Journal
Prelude to a storm – A storm of posting here at Liminality, that is. Mind you, everything is relative—for me, a “storm” of posts means anything more than one post a week. There are a number of things I have been meaning to write about, and I have a deadline of sorts coming up, so rather than do my usual thing (that is, intend to write about something, perhaps even adding it to a list of things I want to write about, and then slowly lose the motivation and desire to write it as more and more time passes, until I finally give up and toss whatever list I might have created into the recycle bin), I have decided that I’m going to do a round-up of “coming attractions” as a way of making myself somewhat accountable. This will not be long, though—remember, it’s just a prelude.
The first thing I want to write about is something I have mentioned a number of times: an explanation of exactly what happened to Liminality during the Great Malware Crisis of 2013 (as it shall henceforth be called, or GMC13 for short). I already have a good deal of this written, so it’s just a matter of pushing myself to finish it off, clean it up, and post it. The problem is that it’s not very fun to write... but it is therapeutic. So it will happen. Soon.
There is also the recent lasagna throwdown that Mason and I had the weekend before last, where we each made a lasagna as a test of our culinary prowess. Andy and his wife, SY, contributed wine and a nice salad. That was a lot of fun, and I took photos of the lasagna-making process (plus a bonus photo of a ricotta cheesecake I made with the leftover ricotta), so it should be fun to do a write-up about it as well. And history has shown that my food posts are among the most popular with readers, so it should be a nice change of pace after the tedium of GMC13.
This past Saturday, HJ and I went downtown to see the reopened Namdaemun (Great South Gate). It’s been five years since an arsonist burned down most of the superstructure, and it has only recently been reopened. Five years ago, I wrote a photo essay after the arson; I thought it would be only fitting to do another to chronicle the gate’s long-awaited rebirth. I took plenty of photos while we were there, and I intend to do the same thing I did with the first essay: link to a “companion gallery” so readers can click through to see larger versions of the photos if they want. Incidentally, this will also be the first Imagery gallery I will have put up since 2010.
As regular readers (if I indeed have any left) will know, I recently “celebrated” (or “suffered,” as Koreans would say) my fortieth birthday. It was a relatively subdued affair, and there wasn’t much to report on at the time. One of the birthday presents I received, though, is worth writing about: a new Kindle Paperwhite. I am pretty much the opposite of an early-adapter, and HJ teased me when I opened the package, saying, “Welcome to the modern era.” I’ll save the details of my opinions for the actual entry, but it’s safe to say that I am impressed enough with the device to want to write an entire entry about it.
Lastly, I have recently begun a regimen of pain and torture, otherwise known as Brazilian jiujitsu. It so happens that both of my foreign colleagues in the English department practice BJJ, and when they said they were going to start training on campus, I was all out of excuses not to do it. So, for the past week or so, I have been walking three minutes across campus to a training room with mats, where, twice a week, I do things that usually end up hurting me a lot. Mason (he of the lasagna throwdown) asked me if this was a mid-life crisis thing—starting jiujitsu because I had suddenly turned forty—but it is more a case of fortuitous timing. This is actually my second stab at BJJ, and I’m determined to make this one stick.
So, that makes five entries (and they will all be full entries, not notes) I want to write in the next two weeks. The deadline is Thursday, 30 May, when we will be getting on a plane to London where, among other things, I will be presenting a paper on the reinterpretation of classical Korean literature in modern Korean film at a conference. I will only be gone for a week, so I could of course write when I get back, but I will be wanting to write about the trip, and I know that if I put off all of these entries I want to write, most of them will never get written.
I only have fifteen days during which I can actually write (barring today, which I am spending writing this, and that last Thursday, when I will be heading to the airport pretty much right after I finish class), which means that I would have to post one entry every three days to get all of these done. I’m not gonna lie to you, Marge. That’s probably not going to happen. Two of those entries, though, don’t actually need to be written right away, and they might even benefit from more time. Both the Kindle and the BJJ entries are about ongoing experiences, so writing those later, when I’ve had more experience with the subjects, might even be a better idea. The other three entries, though, are about one-time experiences, and the longer I wait, the less motivated I will be to write about them. So I’m going to set myself the goal of writing three entries in fifteen days, or one entry an average of every five days. That’s definitely a lot more frequently than I usually write, but it still seems doable (especially since one of those entries is mostly written already). It’s just going to require a little discipline.
And looking at my word count now, I see that I have crossed the arbitrary threshold of one thousand words, which is what separates a note from a full-fledged entry. So much for keeping it short. I suppose that’s a good sign, as it means the words are coming fluidly to my fingers. Here we go; if everything goes according to schedule, you should see the first of this flurry of posts (most likely the one on GMC13) sometime this weekend. Wish me luck.