15th, Entering Canadian airspace on the East Coast.

There are 817 miles and 1313 km left until we touchdown at YYZ.  If you’re aeronautical skills are up to par, you’ll calculate that this isn’t a lot.  It’s true, the desire to write didn’t strike me.  I had been reading Life and Fate, snacking, and possibly sleeping for thirty minutes.  Then the necessity to uphold tradition won me over, and now, with some two hours to go, I made my way to the overhead compartment to retrieve my laptop.  What was I going to write about?

There’s not a whole lot to report on in my life.  My mom had a dizzy spell again a couple of weeks ago and passed out.  That’s what prompted me to take the trip again.  Any money I’ve saved since starting to work again has been spent on these travels.  You can’t really put a price on Christmas time with my parents, however.  The month I had by myself was spent working, cleaning, reading and running.  As much as I liked to do all that, I found myself missing my family, young and old to a high degree.  Even having a completely blank afternoon to read in a café lost some of its luster, yes, partially because of the book, but also because I suspect that phase of life has gone by.  No doubt, when the second diablo makes his appearance, I’m going to take a break from those activities and focus on rearing the pups. 

It wouldn’t surprise me to come to his house and find him in a white robe, without any undergarments and microdosing on some the spores of a fungi grown on a remote island in Papa New Guinea, leading me barefoot through his backyard and explaining the benefits of not cutting your toenails.  D’ya know who I’m talking about?

I’ll give you another clue.  Tetragrammaton.  He at the same time intrigues me and gives me the creeps.  The whole thing sounds like a cult, and I probably got the image above from the Macademia nuts and healthy nicotine that are advertised on his podcast.  I think he lives in California, or at least he gives off those vibes, LA vibes in specific.  That’s probably where that microdosing image came to my head, some weird pseudo-scientific foodstuff hawked off by celebrities at 800 USD per meal, the stuff of Hollywood legend, the secret to the creative juices and glowing skin.  How do you think cavemen cut their toenails?  Exactly.

A few years ago, you sent me Edward Norton on a podcast, I think it was Ruben’s podcast, and in a spell of boredom while deep cleaning the shit out of the mold that grows incessantly in our living room – Hey Rick, I could be on to something, come lick that shit – I stumbled upon Edward Norton on Rick Ruben again.  I had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t a re-run, God, maybe it was, nevertheless for three hours I listened to these two dudes have a spiritual orgy.  Look, I respect Edward Norton – he kind of blew my mind back when you sent me that original podcast.  But after three hours of listening to him and Rick, I have had some doubts about his authenticity.  The problem I have with his wisdom is that it tainted with Hollywoodism.   During those three hours I couldn’t count how many times he name dropped – maybe a weird way to describe it because I guess these people are genuinely his friends – but it made me wonder how out of touch he is with reality, not to mention God/Rick Rubin.  There are flights on a private jets – yeah it’s a cheap shot, the celebrity that speaks out against global warming while taking a PJ to get a BJ – perhaps I’m only bringing this up to say that Norton takes the cake on that one, since his grandfather or father work in some capacity at ‘Conservation’, maybe even Norton himself.  If you accused me of attacking the person and not the ideas they spew, you could be right.  I believe they call this an ad hominin.  But I think it might be a little dangerous to invest wholly in their ideas, because you need to live on their planet to live that way.  They remark about their journeys – I’ll have to check Rick’s – and I don’t think he had to struggle in a real meaningful way, unless you count going to New York to find yourself.  And yes, I wholeheartedly fess up to the feelings of bitterness of not having ‘made’ it in life, at least in the financial sense, that do not allow me to pursue the creative spirituality that they endorse.  There is some talk of being present that certainly has some value, and towards the end he struck a chord with me about spreading yourself too thin with your endeavors, but I guess the whole thing for me is tainted by their milieu.  The antithesis of these guys would be a podcasting aesthetic monk, I suppose.  Perhaps the most ‘artistic’ people I know are two brothers from my childhood.  The bread and butter of suburbia:  white, graduation gift car from daddy, mockers of someone wearing Nike Jordan 2.0 when 3.0 came out last month.  At some point, they ditched the Tommy Hilfiger and golf club memberships to go full blown into the arts.  Acting, producing movies, cigarettes, funny hats worn without irony, film festivals, the whole shebang.  Now I couldn’t sit in front of these guys for more than a minute if they in any seriousness tried to give me some kind of life or spiritual advice.  But that could very well be the case, they’re en route to becoming that successful.  Maybe they’re the second coming of Ruben and Norton.  And to them I say fuck you I have some SAP transactions to cut and paste.

 Seoul, December 22

It sounds as if the festive setting in Toronto is close to perfection. We have Vince Guaraldi lined up for later today or tomorrow. Surprisingly Inyoung has two days off, a rare thing as she’s been walking dogs day in and out for the past two months. Dog owners spending their holidays at home, not outsourcing the dog walks for a few days. A good sign for the dogs and their owners, and I’m a happy man having her around. We don’t celebrate christmas too wildly, it’s not a big part of both our traditions—there is a small plastic tree, some lights. We pulled the big blankets from under the bed that we sit on during winter months. Floor heating over sofa. We woke up this morning agreeing on puzzlecoffeemovie and immediately settled on ordering Chinese for dinner. There is a 1000 pieces picture of Andre Hazes awaiting to be put together, a task that seems to pair well with Vince Guaraldi. It’s more in spirit that we celebrate christmas than in actual rituals. I assume your parents and you have a church visit on the 24th?

On the christmas spirit and a sense of melancholy. Yesterday I watched Kurosawa’s Ikiru and although there is no mention of the festive season (Japan in the fifties, christmas not a thing), it evoked a sense of nostalgia in me. I thought of my dad getting older, then of the house I grew up in, of the time before all the arguments and fighting, and how I always envied my friends for the christmas atmosphere in their house. We did have a tree, we would visit grandparents, yes, but it never felt alike with my friends. Their houses brightly lit, shoes off policy, sleep in on saturdays, presents under the tree even though sinterklaas had only left a few weeks before. Looking back it all felt a bit sterile with us, a little colder. Parents growing apart, invisible yet to the boys’ eye, a whole range of different interests. Dad preferred watching the year in review over christmas. News, sports, music, more sports. Finally reading the books he never got to, as little talking as socially possible, tired of working too much and too long, all those months since the summer holidays. Mom, raised with church visits, saw in christmas the last beacon of hope of getting the coop to the church pews on christmas eve, bringing a blackmail of dropjes for sit-still motivation. She’d dress us up nicely for school dinners, and the christmas dinner at my grandparents, she’d spread all the favorite christmas books around the house. We never got to watching Home Alone together before noon and eating pancakes with our feet on the table.

Now it’s December 23

Things interfered yesterday. I said I would write some later today not I would post some later today.

It seems you made the decision to move back to Canada. Good for you. It seems a decision that’s been some six, seven years in the making. I guess just making it, will have lifted a weight of your shoulders. Seeing how you write about it, not the entire weight, but at least some of it.

There were several books and authors that either inspired me or that I simply enjoyed spending time with. I’m not as eloquent a reader as you are, and since most of my reading is in English, not my first language, a book or author can be good for very basic reasons. Pico Iyer for his writing on Japan, Geert Mak’s ‘Hoe god verdween uit Jorwerd’ for making me think about my grandpa, Zweig’s Chess for the way it made me think about chess, Ernaux’s writing because I would love to write like her, every Modiano (there were 3 this year) for his Paris, Hwang Sok-Yong and Han Kang for the country I live in, Vivian Gornick (good shout!), Erpenbeck’s Visitation paired with While We Were Dreaming because East Germany is a fascinating topic, Dimitri Verhulst describing how Brussels prepares after christ is announced to return just there, the Paris part in Orwell’s Down and Out, the devastating essay of Han Byung-Chul, some first wanderings into understanding confucianism more academically, also I finally read Korea’s most famous tale ‘The Story of Hong Gildong’, and (also finally) Hendrick Hamel’s journal upon landing in Korea, then there were several thriller reads to calm the mind, and several books that sucked, Kitteridge comes to mind, and also one of two Malcolm Gladwell audiobooks, the other one (with Paul Simon) was fantastic, I read the children’s book that was my father’s favorite during our time in Holland, as well as ‘De Stad’, an almost perfect narration of Amsterdam since the seventies, my Amsterdam that is, Goodnight Tokyo was fun as it’s a written version of the Netflix series I loved watching, my first Mieko Kawakami may have been the wrong choice, I enjoyed the Passenger essays you gifted me but don’t remember most of them. There was more but it’s as good a summary as I can give you in a few lines. You asked ‘What was your most notable read last year?’ though and that must be Svetlana Alexievich’s account of the horror that was and is Chernobyl. I read the book in a few hours, across two days, then read a few parts over again and it’s been on my mind since. It occurs every other day, especially now reading Life and Fate. Russia, the Soviet states, what a wondrously evil and horrific but also warmhearted and intriguing place. A month ago I had my passport extended and upon visiting the embassy, I made sure to retrieve my old passport, albeit with a few holes punched in it, as it holds the Russian visa I applied for early December 2019, to access and travel through Russia as part of the train adventure that was to bring me from Amsterdam to Seoul. A visa stamp granted between christmas and new years five years ago, while viruses were raging a lab and a live market in the far east. If Poetin and his warmongering ever allow, I will return to a Russian embassy to obtain the newer version of said visa because that visit is only temporary shelved.

I’m about to head out for a few errands, combining a long stroll through the Siberian cold (mittens already on the desk next of me) with a few errands. Buying spices at the market so I can bake Inyoung some speculaas koekjes later today. Do write me about the parental house over christmas. It was only a sentence you wrote about Guaraldi and fresh snow, but I love reading these simple observations. Is mom making pierogi this year or is she relieved of the tasks for physical well-being? What’s on the breakfast table, what’s on your father’s mind. Is there a garden where snow fell, and if so do birds live there? Are you reading light material after Grossman or watching movies?

Second christmas day in Seoul

A few words before I return to the puzzle. A puzzle that’s proven to be one of the more difficult ones to be made over recent christmases. The colour toning of the picture on the box, is off. Or the tones of the puzzle itself. You may choose. It’s a portrait picture with little in terms of expressive highlights, making it substantially harder to build than the more comic style projects of last years. As a consequence our dinner table is occupied for the next foreseeable future, our aim is to dine at the table again per start of the new year. A similar target stands for Life and Fate but, looking at my reading pace so far, that may be a stretch. Two hundred pages and five days left, six if we count optimistically. It’s not a read I will revisit in the future, it’s very slow-going, but I’m immersed and I find myself unbothered by the constant name verifying, the rapid jumps from one group of characters to the next (although this seems to steady slightly towards the end, we spend more time and chapters with the same subjects). All in all, I find reading it a very satisfying project towards the end of the year, and it’s clear for me but I assume for everyone why many consider it a masterpiece, even if one may dislike it him/herself. I was particularly taken with the gas chamber scene, especially the description of a group of people merged together, no longer owner of their own individual personality but rather just part of a larger organism moving towards its end. The way he describes how the group moves between the rooms, and ultimately in the gas chamber, it gave me an almost claustrophobic feeling. The boy disappearing from the side of his surrogate mom, then returning just in time. All hope’s gone and still I felt a strange sense of relief. Then there’s Krymov, just a tiny bolt in the immense machine that is the Red Army, he’s now fallen in ill-credit with the higher-ups. I took pleasure in feeling the notion of dishonour and betrayal slowly creeping up on me.

And then there are other parts, of substantial length, that don’t do it for me. They serve as mere stuffing, a serving of mashed potatoes on the side of a good steak dinner. You’ll eat it, and there’s taste and texture, but it’s the steak you came for and it’s the steak you’ll remember. The movie extra’s without a face or voice. The canon fodder of anonymous soldiers on both the Russian and German fronts. I read it, I acknowledge the existence of writing on paper and I trod onwards towards the end.

The things we look back at. Things we remember. Things we won’t remember. Fond for the experience, but happy for the escape of an experience as well. It’s a sense I read in Didion’s essay. It’s a notion Tom Waits addresses literally in one of his songs, Take One Last Look, a song I adore for many reasons. One of which, a minor one, is that Waits never recorded it on an album and seems to have sung it only a few times, most notably for Letterman’s farewell series. It’s great, the lyrics, Waits’ voice, his disheveled hair. To hold the habit of looking back from time to time. There’s nothing to be done about it, all done and dusted, it may have nothing to do with today’s going-ons, there’s certainly not much for people who have one or more feet planted in the future, but there’s so much worthy to be found. Not to dwell on, just to savour. Don’t ask me why Jack, it’s probably the end of the year that makes me sentimental. Closing in on 42 as well. Take One Last Look.

“I love to see the wind in your hair
All we ever need we can get anywhere.”

Inyoung just messaged me she’ll be in Busan with friends over the weekend, which sets closing Grossman by the end of the year in a more favourable light. As for the puzzle, chances of achieving that goal became somewhat slimmer as she’s more determined and better capable of sitting those projects out by simply fail-testing parts piece by piece. In January she’ll travel to Vietnam for a week with mom and the rest of the family. We both agreed, almost immediately, that it would be best for everyone if I stay put in Korea, while they’re gone. I love my family in law, and I trust that feeling is mutual to certain extent, but we have such widely differing interests in travel and visiting places, that this is best for everyone. They are planning the trip almost down to the minute, what to do when with which guide and accompanied by what food. Whereas I’d prefer to step off the plane and see how the wind blows from there. It would be incompatible. The thing I realised about this trip though, it will be the first time that I will be in Korea while Inyoung’s not. This may not amount to much, but I have a strange feeling about it. A one time for everything, I guess.

A few days remain in the year, don’t forget to take one last look.