Thoughts On Thoughts

It's been brought to my attention by my kind editor that I've not written in a while.  I knew this.  It sort of niggles in my head  that I have this bloggy job that I need to tend to but then life gets in the way or I think I'm really boring or I haven't seen anything interesting on the internets or the telly so I think oh why bother.

But, it's my job to find interesting things even if I myself am not particularly fascinating so I am going to make some efforts here... try to get on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday sort of schedule.  We'll see how it goes.

So here's today's Thoughts On Thoughts...

1.  I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers/Miami Heat game last night as the jilted lovers of Cleveland professed their hatred for LeBron James via signs, boos and probably louder than usual screaming for the team he left behind.  At first I was feeling not sorry at all for the people of Cleveland but the game turned into such a blowout that I felt a bit sad as their booing subsided into a sort of sulking silence.  I maintain, though, that this is what you get when you date an egomaniac... not that this has happened to me in real life but I have seen it on the television.

2.  I realized, after watching this game, that I don't like team sports unless it's pairs figure skating.  Hume me.

3.  I am currently in love with Steve Martin not only for his genius Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/SteveMartinToGo">feed</a> but for his banjo prowess.  I listen to <em>The Crow</em> with regularity and it never annoys me.

4.  Speaking of Twitter, the My Morning Jacket <a href="http://twitter.com/mymorningjacket/">Twittering</a> is getting good with lots of nice pictures taken by those funny boys.

I hope everyone has a pleasant weekend where at least one good thing happens.

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.

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.

With No Alarms And No Surprises

It's hard for me to blog when I'm not feeling particularly interesting. Most days when I'm home go by in a hazy blur of ITL. See, those Jersey Shore kids have gym-tan-laundry and I have internet-tv-laundry. Not quite as exciting, I admit, but I'm definitely not getting punched in the face as much so there's that.

I've had a real love/hate relationship with Kentucky ever since I moved here in 2004. Things I love: all this green, my neighborhood, the fact that two of my closest friends here are cool republicans (shocking, right?), and a life that is simple. Things I don't love: how insular it is, being judged for living in Oldham County, being judged based on what high school I went to (one you've never heard of, I'm sure), and a life that is simple. See, at the heart of it I don't think I'm cut out for a life this easy. It sounded great when I moved here and I was tour managing bands. How wonderful to come home after a long grueling tour to a place where I could just veg out and do nothing. But now I'm basically a housewife languishing at the East End Target with the rest of the other housewives, and while I used to pray I would never have the sort of weary desperate look on my face that I see so many of them wearing, now I'm pretty sure I do.

So I'm planning my exit strategy. I'm not sure if 2012 will be the year I take flight or the year the world ends. Maybe it will be both. In that case, I'll have a front row ticket, I'm sure, ensconced once again in my beloved Los Angeles. A place that when all is said and done is home for me.

I'm not knocking Kentucky - and there's a chance I won't be going anywhere if we can't save enough moolah. Kentucky is a lovely place... I'm just not sure we were meant to be. And it's not a conundrum that can be solved by going to a different Target.

Well, that was a bummer! Here's something to rectify this post: