caffeination, music, mountain color...'burnt library'...

On a recent rainy autumn evening, (rare in Tucson), I got around to playing with some photos--I'd been thinking about grouping them for a project...both fun and pensive.

First, the fun, from this past summer's trip to Korea:

Coffee-crazy in Korea's capital

Seoul has to be Asia's most caffeinated mega-city. There is plenty of tea to be had, but coffee rules in Korea's capital.

Along with an abundance of multi-storied Starbucks, every street seems to have sprouted a home-grown café: from the Italian-inspired (Pascucci, Caffe Bene) to the French (Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours), the sacreligious (God in a cup) and the pseudo-religious (Angel-in-us), royal (Coffee Prince) and musical (Johannes Brahms), prepositions ("at-to-on"?), from the purely Asian (Gurunaru), to delightfully fractured English (Yoger presso, A twosome place, Me Too, cafe sand&food). Coffee and kimchee--it's what Koreans run on!

As erstwhile Seattlites, my wife and I had our fun sampling the different interpretations of the bean while in Seoul. Some were good, some were bad, many were puzzling (red bean latte? black bean latte? GREEN bean latte?), and most all were pricey...

Musicians: a palace restored

 Late spring and early summer in Seoul: musicians in medieval clothing infuse the grounds of Gyeongbok Palace with a sense of its storied past.

Built in the 1390's when a new dynasty established Seoul as its capital, Gyeongbok-gung ("The Palace of Shining Happiness") was a city unto itself. In the 1590's, in the chaos of the Japanese invasions, the palace was burned and lay largely in ruins until the 19th century. The reconstruction almost bankrupt the kingdom, and then the grounds were the scene of the assassination of Korea's last empress. During the Japanese colonization (1910-1945), eighty-five percent of the palace compound was either destroyed or dismantled...

The last two decades have seen a remarkable period of revival and rebuilding. Today about forty percent of the palace has been restored. With colorful concerts, tea-ceremonies, and the changing of the guard, this palace is shining once again.

Years ago, during a summer staying with relatives, I had visited Gyeongbok-gung. Two decades later, it was such a treat to revisit the Palace, renewed, and with a 'live soundtrack.'

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...and, from the fun to the pensive...

Pensive, because the photos below are from the trip I took to Korea when I was eighteen years old. The same weekend I went hiking in these mountains, after we returned to Seoul, my grandmother died...The uncle I tagged along with (mentioned below), died about a year ago...and just over a week ago, my one remaining uncle in Korea--the one my wife and I accompanied my mother to visit this past summer--he just passed away. We are so glad that we went when we did; it ended up being my mother's last visit with the brother to whom she was closest...

vibrant morning palette

...scenes from a morning in the midst of autumn's palette in Odae-san National Park: steam ascending from temple breakfast fires at sunrise, climbing up through maples and pungent gingkoes, happening upon a folk-painting of a tiger on a trail-side shrine...

I'd tagged along with my uncle as he drove from Seoul to the mountains along the east coast of Korea. We were going to pick up my aunt, who'd just spent a week-long retreat at Sang-won-sa, a "Seon" ('Zen' in Korean) temple established in the year 643. While they spent the morning around the grounds, I went for a hike.

This national park, near the site of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, is dotted with Buddhist sites established in the 6th and 7th centuries. (Odae-san is one of Korea's 'holy mountains.') During the fall, the temple's vibrant architecture blends in perfectly with the forested slopes; the colors of the folk-paintings seem to spring from the mountains themselves.

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Earlier this year, when I realized that we would be going to Korea, an African proverb began running through my thoughts: "quand un vieil homme meurt, c'est toute une bibliothèque qui brûle." (Roughly translated: when an old man dies, it's like a library burns down.) I'd had the feeling that this trip might end up being the last time I would see my uncle, the last time that my mother would be able to share her childhood with her next-in-age sibling, the last chance to access this avuncular 'library'... I'd had that feeling, but I hoped I'd be wrong...

Now there are only the embers, echoed through my mother, through the filter of translation. We'd so hoped to make at least one more trip... Not long before my mother's surgery last month, her brother had been calling her, saying how much he enjoyed the past summer, but how much he looked forward to 'next time, just one more time...' She could only reply that after back surgery she would have to wait and see...

I returned from Seoul with a stack of grammar and language reference books--they sit on the corner of my desk as I type this...My plan was to dive, again, into the intricacies of Korean vocabulary and syntax--to finally 'master' the language, to finally be able to speak, deeply and openly and freely, with my uncle 'next time,' conversant in the language of his library. Man...

So. Any future visits to Korea will be sibling-less for my mother, sans oncle pour moi...no longer will there be 'visits to see family'...but with familial resonance, chasing echoes I'll hope to understand...