This Week's Column - In The Matter Of Cha Jung Hee

I'm reposting my column from this week because the Courier-Journal archives our work relatively quickly and truth be told I'm not always particularly proud of my writing but this one was okay... or at least the subject matter is important to me. So here you go...

Linda Park is a made up person. I don't mean that I'm not really Linda Park or that you're reading the column of some mythical "Linda Park, Korean in Kentucky." But, Linda Park was born from the imagination of an intake worker at City Baby Hospital in Seoul, Korea and perhaps the unimagination of my adoptive father who named me after his first love... a woman who is not my adoptive mother. Yes, I was off to a classy start but that's another story for another time.

I just finished watching the POV documentary In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Korean American adoptee Deann Borshay Liem. It tells the story of Liem, a child brought to America as a child with the name of another orphan that her adoptive parents had been sponsoring. This Cha Jung Hee had been claimed by her father over a year before the Borshay's decided to adopt her. However, unbeknownst to the Borshays. the social worker at the Sun Duck Orphanage continued to send them letters as if Cha Jung Hee was still there looking for her forever home.

In her place they sent Liem, switching her identity, so the girl who'd grown up thus far as Kang Ok Jin became Cha Jung Hee, wearing her shoes and carrying her name on a passport. Though she was told not to reveal her secret, she did try to explain to her new parents but they decided she must be confused.

At the heart of the film is Liem's inner identity crisis and the feeling that she was, perhaps, living someone else's life. Her case may have extreme elements, but I think that feeling of alienation is common amongst adoptees, especially those brought to a country where the culture is vastly different from that of their birth.

It is very easy to say, "Oh, you were saved!" or "You were chosen! You're special!" or any of the platitudes we adoptees hear from a very early age, but I was never exactly sure what I was saved from. If there's an Asian alive who thinks Plano, Texas is salvation, I would like to meet them.

My life is complicated and I think there's a loneliness in me that I may never escape. However, I suspect that's nature. I would love to know, if nothing else, the history of my birth family. Were they prone to depression, too, or did I get that from the circumstances of my childhood? Are they genius and full of wit just like me or did I develop that because you need some defense in this world? Okay, so maybe the genius part is a joke especially as I handily dispel the notion that Asians are fabulous at math and science with my inability to master long division and my refusal to dissect a frog in biology.

I don't like to think about what might have been because talk about your exercise in futility, but I think everyone has questions about who they are and for most the answers may be relatively simple. Sometimes I wish they were for me, but I accept my life and at a certain point you alone are responsible for who you are.

I'm also grateful. Flawed though my upbringing may have been, if I hadn't been through that adversity would I be here right now? Would I have a kickass husband, a nice house and awesome dogs? Cliché but true, there are no wrong steps in life because without the bad we don't get the good.

At the end of In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee we find both the filmmaker and the Cha Jung Hee she's found at peace with their lives. A chance intersection and forty years later, a journey complete.

Over 100,000 Koreans have been shipped from their homeland to points around the world. They say, "Home is where the heart is." My hope for all of us is to find home, wherever that may be.

So Many Things

Normally I credit sources but I've had some of these on my computer for so long meaning to post that I've forgotten from whence they came.  Except the last one, that one came from this place with the bad word in the title.

Historical Documents: My Morning Jacket in October

I know I write a disproportionate amount about My Morning Jacket - especially considering how little I've been blogging lately.  However, I'm ankle deep in NaNoWriMo, which you probably don't want to hear about especially considering I am nowhere near 50,000 words and it's already November 18.  I'm definitely sure you don't want to hear about my time at the dentist this week which is probably the most interesting thing that happened to me besides watching the Gwyneth Paltrow episode of Glee.

I've been posting Tom Picture Time on the MMJ Twitter feed every day which is a collection of shots Tom's been taking at the studio.  You should totally follow them and can do so here.  They'll have a new record coming out sometime next year.  Late spring?  Early summer?  Something like that. Oh oh, and they're on the cover of the new Austin City Limits: 35 Years in Photographs book so that's pretty groovy.

So, without further ado, here's some video (poor) and photos (less poor) I shot while out with Tom (husband) and company (the rest of the band) last month.  You can see all the videos of questionable quality here.

Still Life of Kentucky Living with Water Bottles

Channeling his inner Itzhak Perlman... because a Jimmy Page joke would just be obvious.

The Patrick

Handle with Care

Danny Clinch makes the photo time happen. I make the photo of photo time happen.

Pooch Approved

The closest we will ever be.

Johnny Quaid gets overexposed

Into the woods... with a band of vikings.

I don't know which is more terrifying: Pooch the Chicken (seen here with R.j. Biscotti), Pooch the Mexican Wrestling Optimus Prime or Pooch the Donkey.

Wearing white past Labor Day

Balloons they fall and make things happy.

One Big Kittycat

Sheer Affection

Tom as seen by Danny Cash from a photo by Steve Mitchell

I hope you have enjoyed these small offerings.

Song For A Day - Election Day

Okay, Arcadia really was the lesser of the Duran Duran offshoots but this video just gives me an excuse to re-post this week's column before it goes off to the C-J archives forever more...

I hope everyone voted in last week's mid-term election. It's mostly true that if you don't participate, you can't complain, but in all honesty I understand the desire to abstain altogether with the caliber of candidates we're faced with these days. To that end I feel that I can't really condemn those who choose not to participate.

I did my civic duty at the Brownsboro Community Center in Crestwood, and boy, was it ever depressing. Voting in the 40014 is a somewhat soul-crushing journey to the heart of red Kentucky.

Eight Kentucky counties went blue in 2008, and Oldham wasn't one of them. Not surprising, as I knew what I was in for when I moved out here and mostly I can handle living in the remnants of white flight, in a town where I'm 99 percent sure I'm the only Korean. I think I could probably apply for endangered species status.

So it was with a sense of the futile that I made my way to our polling place last Tuesday. The room was empty when I arrived, but as I sat down with my ballot behind what appeared to be a cutout cardboard box, there was a bit of a rush of people ready to get their Republican on.

As I contemplated the various races, I overheard one woman ask if it had been a busy day and they told her yes, voter turnout was good. She then went on to make tea party comments about how people are just plain fed up and they're right fed up and I think she used the term “fed up” four times while one of the poll workers chimed in about how no one got their change, and this ain't change and keep the change, and it was like every bumper sticker I see on every car out here come home to roost in a depressing auditory explosion. Furthermore, isn't it wrong for the people who work the polls to be giving their political opinions while others are trying to vote?

Dejectedly, I filled in the boxes for the Democratic candidates, none of whom I felt overly enthused about, as the woman's daughter loudly asked, “Mommy, where's Rand Paul's name?” Ah yes, Rand Paul, the libertarian savior. The bright smiling face of the Tea Party, lauded by Sarah Palin, who sees him as a fellow victim of the liberal media's “gotcha” game, and Kentucky's newest emissary to the United States Senate.

It will be interesting to see how Paul, part of the new brand of maverickism, fueled by faux righteousness, gets along as the freshman senator alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell and the Republican party have already made strides in moderating Paul, but recently he's said in interviews that he will challenge McConnell. Jim Bunning, who was, let's face it, pretty cuckoo and an embarrassment to the party, might start looking pretty good as the tea partyers and their misplaced brio take their seats in Congress.

This election proved that people are angry, but where will this anger get the new Republican base? Where will moderate Republicans go? Will the tea party force a third party into our system? That's actually something I'm invested in. That being said, I don't think Obama's getting a fair shake (he's partly to blame for that), and I'm sad that hope doesn't seem to get things done in the same way anger does.

However, one beacon of light on the horizon is that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear reportedly drew more than double the crowd of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor spectacle. I'd like to make a joke about how you need to have honor in order to restore it, but I'll spare us all.

In the end, I'm not too morose about the Republicans taking back the House. Maybe now they'll have some accountability. That's my bright side here.

Song For A Day - Lonely In Your Nightmare

I just finished reading Andy Taylor of Duran Duran's autobiography, Wild Boy, and it was more interesting than I expected.  Strange to hear about how things were falling apart while I was sitting in the nosebleed section of Reunion Arena with a screaming friend and a stoic father on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour.  I was mortified by all the shrieking going on around me and I think it was a while before I went to another concert.

We won't discuss how many posters of this band adorned my walls as a 13-year old because that would be total humes.  Let's just say I managed to cover up all the hideous tan plaid wallpaper and dreamt the sweetest of dreams with John Taylor's pretty face smiling down upon me.

Speaking of dreams... we also won't discuss how many times I watched this video as a young teen just wishing Simon LeBon would come whisper something or other in my ear.  And let's not mention how skeevy that is since I was, as mentioned, 13 and he was 25.

Also, this:

Church In the Now

Sometimes bravery takes on a face you don't expect.

Song For A Day - Kiddie Hypnogogia

It's rare that I post new music in Song For A Day, but a) I really like this song by Mini Mansions even though I'm not a huge Queens of the Stone Age fan, and b) it stars my gay crush, the awesome Erik Patterson, vomiting red goo. The vid is directed by his brother Joshua.

So, peep this shizzle. Imma go buy this record now.