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Back Talk

Back Talk by Sensai

What I love about the web is the opportunity to share my thoughts with others. But I also like to hear what others think, and to exchange ideas.

On this page, I'll share some of the comments I've received in my guestbook and via e-mail. Where appropriate, I'll include a link to the original log entry or essay that inspired the comment. In some cases, I also may also respond to the comments.

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Back Talk

by Sensai

Love in a Taxi: Aliens Walking

The thoughts that run around willy-nilly in a foreigners brain are infinite. You can never really know whats going on in the life and heart and mind of a foreigner. Why is that? Simply stated most of us come from another world. Say What?! Yep! Bubba (and Bubbette)! Why do you think all those little children hide behind their mothers skirts when they see you coming? What do you think you get  the petting of your hair, the giggles from 25 year old "men and women"? Did you think you were Mr. Studley Do-Right? Did you think you were loved and worshiped? Nuh-uh! Nope! No Way Jose! You are an ALIEN and thats the news for the blues. Alien walking is what you are.

We were socialized in cultures very different from Korean culture. Some of us are cultural no-mads, some of us are young and have international identity disorder (in search of ourselves), some of us are Canadians and can't find a job with the education we have because the economy stinks and we can't get a job anywhere else, some of us are Americans and we dont know why we are here most days. Everyone knows we are not welcomed or wanted. But most of us who remain have one common thread as foreigners. If we stay here long enough we will carry around that part of ourselves that we were socialized to be, that "foreign part" that makes us foreign forever and aliens walking.

Lets talk about love and the foreigner! Its February, the month with all those birthdays and to many foreigners the month for lovers. Here in a foreign country you have been away from your home land for months maybe longer.

Whats a guy to do? Generally speaking, if you didnt bring the little woman with you, then you have already been "in love" several times. If you have the significant other with you and you are under 45, chances are very good that you have wished "Mary Beth" and Alice" were back home from time to time. As a male you are clueless!!! True that statement could be applied in many situations globally, however, never is it more dangerous to be clueless than in the clutches of a Korean female. We are pretty much in Heaven as men here. We can have the companionship of exotic beauties at will. Women we could never have back home are ours. We are oblivious to the blinding flashing neon sign on our foreheads (Visa! Visa! Visa!). We dont care that she has slept with half the Western hemisphere, we dont care if she wont sleep with us (until we propose and marry the entire family!) We got women come on down! Some of us go on like this for years or until age 40 whichever comes first. We forget and blank out the ugly truth that we are aliens walking. We try to learn the language, squat when we speak, have children. We try to re-socialize ourselves, praying that we remain in this state of nirvana, but always knowing, that like a beautiful woman, you may dance with her for a little while, but in the end she will always, always leave you. Most of us wake from the dream more quickly. As men beyond the loving, we say to ourselves "Wheres the banana pudding, a real ham sandwich with miracle whip, proper food and pint for goodness sake?!!! Take me home country road!

Whats a girl to do? As a rule it takes 28 days more or less for female foreigners to begin the primal scream. We are happy that there are so many shops and markets. We are especially pleased that an optometrist can be found on nearly every corner. We have our head examined and get new lenses, sometimes extra eyewear just in case. There is no denying it however, we have landed smack-dab in the middle of a dramatic scene from the "Young and the Breastless"! We are not clueless! Eye-glasses, contacts, it doesnt matter! Wherever we look the visual aspect is the same. The men and the women look the same, physically; long thin arms, no behinds, and flat chests. Devastating, simply devastating! We can only imagine at this point whats below the belt and we cant bear to know. Size matters, hasnt anyone heard that yet?! Ahhhhhh!!!!! (Let the primal scream begin!) This is bad, really bad for the girls and women who came here alone. Its even worse than coming here with your jerk of a boyfriend, whose HUGE brain is below his belt at this point. Not to worry, there are bookstores. NO, not really. Why not eat your problems we think? No not really, no proper food. Finally, lets call our friends and everyone we ever knew, including the 7-Eleven clerk who smiled at us once! Nope not a good idea. Three months salary to the boss already. We are not stupid!?? We know, we have always known, that no woman is an island unto herself. Armed with this fantastic arsenal of knowledge as female foreigners, who are also as human as the next guy, our salvation is in the knowledge that we can do anything for a little while. After all we as females wouldnt be here if we werent intellectuals first!

I heard a story recently from a female foreigner who has been in Asia for several years, two of those in Korea. She told me of an encounter with a Korean man of an exceptional, EXCEPTIONAL, nature and presence. In short, he was phat, bad and way good-looking! Yeah, baybee!!! She was on her way for "culture-fix" at the Zoo, or Watermelons or J-Rock. You know the one with phallic symbolism. She lives on the far-side of Daejeon and as she hailed the taxi for that ride along the river, she took the up-front passenger seat to have a better view of the full moons reflection on the night time water. Normally she takes the back seat, not caring to view the traffic. She told me she often pretends she rides with a companion. Their little fingers touching on the seat as they lean in toward one another having intimate conversations about where they are going, while traveling away with relief from where they have been. But this night was to be different, feeling no need for survival strategies of the lonely, she hopped in the front seat and away they went for the twenty minute ride. She said that as they moved slowly along the river she noticed that he, the taxi driver, was not looking at the road, but had turned almost facing her. He was staring at her intently. So intent was his gaze that she had what can only be described, for lack of better words, as an "Ally McBeal" moment. Never, ever had she experienced such passion in full view of the biggest most handsome moon she had ever seen. It was hot, it was passionate, it was an encounter she said that rivaled the greatest of love stories. "To the depth and breath of me" she cried! Of course it ended with the destination, her paying of the fare, but as she was walking away the taxi driver called after her. She returned to his window and his stare with a "What?". He said, "you, you are beautiful". Then he drove away. You can never really know whats going on in the life and heart and mind of another.

Doing anything for a little while in order to survive as female aliens might be more dangerous than being clueless in the clutches for foreign males. Who can say?

Aliens walking, both men and women, hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! Whether we are traversing this plane as foreign men in nirvana bearing a goofy grin or as women with all-knowing Mona Lisa smiles and sugar-plums dancing in our heads, know this to be true:

"Love is going to get you, sooner or later, love is going to get you, love is going to win! Its just a matter of time, so make up your mind, love is going to win!"

Back Talk by Sensai

Back Talk

by Sensai

Living to Die & Other Jokes

 

Dignity is usually associated with a serious mien. Important ceremonies seem to require a purposeful calm and solemn deportment befitting discussion of weighty matters. Few things in most societies are more serious than death, the dead, and their memorializing. For religious, magical, or sentimental reasons, dealing with the deceased requires us to be respectful, and thus grave and somber. Without such concerns we perhaps might bring otherworldly retribution on our collective heads and shoulders. And we will sometime be the one so memorialized; so, as they say, turn around is fair play.

Korea clearly illustrates this tendency. Not only are official pronouncements and speeches given with the due ceremony such occasions seem to demand in that culture, but memorial services are occasions where even a shy smile would be inappropriate. In a Korean memorial service I once attended, a critical element was the reading of the deceased's curriculum vitae. This was impressive, for the departed was indeed eminent with a long and successful career, but the ritual was, for the outsider at any rate, superfluous for we all knew him and what he had accomplished, and the speech was markedly boring-strewn with dates and titles of positions, with little sense of his humanity.

Americans have a peculiar culture. We do memorialize the dead, and we are somber and attend such services with gravity. Yet we most often demand a solemness edged with a lightness of touch, empathy with uplifting, humorous stories of the deceased that bring warmth from the edge of the grave, for the event is more for the living rather than the dead. On such occasions, the older generation usually dresses appropriately and darkly, although among the younger elements this custom seems to have been lost, with bright colors in evidence.

Normally Americans want to smile. At a memorial service I attended, we heard not only of my colleague's attributes, successes, and accomplishments, but also about his amusing customs, his abilities, and yet his warm and engaging peculiarities. This was intended not to demean him, but to allow the living to remember the dead with fondness and intimacy. In American culture we seem to need this. Humor seems required. So humor is important to Americans, at all levels. President Bush joked on fainting and falling after eating a pretzel, for he must have known if he did not treat it with humor, others would to his eventual detriment. That is a form of self-depreciation _ to bring the exalted down to our level. And that too is an American syndrome _ the need for egalitarianism. The deceased are not granted that liberty, so we must do it for them. Of course, there are occasions when humor is not appropriate, but that is not at a funeral.

The humor in the U.S. or lack thereof in Korea is not a religious issue, for Christians in each society act differently. Perhaps it is a question of the regard that Koreans have for their ancestors _ a pious trait often lacking in Americans. We may or may not revere our progenitors, but we have little need to ensure that, if we do not make verbal or material offerings to their spirits, they will not haunt us in some emotional, if not literal, sense.

So in cross-cultural Korean-American relations in funerals and other somber events, we must balance two distinct and opposite cultural needs while navigating the bridge over the River Styx. Perhaps Buddha can tell us how.