I was bitten by a mosquito there that still itches, and while writing this, I’ve gained a sliver of vengeance against the species by killing one here in McDonalds.

After the temple, we walked back and Yuji introduced me to Orange jelly Fanta from one of the many vending machines found everywhere.  I was instantly turned on.  This, not only fizzy but also jelly, drink is the drink of the gods.  Well, at least the gods of ‘What the???’

Once we got back to the house, we picked up Marie and headed back out to Little Bear, a little pastry shop that I highly recommend.  The people who run it are sweeter than the pastries that they serve.  We brought the pastries to a historical house and spent several houses chitchatting until some children came to entertain us with cat’s cradle and Chinese chess.

Around noon, realising that we’d been sucked into the peacefulness, we escaped to meet Laura and Caesar, one of which was Yuji’s friend, at Harijuku Station.  We went for Gyoza, then around a park.  Laura and Caesar left us there for a while until Laura returned.  We then went to the temple, and then wandered around the alleys. I’ll come back to Japan simply to walk around these alleys again.

www.knigel.com

I’m not hungry myself.  My hunger has been dissipating.  Dissipating as I’ve felt myself dissipating.  I seem to get lost in the crowds of people.  I don’t really know my exact identity any more.  Now, when I look around, people pretend I don’t exist.  It is near impossible to make eye contact with people.  I expected this situation; however, while I logically know, I still feel emotionally jarred.

The one thing that does give me identity is money.  When I spend money, I get polite attention.  I almost want to spend money to get the overwhelmingly cute voices of Japanese girls to speak.  I’ve heard Japanese girls speak on television and in person before; however, the experience of actually being in Japan and hearing some of these voices–in particular the Japanese girl who served my pastries this morning–is completely astounding.  I didn’t know anything could be so cute.  The cuteness seems so contrived, yet at the same time so natural.

Cute Japanese girls, we will get to that later.  For now, let me say that there is much more to Japan than cute Japanese girls. Later I will also discuss foreigners who come to Asia with little respect for culture.

www.knigel.com

I had needed something to jolt my life awake, and Japan was that triple shot espresso that did it.  After just finishing my exams, being in a dull school daze, a zombie seeking brains, I needed something to nudge me out of my comfort zone – I was flung.

Mi Ok and my mother, both of them kind enough to wake up early, saw me off to Japan.  Even though I do hate good-byes, I appreciate having them in my life.  I don’t want to miss anything back in Vancouver; however, thoughts of my family and friends warm me up.

The flight was uncomfortable, long, and completely awesome.  Having the window seat, I had difficulty getting my laptop and book containing bag or making an easy escape to the bathroom of which I needed much more often than I wished to advertise due to stomach problems undoubtedly caused by stress and an early morning; however, the view was amazing and not something pictures could ever really communicate.  The movies were horrible except one with a cyborg girlfriend.  Needless to say, I was jealous of the boyfriend.  Where’s my cyborg girlfriend?

When I landed, I was confused and lost while my right ear was nearly deaf.  It felt like half of my head was under water.  I had an ear infection of which was incredibly worsened by sitting beside the wing engine as well as pressurisation and depressurisation.  This made communication, which is inherently difficult in a differently speaking country, rather discombobulating.  Luckily I’d befriended another lost gentleman from Main who was heading into Japan as a teacher.  We teamed up to find our way through the maze.

Once I had gotten my bag and myself through customs, I stored my bag in storage and wandered around lost – completely lost.  I only theoretically knew where I was going to stay.  Having wanted to mix up my life a little bit, I chose a more adventurous plan of action; instead of booking in a hotel or even a hostel, I found a stranger on www.couchsurfers.com and printed out great, yet still vague, instructions to his house.  The instructions actually looked fairly easy; however, it was the small things that caused the most confusion – such as how to get a ticket or even where to get the ticket or the even bigger issue of which train to catch.

Mostly by fluke, and learning a bit more of how easy it is to get lost on Japan’s rail system, I found the right station which is actually way on the other side of the map from Narita.  After I left the station, making it over 24 hours of being awake, I tried to follow the map of which even had pictures with arrows, yet I got lost over and over again.  I was too stubborn to call a taxi.  I wanted the adventure.
Wanting adventure and the fact that the host, Yuji, gave instructions to call him after 11:00 pm when he got off work, I had too long to wait, and I tried to wait; however, while wandering back and forth shaking my head from the station and some new direction I gained my first experience of a Japanese lightning storm – beautiful and wet.

Giving up, and risking a faux pas misdemeanour, I decided to take a taxi to Yuji’s house with the hopes that someone might be there to take pity and let me through the door.

Marie, a Swedish girl, let me inside Yuji’s house once I got there.  She had arrived one day before me and she hadn’t met Yuji either.  Some other couch surfers let her in as she had done me.

Marie was planning for the next day, and I mustered the wakefulness to talk to her a while and help plan.  We decided to team up for our adventure.  She circled many things on her map – all over the map – there were too many things to do and one week was not near enough.  My exhaustion wouldn’t let me stay up for much longer so I took a shower and went to tsami.  I sunk into unconsciousness, yet a thud against the door dragged me up – Yuji was home.

It is a strange, not to mention completely without social script, to wake up in a strange house in a strange land to let in the owner of the house of which I had locked him out accidentally.

“Um, hello, I’m Knigel.  I, um, arrived early because of the rain.  We spoke by email.”

“Who are you?”

“Ummmm, Knigel.  Knigel Holmes.  I got your instructions to come here; however, I came here early and Marie let me in.”

“Yes, I come home often with new couch surfers in my home.”

For Yuji, this was a common situation.  For myself, it was completely bizarre.  I sat down with him and Marie before I went to bed again.  He told me about his experiment.  He was creating a self-sufficient system.  Ideally couch surfers could come and go with very little asked of them.  Surfers would only need to pay 900 Yen for each night, clean up after themselves, and spend 15 minutes each day cleaning up the place.  Compared to Tokyo’s expensive accommodations, one of the most expensive in the world, this was an excellent deal.  Apparently, however, many people don’t put in their fair share.  Sometimes people would steal money from the jar of “donations” or not clean up.  People left it up to others to do everything.  If the money jar looks full, and no one is keeping track, it is easy to get oneself forgotten.  When asked, Yuji said he didn’t care, as it wasn’t about the money.  Something told me that he did care quite a bit.  I made sure I paid 1000 yen and cleaned each day.  Marie and my own name were the only ones on the cleaning sheet out of the many people who stayed there.  I hope that Yuji continues to gain benefit from his experiment.

www.knigel.com

My emotions were, however, immune to the downward pull of the overbearing grey.  My eyes saw, yet my feeling blind.  My optimism of Korea shone through the grey like a crepuscular ray.

Behind the grey, I could see that even Vancouver was being destroyed to go through recreation.  Construction was everywhere, and to this day on every block, ever second building or street, there are families of cranes tearing down and pulling up the cement, plaster, and glass skin to add to the skeleton behemoths that will soon be the multitudes of buildings for the Olympics.  These cranes—these surgeons—are giving Vancouver a facelift.  I am going through the same ordeal; however, I hope my destruction and rebirth is much deeper.  More devastating.  More altering.  I do have an Olympian goal in mind; however, my blueprints are from Mt. Olympus itself and they will be followed even if they bring me—a coin over each eye—across the River Styx.

During the last three months trudging through three English courses while trying to keep enough energy to be a dancing monkey for my students, I’ve neglected to get a haircut or answer my emails until very recently because at the same time I’ve been jumping through flaming hoops to get across the invisible, yet very tangible boundaries between Vancouver and Asia.

My passport was ten years expired.  And getting a new one was step one.  Instead of digging into the wisdom of the Internet, I decided to be lazy and go to a small passport photographer in Harbour Centre that I had remembered seeing from before my adventure into Cuba.  I went into the photograph-cluttered shop only to be ignored at first until a startled elderly Chinese woman peered up from behind the counter.
“No English, no English, no English,” she said, “later come.  Later thirty minutes.  Son come.  Thirty minutes.  Yes, thirty minutes. Son come.  Son come.”  I waited out in the food court watching the store for the son to come while reading the wife of Bath’s own liminal pilgrimage.  I read and waited for an hour.  No son came.

The following weekend I decided to give them a second chance.  Luckily I got my photo taken and later that afternoon, I filled out the rest of my passport application before I sent it off.  Impatiently, I waited.  I couldn’t get my visa and didn’t want to risk buying my airplane ticket before I got my passport.  Stupidly I sent my original BCID leaving my without government photo ID, the kind of ID needed for restaurants and liquor stores.

After about a month of stressed out waiting with my departure date looming, and not knowing how long it usually takes to get a visa, I got my mail from the passport office.  Finally.  I ripped it open, and emptied everything onto my desk—including the rejection letter.  Apparently I hadn’t noticed that I was supposed to write the name of the photographer, the address, and the date of which the photo was taken.  All returned for such a small detail.  Such a stupidly small detail.  The passport process has changed a lot since I applied for my last one to Cuba.  I hastily—two days later—wrote down the information and sent it off again.

I took the risk of buying my flight ticket before my passport came because I’d been told that fewer and fewer tickets were available due to peak season.  It seems I paid higher for my panic, and instead of going straight to Korea, I’ll go through Japan.  After about three weeks from sending my passport application, I received my Soon Chun Hyang University admission letter of which was also delayed followed one week later by my nice new shiny passport.  The next day I took my passport and admission letter to the Korean embassy.

My lovely friend Mi Ok came with me.  She was kind enough to translate between myself and the bitterly unsmiling 아줌마, or ‘ajumma’; Korean for middle-aged married woman.  My previous worries were for nought as one week later I received my visa.

Mi Ok has been my foil, or I hers in her own narrative.  She’s also in a liminal state here in Vancouver.  So many choices are open to her, and she’s not sure of which to endeavour.  She’s been a great friend who has helped me with everything, and she’ll be one of the people I’ll miss most when I’m abroad.  People of her generosity are rare.  When I look at her, I feel a mirror of liminality.  It feels as if we are in much of the same situations, yet in many ways reversed.  Her deliquescent life decisions are paralysing her while my Vancouver life is dissipating deliquescently.

www.knigel.com

Metaphor itself is liminal.

In this hypnagogic dream, I’ve become a sketchily drawn character—with little of its prior definition.  I’ve curled inward, an involuting flower ending its day.  I’ve become obdurately absorbed in my studies, my work, and my travel preparation.  I feel as if I were betwixt and between awake and sleep, that state of suddenly falling down, until jerking awake in surprise with heart pounding.  My neglect has wafted away my old friends while my guilt has kept me from the new ones–if I’ll be abandoning them; it’s unfair baiting people into depth instead of leaving them in safe shallowness.  I’ve been cutting my connexions as one prunes roses to make way for the new buds.

I’ve already snipped my Internet leaving me a connexion-searching nomad.  I’ll need a converter not only for my prong, but also for all of my communication.   Teaching English for the last few years, I’ve learned how to read and speak between the lines of body language and awkward mumbles; however, soon my position will be reversed with my students and I’ll be the stranger in a strange land.  I’ll get that look when I’ve asked strangers to repeat themselves one more time.  It’s the look that makes one feel ever so ashamed and uncomfortable for not knowing the same language.  I’ll try to communicate the language between the binary 1 and 0.  I’ll be describing the realm between where one song track ends and the next begins.  I’ll be trapped while moving in an overlap and absence.

Communicating between languages and cultures is the challenge of which I must accept.  Teaching English in a global world leaves me feeling arrogant.  While I teach English, I do not want English superimposed over all other languages; therefore, my mission–a long time mission–has been to travel and to learn more of various cultures and languages.  This vague awareness that I’d be leaving sometime, sometime in the undefined future, has given way to the full-blown realisation that I’m about to be seated on a 12-hour flight leaving behind everything.

I’ve just moved into my Vancouver West End apartment seven months ago—not fully being unpacked, due to studying, for three months—and here I am, packing it all up again.  I’ve a dearth of memories to pack away, yet being fraught with insomnia–while I fought with Bedcetera to send me the falsely advertised futon that I’d paid for yet never received–is hardly out of my mind.  Already, I need to sell off or store my Ikea futon that I’d bought with the refund.  Here I am again, packing away some of my life, and tossing the rest.  My life here is evaporating.  Again.  Déjà vu: another liminality.

“I’d often referred to myself as homeless,” says Pico Iyer, a third culture kid, as he seemingly writes from my own thoughts in his book ‘The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home’.  Like Iyer, I’ve felt as if I were in a constant state of transition since my youth.  I’ve moved countless times through my youthful years of angst infused with carpe diem until I found myself in Cuba only to come back continuing the trend of transience.  My life in Vancouver has always felt evanescent and more recently, for a while now, I’d been restless and scheming my way to Korea.  Through Langara’s Korean exchange program, the way I found.

My associate in synchronicity hacking and one of my closest friends, Aurora, knew of my mission to Korea and pointed out the obfuscated program.  Soon after I shot off an email to set up a meeting with Mike Allen, the coordinator, only to have the message stranded in oblivion of an inbox on vacation.  I put it out of my mind.

I almost gave up.

Yes, I almost gave up.

Almost.

Little voices finally nagged me enough to send off another email, and before I knew it, I was sitting in an interview being barraged with questions.  That very night I received a congratulatory letter from Mike.  I couldn’t have been happier, or more stressed out.  My dream was becoming reality, and this is most frightening, dreams are easy when they are mere dreams.  I was at one of those intersecting crossroads of life.

Folkloric crossroads seethe with liminality.  When I think of crossroads, I can’t help but to think of Robert Johnson’s lamenting “Crossroad Blues“   of which a blues man sells his soul in trade for becoming a famous blues musician to the Devil at the crossroads.  Crossroads are the places between worlds; neither here nor there, places to meet the dead, bury criminals, or flirt with Hecate.  All in all, crossroads are places of indecision, a place of too many decisions with serious ramifications.  I made my choice at the crossroads, and I’ve enough chutzpah to be confident with my choice; when I meet the Devil, I will win the golden fiddle just as in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” initially by Charlie Daniels Band; however I’d recommend Primus’s stop motion version.

I happened upon so many different crossroads in the months before August 2008 and they, like the veins on a Chinese maple leaf found in Vancouver, have only brought me to the next that lead to the ones after.  This apparently, is life.

www.knigel.com

OLDBOY

A film introduction light on the spoilers with following questions about film violence

by: Knigel Holmes

i@knigel.com

“Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same.”

Oldboy ( 올드보이 ), Park Chan-wook’s 2003 South Korean film based on the Japanese manga, is the middle child of The Vengeance Trilogy.  Our anti-hero, Oh Dae-Su, drunkenly rampages around a small police station acting like an pugnacious fool.  Park attempts to make it difficult for the viewer to sympathise with the obnoxious Dae-Su. 

Dae-Su is soon after kidnapped from behind his friend’s back leaving a pair of angel wings meant for Dae-Su’s daughter.  Dae-Su finds himself locked in an ominous hotel room for 15 years with no idea why he’s been brought there and no contact to the outside world besides a single television. 

Realising that he must have irked the wrong person, Dae-Su begins a book of names that he may have angered enough to become vengeful.  He fills an entire book with names.

During his complimentary stay in the hotel, between hallucinations, attempting suicide, and masturbating to the television, the television that informs him that his wife has been murdered, Dae-Su spends his time on self-improvement by shadowboxing, punching an outlined man on the wall, and giving himself tattoos.

Once released, Dae-Su becomes bent on solving the mystery of why he had been imprisoned while his kidnapper taunts and plays sick games on him.  The mysterious kidnapper becomes Dae-Su’s benefactor on more than one occasion and watches over Dae-Su like a guardian angel.  Dae-Su’s nemesis toys with him and gives him clues to help him solve the intrigue.  Dae-Su’s foil wants to be caught.

Through the movie, there are extreme depictions of violence and gore as Dae-su struggles with the snowball effect of one thoughtless deed.  There are many gratuitous fight scenes with one that took over seventeen takes and three days to film.  There are torture scenes of teeth getting ripped out by a hammer.  There are scenes of suicide attempts.  And there are the most monstrous scenes of an innocent octopuses getting eaten alive (something that would not be acceptable in Canadian films due to animal protection laws).

While Park’s trilogy of vengeance criticises revenge, Park is criticised for seemingly advocating revenge through glamorisation; however, Park refutes this claim on many levels.  Park states that “living without hate for people is almost impossible. There is nothing wrong with fantasizing about revenge. You can have that feeling. You just shouldn’t act on it”.  According to Park, not only is there nothing wrong with fantasizing about revenge, but also depicting revenge in films may help to diminish it.  Park says, “In my films, I focus on pain and fear. The fear just before an act of violence and the pain after. This applies to the perpetrators as well as the victims”. 

This same strategy has been used for ages now as can be seen in Senecan tragedy or Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Russell Roberts, the director of Vancouver, Canada’s Bard on the Beach play, Titus Andronicus, defends his choice of not using “arty-farty” red ribbons instead of abundant fake blood:

“We’re very inhuman, we human beings. I mean, look what’s happening in Afghanistan, in Baghdad, in Somalia. It has happened since day one. This is no more violent or horrible than what’s going on around the globe right now. Titus has been catalogued as a problem play, but I think that the problem—if there’s a problem—is that we don’t like to have that mirror put up to us.”

Like the earlier tragedy plays and their remakes, Park uses extremes to get his message across.  Park says,

“Basically, I’m throwing out the question ‘When is such violence justified?’ To get that question to touch the audience physically and directly - that’s what my goal is. In the experience of watching my film, I don’t want the viewer to stop at the mental or the intellectual. I want them to feel my work physically.” 

Using violence in drama certainly does reach people on a deeper level.  In one of his most dramatic scenes, Dae-Su warns against taking revenge.  He warns, “revenge is good for your health, but pain will find you again”.  This statement reflects Park’s philosophy:

“When a hero decides to take revenge, their hitherto tedious life is ended and they are born again as a completely different person. With the completion of revenge in sight, the hero has to face the fact that their pleasure up until that point must come to an end”.

Nemesis conflict serves the function of dramatising the plot of revenge and a nemesis in revenge plays, which Oldboy draws much of its inspiration from, shows that everyone gets harmed.  Even the ones we love dearest and who aren’t involved in the crime.

Lastly, when asked about the theme of vengeance in his films, Park responded:

 “With the development of civilization and the rise in education levels, people have had to hide their rage, hate and grudges deep within them. But this does not mean that these emotions go away. As relationships become more and more intricate, the rage only grows more and more. While modern society is burdening the individual with a growing sense of rage, the outlets through which people can release their rage are becoming narrower. This is an unhealthy situation, and it’s probably why art exists. In reality, however, the vengeances represented in my movies are not actual vengeances. They are merely the transferring of a guilty conscience. My films are stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves. Therefore, rather than movies purporting to be of revenge, it would be more accurate to see my films as ones stressing morality, with guilty consciences as the core subject matter. The constantly recurring theme is the guilty conscience. Because they are always conscious of and obsessed with their wrongdoings, which are committed because they are inherently unavoidable in life, my characters are fundamentally good people. The fact that people have to resort to another type of violence in order to subjugate their initial guilty consciences is the most basic quality of tragedy characteristic in my movies thus far.”

Certainly one thing Park has done with Oldboy is open a box so that violence in films may be discussed.  Some questions that could be asked are:

Is violence necessary in films?

Why do so many people enjoy violence in film?

Can violence be used in film to reduce violence in the real world?

Is it wrong for violence to be used in films?

Is violence in film justified if it has a underlying purpose or message?

Is it wrong for violence to be glorified?

Is violence fashionable?

How realistic should violence be? 

Should violence in films be censored?

Should the government be involved in screening films?

Who should be the censors?

Which does Korea censor more: Violence or Sex?  Why?

Does violence in films affect children?  How about adults?

Which should be censored first: sex or violence or…?

Are people responsible enough for violent films?

Should producers be held accountable for pushing cultural boundaries?

Is violence in film and/or the real world getting better or worse?

www.knigel.com

Winter Camp 2009 Animation

You may download it from here:

The Phoenix of Liminality: A South Korean Rebirth

“Yesterday I had a craving to see Full Metal Jacket, so I watched Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s opening speech online” said Evan, my university mate, co-worker, and psytrance cohort.

“Um, I haven’t seen it.”  I said shamefully and then quickly tried to change the topic into culturally significant movies that I had indeed seen.  Like many people who have seen many movies and have a taste for more than just the usual fast food of movies, I feel culturally inferior when I haven’t seen a significant classic.  I have to admit that Charlie Chaplain Charlie Chaplin is one of my all time heroes, yet not only did I just misspell his name, but I’ve also seen less than 50% of his movies.  Pretty pathetic yeah?

Well, at least I can consider myself one movie less of a cultural dolt now that I sacrificed a bit of sleep to watch Full Metal Jacket through the early A.M. hours.

Have you seen Full Metal Jacket?

If so, then I don’t need to tell you about it; however, if you haven’t seen it I am in my full right to look down upon your nescience.  Really, how could you not have seen this movie already?  Okay, okay, I’ll be like the rich who give a measly bit of change to beggars for that feel good feeling.  I’ll be your benefactor of knowledge.  Simply, Full Metal Jacket is about the gruelling plight of soldiers embedded in the failed Vietnam War.  I didn’t say I’d give a lot did I?

In Full Metal Jacket, the witty protagonist Private Joker tosses words with a colonel:

Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armour?

Private Joker: A peace symbol, sir.

Colonel: Where’d you get it?

Private Joker: I don’t remember, sir.

Colonel: What is that you’ve got written on your helmet?

Private Joker: “Born to Kill”, sir.

Colonel: You write “Born to Kill” on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?

Private Joker: No, sir.

Colonel: You’d better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you.

Private Joker: Yes, sir.

Colonel: Now answer my question or you’ll be standing tall before the man.

Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.

Colonel: The what?

Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.

Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?

Private Joker: Our side, sir.

Colonel: Don’t you love your country?

Private Joker: Yes, sir.

Colonel: Then how about getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?

Private Joker: Yes, sir.

Colonel: Son, all I’ve ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It’s a hardball world, son. We’ve gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over.

Private Joker: Aye-aye, sir.

This discussion highlights the difficulty of simplifying the choice of what side to be on.  Being a Canadian raised with an anti-war communist mother, I have a strong disposition against war.  I have trouble siding with people who go to war; however, I understand that there may be times when fighting is necessary for survival.  In Canada, it is easy to be opinionated against war and also quite easy to verbally criticise aggressor nations such as the United States of America.

I’ve never before felt that I had to be tolerant of countries such as the U.S. who have continuously repeated the pattern of violence against others.  Watching Full Metal Jacket, it is too easy to see the similarities with the current “freedom fighting” and “peace keeping” happening in Iraq.

I’ve had an easier time in the past being against the American military as well as Canada’s involvement with them.  That was, however, in Canada.  Now, I am in South Korea, going to Soon Chun Hyang University.  I live in what is called Global Village.  Here, people from all around the world surround me.  I am the only Canadian.  The majority of native English speakers are from the U.S.  With so many people from the U.S., it can be very tricky being critical of their country even though their country influences so much of the world. 

I can see that people from the U.S. that live in Global Village may need to be more than a little defensive.  There is a lot of pressure from the rest of the international world due to not only recent actions, but also an ongoing military and economic influence.  Even the term “American” can’t be used easily around here since technically “American” means more than just someone from the U.S.  We have many people from all over the Americas that take issue with the term “American” to be used synonymously with the U.S.

Although I’m from the Americas myself, I somewhat irrationally get upset if someone asks if I’m American.  I really want to distance myself from being associated with that name.  I’d wear a Canadian flag on my sleeve; however, U.S.ers do that too.  Being from Canada, a country of which sees more of U.S. culture than it sees of us, and having already studied quite a bit about U.S, psychology, sociology, history, and more, I’ve become one of the most critical of their system even though a large part of my family lives or had lived there. 

Since I am one of the most critical of the U.S. system in our cultural exchange program, I can certainly rub some people the wrong way.  I’ve been learning that I have to be more careful, and learn new ways of discussing global issues.  It’s become quite a bit more difficult.  While I have no problem criticising Canada, and listening to criticism, many people from the U.S. take criticism of their country as insults against their own families. 

Honestly, I’ve previously had little experience with U.S. soldiers; however, there’ve been a few here.  Now I’m forced to deal with certain issues face to face.  Even though I may at times be pretty certain of the correctness of what I say, I have to take other people’s strong emotions into consideration. 

More importantly, however, is that I have to question my previous knowledge and myself.  While I feel that U.S. soldiers have been indoctrinated with things like illogical patriotism, I have to remember that I myself have been indoctrinated with certain ideas.  I know I have ideas that I’ve stopped questioning even though I accepted them when I had less ability to really think about them.

There is such a fine line between confidence and stubbornness that I’m struggling with.  Sometimes it is too easy to be blind to when one should get over themselves, shut up, and listen to not only what people are saying, but also trying to see what is behind what they are saying.  Even when I am dealing with an ideological polar opposite, I have to see where we are similar. I have to see where we can connect.  I may disagree with many things that they do, and it might be difficult for me to understand what they do; however, I need to be patient as well is analytical.  I really need to remember what my mother taught me: “start from where you agree instead of where you disagree”. 

I also have to remember that I am also a patriot of every country.  I hope to see the world evolve into a world without borders that still respects cultural diversity.  I may disagree with certain actions, politics, people within that country, or institutions that hold power; however, I wish to build solidarity with people from all over so that we can all teach and learn from each other. 

I really must remember that I am as much of a patriot as a native or resident because I love all countries and I’m willing to support them as if they are my own.  They are equally my responsibility as anyone else’s.  Borders, governments, and institutions are merely built by others in the area and do not necessarily reflect the interests or opinions of the people. 

Yes, we must remember not to judge a culture until we understand it, and at the same time know when to step in to help or stay out respectfully, yet building bridges to people all around the world is of the utmost importance.  I am a patriot because I want to help every country become successful.  We all affect each other; therefore, it is in my own best interest to help every country be the best that they can be.

These are some of the things that I have been and continue to learn through my experience here in South Korea.  I have been a frog in a well looking up with limited perspective, yet now I can see a little bit more.  I look forward to visiting your well or pond sometime in the future to see what it’s like.