Angela E J Koh » Family

It started out as a good day, New York

angelaejkoh — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:30:11 +0000

Sick with unknown dizziness, I waited after my night lecture for the city shuttle. I let the rain wash over me since an umbrella storefront was quite far. I held my books weighing as much as babies. One hour passed. Two hours. Then, I didn’t know. My phone had died in my hand.

So I ran a mile back. My door-face gave no greeting or welcome. I sloshed in and threw the books on the floor—they had torn my arms. I threw my shoes outside—their bottoms couldn’t grip wet cement and had sent me flying. In this manner, I blamed and hated everything. Even my new family and the few friends I had left behind. How could they let me leave—how could they believe my city conquests hadn’t stopped at Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco.

I grabbed a used saucepan and threw in Shin Ramen noodles, sink water, and an egg. Eggshells boiled up to the rim surface. I didn’t care to pick them out. I crouched in a lamp-less, couch-less room and chewed the shells that dug into my gums. In bed—hardly tears on my sheets, the Harlem lights roved over my cheek. They comforted me until I was near sleep. I thought, at least, I would pretend it had started out as a good day, New York.

Stealing Grandma

angelaejkoh — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:38:55 +0000

My grandma was born in Korea, raised in Japan so her name: Kumiko. Though, only I knew that. I gave her English lessons, and she made me paper fans or microwaved eel over rice. I slept over her house all the way to the 11th grade. She was my only family in the states, or so worth calling.

Something that stayed with me, unfortunately, was an incident at her funeral. One “family” member, with the backing of many others, accused me of not mourning enough for Grandma. It was a public accusation. I was nineteen. And from it, utter humiliation and ridicule haunted me for years, though the guiltless accuser likely forgot the incident in a minute’s time.

Yesterday, I visited my grandma’s gravesite at Gate of Heaven in Los Gatos. I kneeled in the grass and thought she had the nicest picture on the block. I now have an answer to that accuser (and fellows). I mourned in private because I was afraid. If anyone—even those who knew Grandma—got a glimpse of my pain, they would see into my relationship with Kimiko. They would see our jargon, our stories, and the way we were. I wasn’t ready to share that. At nineteen, bereft and in pieces, I wanted to keep her mine and only mine for a little longer. Even then, you took from me whatever composure I could barely muster.

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.

If Dad Could Speak

angelaejkoh — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:10:50 +0000

Two days ago, I finished my first novel. It took seven months to write, two years to draft. I’ll soon be launched into a bout of editors continuing the story of a mother-daughter relationship. But I remember the last page was the hardest. At the end, there was nothing I thought of more than my father. I missed thinking about him.

In one business meeting, he filled his notebook with Batman drawings. He inserted that Robin is for girls, not for men. When he dropped me off at the airport, he pointed towards the Incheon bridge, said it’s the top five longest in the world and if I could believe Koreans built that. I left him and every day that passes here, he gets older in his Pundang corner couch. His peaking temper lows into a subdued guilt. Now, he’d rather smile into the phone than yell. Like the story’s over. He’s already proud and has done what he’s supposed to, thinking he knows this life fits. I want to cover his gum and hide his teeth. There’s no proof that veins sparked with his blood could lift insignificance off his own time line. I remember why I couldn’t think of him. Someone hasten his speech, open his eyes. Keep him frenzied, alive.

Knew This Would Happen

angelaejkoh — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Just got back from visiting Mom and Dad in Korea. We drove to Busan where an octopus fell onto the snowy gravel in the fish market. Even stopped by Dae-jeon’s pig-blood restaurants with stew on sale for two. I was ready to come home. But my mom does this thing. On the flight back, I found napkins and breath mints in both of my jacket pockets. When I unpacked, there were vitamin bottles tucked between socks. I unwrapped my boots and they were stuffed with ginseng drinks. Like I need to be reminded of our distance as it grows.

In the empty apartment, everything I touch aches with me. The shivering cup or the cold counter. I wake when it’s dark outside–my clock still 15-hours fast from jet lag. It reminds me of the winter night in Seoul. Dad peaks in the snack cabinet and Mom closes it after him. Their life continues. But mine seems at a stand-still (least for the next few days). I can’t seem to get going. I keep waking up when the day’s over. Keep waking up in Korea.

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

Superhuman

angelaejkoh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:53:00 +0000

It’s an eight hour drive to Mokpo, the southern coast of Korea. The forest starts right at the yellow line at the edge of the paved road. The canopies make mountains that slope up and down–like giant, mossed elephants lying next to the freeway. It feels like I can run down their green trunks, jumping atop one head to the next. The crisp air pierced my pores and I could breathe again. But I didn’t know that I’d been suffocating. And these psycho-social images: money, career, family, time, an inability to provide. Unnatural fear and concern left me, carving off the inhibiting excess that held me back from being human. Not human to err, but to be surpassing with inexhaustible room for growth. And human capacity–innate consciousness over rocks, body over plants, mind and reason over animals.

I wanted the lush sight to sink into my bones, the feeling that I could bound over the mountain edge into the black space. I must have been in a snow globe when the top cracked open, a whole set of capabilities and vigor widening my mind. Like I hit “empty bin” to the trash I didn’t know that held me back physically, mentally, psychologically, socially from fitting dreams/goals into a worth life. Sometimes, there are grave mounds on the mountainside, the old generations that sleep with one eye open. I smiled out of ego. The past and their spirits, the precursor staring wearily at the future generation that drives by on bald tires. The feared world they must have left. I wanted to make them proud.

Revisiting Old Wounds

angelaejkoh — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:18:00 +0000

In the Seoul morning, when I look out the balcony, I see the clouds getting caught in the dense mountainside. If you blink, it almost looks like smoke escaping the treetops. Like the whole city’s on fire. About two years ago, I fell asleep in my parents’living room in Korea, on the hard floor with a pink quilt over my face. I had been visiting my distanced parents over the winter. When I awoke, the quilt looked so much like the one in my apartment. For agonizing minutes, I thought I was alone on my spring-less, flat bed in California. To the lone child still selfishly waiting, it felt worse than sitting backstage, watching parents hand their kids plastic roses and head home to real dinners. Worse than when I told a brown coffin why I couldn’t take my grandma to Ueno anymore. I felt the things I’d carefully buried.

I was so accustomed to this ‘alone’that I became good at it. When I’m surrounded by nothing but four plaster walls, everything’s the way it’s supposed to be and my life is continuing in a way I’d imagined. This was comfortable and all I knew how to handle. So when I wake to an Apple-Vinegar-Onion sandwich (the way I like) with mom’s real hand laying down a cup of warm milk next to me, I can’t breathe. Would I wake up in a meager room back in California. Could I then crawl into the garage as I did when I was too young, thinking about letters that should have read, “Eunji, we’re coming back to get you.” I don’t want to blink. I owe it to myself to try and enjoy being by my family’s side for the summer, however uncomfortable and nerve-wracking it makes me (however instinctively, I want to drive them away from me). Would I survive if I were to see my clouds turn into fire one more time.

angelaejkoh — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:49:00 +0000

Clean cotton pillows
Surround
Vacuum makes the mornings loud

I wrote this poem about my mom and the feeling I experience when the image of her comes to mind. Like Ezra Pound and the Imagist movement, I incorporated the sense of providing the direct presentation ensued by that precise moment in time. I added a little twist as the syllabic pattern in each line is unique to my mother. It follows her birthday (5-2-7). The poem physically embodies her to provide a more direct engagement between the reader and the image. I look back to middle school when I whined about how annoying it was to wake and hear the noise of the dishwasher, vacuum, etc. I later realized how she provided me the soft sheets, a home through this process. I came to reminisce often of these mornings. The noise, the nagging may seem so loud but how they really stem from the pure love, other than God, from the one person that thinks of you more than you.