Song

Sirrah. I wish I were a stay at home mom. A stay at home mom who could blog to her heart's content, take amateur photos of her pets, tell you what they're doing today, what I watched on the View, what I thought about it, and what I'm baking while watching it. A man can dream. Alas, I'm too busy teaching Korean kids, writing about Japanese Obentos, baking biscotti for professors, not getting good grades by baking biscottis for professors. It's a close second. But, here I am. Don't worry dear readers, I haven't forgotten about you. I never will. I think about you everyday even when I disappear into the depths of Academic abyss for a month. Consider these entries a test of my love.

I tutor a Korean kid (he's my age; we're kids in spirit) named Song. Like other Korean kids, he has an unhealthy affinity for video games (don't we all?). Song's a sweetheart- is what I gather from the stories he tells me. He collects as many greeting cards as he can for his girlfriend back in Korea and sends them to her as often as he can, so much so that he's been running out of resources and I, so selflessly (foolishly), recruited myself to join his effort, scaling the city to look for as many campy greeting cards as I can find. Hey, this is a trial of love.

I tell Song all the time that what he does for his girlfriend is probably the sweetest thing in the world; that, generally, all the things he does for his girlfriend are the sweetest things in the world. He once bought a rose for every day he liked her. Jinkies.

I've told Song that guys here don't do said things- at least, not as much. And that if they do, women aren't too responsive. Song says men here are macho- that's why. But in Korea, they're not. 'Could of fooled me. I've never been to Korea, but I've watched Old Boy enough times to assume otherwise. That's how I learn things- through media. I don't consider it junk, I consider it ethnographic research; equipment for living, if you will. But I digress, as I so often do . . .

So, the story goes that one day on the island of Jeju-do, Song and his Girlfriend (hereon referred to as 여자 친구) went to a café- I like to imagine specifically oriented towards lovers- where those in love hang their love letters on some sexually charged wall. That was a little harsh. Wall is good here. That being said, Song and 여자 친구 wrote a love letter together, put it in an envelope, wrote in characters too large for the envelope and hung it on the wall- I like to imagine like on a laundry line.

And so, one Friday, while tutoring Song, mmm, about Shakespeare, let’s say, he felt the necessary urge to tell me that he had, out of the blue, received an e-mail from his sister and uncle along with a picture of that very letter he wrote, the characters on the envelope being so large that they couldn’t help but attract whatever eye curious enough to gaze upon it. Not only a café popular amongst lovers, but sisters and uncles as well. Anyway, Song couldn’t hear the end of it, and I didn’t want to hear the end of it, his family still berating him to this very day (lovingly, I’m sure), and me still berating him for that very photo. Magical.

There’s something about food and spaces. Wonderful things happen when we sit down to eat; not only are we nourished physically, but emotionally as well. The lines are blurred very easily between the satisfaction of being fed and the satisfaction of being, in the case of Song and여자 친구, loved- emotionally appealed let’s say. Barthes would probably have something to say about it; Baudrillard too, although I reckon he’d turn it into something consumer-fetish related and ruin the good time we’re having analyzing this whole thing.

Let’s consider the café. Let’s consider the café and love. Let’s consider the café, coffee and love. The café is a place where people go to socialize, yes; but why over coffee? An item that would otherwise wake you up and give you more energy than you actually need in a space you go to relax seems counter-intuitive. But that’s just it, dear readers. It’s not about the coffee, it’s about what it means. The coffee is nothing more than a conduit for something else. An alibi for the hidden intentions of two lovers who go out to drink it. They need a place to be together and the café is the reason. They need a thing to engage in together and the coffee is the fee. Yes, the coffee may be nourishing, but it stands in place for the mediation that goes on between two people. They may buy the coffee, but they may not even drink it, too busy writing love letters. Indeed, it is only a cover for something else that is going on. The cup of coffee is nothing more than a distraction for nosey viewers, like the boy who buys vast amounts of chewing gum to cover the box of condoms he intends to check out. Did I ruin it? I am pretty macho.

Indeed, if there were no such thing as love (and dating ritual, for that matter) the café may cease to exist. Or so I like to imagine. So next time Will Hunting tells you that coffee is arbitrary, you tell him otherwise. That coffee isn’t arbitrary; that it’s, as Song so genuinely taught us, 恋の試練 .

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