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Eurotrip Photos

Some photos I took during our Eurotrip over summer break 2010 (click on each photo to enlarge).

A begging gypsy

Rome

Miles in Rome

Street vendors in Rome.

Some mo’ Rome

Romans

Homies + Italia

There used to be chariot races here…

Had to post this one… the boys look like they are on a Christian rock band album cover

Miles

Mo’ Miles

Our Italian military boys

Josh D

Appelt in Toulouse

People in Italy

The booze is gone… don’t fret Brian, we can always get more. i love you Toulouse :)

Some Rhymes I Wrote Freshman Year Pt 1

Comfortably Numb

I..

studied the capsules and swallowed the writing on the walls,

my pride’s a hassle; followed by the words echoed in the hall.

I..no longer rely on broken clocks – or obsess over karma

the time will come … when I won’t even need or want it.

the feeling came and left, gave and stole away my breaths

I can’t keep breaking my steps with obstacles painted with death.

still I, stitch myself together after you tore me into pieces,

from the smiles that lead to lies gifted by your love for Jesus.

My bed sinks, like an abandoned ship in a violent storm

holding on; onto the frame .. I don’t want to swim anymore.

I wade through, comfortably numb in the wave’s hues

color me black and blue – my eyes have always been set on you.

But my vision is blurred,

mmy speakkkking is slurrrred

I’ll st-stu-stutter over words to say

I could keep quiet about love for days.

I’m fa l l ing into a black hole,

comatose, my toes are frozen

catching the weight of a broken..

man. yearning to reach his goal.

but the truth remains;

You came and you went; resented all the time that I spent

counting the seconds- waiting for a love I could just rent.

Comfort me in my time of need, teach me how to breathe

be my eyes for me, when I’m dreading everything thing I see.

Emotionally lifted, thoughts hang like a wilted goodbye,

you used to keep me watered and alive, guilted by lies.

home is where the heart is- I need a map to help me find it,

but you packed up the atlas …

I searched up and down, mapquested but never found

where you ran off to, the sound of your footsteps are so profound.

I’ll continue to search the depths of my dreams,

and if I don’t find you, I’ll slowly learn to breathe.

but..until then, I’ll relax, and lay comfortably numb

before you come back, let me just say..

..it was over before it begun.

Untitled

trade me a clock for daisies

sanity for crazy

and hope for aiming at the target you made me

right on your back i graze thee

a flex of my mind

i scatter my sins as they dance over the line

of wrongs n’ rights

i write what’s right at the time in my eyes

a plethra of minutes i’ve gained

wasted on the wishes i made

hoping for faith in this world… i am enraged

and stuck in a cage

transcend me above

i can’t handle this stuff

or hand him the gloves

take over for me

and light the candles for us

damaged with drugs

forget the mistakes that you made

in the moments you wasted on hate

you waited for fate to rush in… fuck it

if you’re gauging for weight

i beat the traffic again

and although this magic begins

i can’t fathom a win

in a place where addicts resent the times

they hid in the attic with gin

getting high in low places

you just have to face it

heaven is hell.. without the face lifts

and your soul is adjacent

to the way your goals are coa’lescent

repeat the actions

and rinse off the stench of burlesque racists

golden streets glisten

and i can’t seem to listen

to the way can’t get with it

gifted with the talent of visions

ignoring the mission at hand

i sink in demand

question the man

that feeds the devil’s idle hands

just draw the line…

with a stick in the sand

Fool

React to this atrocity its ripping right from under me,

A man without a plan but be a dream for positivity.

Is never met with strife, although the people living blind,

You can have a second life but it will cost a feeble mind.

But we live in days of terror, like the lair of mass destruction,

The judgment is an err and it will put you in reduction.

Let us hear the politician, and his vile words of wisdom,

Consolidate the power just like the leader of the Christians

Never listen to the truth because the ignorance is bliss,

And the mission is a lie another death upon a list.

That you never wanna see but you ain’t never gonna miss.

I wonder about the freedom, can the truth really be found?

Or am I falling off the edge as the killer in my town.

The bread of the Messiah bleed the blood of fallen soldiers,

The head is not divine so heed the words on broken shoulders.

A guinea pig of trust, broken dreams became a must,

And the intellect is mighty so they keep us on the bus.

We don’t wanna hear the truth all we want is to have a will,

But they feed us all these lies and we eat em like a pill

The Most Beautiful Email I’ve Ever Received.

My sister sent me an email today. This specific email made me break down in tears in a friend’s dorm room. These tears weren’t of pain but of pure joy. Here it is:

“Hey bro,

So I was up reading a young adult book my students have been raving about but got very tired so got into bed. We got a kitty today, by the way. Her name is peppermint and she has adorable black spots on two of her legs. She is six months old, very friendly and purrs easily. She will go right up to you and nudge your hand with her head for you to pet her. One of the nicest cats I’ve ever encountered. Good, since I was afraid Kate’s cat (it’s officially hers, but I’m happy to oblige) would fit most cat stereotypes of being too good for human attention.

So I was laying in bed, sleepy… I started thinking about how I want to get all the hardcover Harry Potter’s and Hunger Games series for my kids to read some day, and it’s generally good reading for me to enjoy, too. I thought about my possible working nook in my future house, I thought about wanting to always be accessible to my kids, imagined one of them running up to me in her pj’s, and me nuzzling my nose to hers, holding her cheeks in my hands and calling her my “eepunee,” as ahpa called me.

That made me think about how much I value umma’s presence in my life and how important it is for my kids to really know her, understand her, and understand and be able to talk to her in Korean. It hurts me to imagine my kids not being able to fully communicate with umma. Goodness. So, I’ve thought about having her live with me and whoever my husband will be – most likely Seth at this point. Then I started thinking about how his family is important to him too, and thus he feels pulled to live in Pittsburgh in the long run. I resist that because I don’t like the idea of being swept up into his world and not being able to forge my own identity and community – I’m afraid of becoming a limb attached to him, being referred to his wife rather than just by who I am. All that. Etc. And, if umma has to sell the house, where would she go? Would she live in Pittsburgh with me if I end up there? Then what about her strong Korean community that’s so valuable and important to her… a community she’s gotten so deeply into since she first immigrated here, years before I was born? Those roots go deep and wide; I cannot imagine her being extricated from that.

Which brings me to visualize our house. 343 Lamon Ave. That lovely home that’s changed over the years. The coats of paint, carefully chosen colors for the rooms, the ever-shifting knick knacks, never too cluttered, in the living room especially. Umma’s collections of lovely furniture and antique items. The dried flowers in pots, the mirrors, the paintings, the arm chairs so lovingly used and the big pink couch. The piano, the hardwood floors, the steps leading upstairs to our rooms. The comfort and familiarity of that space. So well captured in my mind, especially in anticipation of entering home again soon, during Thanksgiving break. The familiarity of umma’s warmth and footsteps, your presence downstairs…

And of course, ahpa’s room. The space in which I meet him when I return home. I haven’t returned to his grave since we buried him – mostly because I don’t feel like I’d be “meeting” him there. No, for me, he is ever present in his room. Ahpa’s room. That sacred place, with the tv, the bedside table with the laptop and cigarette butts in that plastic green and white ashtray he used for so long – I remember it from when I was single-digits of age – that old cubic white alarm clock with the loud alarm. I remember hearing it in the early mornings when it went off for him to wake up, shower, dress in those colors, those fabrics, those patterns, that wonderful smell of ahpa, to go to work. He’d crouch on a chair at the kitchen table, with the small tv on to Korean news and a coffee cup in front of him. I distinctly will always remember his shape from the view of the steps, his crouch, his arms across his knees propped up, his cigarette in his fingers, the coffee cup in front of him, his head – the black, straight hairs, tinges of white – turned towards the screen. That comfortable, ahpa. I was able to capture it in a picture, with you with him at the table, you two eating dinner. The kitchen walls are orangeish, so it was relatively recently taken. It sits on a mini black easel on the left corner of my desk now. Just behind it is my favorite picture of you and me, where you are young and so lovingly looking at me. I think we were in the back seat of the car and I took a picture of us, arm’s reach. Those two pictures are among my all-time most beloved and precious and favorites. Behind that is ahpa’s Christmas card to me.

I write to you now, in such detail, because I want to share this moment with you. I was thinking of these things, laying down in bed, not tired at all anymore. I felt like I was having a heart seizure, because it started to tighten so strongly. I felt tears starting to glisten, but I didn’t let go to let them fall. My choice. Holding strong to the emotion, as if letting go would let go of even a small wisp of these memories, as if I could blur them by crying. I felt so strongly about ahpa’s room. The now blue room. I felt so strongly about the fact that I took pictures with my cell phone of how his room was that day I came home. I took pictures of his bed, his pile of clothes against his drawers, the bowl with saran wrap and pieces of leftover kimbap, his cigarette boxes almost empty, his cell phone (then pre-paid), a couple lighters. The blankets akimbo. His side table as it always used to be. I remember laying down in his spot, holding his warmth with my body and heart. I miss him so much right now.

I want to share this moment with you because I feel like we so rarely share such moments with each other, when we feel ahpa’s loss. I’m so grateful that I’m not crumbling – for whatever reason, I’ve felt inexplicable peace about ahpa’s passing, even in its details, ever since I first heard of it. My first reaction was to know how it happened. With the utter pain and shock that inevitably comes from such news was true peace. He is at peace, and how wonderful is that. And umma is still provided for – you and I are still provided for. We have grown up with a love that is so much deeper and richer than much of the love we even read about. The love in the Baik home is intense. It runs deep, complicated, and thus can reach the level of painful because it’s so darn rich.

I read something the other day that really struck me:

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran

I believe that to be so true.

Today in one of my English classes, a new, very mute student of mine seemed to get really emotional, tightly so. It was all in her eyes and the shade of her complexion. My students are working on their personal narratives and I’ve been encouraging them to write about things that really hold meaning for them – not just hobbies or vacation stories. She was drafting her story, and as I went around to confer with students one-on-one, I paused with her and asked if she wanted to step outside to talk about what’s on her mind. She nodded. We sat down outside my class, in a corner of lockers, and the tears started streaming down her cheeks, but she was still tight, still tightly controlling her emotions. She doesn’t talk much – I’ve only heard a handful of complete sentences from her since the beginning of school. Since she didn’t answer my questions, I asked her if the answer would be in what she wrote in class so far. A nod. I returned with her notebook and tissues. As silent as she is, she writes beautifully. It was raw, honest, with a voice that reveals the child in her. She wrote about the day her mother died, four years ago. She included details that made my eyes glisten with tears. For her, I stayed steady. She wrote about how she kept certain things inside so that the others in the hospital room wouldn’t cry on account of her mentioning something. I told her how beautifully she wrote. How impressive it is that she is writing about this. How much I value her openness and raw honesty. How much I value the sincerity of her writing. I braved myself to share with her that I also lost a parent last year. How I couldn’t write about it for a long time. So how impressed I am that she is writing about this. How important it is to do so. How only recently, have I been able to write about ahpa.

I share this because she didn’t immediately soften after those words. She needed some time to collect herself, so I let her be, after some time holding her knee, squeezing her hand, making steady eye contact, then lowering my eyes to sit with her in silence. Honoring her grief and love. Such words, even if momentarily somewhat comforting, won’t make that pain go away completely. And that is good and okay.

How different this experience would’ve been if I wasn’t able to better understand her. How awkward I would’ve felt. How superficial my sympathy and words would’ve been. It made me grateful to be able to sit there in calm peace with her, for her. This also came up for her at the 8th grade retreat earlier in the year, but that’s another story I can tell you about another time. She is a girl of many stories, deep emotions. She tends to hold it in to stay strong, and I am honored to see her opening up more with me.

I don’t have any ultimate reason why I’m writing you now, really. As I was feeling so strongly, I wanted so much to share this time with you, Jaeho. You’re my brother, who I love so much. I care about you so much. And I wonder how I would’ve been as your middle school teacher. I wonder how I would’ve been if I had known what middle schoolers are like, earlier, when you were that age. I think back to how I was away, in college and working, for the majority of your middle school/junior high and high school years. When I model how to brainstorm story ideas for my students, I bring up stories about you as some of the examples. I tell them about how you used to save your Halloween candy for me. How you saved a candy apple for me at Ramona’s fall festival, not even eating yours until you gave me the one you saved for me. I can see the way you smiled at me, like that picture I hold dear on my desk. I remember how much you loved me as your noona, crying when I left. And it makes me sad that I feel like I don’t know you as well as I used to. And while a lot of that is arguably inevitable, with our age gap and different places in life, it doesn’t have to be something we just “deal” with. I want to know you and your heart. I want to be able to be here for you as I am for my students, but more. I want to be able to listen to you well and care for you well. I want to let you take care of me when I need it, too, because love goes both ways. I want you to know that I pray about and for you all the time, and that regardless of where you are regarding God, I hold you in his light, because I love you so much. As I hold ahpa’s need and deep desire for grace, to feel clean, to get rid of shame and helplessness and all that junk he dealt with, all those pressures on himself, the inability to find peace, in God’s light. I hold umma’s exposed frailty in God’s light. I hold her beauty, that incredible beauty in her amazing strength, in God’s light. I hold us all in the light, because that is where this really inexplicable, odd peace comes from. I mean, what the hell… why am I not in shreds, in utter freak-out mode, when I used to sit with ahpa all the time, hearing from the depths of his heart, his pains, his agony sometimes, his utter love for umma, you, me… his needs, his desires… how he urged me to take him to church one early morning – I drove him as far as the parking lot – and then, last minute, he couldn’t bring himself to enter, as much as he wanted to, because he didn’t want to embarrass umma… because he felt too ashamed. when being free of that is the reason why he wants to go in the first place! gosh, how frustrated and angry I was that ahpa felt pulled back by social pressures… unable to fully be himself in all his brokenness, when we are all darn broken in various ways… we are so imperfect and all messed up in various ways… but that does not devalue us in any way still. I wanted so much, my whole life, for ahpa to let go, to feel free, to accept grace, to accept love, to accept peace, to enjoy his life, not take the burdens of everything on himself. To let go, because the God he knew growing up still loves him so much. And thank God that ahpa doesn’t have to deal with any of that pain anymore, because I know that God knows him so much better than I even do, and I knew him pretty well. Those late night conversations were always so full. God is all loving, and so real and so good. I am so grateful that ahpa is finally free. This life on earth needed to end for him – it was time. As painful as it can be for us, I am also grateful for this. It sounds crazy, but it’s like how I’m so grateful for my “difficult” childhood of pretending to be asleep, driving out late at night to Jewel with you and umma, being woken up, called down to sit down with him at the kitchen table. Without that, I don’t think I would’ve been able to understand ahpa, and in turn, you and umma as well as I do. Ahpa, especially, is so much more complex than a clean family story would’ve ever been able to capture. He was so human, so complicated, so utterly beautiful, it makes my heart swell. He captures so much of man’s utter need for grace.

And Jaeho, I will share a dream with you. I want to write this story about love. I want to write this story about grace. I want to write in honor of who ahpa is some day. I don’t know any of the details, and frankly, I’m immensely intimidated by the endeavor and have no idea how or where to start. All I know is that this story has been pressing on my heart for many years. I shared parts of it with folks at Swarthmore years ago, and someone wrote me this note, which I have posted on my wall. It was on a torn piece of manila folder:

Christina–

Your talk moved me like the great books move me.

Write this story about love. Please write it down and get it published. I’ll read it.

–Greg

What I especially appreciated about that note was that Greg is a no-nonsense guy. He’s not an overly emotional or romantic person. He quietly handed me the note, folded once in half, and left. No meaningful eye contact. Just a sincere, simple act of telling me something in writing.

Gosh, Jaeho, our family history, our childhood, is something to hold so dear to us. And as much as I want to get attached to the physical house and physical room that ahpa’s presence is so infused into right now, I know that I cannot depend so much on that. Ahpa is so much more than that room. I was sad in bed, thinking about how umma probably has to sell the house. About how others will inhabit that sacred space. How umma, and we, will thus be uprooted. But. We are so much more than that space. We carry much with us, and that is true and beautiful. So really, I can go to sleep.

I love you Jaeho.

Noona”

I have longed for some form of emotional emancipation from my father’s death for a long time now. I have now finally received it. No one could of worded it better. I love you too Noona.

Europe

I am going to be in Europe for the next month (landing in Amsterdam). Set aside $300 for sticky icky (ooh wee).

Peace Out.
Smoke Weed.

“Im the dude that lives here”

We were loitering around Highcrest (a middle school) and heard kids drunkenly talking at a nearby house. Mick decided to crash the place on his longboard. He ended up rolling back to us with a fucking tiki torch he took from their yard once he found out they had no more booze. We came to realize that a tiki torch’s flame retardant wood < butane.

A man came out to us lurking behind shadows that happened to be smoking a cigar.

Who is that?
Im the dude that lives here… can you guys move this elsewhere? (clearly drunk)
Aight, no problem man
Just move a few houses down thanks

Drugs are bad.

Judgement

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”