Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Obama’s speech at the Annual Gala of  the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies after the jump

“Literary Theory: An Introduction” – Part 1

Some months after I became a college graduate, I realized that regardless of my degree and honors, I knew little literary theory. This might be to the disappointment of my undergraduate literature professors, but my ignorance on the subject was, is twofold. Firstly, I abhorred the idea of theory. It seemed esoteric, in the way that dilletantes utilize ‘post-’ this and ‘neo-’ that to feign being learned. Secondly, influenced by the first reason, I just didn’t find space in my course schedule for theory courses. Of course, English majors have a literary theory requisite, but I was able to take another course that was more interdisciplinary in working with the history of the printed word, which allowed for less focus on, say, Marxism. Realizing this, I bought a book. Terry Eagleton’s “Literary Theory: An Introduction.” It’s a year and half later that I’ve found the motivation to start it with the intent to seriously study the text.

Dazzling (and searing) rays of spring

It’s been another week in between posts. I’ve been kept busy initially by midterms, and then I went on a trip that left me surprisingly exhausted even days after I’d returned home. Now, slowly, I’m getting my feet back beneath me. Spring is here. It’s a dazzling array of sunbeams smothering shadows wherever they hide. But honestly, it’s a bit too much for me right now.

Showers

Hues of pastel pink, almost lilac in the shade, scattered in the soft spring green look in at me through the office’s large windows to the front of me and to the right. The lapse in posts I could attribute to the sudden rain since before the weekend.

Garosu-gil, Sinsa-dong

There’s a road, and it seems endless from where you stand. On either bank, a row of trees that seem correspondingly to go on forever. The thick of the living green makes for but a narrow footpath in the center of the road when the sun sits directly up above you. This is what I think when I hear “garosu-gil.”

Are All Language Learners Grammarians?

Not but a few months ago, I was hooked

Loneliness and/or Solitude

From the starting lily pad in a Poets & Writers email, I somehow hopped across the thick fog of website white to a book review titled “The Disconnect” by The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller.

The Wheels on the Bus

Today was the 19th Parliamentary Election here in Korea. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean to me. I don’t hold a vote. Nor do I really care. It seems to me, like American politics, children quibbling over who gets to be king of the sandbox. And in that sandbox is a puppy. If you’ve ever seen a child play with a puppy, you know that they can be just as cruel as affectionate to the poor thing stuck with such a temperamental master.

f1rst!

I suppose there’s a need for a formal “first post.” Again, a deleted blog has been resurrected, under a different title. I don’t know why I decided to resume blogging. My readers (according to the stat counter) never amounted to more than the number of fingers used to type out the posts. Posts grew spare and sparer as I either grew busier or more neglectful (there is a difference!). I think a real reason is so that I might at least keep a digital journal of sorts. My tangible leather-bound is actually even worse–I think there are journal entries that are separated by seasons and each day it’s ignored the monster grows more intimidating.

The ambition of my older blog(s) was to just account for my travels. As there are but two and a half months left before I return stateside, I don’t think that would make for an interesting anything. Although, that reminds me, I need to take more photographs. Perhaps this blog might continue to serve as testament to where I will go in days to come. No matter, I figure there are enough things that I come across that might be of interest to someone somewhere with internet. Starky has also begun a blog, more focused than this can and will be, on which he writes about his days as a (substitute-cum-temporary hire status) high school teacher and things to do with (creative) writing. Maybe that provoked me in beginning this.

Regardless, the digital permanence to trace my drying footprints begins here. Again.