jhan's TeaTime

 

Looking back I'm surprised we managed to love each other at all when the whole relationship was based on what we were not, who we were never going to be, what we weren't going to ask of each other. We were not classic Korean couple. You did not pick me up from my mother's house in Queens in your top of the line Hyundai. I did not kiss you on the cheek and tell you I had a nice time. In fact, we met in a dingy nightclub where you were dancing on the bar and I was shooting bourbon straight from the bottle. We took the subway to my apartment in Chelsea, fucked each other goodnight and I didn't have to tell you I had a nice time.

I got involved with you despite the fact that you were a Korean man and I assumed that you made the same forgiveness of me. I grew to love your gentle wildness, your clumsy grace, your spirit your spirit. And I had leaned on the hope that there were similar things to love about me. I didn't want you to think of me as a Korean woman. Men who have been attracted to me for being Korean were interested in who I am only on the surface without knowing who I am not in the deepest part of my heart. I am not ashamed of the presence of my heritage on my face but I mourn shamefully for the absence of Korea in my heart. You and I had an unspoken pack--I wouldn't be Korean to you if you weren't Korean to me.

We went to movies, we threw parties, we spent many sweaty hours in bed and then one otherwise nameless night while my breath was still heavy and your legs were still pressed against mine you looked at me and said "sarang hae." I had never heard it before. "Sarang hae." You were telling me you loved me and I didn't understand what you were saying. "Sarang hae." You asked me to say it. I couldn't say it. How could I use words that had no meaning to me to say what I knew in my heart. "Sarang hae." The next time I say it I'll mean it.

--Diana Son, "R.A.W.('Cause I'm a Woman)" in Contemporary Plays by Women of Color (Routledge Press, 1996)

... My first impression was that it was a love poem. An amnesty. Dulcet verse. But I was wrong. It said, variously:

You are surreptitious
B+ student of life
first thing hummer of Wagner and Strauss
illegal alien
emotional alien
genre bug
Yelow peril: neo-American
great in bed
overrated
poppa's boy
sentimentalist
anti-romantic
_______analyst (you fill in)
stranger
follower
traitor
spy

--Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (NY: Riverhead Books, 1995)

Notions like selfish genes, memes, and extended phenotypes are powerful and exciting. They make me think differently. Unfortunately, I spend a lot of time arguing against people who have overinterpreted these ideas. They're too easily misunderstood as explaining more than they do. So you see, this Dawkins is a dangerous guy. Like Marx. Or Darwin.

--W. Daniel Hillis, A Comment on Richard Dawkins in The Third Culture

TeaTime lists favorite quotes and comments of mine.
Updated every two weeks. Click JazzCafe for the earlier TeaTime.
May/22/96, jhan@gort.ucsd.edu