Gathering.

“I couldn’t let the false accusations of one foolhardy man endanger the entire society of miniaturists.” (15)

The previous quote is from My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.  In this book, each chapter is written, in turn, from the perspective of a different character.

Don’t you think it’s fair that everyone should have a voice?

I began thinking about this after plunging into the condensed writing of Homi K. Bhabha in his chapter The Location of Culture, which emphasizes the necessity for all voices to be heard.  It is better to identify as a global citizen than as a national, and consider not just one voice, but all when considering one’s identity.  Our history is not in the past as it is not static, but it is a story that is being written simultaneously by many.  If our story were to be written in keeping with this theme, like in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, each character takes turn giving their account, and so the readers may see everything for themselves.

As this is often not the case, the unheard voices become liminal. A multitude of voices can be divided between the powerful and the oppressed.  We can think of Freud’s model of the conscious and the unconscious when thinking of our nation state.  This polarity exists until a temporal shift reigns; one which grounds us into the present moment, and this multiplicity of histories being written, right before our eyes.

So yes, this book of Orhan Pamuk’s quite impressed me with its multiple voices evenly shared.  It also inspired me to go on and read more of his work, including Istanbul, a story of his city.  In turn, it made me want to go there.

How is it we make choices?  Have you ever read a book and wished to crawl into the pages, or better yet, go to the place written about?

He wrote about the diamond-like sparkling of the Bhosphorus Strait through the middle of this city perched on the center of Europe and Asia’s divide.  He wrote how houses are pushed right up to the edge of this water, and how people prize living right on the edge, despite how boats sometimes crash through living room windows in storms.

So by and by, I had to go see it for myself.  We make decisions and plans evolve, but how is this? In Sheena Iyengar’s TED talk, The Art of Choosing http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing?quote=785 she suggests that making choices is an art, and that when we are faced with a decision, it can be to our best advantage not to make that decision alone. I often travel alone and quite like it, for I find I am more open to meeting new people that way.  However in this case, as I chatted about my plans and got excited over it, other voices got involved.  At first, it was only me, but when two friends overheard my plans, then there were three. So with our collective and individual agendas together we  traveled.   We all arrived at different times, and left at different times.  I, being the greedy one, added Romania and Bulgaria into my trip as well, while my friends explored a bit out of the capital.  But that is a story for another time.

We combined our group wish list, including a Bosphorus boat tour, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, Dolmabahce Palace, and eating these kind of good/terrible fish sandwiches, from fish fished from the Bosphorus.

I am very spontaneous but not ambitious in building itineraries, so we were a great mix: synergy at it’s best. We got in enough sight-seeing, socializing with each other and with people we met, and I still made my train Bulgaria/Romania bound with more seconds to spare than when I plan on my own.

One must-see in Istanbul is the Hagia Sophia.  (from the Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, “Holy Wisdom“; Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia; Turkish: Ayasofya)The Hagia Sophia was first a Greek orthodox basilica, later an Imperial mosque, and is now a museum.  Let me remind you earlier I was talking about history. Not unlike Bhabha, David Spurr, in The Rhetoric of Empire, is quite concerned with attitudes that trample on with colonial, postcolonial, and imperial attitudes.  I like to think of the Hagia Sophia as a beautiful example of how our constitutions morph, in the perspective of history.  In Bhabha’s view, it is a church, a mosque, and a museum, all at once, whispering from the walls all the stories it has seen.

What stories would your walls tell if they could whisper?

In my next blog entry, I’ll be interviewing others and sharing their stories.  Adieu.

 

Where am I and what am I doing here?

If Paris is the City of Lights, North Korea is the country without lights.

For nine years I lived in Seoul just below it, and the past two years I’ve been in Busan, on the SE coast in South Korea.  I am always asked about North Korea when I explain where I live, and to me, this map explains a lot. Take it in.  I will let the image speak for itself.

Two good non-fiction books I would recommend for a glimpse would be Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulout, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy, as well as fictional Your Republic is Calling You by Young Ha Kim.  Aquariums is the standard book to get into the topic.  Your Republic captures the imagination of possible dynamics, following the would-be life of a spy from the North living in Seoul, but if you were to choose just one, read Demick.  She was a reporter from the LA Times who lived on the peninsula for ten years, given the charge of covering the two Koreas.  At first she was stationed in Pyongyang, but found she wasn’t able to gleen much about the inner-workings of society.  Later in Seoul, she extensively researched and put together the stories of six residents of Chongin, North Korea’s third biggest city, and weaves together the story of their lives.

If you want to go deeper, check out Rescue North Korea, who work on moving refugees out through China and Mongolia or SE Asia and help them settle in the south:  http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/rescue-refugees/

Where am I, and what am I doing here? I am a traveler who set up camp here in Asia.  I am one of many.  Here is my current city, Busan, city of 3.5 million:

Busan, according to the City Tourist Association:

Busan, as Marines see it (I’d really like an over-the-shoulder explanation of this one.): As

Busan as it was seen in 1872 (I like to remember there were tigers living here then):

Busan as I see it:

So as you know, travel is more than observing.  Travel is making footprints and meeting people.  If you step up to Dalmaji Hill in Busan, overlooking Haeundae beach, this is what you see:

 

David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration, in which he says “any visual artist knows, the gaze is also the active instrument of construction, order, and arrangement. What one might call the ideology of the gaze takes on one of its clearest forms in the convention of the com­manding view(15)”.  Spurr tells us that, an aerial view, the power to construct an image, is the power to create a reality.  Here, I am giving you versions of this aerial view.  So what is this place? At this point, am I an observer anymore?  Or part of the landscape, part of the observed? South Korea is a relatively homogenous society, so I am a visible minority, and any expat living here has a lofty collection of moments when we have been pointed out.  Literally.  Who wants to be like everyone else? Whether or not we want to be like them, it may be nice to be with them.

In Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation Mary Louise Pratt describes the contact zone, a bridging point of understanding between two cultures, or the observer and the observed.  For me, to access this zone, I have to be grounded in the present moment.  I recognize the different cultures or perspectives, and focus my awareness on our commonality.  Oh, it is a messy process.  I am tested sometimes, and sometimes I fail.  Often.  I become humbler in the process usually.  The contact zone comes with sharing a meal together, with a mutual life pattern such as work, or play, and sometimes, in a moment.

Since my arrival in Korea, the expanse and intricacy of my connections to people has been growing non-stop.  I would like to relate one of the first, synchronous meetings I had, when I was flushed into the contact zone in a magical way.  Before my move to Korea, I had a brief interlude of employment at an ESL school in Canada, Vancouver.  On my first weekend in the megalopolis of Seoul, I was ventured into the downtown area.  Walking in awed stupor at the immensity of the population and intensity of the urban activity around me, I heard a voice:

“Hey, I know you.”

The voice was talking to me.  By chance, I bumped into An Young Won, to whom I had given a class a few times in Vancouver.  I felt like a trapeze artist, caught on the other side of the abyss.  “I know you.”

At times, life abroad, or life anywhere can be lonely.  But loneliness is a temporary affair, a good driving force for reflection, and at any rate, sweetens the arrival of friends.

Here I am with An, when I visited him years later in Beijing, where he moved to do his MBA at Peking University:

 

Herodotus, Africa, me, and writing.

“Men trust their ears less than their eyes.” Herodotus

Travelers want to see things for themselves. Herodotus was touted as prone to exaggerate, or even lie about his travels. Regardless, he was magnanimous, and his impact on the world beyond compare, as he became known as the father of history.  So why write about travel?  How to write about travel, with truth? To write what matters?  This blog is inspired by a grad studies rhetorical writing course, in which I will explore and define travel writing as a genre, and work on defining my own voice as a travel writer. My intention to travel wasn’t apparent even to myself until I started doing it, and found myself unable to stop.

After my undergraduate degree, I participated in a cross-cultural volunteer experience that took me from my birthplace in the prairies of the Canadian interior to a Southern Africa for six months. I volunteered with Canadian Crossroads International ( http://www.cintl.org). The program is designed to promote awareness of global issues through cultural exchange.  With other volunteers in my community, we prepared for our journey a year in advance, hosting events to promote issues affecting the developing world and settle the details of our placement.  A few months before departure our posts were disclosed to us and I learned I would work  in Swaziland.  When I was first told where I was going, I actually didn’t know where Swaziland was.  I checked the map.  Swaziland is a freckle-sized country within the country of South Africa.  So away I went and my overseas voyages began.

I was placed in Mbabane with SASO, an organization created by local Swazis living “positively” who advocated for a positive attitude, healthy lifestyle, vegetarian diet, and a supportive community for people living with HIV/AIDS.   One amazing person I met while volunteering was Albertina Nyatsi.  I don’t know many people in the world with her strength, intelligence, and resilience.  She is still doing health education work, based in Swaziland, and traveling around Africa.  In Swazi language, I would call her my sisi, or sister.

While living in a village called Lobamba, I also met a local artist named Lucky Mlotsa.  In a fireside gathering sharing music and dreams, he confidently told me, “We are all citizens of the world.”  It took me some years to grow into his statement, but now I feel that motto is the garment that fits most comfortably.  Now he is running his own school teaching art for free to local youth. https://www.facebook.com/stiknmudartists

My work in Swaziland spurred lifelong interests in health issues, languages and cultures, the environment, and especially, learning to relate to new people.  I learned that to travel is to open myself up to change.  It is a personal journey in which we learn to define our own boundaries, and redefine them.  We learn the boundaries of humanity as a collective whole, and our perception of those boundaries.  Ethnographical exploration becomes more than an academic perusing; we are fused with our surroundings, and melded by them.  Basic questions about what and who I am and we are emerge.

After Africa, I didn’t settle in my home country for long.  Again without intending to, I kept going,  as travelers do.  Several countries and years later, I have spent my adult life abroad.  At this point, my home is where I am. Where I am from and where I am going counts, but to varying degrees, I consider my home the view behind my eyes and heart.  So this is the perspective I write from.  This blog is inspired by my academic work and I will make references to readings I explore, but moreover it is a search for my writing voice. The tone may be philosophical and anecdotal.

The other day as I was thinking about this course I  wrote: “We are a work in progress. A human is a living art form. I will never stop working on myself. Sometimes there is joy, and sometimes tragedy. Live and die, live again. We keep breathing. The lines between bliss, chaos, and peace blur.”  In Traveling Cultures, James Clifford poses important questions I will be considering: “Some strategy of localization is inevitable if significantly different ways of life are to be represented.  But ‘local’ in whose terms? How is significant difference politically articulated, and challenged? Who determines where (and when) a community draws its lines, names and its insiders and outsiders?” In my class we ground our ideas in historical travel which has colonial and commercial motivation.

Here in NE Asia where I currently live, I see disputes over island territories and country boundaries, such as Dokdo between Japan and Korea, and several islands between Japan and China striking heated disagreements.  Tibet has been swallowed up by China.  In Canada, there is always the question of whether Quebec, the French province, will separate and take the maritimes with them.  Where are the lines between culture?  Are they geographical? Linguistic? Ethnic? These questions circle.

Perhaps the Empire of England brought me to my current post teaching EFL in Asia.  In the future, there will probably be Chinese teachers in my stead.  This video features the history of English, which I teach to EFL learners.  It is captivating.   A quarter of English speakers are native; a quarter speak it as their second language, and the last half have a smattering.  The best part is at the end. They say as a result, English has evolved so much and is so far changed from its origins, that it probably shouldn’t be called English anymore.  If it does have a new name, it should be probably be given a name in Chinese:  http://youtu.be/rexKqvgPVuA

As I consider this global identity, for me personal ecological issues become of greater concern.  However it is we decide to draw the lines on the Earth, we must not neglect it as our greatest and richest home that we all share.  Economic actions and choices we make impact communities on the other side of the globe.  Unsustainable energy sources and wasteful use of resources impacts global warming, and makes storms that ravage villages and devastate communities.  If entomologists like Charles Darwin, whose writing we looked at, were alive, how would his motivation for writing change?  He wrote as a scientist, documenting his work.  In keeping with his era he was culturally obtuse, as he referred to local Brazilians as “savages.” His strong points surrounded his vibrant descriptions of nature. Nature is worth investing in protecting.  As a citizen of the world I become more concerned with how my dwelling, transportation, and food choices impact the planet as a whole. I think the power rests in these daily choices, much as the richness of our relationships rely on each time we encounter or share with another.

So how to tell this story? My compass looks like this:

In my next blog post I will be getting more acquainted with this compass, and looking at what it is that defines territory in more detail.

Tofo Beach, Mocambique 2000.

The air smelled like coconuts, and the sand swirled around my feet. I can’t believe that was more than a decade ago..