The Bisy Backsons

There was a man who disliked seeing his footprints and his shadow. He decided to escape from them, and began to run. But as he ran along, more footprints appeared, while his shadow easily kept up with him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without stopping, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion and died. (Chuang-tse)

The Bisy Backson is almost desperately active...if you want to be healthy, relaxed, and contented, just watch what a Bisy Backson does and then do the opposite. There's one now, pacing back and forth, jingling the loose coins in his pocket, nervously glancing at his watch. He makes you feel tired just looking at him. The chronic Backson always seems to have to be somewhere, at least on a superficial, physical level. He doesn't go out for a walk, though; he doesn't have time...The Bisy Backson is always On the Run, it seems...always going somewhere, somewhere he hasn't been. Anywhere but where he is...

The Backson thinks of progress in terms of fighting and overcoming. One of his little idiosyncrasies, you might say. Of course, real progress involves growing and developing, which involves changing inside, but that's something the inflexible Backson is unwilling to do. The urge to grow and develop, present in all forms of life, becomes perverted in the Bisy Backson's mind into a constant struggle to change everything (the Bulldozer Backson) and everyone (the Bigoted Backson) else but himself, and interfere with things he has no business interfering with, including practically every form of life on earth. At least to a limited extent, his behavior has been held in check by wiser people around him. But, like the parents of hyperactive children, the wise find that they can't be everywhere at once. Baby-sitting the Backsons wears you out..

[The goals we have] do count, mostly because they cause us to go through the process, and it's the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused, and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it's really the process that's important. Enjoyment of the process is the secret that erases the myths of the Great Reward and Saving Time. Perhaps this can help to explain the everyday significance of the word Tao, the Way.

What could we call that moment before we begin to eat the honey? Some would call it anticipation, but we think it's more than that. We would call it awareness. It's when we become happy and realize it, if only for an instant. By Enjoying the Process, we stretch that awareness out so that it's no longer only a moment, but covers the whole thing. Then we can have a lot of fun. Just like Pooh...

When we take the time to enjoy our surroundings and appreciate being alive, we find that we have no time to be Bisy Backsons anymore. But that's all right, because being Bisy Backsons is a tremendous waste of time. As the poet Lu Yu wrote:

The clouds above us join and separate,
The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?

- Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

If I EVER turn into a Bisy Backson, please tell me. I feel like I'm on my to becoming one now, and it's not cool...my awareness is gone, and I've gotten to a place where I often feel like life is a battle, and I have to "fight or overcome" or I'll go crazy. I have to be perpetually busy so I don't have time to think, because even though I miss having down time to write (which I do even when I don't have time, clearly) and just think, and be, I fall into traps of thinking about things I shouldn't, when I have that kind of time.

I've wasted enough time today. Must go be productive.

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Now playing: Chris Ayer - Fall Away (State I'm In)

"Control" is relative.

Me: i hate that, when you can feel the wind pushing your car and you feel like you're not in control of it
Me: haha i guess that would make a good metaphor in a story for life.

I said that tonight. I realized lately how much I don't like not feeling in control of my own life any more. I used to kind of embrace that. But I guess I also used to trust very much that there was some greater force at work, that life just happens the way it happens and there's nothing I can do about it - I just have to roll with it. Then I started having those dreams where my teeth fall out of my mouth randomly, and I guess that was the end of that.

Thinking about this reminded me of June '06. I was walking around with someone one day, and I said how I like the idea that there's something bigger than me in control, and of course, that everything happens for the good. He said he hated that - he hated the idea that he isn't completely in control of his own life. I guess I can understand that better now than I could before. It's funny, I tell people that kind of stuff all the time - that you just do what you can and that's all, that whatever happens, happens, you can't control what other people do, only what you do yourself - and other more hopeful, optimistic viewpoints. It's a wonder that anyone listens to me any more, cause I don't exactly live by that any more. I know I should, and it's really one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" things, but really, I know me - I wouldn't be saying this stuff still if, deep down, I didn't really believe in it.

That reminds me of In Good Company. Topher Grace is in the ad business because he's a hotshot young executive with a life plan to fulfill. Dennis Quaid is the old pro in advertising because he really honestly believes in it - that he's doing a good thing in helping a man promote his independent business, and that sort of thing. Topher realizes advertising isn't for him - that when he does choose a career, he wants to believe in it the way Dennis believes in selling ad space in magazines. I always loved that movie. But I digress.

After mock trial the other day, I was talking to one of the kids who was an attorney this year. They had lost 2/3 of their matches that day; I felt bad for them. Anyway, the one kid says to me, "If there's one thing I've learned, reinforced is probably the better word...it's so important to ensure that you have as much control as possible over your own fate, because once things go from objective to subjective, you've lost the battle." I think I like that. Well, I don't really like it. But I think it's true.

It's strange. When I was little, my parents did teach me that life isn't fair. I learned that life isn't fair, even though it should be, and that even though it isn't, I should treat others fairly, if not mercifully. And I always tried to live up to that. I've realized that even though, based on what I was taught, I didn't exactly expect others to do the same, be the same - fair and forgiving - on some level, I expected people that I respected and was close to, to do that. I think I knew better than to expect people I don't know to live that way, but I don't think I knew enough to expect people that I trusted and respected not to live like that. I didn't know better than to realize that just because I trusted and respected them, and tried to be just and forgiving, that didn't mean that they were going to treat me fairly and mercifully. I wish I had realized that sooner.

Sometimes I wonder if everything really does happen for a reason. In little ways though. Like my abysmal timing. How I manage to run into people when, if I had gone that way just seconds later or earlier, I wouldn't have seen them. Or like, if I drop a folder and have to stop and pick up everything that was in it, but then on my way to class I see someone I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't had to stop and pick up my stuff. That kind of thing. And then I wonder why it is that I had to run into those people. Sometimes it's people that I like seeing; sometimes it's people that I generally hope/think I'll never see again. But even like, the idea that there are no coincidences. "Coincidence is cancelled today," as Eddie Dean would say. Who was it...someone else said, "Everything has a purpose, and it serves you." Or Shakespeare:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from human haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
- As You Like It

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Now playing: Bright Eyes - Classic Cars

I'm a theater dork.

I am. I love plays. I love musicals. Love reading them, listening to the scores/soundtracks, and seeing them performed. By pretty much anyone, as long as it's not completely horribly painful to watch (:: cough BCT Seussical cough ::).

I saw Toms River East do Footloose last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In part because I knew/like a lot of the kids who were in it. In part, though, because I think I just really enjoy seeing kids do fun musicals. There's something about it that's different than seeing professionals put on musicals. I mean, either way it's awesome. But there's something in seeing young kids act like "adults". Well, maybe not adults. But when you're that age, everything is a rush. There's so much promise in life - everything is something new. And to celebrate that through performance is exhilarating.

It reminded me of something from The Jane Austen Book Club (yes, that again).

Prudie found herself in sudden sympathy with Coach Blumberg. How wise was it, after all, to encourage these children to play at great love? To tell them that romance was worth dying for, that simple steadfastness was stronger than any other force in the world? What Coach Blumberg believed - that there was something important about nine boys outpitching, outhitting, and outrunning nine other boys - seemed, by contrast, a harmless fraud. Jane Austen wrote six great romances, and no one died for love in any of them...

I just thought that was so interesting, looking at it that way. And I totally remember working backstage during those musicals. The behind-the-scenes relationships that came of the ones on stage, the drama and craziness, who made out with whom, who went out with whom. It was insanity. But like Fowler says:

Take phermones, add music, rehearsals day and night, people dying for love. What could you expect?

Such a wonderfully cheery book. All happy endings, but that's her point: reading Austen breeds romance. Too bad it's not true. ( :

A brief rant.

Sometimes, being Asian is a pain in the ass. Rather, being Korean and adopted. Only little annoyances, but still. When?

1) When non-Asians want to try to guess what I am. "Chinese?" No. "Japanese?" No. Korean's usually next. Sometimes Vietnamese or Filipino. And that's only if they know Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines are Asian/Pacific Island nations. But no one who isn't Asian ever guesses Korean first. And seriously, I could make it so much easier by just telling them from the get-go that I'm Korean. Then they don't have to look like ignorant jackasses when they've run out of guesses after "Chinese" and "Japanese."

2) When Asians who recognize that I'm Korean automatically assume I speak/understand Korean and start speaking to me in it. It's easy enough to politely tell them that I'm adopted and haven't been in Korea since I was 4 months old, but still. And half the time, even after I tell them that I don't understand it, they keep speaking Korean to me anyway.

3) When people think I'm a communist when they find out I'm Korean. Communists don't let people adopt their babies, morons. Hell, if you're in China, they don't even really let you have babies. During the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, China and North Korea attacked South Korea for letting Westerners adopt so many of their children, saying that babies are South Korea's number one export. I'm not North Korean and I'm not a communist. Jeez.

4) When non-Asians start talking to me about other Asian people they know. Today in Wawa, some random guy first asked me if I was Chinese, then proceeded to tell me how he knows a little Mandarin (only he mispronounced it) and then he told me how he knows a nice Korean woman who works in a casino in Atlantic City. Like I might know her because I'm also Korean. Like I care. Mmm, not so much.

5) People don't do this any more, and I don't remember it happening, but my mum told me that when I was a baby, people in stores used to ask her if I'd be able to speak English when I grew up. No, idiot, I'm going to live with an English-speaking family and magically know only how to speak Korean.

6) When people make stereotypical Asian jokes that aren't even original. If I get asked if I eat cats one more time, I'm going to flip.

7) When other Asians assume that I have some kind of cultural bond with them because we're both Asians. I mean, that's understandable enough I guess, but when you're as much of a "twinkie" as I am, it gets old.

8) When people tell me that I had an easier time getting into college because I'm Asian. Asians are not an underrepresented minority so it's really harder for them to get into colleges / get scholarships. College admissions actually have higher standards for Asian students. So stop telling me that I'm lucky I'm Asian because I'll get more money.

9) When people tell me that I'm smart because I'm Asian and that all Asians are smart slash supposed to be smart etc. etc. Annoying.

10) When I meet creeps with Asian fetishes who are crazy. Like, stalker-crazy. LEAVE ME THE FRICK ALONE.

I love finding old poems.

Sitting high in another world,
Safe behind the smoky glass,
I stare and watch in wonder
As a parade begins to pass.
The marching band blares loudly;
Dancers spin and twirl and leap.
Admirers fall in adoration –
They worship at your feet.

And I watch behind the glass
As they obey your every whim,
Like a powerless machine
Controlled by an intrinsic force within.
Mesmerized, the populace
Sings praises to your greatness
As, masked, you lead them far away
With your cowardly “charms” and “graces.”

I see them crawl on blindly.
You’re inflated by their love,
But their love is really empty:
They’re only sheep stuck in your herd.
Deep down, I think you know this,
That none of this is real,
But desperate to be a hero,
You like how valued they make you feel.

As I watch from high behind the glass,
The parade begins to part:
The people’s souls begin to rise –
Just their ghosts maintain the march.
Shadowy hosts of former selves
Still follow, going along,
But so absorbed by your silver baton,
You don’t see the people are gone.

There’s nothing left but traces
Of the people they used to be.
Blindsided, now the poisonous wave
Of your baton is all they see.
Still, to be followed around by ghosts
Is enough for you to sustain
Your detached façade of arrogance
That enshrouds your human pain.

From behind the glass, I can resist the lure
Of your silver baton, your golden charm;
Yet I cannot but pity you –
You can’t see what you’ve become:
That in spite of thinking that you are loved,
Your followers are soulless drones.
If the wind of reason should blow them away,
You’d see the truth: you are alone.