Jerry Scott Fisher’s Weblog

Last winter Haein had a caricature gig at a new shopping complex in southern Seoul and I decided to go along and check it out. The name of the complex is Garden 5, and as this picture from Wikipedia shows, it’s quite modern and beautiful.

This is a better picture than I could take with my crappy camera skills and old school phone camera, but it still doesn’t do the entire complex justice. What you see is just a slice of it all, where in fact the whole complex forms a great circle around a central plaza, and is divided into four main sections: Techno, Life, Young, and Fashion (iirc).  And even this large circular complex is just one part of the entire Garden 5 ‘multiplex’ which also includes several other adjoining complexes.

Anyway, Haein was asked to do caricatures in the basement of the techno tower of the complex and as she set up I went exploring. It wasn’t long, however, before I discovered how empty the whole place was. Shockingly empty. Not only a lack of shoppers, but there weren’t any stores! The entire techno tower was virtually vacant, a hollowed out shell of a department store.

Every floor was virtually vacant. I say ‘virtually’ because occasionally I could find one or two little shops set up amidst the sea of empty glass rooms. A fascinating and curious thing.  Some of the shops were very specialized (seemed to me to be selling certain parts of electronic instruments or computer chips) while others would resemble makeshift convenience marts selling ramen, snacks, and alcohol with a lone table set up  by a window somewhere. In my exploring, I soon became quite fond of these little shops and didn’t mind partaking in a beer or two before moving on.

Now this whole first impression of the Garden took place in the techno tower. I then circled around through the ‘techno’ section and entered the ‘living’ tower, which was also basically a ghost tower. Interestingly, however, as I kept going further into the fashion area, the complex suddenly came to life. There was noise, and people, and stores! The fashion and food areas were kicking. There were no vacancies here; on the contrary, there were lines out the restaurants. People were buzzing everywhere. Circle around some more, however, and go up a floor or two and it all starts to become checkered again between shops, vacants, and makeshift convenience marts until it gives way to another sea of empty glass hallways. I enjoyed seeing both sides actually. In the vacant areas, you could study or write with peace and quiet and, if you looked, you could find some nice seats with views. And perhaps it’s one of my idiosyncrasies, but I kinda liked the ambiance of chilling out and setting up camp within the empty towers.

Anyway, I spent the day with my laptop and with my beers, spending some time here and then there, checking in with Haein every now and then and bringing her some snacks. After I got home, I did a bit of research into the Garden 5 and here are a few articles I found: The first was from December 28th, 2009: The Garden 5 development is slow to progress and the other was written half a year later: [Koreatoday] Garden5 project stalled by lack of shops. I do feel a bit of sympathy for the Garden 5 complex. It really is a nice place in my opinion, and I find myself wishing it could generate some life in its empty towers.

Anyway, today, I went back there to spend the day. It had been half a year since I was last there with Haein.  I was eager to see whether it had changed very much, or filled in at all. Unfortunately, it was still very empty in places. The techo and living towers were still virtually vacant (and even a good deal of the makeshift marts were missing). But I again enjoyed having a few beers in a few nice places, and doing some writing and studying. Took a few pictures this time:

solitary table dividing an empty and full tower

View from the table. A band down below.

Another spot I liked

Its view

Rooftop park

View from the roof

Spider

The rooftop park was awesome by the way. A huge area filled with trails, vistas, and a grassy field with a stage.

Jazz band in the plaza

For me, I really enjoyed my day there. I like the place, but seeing it still stirs a bit of sympathy within me. The techno tower is still virtually a ghost town: An amazing technological tower with glass elevators and flat screen TVs in every which wall, great views, modern vibes — but still a virtually vacant tower. I wish to see it do better, spark to life, and no longer stand as a monument to unfulfilled potential. Time will tell, I guess.

If you found the link to this site from my other blog… welcome

This is my old blog. I used to update it a few years ago. I might again sometimes.

Dominion

by Andrew Grodner

Throughout this whole phenomenon we call life and the human condition, there are two concepts that seem to overshadow all that we know and do upon the earth: success and failure. Whether male, female, old, young, married, single, rich, poor, middle-class, or any other vicissitude of being, a dimension of our lives will always be governed under our notions of success and failure. These notions tie into every facet of our personal and cultural understanding into life, and they have the power to shape all our passing senses of worth, progress, security, dignity, and fulfillment. The measure of success, in effect, is a powerful funnel of perspective. Naturally, it has a very nice ring to it when applied to the myriad spectrum of our dreams and endeavors upon the earth, but on the flip side, it may also clang rather tortuously when the pieces of the puzzle don’t always fall into actuality as we would have them. Sometimes the success we seek the hardest – the things feel we need the most – seems to be ever slipping out of grasp like a piece of paper drifting in the breeze. It is a mystery how some things seem to come together so effortlessly and repeatedly throughout the course of our lives, yet other things seem to be forever occluded from us as if their doors had been locked up by the heavens. Is this so? Are some things simply sundered from our birthrights into ourselves? And are we left to vainly circle around such locked doors as distressed creatures until the world slips away? Or perhaps are we given the power to somehow unlock these doors and forge a way into a richer experience of life? Not sure if there will ever be an answer to such questions, and perhaps that’s part of the terrible beauty of existence.

Tossed into this worldly stage of survival and woven throughout with a complex array of physiological, psychological, cultural, and spiritual drives culminating within us, the mandate of creation must certainly be to reach out further into the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. And within the mix of our contemporary culture, these pursuits are very often directed towards our conceived ideals of youth, freedom, beauty, health, happiness, adulation, fame, power, prestige, wealth, dignity, sophistication, an attractive spouse, well-adjusted progeny, scrapbooks of adventure, legacies of philanthropy, portfolios of creative achievement, and so on. It’s quite stale and general to rattle off such ideals in print, but as they exist within the spheres of collective society and our individual minds, they naturally possess a form and a color by which many dreams revolve. And these ever-present, ever-flowing dreams within us could have a more spellbinding enchantment into our approach and understanding into life than we ever may suspect. When certain notions and expectations take precedence within an individual’s mind, it is a natural process for the world to take on a concurrent perceptual framework. In other words, we cut to the cognitive chase, and, as such, we create our own forests and arched doorways into the greater landscapes of our dreams.

Naturally, as a part of living, our conceived ideals of success will shift and turn, expand and contract, get mugged by reality, spark anew unexpectedly, manifest in mysterious corners, and perhaps over time boil down to a more fundamental accord. The schoolyard dreams of scoring the last-second three pointer in the championship game or becoming the first person on Mars soon give way to more modest projections of being a millionaire on the shores of California. And as the interplay with existence continues on through one’s individualization and maturation, with some things given and others taken, the steady hand of wisdom will undoubtedly uproot some of the more ridiculous pillars of ego, fluff, and flimflam from us and lay bare more appropriate, approachable, and universally-shared doorways into success. From there, the terrain may just be open enough for a grander vision to begin to peek out through the cracks. In those beautiful, fading moments, an altogether different dream begins to emerge – a dream to subsume all other dreams – not inward-driven and individualistic-bound but all-inclusive and coursing through all of creation. And it is a dream that has every bit to do with old Battery Bill of the homeless shelter as it does with Barack Obama or Billy Graham. In the grips of such a vision, success in all its conceived glory is utterly overturned: it no longer has anything to do with the self-waxing memoirs of a life well-lived, but it becomes rather a living invitation to invite others into something wondrous.

But then such visions fade into afterglow, words become preposterous, and one begins to wonder whether he/she has had too many sleepless nights. In any sense, beyond the habits, the symbols, and the senses of understanding into everything, there always exist passages within our domains that lead into richer experiences of life, liberty, and happiness. The way forward into it all, I believe, rests in continually perceiving and forging the right keys into these unseen and encircled doorways — and that is a process that bears much hopeful examining!  But perhaps eventually such channels may open up into some grander – and potentially world saving – visions of purpose that unite all of creation. It is our mandate and our birthright, and it is never a waste of time to begin opening up into it.

Around our small apartment, when Haein and I are puttering around getting ready in the morning and/or cooking dinner we have a few default musicians/albums we always throw on.  Cat  Stevens is one of them and I must say, I really dig his songs. I like the style of them, the musicianship, and the direction I believe they were written towards. They strike me as being wonderfully open and naive, yet at the same moment deep and reflective. The songs really resonate with me.  I think  “trouble”, “the wind”, “where do the children play” and many many others are masterful expressions.

So, it is very strange to me to think of how the talented singer/song-writer Cat Stevens could have morphed into the hardened fatwa-justifying Yusuf Islam. It boggles the mind. How could this creative and youthful spirit become crushed and entrenched into a hardened and fundamentalist religious understanding, so bent as to justify the call to kill Salmon Rushdie?

Now, needless to say, I don’t really know anything about Cat Stevens outside of his music and some online biographies, so I can’t really say anything worthwhile as to what might have led him to embrace Islam as he did.  Wikipedia outlines his near death experience in 1976, which marked the turning point in his life’s orientation. My guess is that he — as with almost any other human — was scared shitless in the face of death and that having been saved by luck/grace/God his trembling, thankful soul sought after authorities of God more earnestly. Unfortunately, to my mind, most of the people who would claim ‘authority’ on knowing God tend to be hardened fundamentalists. My simple guess would be that Cat Stevens was in a very vulnerable state at that period in his life and his spirit gravitated to the people who appeared to have the most concrete, stable communion with God. Thus he was taken in and flooded with fundamentalism to the point where he doubted even music and his creative gifts.

I am quite certain that people who undergo trauma in their lives — be it sexual, drug/alcohol, mental illness, crime, near death etc — gravitate to the more fundamentalist doctrines. They need stability and hope in a hard and frightening world. And I don’t necessarily want to besmirch that, for it can be a glimmer of light to so many people. Yet… it can be pure poison when the idolatry of the ‘religious authorities’ begin pouring over every wonder, void, and mystery of creation with their self-serving narratives and arrogance. This can squelch out the grace of God and harden hearts. Even a fire so bright as Cat Steven’s was poisoned.

I am sure this sounds like a terribly presumptuous post, and I’m sure it is. I’m gonna publish this for now and maybe make it more modest and thoughtful later. But I am seriously disgusted with fundamentalism, so any chance of venting will be taken.

Stevens quotes his conversion as follows, “I had found the spiritual home I’d been seeking for most of my life. And if you listen to my music and lyrics, like “Peace Train” and “On The Road To Find Out”, it clearly shows my yearning for direction and the spiritual path I was traveling.”

He justifies his hardening in such a way, but I see it as an after-the-fact rationalization. He has since back-pedaled on his non-music commitment and perhaps he’s starting to see that his Imam’s were probably winging it more than he had originally hoped. I personally see him as finding a spiritual prison… a place of purgatory where his searching soul was crushed under the hubris of religious arrogance. There are good things in Islam as there are good things in Christianity or any other religion. But fundamentalism always poisons the well and may turn the fruits of beautiful music into justifications for murder.

Haein was nice enough to buy me a membership at the ARC (Activities and Recreation Center) in Davis. So we’ve started working out there together. A few observations:

1) It’s much like the SRSC in Bloomington, but without a swimming pool (but they have a climbing wall instead)

2) I noticed that the pressure for the water fountains was very low compared to every other building on campus.   It kinda strikes me as strange since this is the place where people would most be in need a drink.  On the other hand, there were plenty of bottled water vending machines all around, so perhaps it wasn’t that strange.

3) The weather in Davis has been absolutely gorgeous: temperate, sunny, with beautiful fluffy clouds.  Yet it strikes me as strange that every treadmill and every stationary bike was taken up inside. Why people would insist on doing these exercises in a sweaty, stuffy, artificial  environment as opposed to the many wondrous bike paths that run for miles and miles around the city is beyond me. Is it out of habit, schema,  a sense of safety, proximity to other exercise machines, limited time of exercise, a chance to meet others?

4) Although I’ve gotten into great running and biking shape, my upper body strength still leaves a lot to be desired. When I was in the weight room I couldn’t help but feel a bit like the proverbial fish out of water. You know, I was the dude in the old, out-of-fashion exercise apparel of some bygone age amidst all the ripped, young bucks who were there with a plan. Anyway, there is always a start to things and I’ve been going at it so far. But I think I’m gonna start going there very early in the morning so as to have all the equipment to myself

5) There were so many attractive women there… but none so attractive as my Haein.

Gonna try to write some life back into my long-neglected blog. Most of which will be boring public-dairy sort of stuff. What fun

Anyway, during my jog today I started a new kinda mental-exercise game. Unlike walking, it’s hard for me to get a good and smooth landscape of thought when I’m in the rhythm of a run. The thoughts are too bouncy and they seem to always cycle back to their beginning before getting very far.  So, I decided to shift the gears of my thoughts. I have on my iPhone a nifty training-light running program. It keeps track of my time, speed, distance, route.  I set it to announce every tenth of a kilometer I go. Well, my standard route is 8km and about 2km into it, I decided to calculate each announcement in its simplest fraction (eg. 2.4km = 24/80 = 12/40 = 6/20 =3/10). The ones which could get reduced to a quite small denominator were the power ones… I liked those. Since it mostly involved halving the numbers, the math was pretty easy. Sometimes I had to divide by 5 but  it was pretty straightforward. Not exactly a hardcore brain exercise, but in the grind of a jog, it was kinda fun. Reaching 80/80th was the most powerful one, which I deemed to be some sort of singularity where the jog entered the infinite. Lol.

After the jog, pushups, situps, and showering. I took Buddy, the Corgi Haein and I are dog sitting, out for a walk around the neighborhood, where a curious thing happened. As Buddy was a sniffing and a snooping in the grass, I saw out of the corner of my eye another small dog running up to him to play. But, then as I looked a little closer I realized  it wasn’t a dog at all but a cat! The cat nonchalantly ran right up to Buddy, began sniffing his nose, and then playfully pawing at him. Buddy was simply dumbfounded and didn’t know how to react at all; he just stood there watching. I immediately scrambled to get my phone to take a video but the by the time I finally was ready Buddy had come back to himself and started barking and growling like crazy. I assumed this would frighten the kitty away, but it didn’t. The cat just remained there watching Buddy completely unfazed. There were some people nearby who were picnicing and their dog got riled up by all the noise and started barking. So, I walked Buddy a few steps away to calm down –  and lo and behold–  the cat was approaching again. I quickly snapped a picture this time. Then Buddy went barking/growling mad again.