Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

The Rain The rain was coming down in sheets that you could see push their way across the parking lot. It was the kind of rain one sees in hurricanes or during monsoon season. It was a visceral rain that was simultaneously exhilarating and frightening, like a great wave breaking on the beach. I leaned in close to the building, taking as much shelter as I could get before venturing up the hill. I watched a young man struggle with an umbrella before it became fully turned inside out and he wielded its uselessness as one carries an offensive thing, like a smelly stick.  I struck out across the street, and immediately my feet were soaked through, not because I had stepped into a deep puddle, but because all the world had become a puddle and anything exposed to the elements was thusly soaked. I climbed the stairs behind a woman wearing a hooded down coat and pajama bottoms that clung tighter and tighter to her buttocks and legs. I could not make out the repeating decoration, maybe it was som

Making Kimbap I made three kinds of gimbap today. One with bulgolgi-chicken, spinach, radish, egg, and carrots. One with avocado, crab, spinach, egg, and carrot. And one with spinach, radish, egg, and carrot. And one with everything, so technically four variations, I guess. Today’s version was much more successful than my last attempt. I followed my mother’s advice on preparing the rice and I think that made the biggest difference. I grew up thinking of it as kimbap, rather than gimbap. It was a special occasion food, something that was packed for summer outings to the beach. I think it was too precious to be wasted on the wanton mouths of children, except for special occasions. So, when I eat kimbap, it makes me think of Nantasket Beach or Plum Island. It makes me think of the smell of ripe seaweed, sand under my fingernails, and lying on my bare belly on the warm pier staring down into the depths where the crab trap sat with a raw chicken wing tied to its center, just beyond where on

What We Think About While We Ride Home in the Dark The most wild and crazy thing we ever did in our life.  Was it that wild and outrageous?  Maybe it was not and only felt that way.  Perhaps there are handfuls of those moments,  too exotic to be memorable on these pages without an alias.  I am a broken record when I ride a bicycle.  Sentences repeat and conversations evolve oh so slowly.  You speak and I speak,  then I revise my answer, and I imagine your response,  and perhaps it would not be so terrible if I said it a different way.  Or perhaps it is too much to bear and there is nothing,  only the cold,  the passing car,  the darkness all around.  I start the conversation again,  and it is about cataloging crazy things we have done.  But that doesn’t go well either  and I start thinking about the conversation I will have with my mentee  in the morning.  I didn’t reschedule so I will have to leave early.  I don’t know what to tell her, so the conversation is short.  I wonder if I sho

The Bounty of This Earth and This Life Thanksgiving was not always celebrated at my parents’ house. In the early days, before the divorce, Uncle Sam hosted and we would spend the day there, our child selves basting in the lingering aroma of the turkey cooking away and infusing everything with a greasy hunger. I wanted the drumstick, was my mantra, and after some fuss, it was agreed to and the adults found great hilarity in presenting me a plate with the oversized portion.  Korea is such a small country, it seemed everyone was a classmate, or a sibling’s best friend, or an infamous rival, of one another. It was an early generation of immigrants, and like religion that wove Buddhism with Christianity, so too they blended American traditions with their own. A harvest festival, Chuseok, is a human thing, and celebrated with a large bird, or tteok, we are appreciative of the bounty this earth and this life has given us.  We used to have a priest who would bless our cars. Great pains were ta

Checking My Pockets  A numbered set of index cards, a prepared stream of consciousness speech about sexuality and identity, an assignment from a marriage therapist. I was born outside. 20 feet and 46 feet. There is a poem about a bone removed being like a log slipping from the hearth, embers still glowing. Where did you sleep last night? We’ll be in it together instead of in secret.  I used to rifle through all my jacket pockets looking for a forgotten pack of cigarettes. I can still smell the stale tobacco, the old paper and cellophane. Now I only find old index cards, tissue paper, rubber bands, and ball point pens.  How much you can tell of a man from what you find in his jacket pockets? It is archeology and anthropology conducted in the aisles of Salvation Army and Goodwill Stores. The napkin from a hotel in Baltimore. A collection of hair ties. A girlfriend’s father cataloged houses of the deceased. We went once and walked through the closets with him. For years afterwards, I wore

Secrets  This morning a character did something utterly normal, but because it was secretive, was utterly shocking. I wonder about our secret lives, the nasty habits we engage in when nobody is looking, the photograph tucked between the pages of a favorite book, a purposefully circuitous route home, the imaginary letter writing. Of course there is the distant mistress, the male lover, the lingering barista. But those are all too lascivious. What my character did was akin to keeping an animal that no one knew about, not even her partner.  When I was I child we had a cat named Kitty. Kitty just appeared one day in one of the basement window well meowing through the glass. This scared my mother to wits end for some reason, and we all laughed at her when we found the source of her panic. Kitty only came in the house a few times, much to my mother’s chagrin. She chased Big Foot around the basement. Big Foot was the mongrel puppy that my father trained to ring a bell when he wanted to go out

The Whetstone It is going to snow tonight, maybe sleet. I wore my new down coat today, the one with the faux fur rimmed hood. I tucked my gloved hands in my pockets and contemplated the resonance of childhood. In the Ishiguro novel I am listening to, the main character, Christopher Banks, recalls how children are more attuned to the unspoken sensations of a moment, even if they don’t understand the broader import of the event. How as children, we catch the furtive glances, the veiled malice, the language of gesture and emotion. I think for years I thought I understood more Korean than I actually did because I, nevertheless, understood what my relatives and family friends were saying to me. With my entire being, I understand what Ishiguro wrote about. However, I’ve grown to mistrust my sense of perception. Certainly, it has dulled with time, the way a well used knife needs honing, but more than a dull knife, I do not remember details as finely as I once did. I was once famous for my fac

My Favorite Disintegrating Pen My morning pen  is starting to disintegrate  and is now held together  with a bit of scotch tape.  You grow accustomed to some things,  even if they are a little awkward  and you invest in ink cartridges  and rail against the slow entropy  of disposable things.  Nothing you care about  should ever be made out of plastic.  Or waffle cone.  I think of today  as an unsettled dream.  Like wading through a  chest deep swamp.  What if one never leaves here,  the short story never ends,  the sickness never goes away,  the bag of pita chips is never finished?

Climate Talk The president has been given the talk. I got dressed twice today.  It was that kind of a day. Like when you wake up and slip into your pajamas and bathrobe,  and you go downstairs because you are going to work on some recording  while everyone else in the house is sound asleep,  but then you realize,  it is a work day and you are supposed to be in the shower.  It is like that, except,  I got dressed in my cycling gear,  wool socks, padded shorts. I debated a long time about what to wear on top  and ended up wearing a neon yellow biking shirt.  Finally, I pulled on the long pants.  I gathered my work clothes and the warm cycling gear for later,  it would grow chilly once the sun set.  I packed my breakfast and lunch,  loaded everything into panniers,  then carried the bike out of the basement.  I loaded panniers onto the rack,  gloves onto hands,  and then realized I had not charged the bicycle.  I was already starting to sweat.  I put the bike away,  everything came out of

Wild Thing On the way home, I gliding in the tailwind of a passing car, we startled a deer standing beside the road. I think he was all composed when the car passed, but my appearance moments later on my silent steed festooned with lights and wearing screaming yellow accoutrements, was just too much and the deer reared off into the woods with a heavy crashing that belied its size and weight. I don’t often see a deer lose its composure and display its wildness. I called out a greeting, but even so, it was a little frightening to be so close to such unbridled musculature.  It reminded me of a time when I was in high school, and because I had been working in a soup kitchen for several months, I thought I had a particular talent for connecting with homeless people and the down trodden. Once, while visiting the Boston Common with a few friends, I saw a man with dirty backpack sitting by a fountain. Filled with hubris, I walked up to him and tried to introduce myself. He reared up in fright

Sweaty Dancer I was a sweaty dancer.  In the middle school cafeteria,  with the lights turned down low,  maybe there was a disco ball,  I danced with an unparalleled lack of reserve.  I was a frenzy of transformed energy,  the wavelengths of sound pulled off the turntables  and electrified in the amplifiers,  and swelling into the room through the speakers.  On slow songs,  I left a sweaty imprint of myself on a girl’s shoulder,  I loved that feeling of closeness,  bodies pressed as if we could imagine there was nothing between us,  as if we were the only ones moving in a near dream state.  There is something transcendent about dance,  like the dancing disease that passed through communities in the dark ages,  something that taps underneath the fabrications of self  and touches one’s inner being.  I do not think I have been truer  than I have ever been on the dance floor  on a hot night after a slow song.  I think of nakedness,  how sweat pools in crevices,  I think of the warmth of bo