a day in the life of piano monkey

i realize sometimes i have to walk away from the things that i decided to walk away from, i cant just sit there and stick it out. what does it accomplish anyways? it's always all or nothing- sure there are many things in between, but im talking specifically concerning one's active involvement in life. like a car, you either turn it on and go somewhere or turn it off and get out. no point to idle. unless you wanna burn gas. or annoy someone at the christmastide mall parking lot (gosh thoere are four words that should not create a unified image when put together but they do. ha ha) a committment is a committment and a decision is a decision. and neither of them will materialize unless one actually carries out the action to the next consequence. it's a bit of frightening idea to live with. thinking about something and forming an opinion isnt enough? all the little actions you take, they always make a dent on the larger tragectory of process. every angle changes the final desti...

the day approaches with no slowing down or speeding up- i will be en route to cross the big puddle called atlantic on saturday. over three weeks in the british soil. what i would be doing? detail wise i cant really tell you because i dont know yet! it seems be the common theme of my life really: no major plan, willing to ride. it wasnt always like this. for instance, when i was young, my parents pretty much stayed in one particular area of seoul and i knew of: home, school, after-school places such as arts program at this arts school thing and piano lesson place. piano lesson was a memorable thing. once a week, my granny took me and my brother across the town or something; the highlight of the trip would be the dinner-out on the road! on the midpoint. i even remember going through the 80s in south korea, which was stained heavily with blood of political protesters and riot police. the riot police roughly translates as 'combat-police.' and we would be crossing right across one o...

it's april. couple years ago in one april i was not doing so well. then couple years before that april, i was a wreck. a bit before that another april, that wasnt so good either. approaching the decade number three, it seems that things have been rather heavily patched and reworked. snapped cable, tied over a sailor's knot. put into work, because that is the only one that you have. i am alright this april. pensive. even happy most of the time. what were those things that cut through so badly? what did they feel like? i still see the shards of things, more like glimpses. on me, in me, around me, of me. i remember reading a short article as i was tying my shoes, on way out from the health center of the university, one of those times it was kinda tough, gritty: death of saul bellow. "A man is only as good as what he loves." ah bellow, you leave us with such hilarity. thinking about that quotation, my step was a bit lighter from that point. until i crossed the next bog. l...

there has been quarks of coming-of-a-decade sorts around monkey. lots of engagement, lots of babies, lots of wedding news from afar, lots of relocation, graduation, buying houses etc etc. made realize hey that's right we are bout to hit that 30 mark. you know now they have a term called a quarter life crisis. oh so optimistically (in my case perhaps with dread) thinking that we may live up to ave 100 years (that used to be a special unit called a century i believe)- however, the quarter life crisis thing is a fact i think. no one knows what to do. we were sooo drilled into going to school, getting grades, diplomas etc., one-track-minded. if you were lucky, may be you diversified a bit by getting a job or something. but still, by age 25, most of kids that i know were just really barely out of school if not still in school (i was!). then with baby boomers not willing to let it go (i guess they did pay for our generation's slackering attitude by providing more and more), the marke...

as of today, i finished backing up all data from my last standing apple product, the omnipresent, omnipotent ipod 60g. now. i had some good lovin'time with my pod. like a tumor, it needed extra care everyday and everywhere i went. a bit heavy, big, and holding much information. i was the dependent of my pod. often it will turn itself on at an inappropriate level, thanks to the jogwheel. sometimes it will just jam up and doesnt do anything else, claiming a sick day, where you literally have to let it run its course. the webguide asked to perform a 'two finger salute,' where you press on both the inner and outer circle of the jogwheel. i would hope and prey that it would work, giving a proper two fingers salute using the longest fingers of the both hands. yes. it certainly had a big element of S/M. our co-dependency. when i travelled, i always made sure i packed my power chord, from the wall plug direct to that thin, delicate, massive 30 pin opening. but it did hold more musi...

the curse of a light sleeper is that one has no choice. nothing. monkey is a terrible sleeper. once born a colicky baby, dies a cranky lady i suppose. whenever i get to sleep in, it's like gold. money. better than both. it's sleep! ive been told that theh generations of the present are terrible sleepers. it sounds weird, we have more technologies and chemicals than ever before, what do you mean we cant sleep? the irony is that not only we cant sleep well, we dont eat well (over/under nourished, inadequate consumption of the 'whatever-the-hype-is-for-now,' it seems right now it is omega acids and fibres), we are allergic (eczema on rise, all kinds of food allergies. seriously how come there is this skyrocketing of all these digestive problems just about now? i dont remember hearing about crohn's disease being so casually tossed around in dinner conversations, eww), we are sick (all kinds of 'classes' being offered for movements, joints, physho therapy etc ...

the unruly spring fever (i should say in my case, snotty-red-eyed-hay-fever) is spilling out of control, like the flood from the biblical time. and like noah's situation, only a few very determined people will survive- the rest of us are swayed, swept, taken away from the grave, serious daily tasks- into the middle of a frenzy, really. even the usual inanimate objects (which i think isnt true at all times- i believe machines have feelings and they just dont know how to tell us about it. like autistic kids. sometimes what THINGS do tell us is quite spectacular) are being nutty. as i was passing by bloor street around yorkville area (that is the posh area where toronto international flim festival happens every year. and for some reason, the music faculty is right near by. i cross these area mostly to people watch. really, cruising, one would say.), i noticed that one of the expensive boutique (i believe it's a gucci boutique; how would i know? from the dirt pile-ups from the stor...

so the buds are coming, not one at a time, but all at once, like they have waited, like children in school bus on the field trip. as soon as the time comes, they all just roll out, noisy, excited, agitated. even the usually quiet and graceful magnolias are peeking through the fuzzy blankets theyve been under for last couple days. where did you get them? where did you come from? you werent there for couple days definately!! then periwinkles dot the young new grasses with the same lightness of the spring sky. all over the place. scattered. slowly taking over. from ground up, to meet the higher and clear sky. looking up, down, side, they are busy with chatter among themselves. some early guys are already busting out their maroon and purple jackets, looking stylish. just about to shave off those spring fuzz. like teenage boys. and wherever i see, once bare winter sky is full of lines, all curves- even the elusively straight electrical lines, they hang a little lower, warmed up, relaxe...

i cant believe it's almost been a week since i scribbled. not that my writing amounts to anything significant really. just a self-observation. i blame this on easter. well, not on easter, perhaps, easter schedule. last couple days really, starting on friday, has been dyed with that inescapable taste of easter. whether i practice or not, there's always the good old commercialism to count on and boy, it would have been a miracle to avoid easter from the edge of one's consciousness. easter rabbits, stuffed dolls, easter eggs, easter egg kits, easter fundraisers, easter bouquets, easter plants, easter dinners, brunches, whatever blah chocolates. for nation that is somewhat non-religious, it was a rather stunning quantity of products and services for zombie jesus. now, please dont get angry about the concept of zombie jesus. seriously, if i understand correctly, jesus was a bit of a rebel and he was an intelligent person, though he has been temperamental (like the time he whacke...

the pale moon: a cold mistress, melancholia, lovers and secrets, an old formula. depending on the time of the year, the weather of the moment, the moon- especially the full moon, brings out much madness (i believe, seriously) out of all of us. living in my 32nd floor, it's always around the full moon the night is scarred with angry red splashes of police sirens, skidding cars, random screaming of a person, passing arguments. unlike the quite evenings, the full moon lights are always crazy. and today, sky finally lifted after days of rain and mist. the sunset was quite spectacular with all the orange, gold, magenta, red and that purple blue. and what was left of the dayglory of white fluffy clouds are now pale and ghostly under the moon, full and white. no hint of warmth-not tonight, just clarity. one of the most effective setting of this old idea would be verklacht nacht, op. 4 of schoenberg. based on a poem by richard dehmel, fairly controversial back in its debut days, b...

there was a time in my life that i was a 'veggie,' what we call in north america, a 'vegetarian.' there was no plans of rescuing the planet, cleansing the body or anything serious like that. i was living on a slim budget and figured plant proteins are much cheaper. also took less efforts. with couple containers of pulses and grains soaking in water, couple blocks of tofu and canned tunas around, i think i did pretty okay. if you have a pressure cooker, cooking those beans and grain take no efforts whatsoever. because you always end up making more than just enough for a meal, you always have leftovers. and grains and beans, unlike soups, pack amazingly well. no leak, usually. can be eaten cold or hot. marvelous. great. though after awhile, i start to hit concrete and cement, asphalt and hardwood floors with my entire bodyweight. thanks for my inefficient body, i was turning anemic. so even till today, i go back and forth. omnivore. then herbivore. i think i would...

Waters of March A stick, a stone, It's the end of the road, It's the rest of a stump, It's a little alone It's a sliver of glass,It is life, it's the sun, It is night, it is death, It's a trap, it's a gun The oak when it blooms, A fox in the brush, A knot in the wood, The song of a thrush The wood of the wind, A cliff, a fall, A scratch, a lump, It is nothing at all It's the wind blowing free,It's the end of the slope, It's a beam, it's a void,It's a hunch, it's a hope And the river bank talks of the waters of March, It's the end of the strain, The joy in your heart The foot, the ground,The flesh and the bone, The beat of the road,A slingshot's stone A fish, a flash, A silvery glow, A fight, a bet, The range of a bow The bed of the well, The end of the line, The dismay in the face, It's a loss, it's a find A spear, a spike, A point, a nail, A drip, a drop, The end of the tale A truckload of bricks in the soft morning ...

life as i know it is a sine (or if you prefer, cosine) wave of some sort. perhaps closer to a rollercoaster, not quite rigidly symmetrical. just enough to see that it always is posed with a mutual antithesis. up then a down, for an instance. well, never really down, just downward i suppose, as it will eventually hit the cusp and start again, upward. wait. may be it's not even down, if i tilt the axis, just about 90', it'll be just a side-to-side. whammy. not up or down. looks as if it's dancing. with good sense of beats, even! that sounds much better, free from the built-in context of: up = good, down = bad. it should be more than sufficient to realize that such simple directions 'up' and 'down' requires the another to become significant. if there is no axis or a dividing marker, we can take the wave, flatten the hell out of it, and voila, it's just a line. and a straight line, you can always rotate it enough to make it into a horizontal axis, anothe...

verb: every verb denotes an action, a passion or an operation and its symbolism is a direct consequence of the transference of this material sense to the spiritual plane. for example, to take food is symbolic of receiving spiritual or intellectual nourishment... to travel is to move, by exercise of the imagination and awareness, away from one world and towards another and so on. cirlot, a dictionary of symbols, p. 360. oddly enough, cirlot never did an entry on noun. i suppose it's because noun is simpler: it is what it is. without verb, it just.. well, stands there like sack of potatoes or something. even adjectives cant do much with standing-alone-lost-for-words nouns. wallflowers at parties. the passive, invisibles that somehow blend right into the wall- regardless of what kind of wall it may be! nouns that wants to speak but are bound tightly within the rigidity of their spellings. stuck! stasis! pause! rescue! help! all spoken in silence. at least sack of potatoes, given...