PC Bangs

So long and thanks for all the soju ...

2005-12-29T11:14:00.000+09:00

Well, the time has come to cease talking of many things, to stop going to PC Bangs, to pack up my bags and head for different places, to leave behind many happy and strange memories of my time here. It is hard to believe that four months ago I arrived in Seoul in the middle of summer, and that now this city is goign through its coldest December in a century. How much has changed, both for me personally and in the world in general during that time. How people have grown older, or younger. People I will never see again. Parts of me I will never know again. Stop me before I get too sentimental. But let me just say, one thing I will really miss is my Korean phone with its ringtone, these lines from "The Girl From Ipanema":

Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah ...

I still have some poems to finish (especially my planned epic ode to Starcraft) but I think I will post them on my home page instead. For first time visitors, this blog was written between the months of September and December 2005, while undertaking a residency at Sogang University in Seoul. This residency was made possible by the generous support of the Australia-Korea Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts. My thanks to Nikki Anderson and the staff at the Asialink Centre at the University of Melbourne, Moon Sun Choi at the Australian Embassy in Seoul and Brother Anthony (An Sonjae) at Sogang University for their assistance, encouragement and support during this time.

My initial aim in coming to Seoul was to research PC Bang (internet gaming room) culture in Seoul from a sociological or ICT perspective. I've always been interested in public use of internet technologies, but in the past this was purely from a research perspective, as opposed to a creative perspective. So initially, before I arrived here, I was determined to document PC Bangs as a sociological phenomenon but I began to lose interest in this once I arrived here. For one, I began to feel that the issue of PC Bangs has been over-hyped or fetishised in the West, to the point where it has become a stereotype. I wanted to get beyond this stereotype and actually exist and create work in these places, rather than simply be an observer looking at the Koreans as an anthropologist might. Secondly, and this might seem contradictory, these spaces are so interesting and so varied, I began to realise that if I was really looking for a space in which the Korean "dymanism" is flourishing, I needed to go where the Korean people go, whether it be a businessman on a lunchbreak, a school student after classes or a university student late at night, or even someone who's had a big night and is using the PC bang as a place to sleep. For me, it was also important to get beyond the "Oh, PC Bangs are bad, did you know someone died in one recently?" kind of reaction, to gain a better appreciation of why people go there. I could only do this by going there myself, and trying to do what I wanted to do. In the end, I succeeded, but in an altogether unexpected way.

As documented in an article on my project in the Korea Times, in coming up with the PC bangs project, I was influenced by Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities, in which Marco Polo described a series of fictional cities (all of which were really Venice) to the Emperor Kublai Khan. For me this book, with its meeting of east and west, says a lot about the western imagination and how it projects its own view of the world upon "the other", whether this be Asia or any other alien place. So, instead of writing about invisible cities, I decided to write about imaginary cities. I drew up a list of words in English ending with "city" (for example "tenacity", "audacity", "ferocity") and removed the letters "city" from each word, thus creating new cities - hence, "tena", "auda", "fero". In this way, the idea of the city would be present but both imaginary and invisible. Over the course of two months I visited a different PC Bang in Seoul every day and wrote about an "imaginary city" in each one. Of course, like Marco Polo, each of the cities I was writing about turned out to be the same place - in my case, Seoul.

One unexpected image or theme that continually came up in the poems/ pieces was the situation of everyday Koreans affected by rapid changes in both the Korean economy and internet technologies. While I was inside the PC Bangs, ostensibly connected to the world via broadband technology, I was acutely aware that outside (for example around the Jongno area), there were people living on the streets, sleeping in ATM booths, or in the park. This stark contrast could not help but show up in the pieces, most of which are full of old men, ajummas, cooks, drunks and everyday people whom i saw on the streets, in restaurants, or stumbling home late at night. So, in a way, to compare my cities to Calvino's would be a mistake - they are all really Seoul, and they are all actually about the people living here, of course viewed by me as an outsider, but nevertheless I hope I have been sympathetic to the street culture here, and to the spirit of the Korean people in general, which is so palpable, even to an outsider like me.

There are so many people whose friendship, kindness and humour have helped me through this period away from home. Most of them are mentioned in one of my final imaginary cities, Viva. In particular, however, I would like to thank Larissa Hjorth, a fellow Asialink resident, whose friendship, drinking and debriefing abilities saved me from certain insanity. Everyone else - well, you know who you are.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this blog and its contents to the people of Seoul and of the Republic of Korea as a whole. I hope that peace will prevail on the Korean peninsula and that the fabled Korean dymanism will not be lost in the sweeping tide of change now gripping the globe. I also hope one day to return to this most beautiful, contradictory and fascinating city but for now so long and thanks for all the soju ...

For you ...

2005-12-25T11:52:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (60)

2005-12-24T11:55:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (59)

2005-12-24T11:48:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (58)

2005-12-24T11:47:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (56)

2005-12-24T11:45:00.001+09:00

PC Bang Signage (57)

2005-12-24T11:45:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: vorti --

2005-12-23T13:46:00.000+09:00

<------ A city of terminals. << This city with no streets but networks of amputated limbs. << City of burnt grass and black limousines. << Go back to Basi. << Lost city of the broken draft, Cadu is a pile of turnips rotting in the moonlight, begging for a trundle. << Autumn in the city of snow-stolen leaves. << Downtown in the city of greige skylines: muskrats grope for cinnamon oranges in the shadows of a giant air-conditioning outlet. << City of sleepy subways and swift downstrokes. << City of miniature cities, laid out on lawns like picnic lunches, skyscrapers made from sweetstuffs, syringes for telecommunications towers, lights blinking away the loneliness of miniature people gazing up at the stars. << City of warm breaths and gentle men. << Sister city of the radiant golden hair. << City of incompatible systems, apocalyptic notations and superannuated evangelists. << City of riotous dance halls and movies that never end. << City of hunger and dirty palms. << Turning upon the incendiary maple, coming down on an avenue of triumph. << City of dictator beige and magic honey. << City of sandy streets in a lonely tear gas nation. << City of emphasis mines and gravity bombs, assassination attempts and mourning news. << City of vapour trails and suns that set like eggs in a sky of brandy. << City of radiation and pliers. << City of garrets and all-night nature rants. << A film-strength city situated, obviously, deep in the marshes. << City too big to be called a city. << City of the big one, the whopper and the raised eyebrow. << City of dread, of shanties and loam. << The city is tiny but it takes up so much space. << City that encloses many other cities, like a lunch pail filled with multiple containers, each of which holds a prescribed number of foodstuffs - nuts, sultanas, rice, meatstuffs, tapioca, croutons, larvae. << Once upon a time there was a piece of paper through which the words printed on the other side could not be seen, a piece of paper so thick it might have been made of wood. << Stripes of dry land trapped beneath a pale halogen daymurk. << It's just been built but already you can see the tyre-marks on the roundabouts, the skidding tales of midnight smashes and the crumbs of shattered glass. << Alligators crawl through the slippered streets, punctuating the monks' marches for alms. << That vision of you standing in the snow was my secret talisman, a lucky charm to ward off bad weather, frosted lips and crunch hips. << There was a trumpet somewhere but it was tarnished and could only play the theme from F-Troop. << The ajumma comes to the end of her story - the slicing of a giant onion into irregular chunks - and looks up at me as if I am about to leave. << City of sadness engines and wet kindling. << City as weary as a tree that cries leaves. << City of organisms. << The velvet night trips me, I can't see jack via fistlight. << If Velo wears a cardboard crown then surely Vera appears draped in green. << Viva! Page not found. <<------ from: imaginary cities -- vorti -- cities imaginary: from ------>> Page not found. Viva! >> Vera blissful and breathless in daylight's profusion, singing through grass streets stretching seawards to the pipelines, shoves the matter deep in her coat pocket and marches, unfollowed, along cool bitumen avenues, her feet seeking skin prints in the improbably husked net. >> Brims of water and the morning, sirens from the soft ward of someone's conscience, eradicated. >> Human city of bacterial plants, filled with ripe organisms, dead organs and the ghost of a tissue, like a frozen sheet of snow, in the smudged sky, the toxic sky, called home. >> Clothe me in the colour of my departure, then sew up my eyes with city needles, urban thread. >> Dusted with a subway smear. >> We will make stories from the pork and vinegar, roll these in the plotlines of sesame and salt, dip once into the ever-changing vinegar bowl, now greasy with pork fat, picking up where we first left off, being sure also to grab in our shining silver chopsticks without story or meaning a small sliver of white onion, and then taste the whole mysterious historical combination on the ever-unfolding storyboards of our pink wet tongues. >> But in the city of Rau all of these instruments have been silent and sad for a very long time now. >> This is your guarantee. >> Zookeepers have forgiven animals for lesser escape attempts; now comes the time for you to size up the wend of the wires. >> Alone, in the chamber reserved for you in this newest of love-hotel streets, you switch off the flourescent bulb instead, before cracking the set-list in your imaginary, trembling hand. >> Driveways old and empty, bollards wrapped in multi-coloured wire. >> Twenty eight times upon a time there was a dead city called Opa, and this is how many stories you will have to endure before anyone is willing to tell you behind which screen or on which page it even exists. >> A multicity referring and cataloguing itself again and again, until even the patterns of its forced assimilations begin to resemble constellations, beehives, shrouds, lives. >> Odes and elegies, sung in minor keys. >> For once I hear nothing. >> Typical. >> Strawberry soju forever. >> The burning resin between us, behind us, in our heads. >> Lonesome peaks, jagged. >> They can be compared with the other cities, existing (as we do) on warped and tortured scales. >> These are the times when you would like to run. >> When will you cross that line thatched with straw, mountainous with geese? >> Caught in the updrafts of belching subways, a new mythology to replace the reverse dream. >> I've turned my safety off, having no further use for disguises, stealth or radioactive hair. >> The city is full of us - fistfights galore. >> Money strafes us all. >> You. >> Something tells me no one would try to stop me. >> Splashing, exhausted, into a pool of algae and carp, because no one was there to catch me when I fell. >> A city no one living in my home town has ever heard of, nor ever will. >> Await the final outcome. >> This little piggy stays home. >> You're not the only one praying for dawn. >> Couples stroll under the avenues of greening trees, whispering lines of poetry, like thieves unhurried in the dark. >> Blast. >> But their dreams - ah! If only you could see them, feel a sleeping heart's beat! When morning comes, be sure to keep a map beside you, if only to reassure your nocturnal half that Basi is real, just like the obscure system of pressure points that is said to lead to another most ordinary city, that of the smile. >> Behind us, mountains; ahead, cartwheels of conversation, opening. >> Shoulder arms. >> Night comes, and the neon day begins. ------>

PC Bang Signage (55)

2005-12-23T12:30:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: viva --

2005-12-23T11:45:00.000+09:00

Viva! Page not found. Viva! City of marshall arts. Viva! Grape soda. Viva! Song lyrics spread from mouth to mouth. Viva! Your mouth, my lips. Viva! Trouble girl. Viva! City of endless planes. Viva! The angel of hips. Viva! Snowy boots. Viva! Timpani. Viva! Pansori. Viva! Ko Un. Viva! Hiddink. Viva! Holland. Viva! Pa ra pa pa pum. Viva! Namsan. Viva! Bukhansan. Viva! Hongdae. Viva! Seventies record collections. Viva! The hiss and pop of vinyl. Viva! Dancing boys. Viva! Moriapo. Viva! Mokochukcha. Viva! Demilitarised bones. Viva! Hangul carved from snow on the rear window of a white car. Viva! Strangely addictive. Viva! Isaac. Viva! I love PC Bang. Viva! Squat toilet. Viva! Navy Seal. Viva! Captain of Pirates. Viva! JSA. Viva! Old Boy. Viva! Starcraft. Viva! Bulguksa. Viva! Sansachun. Viva! Comfortably nunchukka. Viva! Imaginary kitties. Viva! Quiny. Viva! Perpetual reconstruction. Viva! Visa run. Viva! Alien identification. Viva! Professors. Viva! Lost in translation. Viva! Zero transmigration. Viva! Foreign exchange. Viva! Weguk. Viva! Snowblasts. Viva! Magic won. Viva! get on up. Viva! Sex machine. Viva! Ride. Viva! Vanishing. Viva! KTX. Viva! Seoul Station. Viva! Volunteer Jehovahs. Viva! Outer Circle Line. Viva! Christmas marking. Viva! Stevie. Viva! Kevin. Viva! Young Eun. Viva! Anna. Viva! Melanie. Viva! Tan. Viva! Joseph. Viva! Sean. Viva! Anouk. Viva! Kat. Double viva! Soju Panda. Viva! Nika and Primoz. Viva! Bridget. Viva! Jooyoung. Viva! Moonsun. Viva! An Sonjae. Viva! Sogang. Viva! Space heaters. Viva! Ondol. Thank bloody viva! Hanok. Viva! River and Mountain. Viva! Folk songs. Viva! Busan. Viva! PIFF. Viva! Love hotel. Viva! Sting Hotel. Viva! Hmmm ... Viva! Soju. Viva! Baekseju. Viva! Makkolli. Viva! Viva! Viva! The moon. Viva! Dim stars. Viva! Morning calm. Viva! Dongdaemun. Viva! Namdaemun. Viva! Jongno sam-ga. Viva! Anguk. Viva! Sinchon. Viva! Hanna doh, juseyo. Viva! Gamsa hamnida. Viva! Hoju saram. Viva! Soju saram. Viva! Yi Sun Shi. Viva! Turtle boat. Viva! Han. Viva! Terminal. Viva! Page not found. Viva!

PC Bang Signage (54)

2005-12-22T16:02:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: toxi --

2005-12-22T15:45:00.000+09:00

City of organisms. City of organs. City of tissue. Organisms that change shape depending on the flow of traffic. Organs that thump and glow, in time with the jingling of beggars in the aisles. Tissue that blows in the wind and is mistaken for snow, finally alighting upon a loudspeaker. City of poisoned organisms pelting streetwalkers with shame, bludgeoned in turn by firehoses and backdrafts. City of poisoned organs that sing songs about the girl who was supposed to be here yesterday, with just the faintest taste of Christmas carols. City of poisoned tissue, readable in the grey cheeks of strangers, interpreted by the buzz lights of the underpass, irretrievably cold. City of organic organs and hipster drills, banshee wails and coo-eyed blubber, wilting on the footpaths and draped across the bridges, inviting guests to their strange womb-like corps. City of organ tissue sandblasted and bent, rent from the chaos hole of delirium and banged up on newsprint and grape soda. City of tissue organisms eradicated by the serpent-wail of thyme, fists gnashed on the energy pill of transmigration, hollow and vile. City of humans. City of bacterium. City of plants. Humans that change shape depending upon the snow of tissue. Bacterium that thumps and glows, like miniature foot-pedal organs. Plants that blow in the wind, giving the unharnessed spinning energy of the planet a silhouette. City of poisonous humans caught up in the mash-grind of carbon disintegration, flopped on benches, tooled on shoeshine. City of poisonous bacterium visible only from the sunspots on Mars, licenced to shrill, band-aided as a precautionary pleasure. City of poisonous plants, ring-barked by scientists, drooling sap and shedding leprous leaves. City of human bacterium that croaks, splattered on the windmills of pain, ground down by the aching of boots, stapled to the gum freeze of spring. City of bacterial plants, viral and mutant as yesterday's breeze, shape-shifting the sky and catapulting through smog. City of human plants, mocked by the sapiens, indulged by the worms, pitied by everyone for their willowy wrists. Human city of bacterial plants, filled with ripe organisms, dead organs and the ghost of a tissue, like a frozen sheet of snow, in the smudged sky, the toxic sky, called home.

PC Bang Signage (53)

2005-12-22T13:47:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: tena --

2005-12-22T13:45:00.000+09:00

City as weary as a tree that cries leaves. City on the edge of hopelessness, on the duckboard of despair. The pathos of a rushed existence, coupled with an addiction to shuffling. Manacled to the winter sun-dial, I tripped upon a field of transparent snow. Windows were curtained, dogs barked all night at the makkolli moon. Rubbish bins filled with mysteries and secrets. The scent of a cigarette smoked by the man in the dark overcoat walking ahead of you in the lane. The irresistible soundtrack of dance music bleating from the stacks parked out the front of discount stores. City of sock stalls. Orange tents that could be situated on a battlefield, soup kitchens for the passing crowds. Fatty fish spirals on skewers, paper cups filled with machine broth, its clouds like sheets of white mist that hit the face, drunk. Balloons kissing ceilings. Background noise on handphones, the tinny voices of disconnected souls. Sweet city, I will miss the memory of your hand in my pocket. I will miss your ineluctable dance moves. I will miss the temporary communities waiting at traffic lights. I will miss the community police boxes. I will not miss the pigeon catchers in the citizen's parks. I will not miss the weird glances of passers-by. I will not miss the subway queues, the partly-constructed blast-doors, the shuddering punch of wind between skyscrapers. I don't not know what else I will remember once I have left for another land on a beetle. You are Morgenland, the next chapter in my breathless correspondence with the world, hanging on to the tassels of this magic carpet, history. Dreaming at night of a new myth, featuring glad girls, hassled boys and everyone in uniform. Gazing upon the neon double of my eye, broken by the shimmer of hardware stores, singing rooms and architectural imaginations. Promised a dynamic experience, I find myself disappointed only with my own fear of failure, in another language. What else can I ask of you, city of repeating pleasures? City of dares and disbelief. City of strings, red tape and handshakes. City of wrists. Woven through with golden ribbons, city of mourning calm and sweet bread. Green tea, red buns, black night. Clothe me in the colour of my departure, then sew up my eyes with city needles, urban thread.

Check me out in the Korea Times!

2005-12-21T14:49:00.000+09:00

I'm very excited to say that there's an article in today's issue of English language newspaper The Korea Times that profiles my PC Bangs project here in Seoul. You can read the article online here.

Big thanks to journalist (and artist) Bridget O'Brien, who definitely has a love of poetry (boy, is that a nice change!) and to photographer Kim Hyun-tae who managed to make me look cool in the pic (above). So strange to be in the newspaper - it's my first feature profile ever! Zippedy doo dah!

Postscript: while this site hasn't quite been overwhelmed with hits since yesterday's article, the story has been mentioned here on the website of poet and writer Moses Iten. Yay!

Snapshots of Almost Contact

2005-12-21T11:44:00.000+09:00

Melbourne-based new media artist, lecturer and all round soju-panda Larissa Hjorth, who is also undertaking an Asialink residency in Seoul at the Sszamjie Space, held an open studio the other night, to celebrate the completion of her "Snapshots of Almost Contact" project. Please, consider ...

Soju-Panda Eyes herself: actually, this shot was taken last month at the Sugar Bar in Hongdae but seeing as we ended up in exactly the same place the other night, there really is no difference ...

An example of the kinds of works Larissa has been creating out of the distinctive Korean fabric pattern. Steve Jobs, look and learn ...

Seoul's best-kept secret, three piece band the Whilebird Chirpings, featuring Jooyoung on keyboards, Matt on lead vocals and drums, and Bridget on lead guitar. Rumours of their imminent demise should be treated with alarm.

Bridget, an artist who moonlights as a staff reporter for the Korea Times, tries to point to a picture of her phone. Unfortunately, being height-challenged, she doesn't quite achieve her objective. It's the second from the right, Bridget.

A close-up shot of some of the phones Larissa photographed, together with their owners' accessories (a must).

The money shot: ninety six phones, who knows how many text messages, conversations and self-portraits ...

A Poem by my Australian Culture Students

2005-12-21T08:21:00.000+09:00

One of the highlights of my Australian Culture classes was the series of student presentations which took place at the end of the semester. In one of the final presentations, on the topic of Australian poetry (a topic that no one was really that keen to tackle), the students (including the cute koala pictured below) broke out into song, the lyrics of which I have presented below. They also gave me a cd featuring an mp3 version of the song, which I hope to upload soon.

Aussie and we Korea

Thank you Prater for your class
Made us become Creator
oh My dear Prater.

Though I sometimes took a nap.
At least I know Phar lap.
Met I Kangaroo and oodgeroo.

No more nasty Vegemite.
I don't want another bite.
No more ABC news tonight.

Now old ANZAC wowow
Thanks for comin' at hard time.
From your land to end war crime.

As time goes by, We say good-bye.
Just one thing to remember.
We had great time from September.

Learning so far Australia
showed us who we really are.
Forever Aussie and we Korea.
Forever Aussie and we Korea.

I'm speechless.

PC Bang Signage (52)

2005-12-20T21:57:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: scar --

2005-12-20T13:44:00.000+09:00

City of sadness engines and wet kindling. The tell-tale signs of tampered seals, broken message sticks and gravity defeated. Neon diodes for restless leaves. Coming to the end of a demolished line, and realising that you've left your instruments at the coup. Riots raining down like spent cartridges, with no way of telling who's abused, who's simply rumbling. Shadowed by a mallet, mimicking the sound of grisly gums. Lights explode, revealing the weird interstices between our sweaty hands. You're running. I'm bringing up the rear, like a goofy bear caught with his nose in honey. Sunsmiles, rapids and cantilever bridges. Did you bring the ordnance? Damn. Strapping incendiary clocks to our thighs, I wince in pain at the slightly radioactive buzz. Chills emanating from yesterday's snow piles. A dog whose fur is the colour of dirty snow disappears amongst the garbage, urinates and then jumps out at a passing electric vehicle. Misses. Smile, you're on planet Scar TV. Midnite rendezvous, a tattoo of the times on my wrist. You check for a pulse. It seems I'm still here. But are we? Eradicating plans and reassigning code wards. My good friend, whom I have never met, tells me of his mind colds. I wish his breath. I find footprints in the paint. Someone has been here before. The little girl bursts out of my chest and begins to sing. It's all too much. The doors have all been ripped off their hinges. Solitude creeps. The tags have been busted, the trees have been replanted in a different arrangement, probably symmetrical when seen fromn the air. All of their branches have been drenched in fairy lights. Walking between them brings on the dizziness again. Then I'm off to the terminal. A dog barks, or is that you coughing? Specks of blood on a yellow handkerchief. Definitely interwar. Blisters with minds, socks with ammunition compartments. Sounds impossible. Bangings from the cellar. Ripples of rumour beneath the surface of a frozen pond. Turtles in the snow. Hunchback mountains. The blur of safety. Smells like veneer. Dusted with a subway smear.

Bulguksa

2005-12-20T13:15:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (51)

2005-12-20T12:46:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (50)

2005-12-20T12:44:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (49)

2005-12-20T12:37:00.000+09:00

Soju Glacier

2005-12-19T15:48:00.000+09:00

soul cracked on a mountain sheet
soju warms me with glacial heat

mind snared on a toothless high
soju shoots me up into the sky

body wrapped around a sharp pin
soju heals me like rain on tin

fingers burnt by a solar flare
soju sooths me like bomb scares

eyes dimmed by the wet eclipse
soju numbs my vision & my lips

heart broken by passing times
soju thrills me with its rhymes

imaginary cities: saga --

2005-12-19T12:22:00.000+09:00

The ajumma comes to the end of her story - the slicing of a giant onion into irregular chunks - and looks up at me as if I am about to leave. The truth is, I just sat down. She tosses the white stories into a pink plastic tub and picks up a second tale. I pick at my kim chi like it's an excuse someone's about to give me, and which I do not want to hear. But the truth is, I've heard it a thousand times before, and this time the kim chi tastes just as vinegary, just as spicy as the last one. I look up at the old man cooking pork on the little grill and mistake him for someone I once saw at my grandfather's funeral - leathery, small, beaten down by time. The truth is, I have seen him before. He's the guy who tried to shake my hand in the laneway and tickled his index finger against my palm, like a small worm against my skin. He recoils from me now, anticipating my inevitable reaction, and goes on turning the small slices of meat story. The old man looks up and sees a friend out in the street, goes to get up and then thinks better of it, looking sadly instead at the small glass of soju with no companion. It could be crime to eat alone here. Between the cracks of boisterous social encounters, however, the small seeds of loneliness and isolation shoot up like outcast weeds (him, me). The small glass of soju - I can see the exterior of the glass is dusted, from lack of use) twinkles in the intermittent strobing of the light behind the wall fan, wishing itself empty, knowing that in truth this is not its purpose - a soju glass should always be full. The half-empty bottle stares at the glass balefully, all the while aching for the warmth of the old man's palm, knowing also, in all truthfulness, that its fate will be to be thrown into a crate of empty brothers and sisters, then transported back to the bottling plant, either to be smashed and reformed as another green glass story, or to be simply washed clean and free of human prints and then filled, just like the last time, with the clear and glacial liquid that keeps old men warm and conversations flowing. The room looks at us all with its usual ambiguity, its hangul signage worn and crusted from corrections, cancellations and sad amendments to the list of a dish's ingredients. The hangul characters, red and orange against their teakwood skins, radiate an uber-cool aloofness, existing on a plane beyond menus and orders, beyond conversation even, though in truth the conversations themselves attempt to mimic the script's everyday practicality, its scientific charm. The air forgets us all, forgets even the scent of the onion, the pork fat frying, the cigarette smoke slithering, the dust gathering on wood and glass, the incense in its corner. The incense has no story. The plastic chairs have no story. The glass windows will have no story until evening falls, and the world turns neon, giving them something to reflect. The ajumma continues slicing her stories into small white chunks, irregular but million-fold. They will be placed into small white storyless bowls, and green shoots added to them, along with the now-familiar vinegar saga. We will make stories from the pork and vinegar, roll these in the plotlines of sesame and salt, dip once into the ever-changing vinegar bowl, now greasy with pork fat, picking up where we first left off, being sure also to grab in our shining silver chopsticks without story or meaning a small sliver of white onion, and then taste the whole mysterious historical combination on the ever-unfolding storyboards of our pink wet tongues.

The Hanok Fields

2005-12-16T19:28:00.000+09:00

there's another country buried here
in the ground under all this snow -

i can see it in the rice field rows
how the white flakes make them look

like the flat plane of hanok rooves
& as if some long-departed designer

(maybe even king sejong) had seen it
just this way & thought (in all of

this order i smell yin & yang merge
white moon above the dim bird below

the empty furrows coated like tiles
& here i will make my sweeping arcs

their exponential gentleness (earth
a dragon emerges every springtime to

pounce upon their ancestors' burial
mounds (but for now they too remain

cloaked in snow - like turtle shells
awaiting another frozen invasion ...

there's another country buried here
in the ground under all this snow -

i see it in the perfect hanok fields
another place for my mind to grow

Sound of Vitality

2005-12-14T15:48:00.000+09:00

It's the sound of a whipcrack,
(whiplash on the windswept road

It's the sound of reed engines
(engine reels & carburettors

It's the sound of a small purr
(purrpure lubricants that whirr

It's the sound of exploded cans
(canplode diode transmissions

It's the sound of pine whispers
(pinepanic at the smell of snow

It's the sound of radio burning
(radiospherical planetoid buzz

It's the sound of dim mechanics
(dim stars on a shadowed orbit

It's the sound of transplants
(plantlungs panting for daylight

It's the sound of beige burrs
(burrpools rotating mindlessly

It's the sound of abstract drills
(drilldown to the rotten old core

It's the sound of puncture hums
(humdrums split like the rapeseed

It's the sound of modest tools
(foolswept into the convex blades

PC Bang Signage (48)

2005-12-14T14:47:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (47)

2005-12-14T13:45:00.000+09:00

Back To the Tourist III

2005-12-11T17:16:00.000+09:00

you better run, squirrel ...

destinations detonate like
the coyote on acme or speed
my runners wear thin again
- it's time to go back to
the tourist (iii) troubles
i've seen em (stacked them
high lived them low better
clear out of this saloon &
hope a time machine comes
soon ... sitting inside a
pentagon (shooting aliens
is more fun than it looks
send home an ordinary book
hear the killer drone it's
a shoelace they've untied
forgotten homework inside
a locker full of pin-ups &
baseball pendants at home
in the brochured suburb i
took a spin in the rhyme
machine pedalling madly
just to make these hours
swim in buckets shortened
calls - the snowy breezes
& the freshly paved street
sheets of burning rubber
castle motels conventions
buses without destinations

PC Bang Signage (46)

2005-12-11T12:44:00.000+09:00

Some photos and poems from my Creative Writing Students

2005-12-09T14:03:00.000+09:00

On Wedenesday I spent an enjoyable evening with my Creative Writing class, who have been a joy to teach and a lot of fun this semester. After starting out rather sedately with some pasta at "The Spoon", things rapidly went downhill, due to the ministrations of soju, baekseju, dongdongju, beer and the strange Korean energy drinks which are like pre-emptive hangover cures. I've posted some photos of the night plus a few poems written by my students using internet search engines. They wish to remain anonymous. I can say, however, that the mittens below belong to Judy.

Why am I standing here?

Why am I standing here?
I am standing here for election as a councillor
Pleased and honored as deputy
For the Parish of the Castel with which
I have a great affinity and where
I would intend to continue living.

Why am I standing here?
I am standing here to see my broken heart.
Yet her soul hasn’t been completely gone
I am waiting to see the way she will turn around
And break my heart.

Why am I standing here?
I am also standing here for Islam and against terrorism
Fighting for their own liberty
And fighting for free Muslims Coalition.

Throughout my life I have asked myself
“Why am I standing here?”
Not so much in regard to the big
It’s just a question of existence, suffering and death
A matter of politics, religions and of course, love.
That’s why I am standing here.

Judy, Min Jeong and Stella. Possibly 10pm.

Awakened by Thoughts

Thoughts come back
Souls are awakened
Sums of experiences
A programming that reflects the inner turmoil of my mind

More and more
I awaken to thoughts
With worlds in motion
Transforming it into images in my mind

My spirit is soaring
Carried aloft on the wings of the breeze
As I gaze on this vast scene
My thoughts will journey far

Saemin, Judy and JinWon. Hmmm ... 11pm? 7.30pm? Could be either.

Braille On My Mind

Jotting down words to be organized
in pennies, Quarters, Nickels, and dimes.

The print and braille
in puffed paint.

The Blind want to be
Professionals of my author's deeply felt spirituality

As with life's ending and beginnings,
you're in the wrong lane
When everything is coming your way,
and When you're not right in the mind,
the left gets pretty crowded.

When someone asks you, "penny for your thoughts?"
you put your two cents down to feel what happens to the other penny.

Not forgeting the pupils
who were more than teachers,
braill is the fall that never shines yellow leaves
and the winter that refuses to let in the warm breeze

Lying in the hospital bed dying
It's hard to get your mind around it at that time

Paul, HanJun (aka "Hawk") and Stella. Paul looks wasted but he's actually still in control. Maybe 10.30pm.

Transient Love

I love him
Anyways, I still think I love him,
But no one can ever say that
I never told him that

Transient Love,
Romantic Movie Stories with
Jon, Gregory,
Chris, Peter,
Mick, Mark
One Summer Afternoon

Love is transient,
Hate is transient,
Good is transient,
Evil is transient.
How could they be permanent?
Where is there any permanence in them?
You could say that they are permanent
Insofar as they are invariably impermanent

Is it a transient love affair
Or something similar to the US-Soviet policy
Of peaceful co-existence?
I don't know

Jeremy, Min Jeong, Bae and Saemin get drunk as skunks, on professor's orders. Possibly around 11pm.

Quarrel Within Myself

I, Me & Myself
I have quite a few personalities who usually always quarrel within themselves.
The cynical me
The sympathetic me
The positive me
The negative me
The kind me
The sarcastic me
The snobby me
The narrow-minded me
The open-minded me
The preserved me
The outgoing me

Everytime I witness a quarrel
I can’t let myself go
I just let them quarrel over the simplest things ...

These quarrels continue until they find that there is no answer.

So I wait.

I am still waiting for these quarrels to end.
Although I now realize
The time that these quarrels end may be the end of my time.

Me, Min Jeong and Jeremy try to drink the street-makkolli as quickly as possible. Possibly some time after 1am.

Rain keeps dropping

The rain is tearing up my soul,
knowing that I am alone,
waiting for the moment someone comes.

Waiting every hour,
but still no signs of life,
as the rain keeps dropping on my soul.

One day like rain,
they will fall to earth
and grow green
all over the world.

All those moments will be lost ...

in time, like tears ... in rain, like smoke

PC Bang Signage (45)

2005-12-08T13:42:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (44)

2005-12-08T13:40:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: rau --

2005-12-08T13:37:00.000+09:00

There was a trumpet somewhere but it was tarnished and could only play the theme from F-Troop. There was a drum but it got broken when someone I once knew drove a fork through it, just for something to do. There was a guitar but three of its strings were missing and noone took me seriously enough to play it. There was a harmonica but it fell in the bath and I left it there to rust. There was a flugel horn but you should ask my sister what happened to it, that day at the performance. There was a triangle but it decided to go to Bermuda for a holiday and, strangely, was never heard from again. There was a bass but it got confused with a US Army installation and was arrested for some trifling offence. There was a keyboard but I used it to write things on my computer and it ended up not being able to produce any sounds at all except for the cowbell. There was a saxophone but that went out of fashion in the 1980s along with shoelace ties and pointy black boots. There was a harp but it got drunk on mead and has never been the same since. There was a melodious Irish tenor but he got lost in the foggy dew and came back as the ghost of Enya. There was a backing choir but they got enlisted as extras in Sister Act 2 and - well, you know the drill. There was a paino - see "keyboard" above for its fate. Quite sad, really. There was a banjo but it was reincarnated as a colonial poet and, since that colonial poet died quite a long time ago, it's now also dead. There was a lagaphone but I'm afraid the bush band revival has been over for some time now. There was a gum leaf but a koala ate it. There was a spoon but a junkie stole it. There was a mellotron but I'm not even sure what that would have sounded like anyway. There was a zither. There was also a ukelele. But in the city of Rau all of these instruments have been silent and sad for a very long time now.

PC Bang Signage (43)

2005-12-08T12:38:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (42)

2005-12-08T12:37:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (41)

2005-12-08T12:35:00.000+09:00

Snow Grocer

2005-12-05T11:43:00.000+09:00

sits amongst his wares facing
     a heater shaped like a fan with
no blades absorbing radiant heat
     like sun ra soaking up a cosmos

     with white gloves & thin white
hair he sits & laughs every time
     I try to guess what he just said
eg how much to pay for makkolli &

then one day he says eh tonight -
     snow! as if he knows what I am
thinking - how these skies look
     pregnant with ice, both of us

     smiling and laughing - tonight!
only it doesn't snow, not tonight
     or any other night this week but
still i trudge on down to him &

ask tonight snow? at which he
     shrugs or laughs or both yes,
tonight, snow then i realise
     he's been speaking in english

     for days & it hasn't snowed &
then in the dead of last night
     it fell down gently, like a rain
of makkolli on the hanok roof

& i thought about how quiet it
     was & how the sound of snow is
like a human breath on a window
     or footsteps on the world's head

First Snow!

2005-12-05T10:55:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (40)

2005-12-04T12:33:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (39)

2005-12-04T12:32:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (38)

2005-12-04T12:30:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (37)

2005-12-04T12:29:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: rapa --

2005-12-03T11:38:00.000+09:00

That vision of you standing in the snow was my secret talisman, a lucky charm to ward off bad weather, frosted lips and crunch hips. This time, dumbstruck by seasonal variations, I'm moving slowly along a gigantic wedge, following my own reversed footprints in the hope of getting home before dark. That monkey, sitting on the dead tree bough, brought up insane cackles from deep within me, then was gone. This dream, in which all the scenes freeze as if it's a dirty dvd, causes strong motion within my stomach, and the wind's howling and the tree is gone. That might sound melodramatic but I'm unfamiliar with sub-zero survival and I've got no idea how to keep out the forgetfulness of cold. This bridge, festooned with ice tentacles, promises nothing in the way of supplies, shelter, fire or rest. That bar is no longer there, so I dream of plum wine as if it is my own blood, unfreezable, treacle-like, swaying. This nightmare, that recurrs, involves a long boat and a knife. That knife, whose sharpness I have never tested, nevertheless cuts me open, then drops to the floor with a death-clatter. This death is just like all the others, neither painless nor swift, neither liberating nor constricting. That phone call will come, some verdant mourning, and you'll drop the pen and crossword, rise up from the sink and smash their mealy mouths. This could be a call to arms for all my family, only I can't hear them right now and they're scared. That guitar lesson taught me few things, but I can still remember them, even when I am drunk and there's no guitars. This morning, trudging through the ice, I made a decision which I had to revise as soon as I saw the car coming fast towards me. That decision, regarding pouring rain and silent snow, comes up again every once in a while, to the nation's detriment. This year of living daisies is coming to an end but what's a year, anyway, compared to a yew. That was meant to be funny and cryptic and ambiguous but then again sashay past me and the game's up. This cringing tide, this anagram of speed, this multiple-poled universe. That dry ice, that federation of losers, that crusted envelope. This girl, that girl. That boy, this boy. This way, hurry. That will never happen. This is your guarantee.

More signs that speak for themselves

2005-12-02T12:48:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (36)

2005-12-02T12:27:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (35)

2005-12-02T12:26:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: preda --

2005-12-02T12:10:00.000+09:00

Alligators crawl through the slippered streets, punctuating the monks' marches for alms. Bathed in a tropical punch glow, the women wash green vegetables in the shallows by the wharf. Cradled in her mother's arms, a moon baby peeks out from her blanket of snow with cinnamon eyes. Deaf boys run shouting through the markets, each point of pressure upon a sack or bale containing languages, symbols, conversations, memory. Everywhere the smell of pine needles and gunpowder, as the chiefs gather straws on the reed mats, then toss once more for fortune. Forgiven, the street dogs return from their dark pound, whining majestically all the while. Gnawing at an old sock, the village cat does not even deign to move as the early train shoots past its tiny sphere of influence. Having given up on dancing, two drunk men stagger towards a wall that's already warm, and somehow jam wedge themselves between the soft earth and the curiously expanding bricks. Imagine a world like this, where you and your kind have not yet set foot; nor will you ever come to know if this place, stolen from the itineraries of travellers and merchants, holds even migratory ducks. Jettisoned from the misery of a globe with only one side, it does exist, if you care to close your eyes and give up the attempt. Knowledge is a small brazier being attended to by wasps and the grisly night. Liminally conscious of its depths and, likewise, its shallows, winter comes and goes. Margarine could be a cursing word or a lubricant, were it not coloured like the sun and so prone to its rays. Nothing escapes the attention of the oracle, though no one here knows just who that oracle actually is, each having long ago given up his or her right to distinctions. Only the gravediggers are known by name, in this town where nobody seems even to die, or to care for sleep. Poppies blowing in the green breeze of the mounds, the gauze creep of the corrals. Quiet spaces, no more shall we sense them, know them, breathe them in through nostrils clogged with noise and slint. Restored, the grand walkway of the stars billows pain comets and milk teeth, caught by small children lying on their backs. Silhouetted against the puppet theatre stage curtains, two lovers explore each others' thighs. Teach me to remain calm when your gaze is directed this way, phantom bird of the abstract jungle hair. Unlike moon babies, our spiralling lives must end somewhere, together or wrapped in clean sheets. Vertical graves, silent tongue dances, half-moon kisses for your eyelids. Waxen, your smoky cheeks grow roses, setting off chain-reactions in atomic fields. Xanadu, I suppose. You never gave that city a name, not even when the last rains came, and it was time to bring in the red peppers. Zookeepers have forgiven animals for lesser escape attempts; now comes the time for you to size up the wend of the wires.

PC Bang Signage (34)

2005-12-01T15:17:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: preco --

2005-12-01T14:30:00.000+09:00

It's just been built but already you can see the tyre-marks on the roundabouts, the skidding tales of midnight smashes and the crumbs of shattered glass. City without a history, merely a pamphlet, that used to be handed out at the now-closed tourist information centre. The letters of its name have been stickered crookedly onto the glass, and the decor of the booth's interior betrays all the tell-tale signs of a 1980s housing development. City of reconstructed dragons and false ceilings. City of site meetings and grazing animals. City designed to correct the imbalances in a country with too many empty cities and only one that's worthy of the name. Administrative districts, quiet districts, lane districts, wooden districts. Empty allotments. White markers and red string. Nevertheless you can feel a certain hope in the air, a kind of metaphorical rumbling in the bellies of its brand-new inhabitants. City of roses and frog-marches. A city that comes on to you innocently, like a phone game. You call me. I'll call you, let it ring three times, and then hang up. Then call me back. I'll film you talking on your phone and you'll pretend you're not watching. We'll descend into the moonless sewer of a nightclub and touch every person there. Who needs dancing anyway? It's never as simple as it looks. Trust me, I've sprained my boogie bones so many times now, they've named a wing of the foreigner's hospital after my pet crutch. Honestly. City of laser-like advances, robot retreats. Sinking into the arms of a wet chair, while a barman parades his Hitler uniform like a cocktail, igniting a tower of glasses with his own sweat. Tanks and fake matchboxes. Graffiti walls like album covers, slightly mildewed and smartened by a layer of filth and barely-disguised innuendo. Hot soup girls in the fractured shadows, handing out fliers for insect bands you know you've heard of. The remains of a sub-culture you're sure you saw in the last city you visited but hey, this is a holiday. You'll enjoy the correspondences. Signing your name on invisible buttocks. As you would like to, with a glow pen. Listening to your own music gives you that secret sensational feel, doesn't it? Mmmm .. rewind. This is our holiday, after all, from reality. Pink anthems, rolling in the festival muds - it's good for your online complexion. Reading of your contemporaries being bashed, or thrown into rehab, makes you want to punch somebody's lights out. Alone, in the chamber reserved for you in this newest of love-hotel streets, you switch off the flourescent bulb instead, before cracking the set-list in your imaginary, trembling hand.

PC Bang Signage (33)

2005-11-30T18:14:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (32)

2005-11-30T18:12:00.000+09:00

Mokochukcha*

2005-11-30T12:47:00.000+09:00

Mokochukcha, you know you want to. Look at me: I want to. Look at everyone else: they want to. You want to. Stay.

Mokochukcha, do you know what happens to yesterdays? Do they turn into tomorrows? Who cares, your glass is empty.

Mokochukcha, I’m seeing lots of purple and strawberry colours. Is this bad? Please tell me it’s okay. You’re all purple. I’m purple.

Mokochukcha, I want to dance but my feet are unwilling and there’s no one to dance with. You know you want to. Shall we?

Mokochukcha, is this eternity? Your smile? Our crazy dance? Is this what keeps people up all night, long after they should be at home in bed?

Mokochukcha, what do you dream of besides crazy dancing? Do you get drunk in your dreams too? I know I do. I do all sorts of things.

Mokochukcha, look at me: are people born for each other, or just for themselves? Why do we have to die anyway? Perhaps you know.

Mokochukcha, let’s meet up again. In a soju bar, in a nightclub or even on the street. I'll recognise you and we’ll do it all over again.

Mokochukcha, you know you want to. Live.

*trans: “Drink and die".

PC Bang Signage (31)

2005-11-29T14:02:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (30)

2005-11-29T11:00:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: opa --

2005-11-28T17:05:00.000+09:00

Once upon a time there was a piece of paper through which the words printed on the other side could not be seen, a piece of paper so thick it might have been made of wood. Twice upon a time there was a transparent screen through which one could see the other side of the world, a screen so tantalising you almost wanted to stick your hand in it. Three times upon a time there was a window through which fish could fly, bursting out into daylight and dying right in front of you on the cobblestones. Four times upon a time there was a fish so smart it could survive out of water, flipping about and using its tail to order drinks, hail cabs and enter security codes. Five times upon a time there was a security code that was so secure it hadn't even been thought of yet, but existed nevertheless, inside the brain of a super-intelligent fish. Six times upon a time there was a thought so rarified it could not survive in the human brain, and thus had to be thrown away, like a dead fish. Seven times upon a time there was a brain so soft and yet strong that it could have survived in the ocean, where it might have been mistaken for a jellyfish. Eight times upon a time there was a jellyfish that enjoyed computer games, and often wondered what lay on the other side of the screen. Nine times upon a time there was a computer game that could not help crying, blubbering through its start-up routines and causing the screen on which its menus were displayed to smudge. Ten times upon a time there was a cry so piercing, so utterly sad, that trains would stop, dripping taps would dry up, and ugly men would somehow become beautiful. Eleven times upon a time there was a train that dreamt of derailing itself and then did so, flying off into a rice paddy and burying itself there, in a hiss and storm of steam. Twelve times upon a time there was a rice paddy full of jellyfish and model aeroplanes, useless for growing rice but beautiful nevertheless. Thirteen times upon a time there was a model aeroplane called "Benny" that was attached to a piece of string and spent its days circling beneath a spinning ceiling fan. Fourteen times upon a time there was a piece of string that wanted to be a jellyfish but instead found itself reincarnated as a piece of cooling lava. Fifteen times upon a time there was a river of molten lava that smelt like burning incense but was, in fact, a reincarnated Buddhist temple. Sixteen times upon a time there was a Buddhist temple that a passing peddler mistook for a glass of cola and then proceeded to drink. Seventeen times upon a time there was glass of cola that a waiter brought to you free of charge but which tasted like petrol. Eighteen times upon a time there was a litre of petrol that refused to be burnt up in a fuel tank and thus chose to self-combust, killing the car's occupants and several bystanders. Nineteen times upon a time there was an explosion that didn't want to be thought of as a killer of innocent bystanders and so disappeared into the sea, leaving behind a note that said: "Give my love to Benny". Twenty times upon a time there was a sea that was so sick it no longer responded to the pull of the moon and just sat there like a quivering mass of jelly. Twenty one times upon a time there was a moon that had no name and whose gravitational pull had no discernible effect on lovers or seas, so it span itself out of orbit and is now travelling somewhere in space, in search of lost satellites. Twenty two times upon a time there was a pair of lovers who were infatuated with satellites, and whose names cannot be spoken, for fear of dragging space probes back to earth. Twenty three times upon a time there was an earth where lovers arrived from outer space, seeking the comforts of radiant dawns and spider monkeys. Twenty four times upon a time there was a radiant dawn so beautiful it froze the hearts of lovers, spider monkeys and model aeroplanes, forcing the authorities to ban it from appearing at all. Twenty five times upon a time there was a spider monkey that dreamt of becoming an astronaut but settled eventually for a part-time job as a scrap-yard merchant, earning good money. Twenty six times upon a time there was an astronaut who bellowed operatic tunes to the stars, but whose space-suit was punctured by one too many peanuts. Twenty seven times upon a time there was an opera in which all the characters, as well as the orchestra members, died, somewhat muting the standing ovation of the (also dead) audience. Twenty eight times upon a time there was a dead city called Opa, and this is how many stories you will have to endure before anyone is willing to tell you behind which screen or on which page it even exists.

Autumnal Dynamos

2005-11-28T10:55:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (29)

2005-11-27T15:32:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (28)

2005-11-27T15:22:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (27)

2005-11-27T15:11:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: multi --

2005-11-27T14:52:00.000+09:00

City that encloses many other cities, like a lunch pail filled with multiple containers, each of which holds a prescribed number of foodstuffs - nuts, sultanas, rice, meatstuffs, tapioca, croutons, larvae. An anticity formed from invisible matter, shifting its colours and contours, blown by desert winds and dream tornadoes. An atrocity filled with horrors, spikes and black smoke, spewing out deformed mutants and scar slogans, calling to the darkness within your ventricles. An audacity stretched like a dare from the limb of a still-green tree, or coiled in the bottom of a soul boat, ready to be thrown, fastened or used to hang other cities from. A basicity of which it is not necessary to speak, or even dream, hidden inside another city whose governmental complexes defy the bureaucratic imagination, if it even exists. A caducity so moribund its whimpers sound like stolen curses, hampered by sticky constraints and medical technicalities, falling through sleep into a deep well of madness, covered in ash. A capacity for evil that no one ever suspected still lives but does, in nature reserves and traffic islands, quarantine areas and no-fishing zones. A clonicity that attempts to duplicate even itself, leading to a long litany of missing parts, overpasses to nowhere, riffs on postmodernism and galaxies of cul de sacs. A conicity that sweeps up all in its path, even the sleeping terminal attendants, and creates new weather patterns, based on its architect's original intentions, now buried beneath the horror of gated communities, rifle ranges and toxic spillways. A cubicity fashioned from rafts and steel wires, held together by desire, persisting as a tightly-strung circus tent, under which its animals graze and gaze. A duplicity that's breathtaking in its grandeur, though the logic is wrong and the adjustments made by engineers will never obtain council approval. An edacity whose subway systems interconnect only on the hour, causing entropy and unexpected life encounters, especially a midnight. An ethnicity of which one can only dream, lodged as it is between the scions of restriction and the tremors of united stations, partly built, in space. A felicity like a feel-good balm upon the lips, pursed in preparation for the sanction of this candidate or that, but forever silent, alert, armed. A feracity of slow waltzes and miniature parades, submerged loudspeakers and surveillance blockbusters, concealed romantics and open-faced laughter, grinding down its teeth on the harbour's edge. A ferocity astonishing even to its own inhabitants, in the way its snow-squalls whip the skin from the face, its rain lances the windshields of automobiles, its radiant heat blisters streetsigns, its moonbeams suck the very fluids from my body. A fugacity trenchant, exposing hypocricy and mending tortured limbs, beyond all meaning and enveloped in smog, blinking towers that glow and laser surgeries housed in shadow bunkers. A helicity whose blades puncture drums and contaminate dry zones, filled with the urgent squealing of atomic clocks, marked by its denizens' wearing of orange armbands, and the bandannas of the military, striped and saturated with sweaty grease. An iconicity characterised by icicle statues, advertising rays and sugar bays, curled up like a homeless wish on the steps of cold justice, populated by boys with bloated stomachs and sorry wires. An intercity blown to smithereens by repeated invasions, now located somewhere in the asteroid bell we all call home but haunted, still, by the steel consistency of its barricaded islands, its musuem shell. An ionicity bombed and reconstructed, all of its former plans and colonies lost, piles of cardboard boxes in the central station concourse, blue paint in the air and sideways glances everywhere. A loquacity harbouring refugees from free thought, bunkered down in the eerie neon snow, diseased and canned, preserving only our final breaths in its shafts and risers. A lubricity that slips like chance encounters between the lips, down the throat and into the farthest reaches of our corpuscles, arriving finally at the fingertips, where it sits, like a spider monkey, and waits. A megacity etched from the walls of a giant transdermal prison, its ringroads and rotaries like omniscient eyes in the face of human traffic, cordoned off and blind. A mendacity cutting itself repeatedly on barbed wire, changing its name, denying its own complicity, saving that rebuttal for the final appearance of bone, shattered sinews and tendons of hope. A mendicity all of its own, a pride like a billowing blue cloud, a miasma of swamplands and flooded wharves, coming alive only after the heat of the day has vanished. A minacity deathless, frontierless, plain - existing only in the eternity-bound wagons of the last black train, housing prisoners from cities whose names cannot be uttered, tied with string and bound by codes of brotherhood, sisterhood, nationhood, belief. A multicity referring and cataloguing itself again and again, until even the patterns of its forced assimilations begin to resemble constellations, beehives, shrouds, lives.

PC Bang Signage (26)

2005-11-27T13:20:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (25)

2005-11-27T13:11:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (24)

2005-11-27T13:08:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (23)

2005-11-26T17:06:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: mina --

2005-11-26T16:42:00.000+09:00

The city is tiny but it takes up so much space. In the tunnels, on the wagons and under the stars. One more push and then the darkness will cloak us, or crack. Dreams of a black crow with a blade of grass in its beak. City of wondrous walls and far-up windows, through which candle light bleeds. Oh yes, it's historical. It's bathed in the blue skies of a post-plague morning. It's covered in mist. It's prandial. Esoteric balladeers pepper their sets with sidelong glances at hourglasses and mead. Fake beards ... okay. Someone pours tea from a giant steel kettle and we settle into our familiar jousting positions. City of interminable consultations with oracles. City of bad news recirculated through flues. City of underfloor heat and head-high smouldering looks. City of jawbones and dialectics. Shutters whirr, somewhere. Outside a stillness prevails, lording it over the jackdaws and scarecrows out on loan. City inside a glass globe. The patter of lower court officials. Thatched straw roof, earthern floor: between us, a grim troll. Padded walls and slops buckets. Boisterous boys and mincing girls. Some religious delegation gets the boot. Black ships in a steel harbour. Bodies hanging from trees, vines encircling their legs and arms. Signs posted randomly along passageways leading to wooden mines. Outlaws and prosody. Middle time. Kingdoms and fiefdoms, spiralling defenses and natural redoubts. Evenings of yearning. Days of speed. Colossal dreadnoughts and battering rams. Machines. No doubt. Destiny. The importance of lineage and custom. Books made from older books. Libraries made from the songs of extinct birds. Paradise, in a nutshell. Spherical lanterns and high-pitched wails. Torture chambers, yes. Wells, filled with old boots and armour. Metal horses. Arrows and pitch. Wheels and grinders. Midnight sorcery. Flying warriors. Snakes and beetles. City of the underclasses. City of rosewater. Inklings of sorry tales, chainmail speaking in tongues. Museums of lard. Fantastic noodle trails. Glory and desperation. Assault and counter-assault. Chips and fingers. Odes and elegies, sung in minor keys.

PC Bang Signage (22)

2005-11-26T16:05:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: mendi --

2005-11-26T15:59:00.000+09:00

City of dread, of shanties and loam. In a police state jacked on lonely clubs and bullet time, some streetwalkers trip the line, busting the bleeding hearts and painting skyscrapers red. The tenements by the disused stream are no longer reliably dangerous. Shadows swoop on crumbs of maize and shoot arrows into corporate plans but it's all dead-beat, thrashed. Like the screech of Babylon in tremble bars, or the criss-cross of pseudo-mazes infesting the low town. Clamps on all my wheels, buttons on my bread. Time for more sugar. Anytime I might. Seeds and straw, beige monotones and super action. Walking the world into the ground. Plastic bags over plastic plates, on which plastic food is served using plastic implements. A small bowl of soup and three white plastic cakes in a sea of blood-red sauce from a plastic container. Plastic shoes of all stripes, boxes of plastic biscuits. Smashing into plastic signs, drunk as midnight on Jongno-gil. The barbituate of loneliness. Self-doubting keyboard shields, grimaces from graveyard shifters. Down an alley, well ... what? I could hear that crooning even in my sleep. A small disturbance in the mystery room. It is a street. Clean machine warehouses. Crazed mimics. The poverty of dogs. City of dry-cleaning gases emitted in the early snow hours. This does not escape your attention. The yellow of mustard, the orange of tarpaulins, the green of soju glass, the sandy-white of fortune tellers. Roasted potatoes like crumbly eggs, served in sevens. Batons and barricades. Each mobile unit connected to the next, the water cannon. Log-off time. Fake plants and dead saplings. Shame meals. Booby-traps and curfews. Ideal of a dub soundtrack. Hello? What are you doing? He hangs his head, arms outstretched. His companion sleeps next to a small plastic basket containing three coins and one fluttering note. They call this jazz. For once I hear nothing.

PC Bang Signage (21)

2005-11-26T15:04:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: menda --

2005-11-26T14:56:00.000+09:00

City of the big one, the whopper and the raised eyebrow. City of tales so tall they call them riddlescrapers. City of a thousand hits and one junkie's promise to tell all. City without a story arc. Follish little boys trundling barrels down to the px for spare candy. Two old men fighting in the street with a crowbar next to a construction pit while everyone else just looks on. City of two finger type pads and mouse recalls. Third floor activity hubs. Second floor restaurants catering to the mafia. First floor florists. Streets filled with newspapers telling of the latest academic to be hauled before the prosecution for supporting the non-existent enemy state. City of excruciating silences and barely audible whines. Factory timetables. Hawker routs. City of the tin whistle, the banana peel and the open mouth. Gags that flow like rivers through the food halls. City of girls who hold their hand over their mouth while speaking on mobiles, laughing or both. City of girls in short skirts who hold their handbags behind them as they ascend escalators to deny men upskirt glances. City of gas attack contingency plans involving orange facial hoods and a wan yellow light. City of re-run movies. City of motorcycles and grey steel poles. Backslapping the squat toilets, doing a runner as the kim chi courses through me. Elaborate hoaxes involving chaebol daughters and the sons of former military commanders. All hauled before the prosecution, never to be heard from again. Plum wine in heart-shaped bottles, vitality juices in forbidding metal cans. City of roaring hot plates. Hair dye and tooth bleach. Nature rooms. The rarity of disability access. The sanctity of dynamics. The over-inflation of production targets and the boo-hoo of parliamentary shame. Take what you want, give with a grimace. Too many falsehoods to halve in one day. Typical.

PC Bang Signage (20)

2005-11-25T17:03:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: mega --

2005-11-25T14:44:00.000+09:00

City too big to be called a city. City too large to fit on any map. City too huge to have a name. In the city of Mega, it never rains. The colossal pap of remediation hits me. Hey, maybe you only live three times. Sidewinding down to the intermission between tracks one and two. Burning tool hunters. Opera evasions on the side, glassed out emergency macs all over. City of chrome bars and enamel furniture. Primary colours, fruit fusions and blue buttons. Spouts of water dressed as funerals. Arriving at a conclusion that was someone else's initial departure point. Playing tag with the beacons of drizzle. All of a sudden, the atmosphere becomes turpid. Like sunglasses freeze-fitted to the face. The winking lights of the riverside expressway warm my heart. Applying lip gloss in the dark. Waiting for the subway train that will spirit me to Jeju-do, and the lava tubes. Singing a sad folk song upon your departure. Finding out its name years later. Spin-dried woollen pants. Silkworm rot. Bangs in which the alarms have been triggered. Frozen lakes full of fish. A city in which elections take years to analyse and decipher. City of rotating female leaders. Hits from the blog. Tokens from token amusement park rides. Fightbacks from K1 veterans eager for a news career. Mushy peas, dried pumpkin leaves and persimmon flakes. Shadow-lords, ubermallets. Bingo drums. Carpark solidarity. City of one-way tickets for speed. Sorry for the explosion demands, it was all just hot heirs and taffeta honorifics, babe. I was actually looking forward to the fireworks tonight but the line was engaged and I'd run out of sweat cannisters. Instead, I hurled abuse at a bizarro poster, then emptied myself in the nearest bath. Strawberry soju forever.

PC Bang Signage (19)

2005-11-24T14:31:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: lubri --

2005-11-24T14:27:00.000+09:00

A film-strength city situated, obviously, deep in the marshes. Canals full of treacle and drains that drip. Body-parts moving infinitely towards their obsolescence, pulsing nevertheless with the isotope of hopeless life. Hopeless life, staggering towards reproductive symmetry. Symmetry, between our bodies and the city's design. Blank signs, stretched across a broken boulevarde. Dream spurts, like a monsoon of desire. Speaking of Lubri, a mechanic drew for me his own version of the plastic passions. It looked a little like a bowl of noodles. I danced around a pole, subverting the warrant for my repression. Something sidled up to me and thrilled me in the dark. My hand lay clenched by the remocon, unable to let go of its caffeine fixation. Somehow, we slept. The days could fill a plastic spoon. An endless city of reboots and configurations drawn in red. Beyond the heat-haze, on the river coated with lurid green fronds, we sat and watched as the ferries punted to and fro. The beer bottle between us looked like a limb in a sauna, sweat dripping down its elegant brown skin. Beneath the pulsing drum of my own belly a modest hunger surged, tripping the wire that causes heartbreak and dream squirms. The love of a desert lizard for shade. The footprints you left like a map across the room after showering in the infinite cubicle. The surprise of dawn, hatched from a moon egg. Surviving on water and touch. Drying up in my sleep only to dream of dams and advancing tidelines. Billowing with my arms into a crackling embrace, all the while thinking of the heat of the road beneath my feet. Bathing your feet in a stone bucket left beside the door, then watching it overflow in the candle-enhanced twilight. Swotting mosquitoes with our fingertips. Reading lines from a book of palm prints. recoiling from the hot blast of midday like an electric hammer. The burning sprockets of the stars. The velvet honey holding them together, or apart. The radiant glue of moonbeams. The smoky oil that clings to your lips. The burning resin between us, behind us, in our heads.

PC Bang Signage (18)

2005-11-24T12:45:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: loqua --

2005-11-24T12:31:00.000+09:00

City of garrets and all-night nature rants. City of the invisible line between smoking and non-smoking areas, waves of smoke billowing freely across this demilitarized zone while observers from both sides wo-man their monitors. City of freak scenes and bad acne, too much foundation and red blood dripping from the lip. City of faux-soundtracks to eighties jazz bio-pics shot in sepia-green. City of corn investigations, acid-rash and delta dreams. Waking up non-plussed by the miaowing of a miniature fridge, set to icicle. City of blather. Move along, please. Haunted by the disco-pup cruising at three o'clock, dumplings like miniature brains at an autopsy. Cleaning up after the big tsunami. Coin-drop can dispensers, grape soda rushes. Waiting to hit number one, for the counter to trip zero. Surprise me, phantom pants. Wriggle out of a stone. Borrowing a line from an anonymous abstract, bleatings from the online cyclo-pediatrics. Your cyworld homepage gives me the impression that you harbour tentative feminist fantasies. Suddenly the counter whirrs. Catching the emoticon disease. Hearkening back to the last time you ate shrimp. Shredding itineraries and placing them in the hulls of ashtrays. Add water. In this way the glowing coals can rest in death. Depth charge from an infinity whack of the timeless pressures of inner-city life. Bivouac by the poisoned stream where Bono bled for Africa. Hacks uploaded in binary code will not execute on this server. Mocking my own spasmodic lingo. Hours without speaking, days without listening. City without parks or gardens. Wandering women hawking doughy refreshments to the new warriors out on patrol. Listless seargeants wave them away. Bodily functions are expressed as mathematical end-games. Energies are short. Strapping explosives to the whining mule, then off up the pass. Planning a seven day journey from which you will be back in five days' time. Ponder the deleted histories of the last half hour. Spider diaries. Whip-cracks. Lonesome peaks, jagged.

PC Bang Signage (17)

2005-11-24T12:19:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: ioni --

2005-11-24T12:09:00.000+09:00

City of radiation and pliers. To find meaning in the ad breaks between sutras. City of radio free emoticons. Television is a sheet of glass between eternity and magnetism. Decomposition comes naturally. We are of the worm. This electronic charge re-situates my poles. I crave great density. Listen to the crystals dictating terms for an armistice that will never come, discovering some correlation between diplomatic functions and these bare-faced streets of Ioni. Packed with pseudopotential, the trains revolve on time. Chaos - or is it entropy? - is achieved in such a way that no one ever notices the difference. At the community police station, some charge is bound to be read out, slowly. I document the eruption of a different species. It is no longer appropriate to quote scientific abstracts in the fce of minor court officials. Beneath the piping of sub-latrines, a new manure-nation can unambiguously be defiled. By means of decomposition, the general and his band of assassins attempt microscopic reform, supposedly for Ioni's benefit. Truth and reconciliation can only be established once minight's hour has swung around to face its attackers. This army, being constructed from the valency of zero, charges invisibly, and the longitude thus undergoes strict change, otherwise known as annihilation. The latter can also be expressed by experimental soundscapes, as in the aura bars of the steely capital's sun districts. Drugs flow through veins here in well defined quantities, i.e. the obverse of the pupil's dilation, by the wax and wane of which our loony calendar is set. Transverse, on the other hand, becomes a new form of poetic dialogue between effective traitors and the opposite charges. Our macroscopic viewpoint produces a dielectric constant. Propose explicit values for all classes, large and peasant. Histories of crystals are a given. They can be compared with the other cities, existing (as we do) on warped and tortured scales.

PC Bang Signage (16)

2005-11-23T16:57:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: inter --

2005-11-22T17:14:00.000+09:00

City of vapour trails and suns that set like eggs in a sky of brandy. City of drivers on auto-pilot and air pregnant with the rumour of the first snow. Snow so fine it falls in shards and can only be seen in the light of the eerie streetlamps. Wan glow so eerie it makes you feel like snow. Tomorrow morning you will walk out your door, see the damp bitumen and think: last night it snowed. Only here and now, in the alleyways of Inter, snow is just a jotting on a "to-do" list, like missing your appointment with thanksgiving and going out drinking instead. Compiling a list of body-parts you would like to photograph. Check the hourly news bulletin for a ping from some long-lost friend or your new-found love. Burying your new-found lust under a tree, then walking three circles around it. Crying at the sight of children holding onto handrails and not looking down as they inch towards the tempting sweet. Air so cold it makes your eyes wet, coming out of the subway with no gloves and nothing around your neck. The foolishness of your desire to run naked through these lanes. The flecks of rain that were once snow. The imaginary cities your friends are creating, right at this moment, in a sunnier climate. The earth spins yarn. An exploding neon monument, retracted. Connections missed and promises broken. Plans for a new year, a new visa, a new city. The place of the heart in the act of thinking. What do you feel? As autumn breaks under the pressure of its interconnection with the snow, you decide upon something. The egg of your frozen head dictates a punk shadow but you walk alone anyway. Women hear you coming and cross the street. Dogs hear you walking past and lift their earflaps quizzically. The cats are all frozen in place. Their eyes are slivers of snow. The cars stop at green lights. Outside the grocery, a glass steamer for memory buns gathers condensation. How to tell the difference between raw and boiled eggs. Red date stamps on your palm. Inquiries as to the validity of your educational qualifications. Moments on a passport waiting to expire. Photographs of a human face in sunlight. Blocked pipes and tepid water. These are the times when you would like to run.

PC Bang Signage (15)

2005-11-22T16:47:00.000+09:00

imaginary cities: iconi --

2005-11-21T11:19:00.000+09:00

City of emphasis mines and gravity bombs, assassination attempts and mourning news. City of lightning and turtle boat people. City of city slickers in emergency ponchos goose-stepping through puddles of rainbow-infected grease. Monumental city, shouldered with statues of great and far-flung revolutionary bandits. City of the comet Kohoutek and the Sun King. Wave your pink fronds in equal time, denizens. Men in short-sleeved shirts and ties as if this is Dallas in the 1960s; women in traditional dress and immaculate make-up and perfume. City of bombs reversing into the cargo bays of silver aeroplanes. City of cricket operas and cicada sonatas. Drizzle falls along the motorways, while distant guardhouses flicker in the dim fog. The self-important jeeps honk and rattle, slowing only for hairpin bends, or mountain curses. The pyramid, fashioned from the jetsam of a streamlined war, remains unoccupied. Even great leaders, it seems, must wait for sanctity to be betsowed upon them by temporal high priests. Bloodclots of wire strung along the tight hemisphere of the alleyway. Hold your heads up if you dare. Run willy-nilly backwards. Hit the extradition running. We have erected a gigantic wall to stop the winter from invading us. Our dear icicles splinter in the air. Our agents are everywhere, tracking your predilection for political rants with just the slightest hint of slaciousness. What is your reliability rating? Has it changed at any time during the past three days? Watch your step and don't say you weren't warned. Why are your hands cold? Where have you been? Midway through the historic annullment of our armistice, I took a sideswipe at the moon. In the end I only clubbed a monkey. Fishing plastic bags from the sky, a green boy with a swollen belly. Phosphorous flashes. The inner and the outer circle of an explosion. When will you cross that line thatched with straw, mountainous with geese?

Possessions ...

2005-11-21T11:08:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (14)

2005-11-21T11:02:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (13)

2005-11-21T11:00:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (12)

2005-11-21T10:59:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (11)

2005-11-21T10:57:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (10)

2005-11-21T10:48:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (9)

2005-11-21T10:47:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (8)

2005-11-21T10:46:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (7)

2005-11-21T10:37:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (6)

2005-11-21T10:35:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (5)

2005-11-21T10:33:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (4)

2005-11-21T10:31:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (3)

2005-11-21T10:28:00.000+09:00

PC Bang Signage (2)

2005-11-21T10:24:00.000+09:00

Me, Kevin & Young Eun ...

2005-11-21T09:59:00.000+09:00

One of the highlights of being here in Korea has been meeting some strange people. And when it comes to strange, you can't do any better than Canadian-turned Yankee Kevin Puloski, who I met while staying at the Seoul Backpackers (Deluxe). Through Kevin I met a lovely Korean girl called Young Eun, with whom we spent one delightful drunken evening in ... erm ... October? Cripes, the old memory's on the fritz. Anyway, here's some snaps that Young Eun took that night. She also made some movies of us singing at a norebang (Korean karaoke), including one spectacular clip of Kevin and I performing "Paperback Writer" but Blogger seems to be having a coronary when I try to upload it, so you'll just have to imagine ...

I really like this one, taken down at the Chonggyechon stream project. Arty.

This one could almost be a band shot. Taken out the front of a Sweet Buns franchise. My favourite place to be!

Me and Kevin clowning around. Heck, someone's got to do it.

Kevin shows off his amazing strength - check the look on Young Eun's face. Priceless.

imaginary cities: heli --

2005-11-20T18:21:00.000+09:00

City of sandy streets in a lonely tear gas nation. City of secret cities and minimal identification requirements. City of corkscrews. Dawn breaks across the children's playground, the eerie neon of the all-night soju bar casting a sick light over the kerb's exchanges. As I work my way through this alien's alphabet, I take solace in the cheerful smiles of advertising posters. Inside the club, the space is dense with the sweat of foreign girls and couples lining up for the coatcheck. I order whiskey and coke for myself, then try to dance. Some people - mostly girls - can do it easily. I stumble through the first of many traditional techno-climaxes. Dancers mince and groan on the stage, grinning at non-existent admirers, or perhaps their own unchronicled secret one-liners. City of thrash and guitar experiments. City of miniature pizzas served in paper cups, full moons folded in half. City of night explosions and odyssey marches. A city that cries like single men coming home from soulless clubs in taxis. City of strange circadian rhythms resembling sky thermals, arms resting on car windows, taxi drivers laughing at woollen hats. City of disappearing small businesses and recurring multinational chains. A repressed memory of police violence reappearing unexpectedly in a gold tooth. Who knows how many of these old men were once agents of the imperial holocaust. All together now, into the fearless pitch black of death. City of wine imports and plagiarised conversations. Men in suits wearing sashes across their chests, smiling at strangers. Christians. Cheesecake promotions clog up the footpaths, while clouds continue to flee from the droning skies. I look inside myself and see only shadows, extinguished candles and a leaflet explaining the atrocities committed by my forebears. Emo blasts from the crib of some cryptic anagram mouse on marzipan. Encores by the unwelcome gusts of spring. Sweetstuffs dressed as racks of raw red meat. Caught in the updrafts of belching subways, a new mythology to replace the reverse dream.

imaginary cities: fuga --

2005-11-19T15:36:00.000+09:00

City of dictator beige and magic honey. City of forbidden city kisses. City of pedals, of monument-scrapers. Torn away, postcards of atomic revenge from the wreckage of timecodes for the lonely or the plain-old bugged. I yearn for a simple light. Swollen on a gland, mimicking bubble machines in the air. The pressure makes my ears pop, and some gaseous liquid escapes. Capital punishment city. High up on a spire of desperado gumption, I look down and see hard-core. Deep within the bowels of the supermarket, a stock-taker contemplates her emergency scanner and gives up counting down the nanoseconds. Out on the floor, her colleagues scramble to mop up a mysterious slick of kerosene. Who's that peddler of cheapskate delights? Someone should buy him a dream mattress. We practice riding in carts on jelly plasma, then snack on midnight and dried fish. I look up and all I see is glass squares animated by a malaria-yellow flourescent light. We all look tougher with our shaved heads. We're football hooligans looking for a burning pitch. There is romance even in the boot slapping my splattered face. Your torn tight jeans and our trophy scars. This tantalising mission, fired by an anonymous battle scream, accelerates into plutonium pipelines of on-screen sabotage. Please return that stolen dog to its little space of sunshine, by the fire escape. Someone's out there looking for her, calling her name, mobile accessories jingling. The trace-warp showed up nothing, at least on this level. Cover me while I descend to some other luxurious singing chamber. I look across and see you're breathing heavily, though the stairs were ever-elecric and in perfect working order. Punching the transparent seal separating my face from the air, I can almost taste the sulphurous mildew of phantom marches. You're an irreversible machine, a signpost on the road to scattered sands, where treacherous bandits lie in wait. Let them come. I've turned my safety off, having no further use for disguises, stealth or radioactive hair, Fuga.