My Korean-American Life

  by Sarah Song in February 2023 It was two years ago. I had written a piece titled Obituary for a Whale upon seeing a picture of a 30-ton humpback whale lying dead on the beach. Tears flowed as I looked at the sight of the lifeless whale, lying on the sandy shores of Assateague Island in Maryland, where my family used to go every summer. It was a 15-year-old female humpback whale named Pivot. Considering that humpback whales typically live around 90 years, its death at such a young age felt like dying in the prime of human life. The humpback whale had also made appearances in "Strange Lawyer Woo Young-Woo," a Korean drama that gained popularity last year. Despite their imposing size that might seem threatening, they are often called the "Guardian Angel of the Sea" and known to save seals and humans from being chased by other whales and sharks. Occasionally, such stories find their way into news articles. Once again this January, news emerged of dead humpback whale...

  by Sarah Song in January 2023 After a long time, I went to Colorado in early January 2023. Along the highway, the view of snow-covered mountain peaks against the blue sky was unfolding. The landscape of snow-covered peaks rising majestically over the vast expanse of plains seemed almost sacred, as if inhabited by mountain spirits. “ Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Maasai ‘Ngaye Ngai’, the House of God, ” begins Ernest Hemingway's novel The Snows of Kilimanjaro , published in 1936. Looking at the snow-covered peaks year-round, I wonder if Hemingway was inspired by such sacredness as he contemplated death while writing his novel. Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania, Africa, with the Furtwängler Glacier surrounding its summit. It is named after Walter Furtwängler who climbed there in 1912, but this glacier has reportedly melted by 85 percent between 1912 and 2011. Furthermore, ...

  The picture of a whale froze me as if splashing winter waves on me. The death of a 15-year-old, 30-ton humpback whale named “Pivot” hit me like the shattering waves on Feb. 18, 2021. Pivot, as big as a school bus, laid on the shores of Assateague Island in Maryland.  Like the name "Pivot," my family's many splendid memories of camping trips pivot back to Assateague Island. The pulsing sound of the sea and the cacophonous squealing of seagulls at the camping ground used to wake me up. Peeking through the tent window, wild horses or deer were right before my eyes when I awoke. In the seashore where we used to enjoy taking pictures with wild horses, the steely waves were smashing the lifeless Pivot. The news reported no obvious reasons for the death, adding that 146 humpback whales have died from being stranded nationwide since January 2016. Somehow my memory flashed back to when I read about flushed urine resulting in killing aquatic animals. Even after part of the nitro...

     Spring comes with sound. The warbling of returned migratory birds, the murmuring of melting streams that had frozen over the winter, and the dripping of spring rain falling on the eaves of the roof where icicles in winter had hung. I hardly see frozen streams or icicles in winter now, but the sonorous singing of all kinds of birds early in the morning signals that spring has come.      Spring also brings scent. The scent of various kinds of grass. Ra Tae-joo, a Korean poet, said in his poem  Grass Flower 2 , "Know the name, you become a neighbor / Know the color, you become a friend," but for a long time I didn't know the names or colors of the spring grasses. The only names I remembered were mugwort and shepherd’s purse. In my early childhood, I used to dig them up with my friend after elementary school. I would bring home a full bag of them on sunny spring afternoons. Then, my mom made soybean paste stew with them. Their fresh scent together wi...

  Squirrels and Bird Feeders "Obsession is beautiful. It’s what makes art." - Joss Whedon In early March, I set up a stand for bird feeders. In front of a tall birch tree in my backyard, I placed four different bird feeders and two plates, one for a water bowl and the other for a platform feeder, on a pole almost double my height. While searching for birds’ names, I’ve learned that different types of bird feeders attract different birds: a platform feeder that has an open, flat tray entices juncos, towhees, mourning doves, and a hopper or house feeder that holds birdseed and dispenses it into a tray at the bottom attracts my favorite birds - cardinals and bluejays. Sparrows, swallows, titmice, and grosbeaks like the long tube feeder, while woodpeckers, chickadees, and jay flock to the suet feeder. The bird feeder set I had ordered online included those different feeders. Among them, the suet feeder, a thick wire mesh with large holes, could not hold the bird food I bought. Wh...

<Ember> painting generated by  DALL·E My Korean-American writers' group is going to have a workshop next month with Dr. Mark A. Peterson  ( The Frog Outside the Well ) about Sijo. Sijo is a Korean traditional poetic form which requires the three lines of average 14–16 syllables: theme (3, 4,4,4); elaboration (3,4,4,4); counter-theme (3,5) and completion (4,3).  To prepare for this workshop, each of us is trying to write Sijo this month. I wrote one titled Ember and tried a painting with this Sijo using DALL·E. Ember  Like magic, fanning flames a bonfire’s dying embers. (13) Long ago, my mom used to fan the agungi* for cooking. (15) If fanning could rejuvenate my mom aging day by day. (15) * Agungi is a firebox in traditional Korean kitchens to burn firewood or other fuel for cooking. (Jan. 2023)

(Bojagi illustrated by my daughter, Jeeho Ha)  When autumn knocks on the door with chilly morning air, I welcome it with fall decorations:  placing ornate pumpkins in front of the entrance door,  colorful mums on the front yard and inside the house, and changing the dining room tablecloth to the one with autumnal tints. This has been my ritual since I moved from Texas to Northern Virginia, where four distinctive seasons exist and, especially, lots of mature trees with exuberant fall colors paint landscape in vivid hues.  It's already mid-October. This fall, however, I haven't changed the tablecloth yet. Last fall, my younger daughter inadvertently spilled nail polish remover on the table, damaging much of the autumn tablecloth that I used for many years. The red and yellow maple pattern tablecloth had become a part of me with stains of memory. I decided to make a quilt tablecloth with it after cutting off the damaged parts.  It wasn't a small decision for me to ...