Angela E J Koh » Fulfillment

The Extent To Which One May Reap

angelaejkoh — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:35:30 +0000

New York City

“It’s not enough,” was the first thing that came to mind. Half-year into 2011 and by luck, I’ve had the opportunity to work with: The Orange County Register, WongFu/afterschoolspecial, Gulf Stream/Entasis/TriQuarterly publications, over 10k twitter followers, first tattoo piece, Columbia MFA acceptance, Steppie/MaryLenore with Sylvia G Photography, comics site Critiques4Geeks, trek in Guatemala, and see the polished 7th chapter of my novel draft. I owed it to the goodness of my colleagues – for allowing me to dip into their projects, for assisting me with mine. Despite my gratitude (and to that of my body, harboring unknown energy for pursuit), I sat cross-legged on a patio chair in the garage and thought, all the things combined was not enough.

Guatemala (that’s me!)

The works didn’t satisfy my conception of accomplishment. I understood that I had yet to cement my existence. In other words, in my absence, there would be no greater or lesser number of people affected by my acts or my person. I wasn’t a part of a fundamental ideal – simply, I wasn’t doing enough. I had certainly enjoyed my last half-year, but I needed to yield more somehow. Hearing the humdrum of the garage-dryer and the last of my pillow cases tossing in the tin bin, I thought I sounded impatient. Impatient to be where I couldn’t be certain that I’ll go. Impatient to know the extent to which one can reap from this life. The last thought I had, peering into my brimming laundry basket, was that I could double, triple my output – and that I would have to.

South Korea

If You’re On The Same Page

angelaejkoh — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:09:00 +0000

Something very common I assume. My expectations were simply not met. Growing up, and seeing what the big world could be for me (and the other way around) is not much. I think, I thought I was special, and maybe I would have a unique ability to save the world and die for love and leave great children behind. That there was always a ‘good guy’ or a ‘direct and pure, shining goal’ to work towards. And in this, I am very helpless. I console myself by going back to when I simply didn’t know what I wanted to do. When I was ‘kind of good’ at everything. Before I felt life was an RPG game, and the winner just needed to spike their abilities to the extremes (like Vegeta). Use the set institutions and resources around me as tools to further myself. But now I stare into the screen with such a resolute and predictable future and income, I’ve become a small screw in the clockwork (take it as you will). Had I not been in control this whole time.

How unnatural of this world to take the human expectation (to evolve in love in mind through faith, hope, and charity, instilled into the soul before even birth), and have this expectation driven into the deep recesses, to be cast off like child’s play, calling it immaturity, and reificating the experience into “growing up.”

I look at my life lines and think, is it okay to be such a jealous, overzealous, analytical, critical person. And how long does one live, thinking this way (too long)? But I won’t stop, see I can’t because I still am helplessly that child looking for a goal but. There is no stop or rest or breathe or sleep or walk or lean. Because there are promises I made to the people I love, and at least to them, I could be a woman of my word, if not much else.

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.