Climbing Hyoungjae Bong part one

Clip from Climbing Hyoungjae Bong/ 형재봉 등산 이야기 #mountainhiking #지리산 #등산 #hikinginkorea 

Full video via YouTube link: https://youtube.com/shorts/J01imHKLFw4?si=Repo9jWKUnARzx1Y

형재봉/ Hyoungjae Bong

 

형재봉높에서

At the peak of Hyoungjae Bong.

Full video at YouTube: Hiking the Jirisan Mountains./ 형재봉 그름다리의 풍경 #hikinginkorea #mountainhiking

https://youtube.com/shorts/8NIbygid5AU?feature=share

Winter in South Korea is Changing

 

Climate Change 2

 This is noticeable in South Korea where last summer’s crops were negatively impacted by heat. 

Now we’re in the middle of a weird winter that’s sometimes very mild and sometimes bitterly cold. 

More at YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/Bv19U8MaIYY?si=-t8-9Fjg23IbTsTL

Climate Change 1

 

Jaywalking in Seoul

https://youtube.com/shorts/U2XyGKyFekI?si=GisO58t56NFnyGp6

Jaywalking in Seoul: Why Not Often Seen? #pedestriansafety https://youtube.com/shorts/U2XyGKyFekI?si=GisO58t56NFnyGp6 via @YouTube

Visitors to Seoul sometimes comment on how law abiding the pedestrians are. There are structural reasons for that.

Living overseas away from hospitalized parents

 

What it’s like to be away from parents when living in another country.

Christmas Eve in Seoul

 

Roadways in Seoul

 

Borges contra the contemporary lit biz

  Borges once remarked that normal people want to be praised for what they’ve accomplished; writers want to be praised for what they will accomplish. Touché. 

And yet … what is deemed « accomplished » in 21st literary production tends to measured by skewed metrics. I have several mss I keep dutifully shopping ard; gatekeeping has bec dysfunctional — the influential agents and acq editors know it, and obv writers do too.

Gatekeeping — what I term Selector Class Systems (and extend to prestigious MFA programs, prize jury selection, etc) — needs public critique. Yet this rarely happens; it’s a career risk after all. In the meantime, speaking personally, the work I do have out there (including an online chapbook of poems/authorial moviepoems (something that hasn’t been done before: formerpeople.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/baram-… ) and a historical novel abt an attempted fascist coup in the US: eclectica.org/v23n2/harvor.h…— receive no critical attention. The excuse given is they lack an ISBN.

The presupposition is that online work is somehow less worthy; somehow akin to self published work. But both these works are curated, and what’s especially galling is work that IS self published but can camouflage itself as not receives reviews and shortlisting for prizes. The issue here isn’t one of the occasionally delusional self regard of writers or the rocky process of contemporary canon formation. Instead, it’s an issue of fundamental fairness. If work is out there, shouldn’t it be judged by objective standards?

동지/ Winter solstice

 

Hiver en Corée de Sud/ Winter/ 겨울