mind from the festering relationships with his family members. They cannot trust him because he has hurt them time and time again, and never taken any responsibility for that hurt. He needs them but resents needing them, resents his dependence, resents the fact that they continue to support him even while he criticizes them for not doing more. He lives in the past, seeking to find the causes of his current situation, and with the ghosts on his side he has found a new way to authorize his point of view without having any responsibility for the messages.

* * *

OH REALLY YOU SAY:

Two from Duffy's book "Rapture:"

You

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head.
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell: the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin.
into my life, larger than life, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like gift, like a touchable dream.

Syntax

I want to call you thou, the sound
of the shape of the start
of a kiss — like this, thou —
and to say, after, I love,
thou, I love, thou I love, not
I love you.

Because I so do —
as we say now — I want to say
thee, I adore, I adore thee,
and to know in my lips
the syntax of love resides,
and to gaze in thine eyes.

Love’s language starts, stops, starts;
the right words flowing or clotting in the heart

Tags: photography

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment that things started to feel wrong. I only know the day when I realized that they needed to be righted and that I had the power to do it. March 25th, 2008.

I know that somewhere during the late, cold months of 2006, things started to slip toward "off" and by the time I noticed, they were far into wrong and I was unable to turn the bus around. I am still not sure of the catalyst(s) or the reason(s). I just know that it has taken me over a year to remember the person I am, the person I can be and the person I want to become. I am still putting some of the pieces of that latter version together. But I am closer.

It is amazing that, after so much time working to create a balance in myself and set myself up to be constantly in tune with what was taking place internally, I was able to so completely lose myself and lose track of how I felt. I was so turned around that I was doing things "to make myself feel better" that really just reinforced the feeling worse. And I am just now rediscovering the things that actually make me feel better. The small things. The things that nestle up next to your heart, propping it up when it needs it and just watching its back when it stands on its own.

I thought, when I quit smoking, that I was losing this whole part of my personality. That my edge would be dulled. That I would lose what little cool I possess. I am still recovering from that notion. And it sounds so silly now, even though I fight its remnants still.

I thought, when I moved, that I would roll in and rock out. I rolled in and was rolled over. Steamrolled.

But I got up. I haven't made all the best choices, but I'm fixing those one by one. And I'm not gone or defeated or dried up. I am standing, tougher than ever, with no more fantasies. I am not afraid. I am not comfortable; there is no nestling or hiding. There is only the journey. The discovery. The knowledge that I am going to be, as I always am, okay. More than okay. Fucking GREAT. Again.

Current Location: JP
Mode: pumped

http://twitter.com/kdotdammit/statuses/810628342

kdotdammit: How boring am I? I had a shit day & endured male anger for 3 hours straight. Kinda kills the words. I'll go find pictures of Suck Magazine.

I've never done one of these in my blog before. Ready? Here we go! Let's see what captions we all can come up with for this picture:



...now c'mon, don't let's all shout out the same thing at once...

Travis was on webcam duty this afternoon and the more pictures I shot the cuter he got. The strip is linked to the set.

Mode: amused

I met Robert Rauschenberg when I was working at MoCA. His insight and meticulous attention to the facility and our display of his was pointed yet not unpleasant. His work has so permeated contemporary art it's almost impossible to talk about it without mentioning his influence.

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82:

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Robert Rauschenberg at his home and studio in Captiva, Fla. in 2005.
More Photos >

"Mr. Rauschenberg, who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked."

(Via NYT > Arts.)

A coffeemaker without a carafe? Sold. And I can set it to wake me with coffee.

Mode: depressed

Working conference paper draft is finally done. Some historical details to track/finesse and definitely some editing to do for clarity and for length. But it's done enough for a lunch break and crash on the couch. And it's done before my afternoon stint of tutoring. I win. Take that, Henry Fielding!

Also, Death of the Author still seriously rocks.

Just because I'm forgetful like that and, if I don't post it now, I will never rememebr to do it tonight.

dance_the_dance suggested a great vocab-building charity website that they thought the members here might enjoy. It's at http://www.aidtochildren.com/ . Very similar to http://www.freerice.com .

Post a comment if you liked it or even if you'd rather we didn't put up suggestions like this. I know last time we did was around Christmas I think and one member got their whole office involved in the site as a charity drive.

Mode: sleepy