why are k...
As I take the final plunge into my last semester of graduate school, my time has once again gone from an expansive Mid-Western Prairie to a San Francisco alleyway, highly raked, narrow, and improbable.
Work on the thesis slow going, and now tech has begun for a show. The idiots from above have assigned me not a nice button pushing job like Light Board or Sound Board Opp, but assistant costumer and props. The show is incredibly complex with lots of tiny and large delicate props, and shadow puppets that I have to manipulate backstage. I also have to turn the crank to send backdrops and trees flying in and out from the wings (actually pretty cool to see, but not to do). They have given us wireless mics, but mine someone won’t turn off. Despite efforts to “check the mic,” I have been overheard humming Christmas tunes, complaining, and breathing heavily into it. I also use the mic to convey confusing messages.
Su: “Gina, when I strike the table, I mean the platform, yeah the platform, should I leave it back stage or roll it stage right, I mean stage left, into that tape thing, that taped triangle, I mean rectangle..where it lives?”
[Long pause]
Gina: “I’m coming over.”
I had a dream involving my family members though I don’t remember what or how. I am excited, a potential gig may allow me to live in Hawaii from June to August, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in Hawaii for that long, and I hope that I will finally be able to do all of the things I want to (Shakespeare festival, classes at University of Hawaii, research at the Bishop Museum, oral history interviews…). Begrudgingly, I am coming to terms with the fact that I am very much all talk, or mostly talk, and rather lazy. It seems it takes me much longer to do things than other people. At least that is my limited understanding of the situation.
But back to my mother. I was remember a story she told me about her Halmoni, her Korean grandmother. My mother doesn’t tell that many stories about her past, and so I latch onto the ones she does tell. It’s not that she doesn’t think about these things but she is a woman that lives in the present…good for the most part, and not trapped in nostalgic. In this story, for every birthday, Halmoni gave her thick granny-ish flannel pajamas, usually Christmas themed, bought on sale a year in advanced, inappropriate and uncomfortable for Hawaii evenings in their small tin-roofed house. Finally, my mother asked for something else for her birthday, and Halmoni gave her a frying pan. My mother was 9 years old and not so into cooking at the time. I asked my mother if it was a special pan in any way, and my mother said, no, it was indistinguishable from everything else in the kitchen. And so from then on she asked for the flannel again.
My friend and I were talking. I was talking about my mother, I think. He said that he went through a phase of dating Korean women, and talked about the fear of my tempter… That I believed I didn’t have a temper, only a lot of guilt and depression…and then someone told me, “don’t you know that guilt is just subverted anger?” So apparently I do have a Korean temperament after all, it’s just buried under a mother load of Asian daughter guilt.
He was talking about why Korean women are all crazy. He said on a whim, he googled “why are k” and the rest “orean women so crazy?” auto-filled in. Well at least we are intriguing, I just hope we are worth the effort. Of course, I am only 1/4 Korean, so the k-force in me is quite diluted.
Work on the thesis slow going, and now tech has begun for a show. The idiots from above have assigned me not a nice button pushing job like Light Board or Sound Board Opp, but assistant costumer and props. The show is incredibly complex with lots of tiny and large delicate props, and shadow puppets that I have to manipulate backstage. I also have to turn the crank to send backdrops and trees flying in and out from the wings (actually pretty cool to see, but not to do). They have given us wireless mics, but mine someone won’t turn off. Despite efforts to “check the mic,” I have been overheard humming Christmas tunes, complaining, and breathing heavily into it. I also use the mic to convey confusing messages.
Su: “Gina, when I strike the table, I mean the platform, yeah the platform, should I leave it back stage or roll it stage right, I mean stage left, into that tape thing, that taped triangle, I mean rectangle..where it lives?”
[Long pause]
Gina: “I’m coming over.”
I had a dream involving my family members though I don’t remember what or how. I am excited, a potential gig may allow me to live in Hawaii from June to August, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in Hawaii for that long, and I hope that I will finally be able to do all of the things I want to (Shakespeare festival, classes at University of Hawaii, research at the Bishop Museum, oral history interviews…). Begrudgingly, I am coming to terms with the fact that I am very much all talk, or mostly talk, and rather lazy. It seems it takes me much longer to do things than other people. At least that is my limited understanding of the situation.
But back to my mother. I was remember a story she told me about her Halmoni, her Korean grandmother. My mother doesn’t tell that many stories about her past, and so I latch onto the ones she does tell. It’s not that she doesn’t think about these things but she is a woman that lives in the present…good for the most part, and not trapped in nostalgic. In this story, for every birthday, Halmoni gave her thick granny-ish flannel pajamas, usually Christmas themed, bought on sale a year in advanced, inappropriate and uncomfortable for Hawaii evenings in their small tin-roofed house. Finally, my mother asked for something else for her birthday, and Halmoni gave her a frying pan. My mother was 9 years old and not so into cooking at the time. I asked my mother if it was a special pan in any way, and my mother said, no, it was indistinguishable from everything else in the kitchen. And so from then on she asked for the flannel again.
My friend and I were talking. I was talking about my mother, I think. He said that he went through a phase of dating Korean women, and talked about the fear of my tempter… That I believed I didn’t have a temper, only a lot of guilt and depression…and then someone told me, “don’t you know that guilt is just subverted anger?” So apparently I do have a Korean temperament after all, it’s just buried under a mother load of Asian daughter guilt.
He was talking about why Korean women are all crazy. He said on a whim, he googled “why are k” and the rest “orean women so crazy?” auto-filled in. Well at least we are intriguing, I just hope we are worth the effort. Of course, I am only 1/4 Korean, so the k-force in me is quite diluted.