Angela E J Koh » Love

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.

From My Sketchbook

angelaejkoh — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:54:47 +0000

On Brothers

angelaejkoh — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:17:54 +0000

If there was an alliance or a freebie card that God slipped into my hands before birth–it’d be an older brother. I didn’t recognize this until there was nothing left, only this card. I’m having some trouble here. You see, I scarcely talk about my brother. And for those who have one, who are one, would find this reasonable.

No matter how much we age, he’d lived more than me in the most similar circumstances (environmentally, biologically). To me, his word was final not because he was exceptionally loud, but because his word conveyed the world I’d face. He walked, broke his bones before I did. So there was always something to learn and be afraid of. Though he was particularly cruel with his bullying antics in my childhood, I think I was scared for other reasons. I believed he had a right to despise me. My parents reminded, “he’s had it worse” and even he must feel—he was a child faulted for being one and had thus grown to be an adult prematurely.

The whole way, I’d felt sorry for myself watching him (things I’d have to endure but never came). Like a worn broom he cleared my footpath. By the time it was my turn, I had little to bear. Evidently, I had had a childhood at all. When my parents blanked, lost me in a wonder park, it was my brother to find me huddled by the cobblestone street. I realized it’s not him that scares me. It’s what I imagine: a boy having to find his own way back to his lost parents. And most selfishly, what I would’ve done without that boy having suffered so.

Does It Pay To Be Strong

angelaejkoh — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:05:00 +0000

I see hope as a rare plane of sheen that wears over time from mistrust and abandonment. Maybe each layer becomes roughed up with pride and strength to withstand socioemotional distractions. It’s a disenchanting process to withdraw yourself from reach this way. I think it makes you readied to sever a bond, a laugh in the backseat of a car, a pinky-promise behind a dumpster wall when necessary. This kind of strong becomes a new solution to resist the possibility of failure (insert your fears here). And failure is always a good enough reason to make the people and experiences around you dispensable.

It’s true, the resilient and brutal scarcely have the strength to hope. It’s brought me to a secure and busy place in my life at the price of bitter detachment. Should my expectations rise so that no person could fill them, not even myself, I would become distant and elusive from everything. Maybe even ephemeral and disconnected to this world and I would find some peace in it. It was two years ago in some run-down bar, three hours south of Seoul. The old man said, It’s just too difficult to love a strong woman, and even more difficult to see if it’s worth it. And if you could see his eyes wringing with loss and his age creasing dark brackets around his mouth. You would believe him too.