well, my dad keeps whining about how i don't update my blog. blog=web log and this captain's log is naught but a...
log. shitting on a speeding train. that's what my life has been like lately. i've gained about 4 pounds just because i've been eating like shit and only when i can... and i have been to the gym a grand total of about 12 times since early december. it's pathetic.
but it all ends tuesday. wednesday, sam-il-jeol, is the 3.1.1919 holiday, perhaps one of the most important holidays on the korean calendar. sam (3) -il (1) is the day that koreans marched for independence in tapgyol park, downtown seoul... and were massacred by japanese troops for their troubles.
here's some detail.
"The Japanese suppressed the movement with brutal force. They fired into groups of Korean Christians singing hymns. Christian leaders were nailed to wooden crosses and were left to die a slow death – “so that they can go to heaven”. Mounted police beheaded young school children. The police burned down churches. The official Japanese count of casualties include 553 killed, 1,409 injured, and 12,522 arrested, but the Korean estimates are much higher, over 7,500 killed, about 15,000 injured, and 45,000 arrested."
a friend of mine who had a psychologically abusive father has post traumatic stress disorder.
she recently told me that her symptoms are "nightmares, insomnia, anxiety, and hypervigilance. Also, you fly off the handle rather easily."
from what many of you have read here, koreans can seem to be xenophobic, tempermental, illogical, hypersensitive, cranky, super-proud...
could it be that, as a nation, they are suffering from some form of PTSD? i've read stuff about jews, as a nation, having similar psychological baggage that really hard to find any sort of closure on. not just holocaust survivors. the jews i know don't display that, but books like erna paris' "dark shadows" (which i had to put down because after the introduction i fuckin' got it-why do authors say something plainly in the first part of their book and then beat you over the head with it for another 400 pages?) seem to imply a sort of nation-wide (not geographically, but as a group of individuals) sense of PTSD.
from PTSD symptoms
Symptoms of PTSD are generally of three types:
* Intrusive
o Dissociative states
o Flashbacks*
o Intrusive emotions and memories*
o Nightmares and night terrors
* Avoidant
o Avoiding emotions*
o Avoiding relationships*
o Avoiding responsibility for others*
o Avoiding situations that are reminiscent of the traumatic event
* Hyperarousal
o Exaggerated startle reaction*
o Explosive outbursts*
o Extreme vigilance*
o Irritability*
o Panic symptoms*
o Sleep disturbance*
it'd be a harsh generalization to say that koreans all experience these symptoms, but look at the ones i've starred... my students all seem to display these. walking on the streets here you encounter the three "avoidant" ones i ticked.
I AM OFFICIALLY TALKING OUT MY ASS here. i'm not qualified as a psychologist, anthropologist or critic. just a casual observation.
i'm listening to two records exclusively these days.
one: mission of burma-the rykodisc collection. a great band i never bothered to seek out; now i'm transfixed by them.
two: bruce cockburn - speechless.
despite the fact that he put out some STINKY shit in the 80s that got even stinkier when the barenaked retards covered it - bruce cockburn is a ninja on the guitar. this album is just him and a guitar or a dobro and sometimes a clarinet. he slays. it's ridiculous.
i, on the other hand, do not slay. in fact, when playing bruce cockburn songs, i destroy them. here's proof:
