Saturday, February 26, 2011
실타래를 풀다
Friday, February 25, 2011
Resolve anger
“People are all good, once you get to know them.”
That was the first thing our tour guide said when we started the trip in Prague. He had a kind face.
With feverish, tired eyes, I looked out the bus window at Eastern Europe. It didn’t feel that different from Western Europe. Churches here, churches there—nothing really stood out.
In Budapest, we stayed at the hotel where actor Lee Byung-hun stayed during the filming of the K-drama IRIS. The next morning, I was waiting in the lobby when I saw Song Hye-kyo coming out of the elevator! Wait—no, it just looked like her. It was actually our tour guide. Petite, with fair skin and a bright smile—she really did look like the actress. Maybe it was because we had talked so much about the drama the night before. Or maybe it was just my fever playing tricks on me. Either way, when I told her, “I thought you were Song Hye-kyo,” she was delighted. She gave me some cold medicine from Korea, and that strong Korean medicine really worked. I finally started to feel human again.
Other people write fun travel blogs listing all the historical places they visited.
But me? I always seem to come back with a sad memory. When I think back on my trips, they feel like places I just brushed past in a dream—foggy cities I barely got to know.
When I arrived at the airport, my husband came to pick me up. He took my travel bag and said,
“Got it all out of your system? I guess things will be quiet around here for a few months. I made soybean paste stew. Come eat.”
Whenever the tangle of stress and frustration builds up in my chest, I feel like I have to go somewhere. I distract myself by looking up destinations, asking, “Where should I go next?”
Booking the trip makes things even more stressful—but slowly, as I plan and wander, the knots begin to loosen.
Maybe that’s how I’ve managed to keep this long marriage going. We go through the cycle again and again: I leave, I return, and my husband waits with warm stew on the stove. And somehow, it works.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
화가의 아이
Friday, February 4, 2011
An artist's child
People are often curious about where artists come from and how they first started making art.
But according to South African painter Marlene Dumas, what really matters is not where you begin, but where you end up. She once said that everything between the beginning and the end is just shadows.
I went to see her exhibition, “Measuring Your Own Grave,” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York with my child. Dumas once said that “the canvas is the coffin of the subject you’re painting.” It was a powerful idea.
While my husband and I looked at the paintings, our child began to draw too. If we used brushes, the child wanted brushes. If we used colors, the child demanded colors and painted wildly. At home, in restaurants, on napkins, receipts, even on shopping bags—my child drew everywhere. I always carried materials, but even without them, my child found a way to draw.
At first, the drawings were simple lines. Then shapes—circles, squares. Soon, dinosaurs appeared, then sharks under the sea, then tigers in the forest. The soft lines turned rough, and the drawings became full of tanks and airplanes. My child made loud sound effects—explosions, gunfire—while drawing dramatic war scenes. I never taught my child how to draw. I never asked, “What are you drawing?” The only thing I did was place different tools nearby—crayons, pencils, paper.
As my child got older and had more opinions, we even made drawings together. My child would doodle on the edge of my own work, making it a kind of collaboration. During the teenage years, the drawings turned into comics. Eventually, my child was accepted into an art high school. Since the child had been drawing from the moment they could hold a pencil, it felt natural to expect that art would become their future.
But then one day, my child said:
“Art is something you can do without going to school for it. It’s not a big deal. I’m not going to the art high school.”
“Won’t you regret it later?” I asked.
Instead of studying art, my child chose a college major that had nothing to do with it.
But once at university, they began taking electives in drawing, photography, and even minored in film. They started posting their own drawings on a blog, sometimes staying up all night to work on them.
One day, I heard something surprising—and a little exciting—from my child:
“I think being an artist might be one of the coolest jobs ever.”
But instead of feeling happy, I found myself saying,