yesterday i rested and made:
1. fluffy paper
2. dead blue pig-dog (he’s ugly)
3. tragic bear (held together by pins until i can find proper joints)
4. necklace (my favorite braid to make)
5. thaumatrope

the thaumatrope is an old optical toy: a paper disc spins on a string, merging the two faces into a single image. this thaumatrope demonstrates sleep paralysis [가위눌림].

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during sleep paralysis i’m always aware of being trapped a breadth away from reality. recently i “woke” to see a man hunched in my bedroom. i knew it was just a trick of light, but i couldn’t un-see his body, long and black, dead still except for the twitching of his fingertips, and the wet white light in the corners of his eyes. his lips were slightly parted, and there were no inhalations of breath to punctuate the low, desperate sound that hissed from his throat. i understood this noise came from the plumbing in my apartment, not from any phantom; i knew that once i was fully awake, the illusion would resolve itself. i waited. i could hear my neighbors’ movements, and my window glowed as the pre-dawn blue transmuted into a.m. gold, but i couldn’t rouse completely. i was still trapped between sleeping and waking as the man’s hands started shaking.

the thaumatrope makes me remember… do you remember, when we were children? we would race from one room to another, and understand that the wall we passed was not a single mass, but two faces, back to back, with a space in between. do you remember longing to see the ghosts that lived in that unseen space? we would imagine ghost games, inventing rules and backstories, and at some point the space between reality and play would diminish to the thinness of a paper disc.

i thought of the optical toy again as i tried to keep my body from going into autopilot mode while socializing. i felt worn because i had to be a thaumatrope and spin my mind, words, and expressions into a coherent, consistent personality, and to form responses that were coherent and consistent with others’ conversation. i have no hatred for people; these people were intelligent and lovely; they just weren’t special to me.
i do wish i were a little better with people though. i talked to steve a while ago and he showed me how stupid and gullible i am… except nobody’s mistreated me, nobody’s lied to me, nobody’s made any promises to break to me. i let myself be cheaply used. i have to do better by trusting in facts and actions without superimposing my own baseless assumptions and expectations. i have to see past illusions. so to inspire myself i have been bellowing this song all day:

BE A MAN / WE MUST BE SWIFT AS THE COURSING RIVER
BE A MAN / WITH ALL THE FORCE OF A GREAT TYPHOON
BE A MAN / WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF A RAGING FIRE
MYSTERIOUS AS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

i love to sing this part in my deepest, most hunky voice because it inspires me to be crazy manly like mulan. i like very much the word “beefcake” so i’m trying to have the qualities of such, as i understand the “beefcake” to mean… i try very strenuously… every day i am trying to be crazy manly and hunky, like a river, typhoon, raging fire, and the moon, ALL AT ONCE…

but…

is hard to be manly.

II. A DRIFTER…
adrift on a wind-driven sojourn to traffic with phantoms on long deserted highways, to meet lone rangers and wrangle drawling one-liners from strangers, to meet strange men driven to violence by the dark spirits of voodoo and tennessee whiskey

a stranger straight out of an old parable of the road draws near. his boots drum up the grit, step by step, a fierce tattoo marked by clouds of yellow dust

he enters my house and relays stories of his wayfaring. he tells me the ways of the world and how that world fares and punctuates his rhetorical questions with vaguely concealed slyness. “you’ve never been to paris? never seen la joconde? no? seriously, never?” nodding ah-ha he continues, “it’s a small painting, about this big…” and holds out his arms and cocks his thumbs and index fingers into right angles.

here are his hands, framing my world: a white door, a bare brown floor, two cups of tea on a wooden table, a small pile of books atop a small cabinet.

he shuts one eye and mimes photographing me, “la joconde,” he says, “in her gallery.” he says this with a grin simmering behind his face. the heat bakes off him. the tea exhales steam for longer than usual, and the cup in my hand never seems to cool.

he burns,

and at night i toss and turn in my bed. i struggle with certainties: tomorrow over breakfast, he will dangle the lure of the untraveled world. i will hesitate to catch it, and his bait will sink into trite banter. he will continue in lightly mocking, slightly disappointed tones, and there will be a certain hitch at the end of each sentence as it stops short of becoming an invitation. i will smile my most meaningless smile and walk him to the door. i will watch him striding away, and before the dust obscures him completely, i will take one step forward. then i will hear, distantly, the rattling of wind against chain link fences. in that moment i will return to myself, smiling that meaningful smile that exists only in my gallery, belonging only to me.

III. IS THERE A HAIRAFTER?

hahahaha at least i know how to amuse myself!!

having a defective gimphole of an ear means i can’t hear and manage my own speaking tone. maybe i softly whisper, “help! help! there’s a fire!” and maybe i holler, “I WONDER IF HER VAGINA IS AS CUTE AS HER FACE! ohohoho! (=^_^=)”

i just do not know. i must be so cautious these days!

new year’s resolution #123: avoid shaming self by speaking less and thinking more. do not shout about pig breeding on the first date. do not express unseemly desire for “a meat bucket” or “an eating bib” during the second date at a fancy restaurant.

new year’s resolution #234: do not shame self by molesting novelty toys in asian gift shops. remember that soft, plush pig that dispensed toilet paper through its ass-hole? remember how you got your finger stuck in the pig’s ass-hole, and when you tried to shake the pig off, the small, golden bell on its tail chimed merrily for attention, and everybody stared at you with a pig hooked to your hand by its ass-hole? that was regrettable; let us avoid such situations in the future.

new year’s resolution #345: stop being shameful and generally repulsive.

here’s a dance of death to herald in the new year:

2010 didn’t begin so well for me. i did not have dukboki with my family. i did not get a kiss on new year’s eve. i was sad for some reasons.
when i felt better, i fixed my sewing machine! the first thing i ever made on my machine was a bag with my bear claws and an ursa minor (who is screaming his name, because he’s unusually small and much confused for a koala). it’s filthy now because i toted it everywhere. i’ll make more bags and clothes this year. i want to make more than i buy.

when i started this entry, it was really to post this link:
https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/haiti_earthquake
this is one of the more reliable places to donate for relief efforts in haiti. the organization has been involved in public health there for a while, and i think we can be sure the money will be channeled properly.

i don’t ever post about current events. if i did, i’d just spew a tedious stream of frustration. i don’t listen to the news at night, because i can’t take bad thoughts to bed with me. i feel scared by it. the scale of these global matters, and knowing that the small matters keep tangling together so there is no solution or reasoning to problems, just clotted knots with no beginning or end. i started viewing photos and reading about the maiming of south asian women who “dishonor” men, then i couldn’t stop reading texts related to culture/religion/government, it just does not end. and what can i say that isn’t already obvious? i’m too stupid to write an illuminating editorial.

this is my gurim-ilgi, my self-indulgent and cheap picture diary, for those personal frustrations that aren’t caught up in matters too complex for me to understand.