Angela E J Koh » Affliction as Currency

It’s not considered “exchanging” unless you break your heart for it

angelaejkoh — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:33:26 +0000

ph. by me

I don’t think I’ve asked for much in exchange for my shot at writing. When I came to terms with this ability, I found how to translate the world around me in a way I could understand and love. Cold as it may sound, I’d readily sacrifice the means to indulge myself or to dine on weekends for the time to jot down a piece. I’d give up a number of acquaintances and the carefree lifestyle with night plans. In return, I’d adopt decades of senseless, wage-less work and faltering support. In this quaint city, I thought I could give up about anything because nothing was held too dear in the first place.

My mother and father, both from Seoul will return to California this year, 2011. If you’ve glanced through my blog, it’s been seven years since I’ve been waiting to reunite with them. This distance between us has been the source of much of my writing/poetry. All of a sudden, it came to me while applying to graduate programs in the east coast: I’d be asked to willingly choose between my craft and my family. I’d have to decide between further researching poetry or being with my family after 7 years of separation. This was the very thing I’d feared the most. I don’t have to go, I tell myself frequently between post-office visits, or better yet, I won’t get accepted anywhere. I asked for very little in exchange for writing, but I’d forgotten something so important. It’s not considered exchanging unless you break your heart for it.

What Eating Really Means

angelaejkoh — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:38:24 +0000

It’s still Wednesday night. I stare at the canned tuna and the Mayo bottle while the Het-Bahn rice cooks in the microwave. In a house of maggots and moths, I rarely find issue. All my food is preserved, tin-packed and I eat them Monday through Friday, the trash filling with cracked lids. It never occurred to me that this is why I vehemently insist on having “my choice” on the weekends.

Last Saturday, I looked for Fettuccine Alfredo, not the good kind. I wanted the bland, over-sauced one from Chili’s. It had to be just that–not Olive Garden, not Maggiano’s because I’d thought about it so carefully between Ramen packets and Poptarts. I imagined sitting-in like a customer on the red stool and polished bar. It meant I got to eat something because I’d earned it. Just a taste of a little more than what I have now meant I could see above this can-opener. Maybe if I keep that in sight, I’ll reach the weekdays I could have everything.

It Must Have Felt Heroic

angelaejkoh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Sounds like stretched cables, a ringing tucked in my ear flap.

I’m moved by need, it takes me from this day to the next. Like money, I think, how much I’d like to shower my parents with it and say, I’ll take over from here. Hearing them leave that for this, their wet cheeks pressed to my face. I carry them on my back and sometimes it gets so heavy, my ears start ringing. This amour of affliction and pressure made me feel strong. It must have felt heroic to sacrifice my time, my slow and easy.

But I was nervous. My peers might see how blood-lust sacrifice, an absolute neglect of their person could manifest real potential. Into individual passion and ability they’ll use to pass me up, wasting no time for safety nets or maybe’s. That they’ll find I’m not a smart girl (brother got those genes), but a poor competitor. That I got as far as I did because I lost a sense of self. That no burden outweighs that on my back.

Now, I was thrown a keyboard like a lotto ticket. It seems the world of lotto tickets makes passion and ability fruitless. I could only let my knees buckle and hold. Waiting for something

Whether it be better in sorrow than comfort

angelaejkoh — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:02:00 +0000

I’m afraid to admit that I’m settling into a kind of uninterrupted contentment. It might affect my creative craft. It’s too difficult to sit down and write when everything smells and tastes so good. But that’s how it is right now. I wake and stare into the bent panels of my window, the morning shine seeping into the room. My nose rubs against the cool linen and my hands stay still at my sides, admiring. The air looks so alive.

But it’s dissatisfying. I find myself looking for some modern day flagellation. Maybe calling my mother to make her cry. Or memorizing my 23 e-mails of rejection. Because with every arriving good will and fortune, I wince a bit inside. Almost like I’m waiting to be hit with a bamboo spine or the window shutter stick. Since nothing’s free. Even now, I flip through my life and see all that I owe, grief I must look forward to. If this is the outcome of my time line, at least it proves life is just. At least it puts a judicious soul at ease. Though I frequently count my blessings in front of the microwave, I want them to stop. I’d rather pay my impending distress now when I feel stronger than I’m used to. I don’t know if I could handle it with grace should it come any later.

I picked up sketching last week, seems like I enjoy cathedrals and ships

A Brief Sketch

angelaejkoh — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:45:00 +0000

Often, I wonder if my youthful pleas to become a savant of letters had been a Faustian bargain in disguise. There is no room for a fall-back plan and so my frenzied passions have been aimed towards becoming a novelist and a poet my whole life. In this desperation, I’ve been jousting my way into scholarly academia with the discipline of a Buddhist monk. My childhood was filled with Korean, Japanese, and English, learning to engrave and accept paradoxes between cultures and language in my soft mind. I would hear music and rhapsody in my nightly dreams, filling my days with soulful poetry of diverse language and meaning. I had my family fluff me up with mystifications of swan heroines and poke me with lessons of bloody endings and mass seppuku suicides. In this, I became elated with stories and the intricacy of imagination woven into truth. I left for Japan to the Shinanomachi Inter-cultural School to learn the art of the Meiji I-novel and fell in love with Soseki’s Kokoro and Dazai’s No Longer Human. I would read about self-aggrandizing isolation through stories and absorb the Japanese appreciation for the simplicity of Tanka, Katauta and Haiku poetry. I decided when I was sixteen that fiction-writing and poetry is a never ending process of learning rather than knowing. Since then, I have been unable to control this insatiable thirst to grow alongside accomplished writers in the field of both fiction and poetry. As the Faustian bargain has been sealed, my thirst has been unquenchable. I am qualified because I am a misfit in a state of perpetual madness. I am obsessed with fiction and poetry like Vladimir Nobokov’s Humbert Humbert is with his Lolita. I am qualified because I do not sleep, I do not believe in “Plan B,” and everyday I write until my nails crackle and splinter into my fingertips.