[travelogue] charleston.

January 14, 2017

the truth is that this cross-country trip is one i don’t necessarily want to remember — and yet i can’t help my desire to document and share it in the way that i want to document and share everything beautiful. maybe that’s the thing about the world, that my heart might be breaking into the tiniest little pieces, that things might be going to shit all over the place, but the world is still largely a place of beauty and wonder — and, even amidst the heartbreak, amidst the depression, it still manages to take my breath away.

charleston — or, at least, the tiny bit of charleston i got to see in the less-than-twenty-four-hours i was there — is a beautiful city. yes, it has a sordid history, and its way of trying to edit it leaves me scratching my head, but the city is beautiful, the people friendly, the food outstanding.

(holy shit, the food is incredible.)

i have a weird emotional connection to charleston. it’s a city i want to like, to love even, and it’s been on my list of cities to visit for some time now, so, when i thought about the possibility of driving across the country, i knew i’d be making a stop here. that’s part of why i don’t necessarily want to remember this trip, though — because everything about it feels wrong; none of this was supposed to happen this way.

here’s the thing, though: sometimes, i think life is all about navigating disappointments. sometimes, i think it’s the cynic in me who says that, that i don’t actually believe that at my core, that i believe life is more hopeful than that, but the last two years of my life have been about trying to bear the weight of disappointments and, ultimately, not surviving it.

and i wonder whether it’s worth sharing any of this, but i do carry this conviction to be transparent, to share not only the lovely, shiny things in life but also to be able to acknowledge the crap, to say that, no, nothing is going well in my life, i am struggling with so much darkness, but here is something good — here is something that made me smile. i dislike how we curate our lives to make it seem as though we have picture-perfect lives; i’m not interested in those veneers; and i’m not interested in presenting only the good, whether it’s here in this space, on instagram, or in my fiction.

because the truth is that we all hurt. we all go through moments in our lives that are filled with nothing but pain. we all suffer heartbreak. we all feel like we’ll go mad from it.

and, yet, the other truth is that the world continues to be a beautiful place. sometimes, that beauty is comforting; sometimes, it’s the most cruel thing; but it’s there to be seen, to be witnessed, to be remembered. and, maybe, right now, i don’t want to remember this road trip much at all because, maybe, it’d be better to forget the heartache, the pain, the grief. maybe, it’ll be possible to leave all this brokenness behind because, maybe, one day, i will be well, and i won’t want to remember any of the hurt.

and, yet, it would be impossible to keep the beautiful parts of this trip while discarding the darker parts because the darkness brought me here, and it made me see the beauty that gave me the hope and lightness i needed to get through the day. like i said before, nothing exists in clean consistency, and things exist, take place, in relation to each other. i cannot keep one and forget the other.

so, when i think back on charleston, i will think back to this first visit, these not-even-twenty-four hours i spent in this city. i will think about the sadness of my circumstances, the disappointment that this was not how i wanted to meet this city for the first time. at the same time, i will think about eating that fabulous meal at FIG, about listening to people talk about weird baby names while eating a satisfying breakfast biscuit sandwich. i will think about eating okonomiyaki at a restaurant in a converted gas station and thinking back to the last time i ate okonomiyaki in hiroshima in 2012, and i will think about that barista at a fancy coffee shop who said, “hi, my name is [___]; nice to meet you.”

i will think about the houses, all those columns and porches, and i will think of the warmth even in december. i will think about how i thought that, no, charleston is not a city that makes me think it could be home, not in the way boston does or sapporo does, but it is a beautiful city, yes, one with complicated history that maybe needs deeper reckoning, and it is one i would like to explore further in the future because it is a city that let me believe, at least for that day, that i will have a future.

there were a lot of things i wanted to say about charleston, about the carolinas, about the south in general and place and the question of how we are to exist in places that are hostile to us. i wanted to talk about how the billboards change once you pass into north carolina, all the bible verses and proselytizing followed by advertisements for gentlemen’s clubs and adamandeve.com and fireworks — the south really loves its fireworks. i wanted to talk about how there are yellow diamond signs announcing CHURCH, followed by a church, how there are so many churches in south carolina, so many that i wonder how any of them is sustainable because there doesn’t seem to be population enough to congregate and support them. i wanted to talk about the oddness of being a [queer] woman of color in such predominantly white spaces, about the oddness of seeing people of color mostly behind the counters, providing services, while everyone else was largely white.

there was a lot about the carolinas, about the south in general, that made me uncomfortable.

maybe we’ll get into that in the future.

we’re halfway into january, and i haven’t read a single book yet this month, this year. to be honest, i haven’t been thinking that much about books, and, while i’m hauling a van full of books (and a dutch oven) (and a rice cooker and guitar) across the country, i’ve only got two in my tote: nayoung aimee kwon’s intimate empire and rachel khong’s forthcoming goodbye, vitamin.

considering that i’ve been driving 6-7 hours a day, i unsurprisingly haven’t had much time to read. this is the thing with me and books, though — that, even if i never pull the book out of my bag during the day, it still comforts me to know that it’s there, even if it’s adding weight to my tote bag. i like knowing that i could reach into my bag at any time and have a book on hand, and, even in this time of darkness, even as depression takes away my ability to focus on words, i like knowing that it’s there, that books will be there, that literature will keep going on.

i like knowing that, even while i’m struggling just to believe that i will be able to continue creating things of beauty and wonder, there are people out there — writers, chefs, musicians, artists of all kind — creating and putting beauty and wonder and light into the world every day.

[travelogue] chasing meals.

January 10, 2017

i think about food pretty much all the time.

while i’m eating a meal, i think about what i want to eat for my next meal. as i’m trying to fall asleep, i think about what i want to eat tomorrow, what i want to cook, what i’m craving and why i’m so fucking hungry and how i can’t fall asleep because of it. i follow a fair number of food people on instagram, so i spend a fair amount of time every day looking at food and being cranky that i can’t eat any of it. i read about food constantly, whether on food blogs or in food magazines or as food memoirs or cookbooks — so, basically, i’ve got food on my mind pretty much all the time.

(maybe the one oddity is that i don’t watch tv about food, but that’s also one of the few things consistent about me: i don’t watch much tv in general.)

i know there are people for whom food is a nuisance, something that must be consumed merely for sustenance and nothing else, but i am (clearly) not one of those. food, for me, especially these days, has come to be a sort of hope, this one thing that i can anticipate and look forward to and enjoy on a regular, daily basis, even while everything seems to be going to shit around me. these days, i feel like i’m existing on a precipice, trying so hard not to lose myself entirely to darkness, to nothingness and hopelessness, and i swear this is a battle i’m constantly losing.

and, so, i eat. i cook. i think about food.

this past weekend, i moved out of my apartment in new york city, and, with the help of my family, i packed and loaded as much of my stuff as possible into a mini-van and discarded the rest. i’m currently in the process of driving across the country, back to california, and am currently typing this in a hotel room in charleston, even though i should be sleeping to continue on the next leg to atlanta tomorrow.

i can’t sleep, though, so here we are.

the first leg of my trip took me from nyc to dc, where i went straight to momofuku ccdc because, as it goes, i set my navigation to guide me to restaurants.

last night, i laughed this off as a continuation of my ongoing inexplicable fascination with all things momofuku. today, though, when i think about it, i think it must have been the obvious thing that i would run immediately to something familiar. i mean, to an extent, i know momofuku. i know what the food will taste like. i know what the restaurant will look like. i know the logo, the ssam sauce, milk bar.

it reminds me of home, and, when i was in dc, when i was sitting at the bar in ccdc, slurping noodles and drinking a vodka cocktail, i could forget that i’d just lost my home and that i can’t go back, not yet, not for some time.

when i first had momofuku a few years ago, i didn’t think that much of it. i remember loving the noodles but finding the broth too salty, too spare, and i kind of simply checked it off my list of places to eat and moved on.

recently, though …

momofuku makes my favorite ramen noodles (i believe they’re made in-house), and i can’t get over them. they’re the perfect texture and thickness, just slippery enough and easy to slurp (because noodles must be slurped), and i like that they’re not generic or given less care than the broth or pork. i think noodles are kind of like rice — they’re often seen and dismissed as a basic part of a dish, but, if you have bad rice, bad noodles, the entire thing is wasted.

(FIG [below] gets at this, too. i asked the waiter what he thought of their pork dish, which comes over rice, and he said that they consider the rice just as important as the pork. that kind of care and attention comes through on the plate.)

the more i eat momofuku ramen, the more i like how balanced it is; it’s a bowl that just comes together very well; and ithits all the right notes of comfort and satisfaction and quality. it definitely served as comfort last night, and it’s a bowl i will miss intensely when i’m away from nyc. they did just open a restaurant in vegas, though …

my navigation today brought me to FIG, where i spent way more on dinner than i should have. my budgeting philosophy is simple, though: eat one great meal a day, and eat crap/starve for the rest, because i’d rather have one great meal than three mediocre/crappy ones.

because here’s the thing: there are a lot of really shitty things about suicidal depression, but, for me, one of the worst things that happens is that it takes away focus, and, when it takes away focus, it takes away books. depression often makes it really difficult for me to read, to sit down and focus on a book, to derive joy from that. i don’t know why that is, but it is.

food, then, fills in for everything.

part of it is likely to do with the fact that i have to eat, whether i want to or not, whether i have an appetite or not. i get hungry, and i feel worse because i’m hungry, so i have no choice but to rouse myself out of my mentally catatonic state and do something about my body’s basic needs. this isn’t to say that depression hasn’t taken food away from me at times, too — there were weeks last year when i got by on rice and hot dogs and fried eggs and ketchup because i didn’t have an appetite and that’s all i could get myself to cook and eat.

after a while, though, my mouth starts to revolt, and it starts craving things. it starts wanting noodles and kimchi and pork. it starts wanting to chew something with more heft, to taste something with more depth and flavor, to eat something that’s actually food and not questionably-processed foodstuffs. it wants green things, bright things, interesting things. it wants to feel alive.

and, so, i let food get me through the day. i think about food a lot. i think about what i want to eat, what i want to cook, and what i need to do to make this meal happen.

i let food give me purpose, and, in that way, i let food create a sort of hope for me.

and, so, i picked my cities by food.

at the moment, i’m still kind of numb to everything, including my depression, including my grief. the road has that kind of effect, but i’m starting to feel that numbness fade away, too, and, as i get further and further away from home and everything that i love, it’s all going to come fully crashing down on me. i’m going to have to figure out how to process my grief, how to grieve, how to start piecing myself back together. i’m going to have to work on learning to manage my depression in more sustainable ways. i’m going to have to muster up the energy to fight for my life and get back home and not die in california.

until then, though, for this week at least, to hold myself together for this 3,300-mile drive, i’ll go on chasing meals.

this is all we've got.

December 30, 2016

the snow stopped, i murmured to myself. it felt as if a long time had passed. snow erases everything. sometimes, it covers up things that can rot and disappear. for a little while, snow helps us to remember the memories we keep scattered in our hearts. and now the snow had stopped. (park min-gyu, pavane for a dead princess, 10)

2016 was a year of heartache; i didn’t know my heart could hurt like it did.

i didn’t know it could hurt so much from fear, anxiety, and disappointment. i didn’t know it could hurt so much just being who i am in a conservative setting, to look into the future and see the continued aggression and rejection, and i didn’t know it could hurt so much on account of my country.

i didn’t know my heart could hurt so much from sheer longing, not even for anything impossible but for things that seem so basic, so human.

i didn’t know my heart could hurt so much, to want so much to love someone, to want only happiness for her.

i didn’t know the human heart could be so easy to decimate, so difficult to kill.

if my heart feels destroyed, my brain feels so muddled these days. i’ve been trying to write this post since december 17, when we had snow in new york, and, now, it’s december 30, and i’m trapped in california because 2016 is the year the idea of rock bottom lost all meaning. i have things i want to say, but i’m not sure where to start, and all the anxiety from being stuck here is bleeding into everything.

all i want right now is to go back home.

i suppose, though, here’s a brief summation, that 2016 was the year of instability, of looking for and failing to find a full-time job and gain, with it, a measure of stability and assurance that i haven’t totally fucked up. it’s the year i finally met the challenge of semi-regularly producing content and trying to find a voice of my own, and it’s also the year i stopped caring about trying to fit into a specific niche or satisfy the implied requirements of what makes a good social media presence of a particular ilk.

2016 is the year i was constantly surprised by people’s capacity to love and reach out, and this means a tremendous amount to me because 2016 is the year i learned to carry anxiety with me everywhere, the year when spaces that were once familiar became treacherous. it’s the year i looked my sexuality in the eye, recognized it for what it was, and outed myself on social media, which wasn’t something i planned to do, ended up doing the night of the election because of terror, fear, and rage. 2016 is also the year i excised god from my life and walked away from faith — and the two combined means that 2016 was a year of constant tension and strain and worry.

it’s liberating to be out, but it comes packaged with a whole lot of uncertainty and fear. i also have the added baggage of having grown up in a conservative christian community, and being out means that i honestly don’t know where i stand with many people, if and which relationships are dead, what consequences my conservative christian family might face from their community because of my orientation. it might be a stupid thing for me to be worrying about, but it is there, and it is a thing that has kept me silent or talking in what feels like code, hoping people (allies) read between the lines or (non-allies) miss the hidden language altogether.

it’s been a lot to carry, trying to rebuild my world without faith and to navigate life outside the heteronormative mainstream. i feel almost like i’ve been reborn, and it has been exciting to claim this part of myself that i’d neglected and dismissed for so long — but that makes me angry, too, the narrowness of the world of my youth, the ways religion continues to repress and shame and harm with ugly violence fueled by blind hatred.

and, so, 2016 is the year i learned that silence is not an option. i ended up outing myself in a pique of rage and panic because this country had basically made it very clear on november 9 that it didn’t matter whether i was in the closet or not — it was going to come after me and my rights, anyway, so i might as well speak up, and i might as well fight.

which goes to say that we might be looking right at 2017, and i might be feeling completely muddled and broken these days, but we’ll find the words to talk about all this shit in the months to come.

my goal for 2016 was to read 75 books, and i did not meet that goal, coming in at 65 (i think). i feel like i fell short of all my reading goals this year — didn’t read 75 books, didn’t read anything in completion in korean — though i did blog more, so i did write more about what i was reading.

it’s not to say that 2016 was a bad reading year. i don’t think any year in which i read and attempt to read diversely, intelligently, and thoughtfully can be a bad reading year, but it is true that 2016 was largely an uninspired reading year. i struggled considerably with staying engaged, staying interested, not with specific books per se but with fiction in general. for the most part, though, as unpleasant as it is to be uninspired, that was still okay because i diverted a lot of my focus into reading more food writing and more cookbooks, into exploring what that intersection of literary writing and/or journalism and food looks like.

this is not a comment on the books that were published in 2016 — or that i read this year because i read some amazing books that moved me and challenged me and helped me find hope amidst the shit (my next post will be about 10 specific books). i’ve struggled with some very real fatigue this year, though, and it’s a fatigue that has almost entirely to do with whiteness and straightness, despite 2016 having been a pretty good year for writers of color. it’s encouraging to see the industry being better, trying to look beyond its white straightness, and yet …?

maybe this fatigue is an inevitable by-product of both this election cycle and this election, all the ugliness it exposed to be alive and well in this country. maybe it’s an inevitable by-product of the disappointments in my own life, of not finding a job, of struggling so much to survive, to pay the bills, to write. maybe it’s also an inevitable by-product of all my interpersonal and social anxiety.

maybe it’s all of it.

in his year in reading essay for the millions, kevin nguyen writes:

if you believe that books have the power to do good, you also have to believe that they can do just as much harm. after the election, there was no soul searching on book twitter. no one questioned the power structures of publishing. can we talk about how one of the big five publishers is owned by news corp? often the publishing of things like bill o’really’s twisted histories is justified as a means to support literary fiction. but does anyone asks if that trade-off is worth it?

it’s easy to romanticize books and to make them out to be great cultural pillars, and that’s not to say that they aren’t. it’s crucial to recognize literature’s place in the world and its ability to shape thought and, yes, do good (and to stop trying to kill humanities programs), but it’s easy to lose ourselves in this idea that, because we read, we are good, we are somehow superior to other consumers of other modes of culture.

we make a thing out of a flawed industry, even going so far as to make the big 5 out to be these great underdogs in the world of amazon and internet media, when big publishing is exactly that — big — and just as guilty of making bad decisions, of failing to adapt and make changes, of sitting around and talking about a topic (aka diversity) instead of trying to do something about it. just because publishing’s business is books doesn’t mean it’s an industry that’s not guilty of indulging and overexposing celebrity, of selling out, of making questionable compromises in the name of what — money? reputation? power?

which is not to dismiss the agents and editors and publicists and marketers and designers and the army of assistants and HR people who try to acquire great work by writers of different colors and backgrounds and orientations and bring beautiful, thoughtful writing into the world. i know that there are great people working in publishing today, and i love the work that they do, the dedication they have to literature and literary culture. as a reader, i am indebted to them, and, as a writer, i hope one day to be published by them, to place my book in their hands, to have them on my side.

and yet there is something about always having to make this kind of statement that feels odd — like, how we must always go out of our ways to say that, yes, we know that not all white people are racists and we know that not all men are misogynists or assholes who commit violence against women, not all christians are homophobic bigots. to have to make that concession is simply another way that power exhibits itself, this seeming need to protect the power-holder’s fragility and indulge its self-defensiveness, all just to be able to say that shit is bad and shit needs to change.

making a criticism is not making a blanket statement that everything in that setting or grouping is bad. things are not so clearly either/or, and contradictions exist within everything — and, as such, 2016 was a good year for writers of color, but 2017 needs to be a better one. we need more writers of minority groups telling their stories, whether through journalism, fiction, or personal essays. we need to be asking ourselves if the trade-offs are worth it, and we need to admit that books can do as much damage as good. we need to question why we read what we read, why we write what we write, why we publish what we publish, and we need to look at where voices are being cut off and shut out.

we need to ask how we can do better, whether as people who work in the industry or as writers or as readers because it will take all of us to create change and move the world to a better, more open place.

i don’t mean this to sound condescending or like a lecture, but i do want to throw the challenge out there because, again, silence is not an option, and, similarly, indifference is not an option. we don’t get to not care anymore, and, as such, i hope to see more in 2017 from publishing and the literary world. like i said, there are people out there doing great work, so i don’t think this is a vain hope.

ultimately, 2016 is the year that being able to recognize myself in literature started to mean a whole fucking lot, and i will do as much as i can in my own limited ways to bring more attention and awareness to great writing by minority writers. it is the least that i can do.

if 2016 was a year of heartache, 2017 is the year we lose each other.

early next year, i’m looking at a move to the bay area, back across the country to california, that fucking state that just won’t let her goddamn claws out of me. it’s a mess of a situation where no one wins, not me, not my family, not anyone involved, and it’s not something i’m really thinking about in any substantive way yet because to do so would be to descend into rage and desperation.

i know exactly what a move back to california means; it means a return to rootlessness and restlessness and continued self-loathing. it means not letting myself settle down because my singular goal will be to leave as soon as i can because the longer i stay, the greater the damage, and i’m already in pieces.

to some, it might sound strange and irrational because a state is a state, it’s just place, somewhere to be, who bloody cares? a cage, however, is place, too, and place is a weapon, a trap, a hell, and, as a queer woman of color, place matters a lot because place is directly attached to safety, and safety is something i don’t take for granted.

there’s that saying that a wounded animal is the most dangerous, but i wonder to whom the danger lies. is it the wounded animal that is in danger from herself? or is it the person or thing cornering her that is in danger? when you trap a wounded animal, who will she harm — you? or herself?

if there’s something to remember, it’s that things do not exist simply in clear binaries. it is possible to love someone and be disappointed in that same person, to acknowledge someone’s goodness and generosity as well as that person’s narrow-mindedness and flaws. it is possible to love someone who harms you, not in a stockholm syndrome sort of way, but in a genuine way that recognizes that we all fuck up and we are all capable of causing great harm but we can also admit that and work to heal wounds and rebuild trust.

it is possible to be so completely, humbly grateful for what someone does for you and find yourself suffocating from that same gratitude, and it is possible to care for someone and love that person deeply and trigger that person in all the worst possible ways. it is possible to believe that you are doing the best for someone and wreak so much damage that that person will flee from you just to have even the smallest chance to heal.

it is possible for things to be okay even while they’ve fractured beyond repair.

it is possible not to want to live and also not to want to die.
it is possible to listen to someone speak and not hear what that person is actually saying.
it is possible to have an open heart and draw lines and conditions that close up that same heart.

it is possible to be, to commit acts that so completely oppose each other at the same time, and to believe in a world of perfect consistency is to be naive.

when i think about 2017, i see nothing. i have no hopes, no expectations, just silence and darkness, a low thrum of hopelessness underneath it all. 2017 already looks like regression, ten steps backwards, and i can already chart it out in loss. 2016, in many ways, is ending with lines drawn in the sand indicating the limits to certain relationships, and 2017 is starting not with calm and anticipation but with my anxiety and depression keyed up as high as they can go. 2016 might have tracked the decline of my mental state, but 2017 is already tearing at the shreds, causing more damage before the year has even begun.

i have one goal for 2017, and it is to move back out east, whether to new york or boston, by the end of it because i will not live and die in california, a state that i despise and that has never been kind to me. i know where home is, and, by the end of 2017, i will be back home.

even good things come to an end.

December 15, 2016

it was the via negativa way of figuring out i wanted to do with my life: i didn’t know what i wanted, but i knew what i didn’t want. (momofuku, 19)

benu is very much a restaurant that’s influenced by different cultures. like san francisco and its environs, which has the highest asian concentration of any area in the US, there’s distinct eastern influence. sense of place is expressed not so much in the locality of the products we use, but through the spirit and the cultural influences of our area that permeate our food. the cooking at benu often explores how asian flavors, ideas, and aesthetics can harmonize with western ones. in that way, i think it reflects a bit of my bicultural background as well. and in the process of establishing an identity for the restaurant, i came to a better understanding of my own. (benu, 23)

i imagined what it would be like if my ancestors had ended up in charleston, south carolina, a few generations before i was born. they would have eaten corn, they would have eaten grits, they would have cooked with bacon. or, if southerners were magically transplanted to korea, they’d eat jook instead of grits at breakfast. and you know a people who can handle the salty power of a country ham certainly could have gotten down with kimchi. i imagined a japanese cook making grits — you know he’d boil it in dash and season it with soy.
i guess these were all conversations i was having with myself. i didn’t want to be cooking shitting fusion food. i consoled myself by thinking about how vietnamese cuisine and cajun cooking adapted from french techniques into something that might have looked french but tasted totally different. but it was with this dish ["shrimp and grits"] that i decided — or accepted — that if we reached past “tradition” to create the truest and best version of a dish for our own palates, then what we were doing wasn’t bullshit. momofuku was going pretty strong at this point, but this is the dish that allowed us — or me, certainly — to really look outward and onward. (momofuku, 110)

how to talk about some shit? here’s some stuff in lists.

01. these days, reading is done pretty much as pure escapism, and there is no greater, more gratifying escape than to slip into the world of food. food has its own language, its own rules, and, unlike other art forms, it’s firmly grounded because the elements of food come from the earth. the best chefs, i think, are sensitive to this, to the seasons, to the shifting and changing of the environment, just as they’re sensitive to culture and technique and the globally varied approaches to food.

02. i recently read benu (phaidon, 2015) and chased that with momofuku (clarkson potter, 2009), and they’re both written by korean-american chefs (corey lee and david chang/peter meehan, respectively). they both take inspiration from korean food, but they also draw from chinese, taiwanese, japanese, vietnamese, french cooking and flavors and technique, paying respect to these sources but unafraid to toss out tradition and try new things. there’s a sort of mad scientist glee to their innovation, and i bloody love it.

03. i love seeing what korean-americans (and, in general, asian-americans) are doing. we all negotiate our relationships with our ethnic identities in different ways — some of us reject it outright; some of us acknowledge it though it doesn’t play a large, obvious part in our lives; and some of us draw significant parts of our identity from it. it’s not just ethnic identity, either, because we also negotiate our relationships with our sexual identities, gender identities, etcetera in our own ways, and there’s no “right” way to do so. there is no “right” way to be asian-american, just like there is no “right” way to be LGBTQ or to be a woman. there is only the way that is right for you, and one of the great, exciting things for me in recent years has been to see and witness how we contribute and present our individual selves to the world.

04. benu and momofuku are fun books to read back to back. lee and chang have their similarities — they’re both korean-americans of the same age who grew up (or spent significant amounts of their youth) on the east coast and have reputations for being intense in the kitchen and obsessing over details — but to dwell on or make much of these similarities would be to do both a disservice. the juxtaposition is interesting, though, because of the ways they diverge in so many ways; chang is more foul-mouthed and has a dry sense of humor while lee is more formal and restrained with his words (at least in writing). lee’s cooking is more elevated and refined, very little of which someone could attempt at home, while chang goes for the masses without muddling accessibility with low quality. none of this is meant as an inherent compliment, and none of it is meant as an insult because what benu & momofuku show us is that here is how two creative minds work. here is how they venture off on their own individual creative pathways and bring us something wonderful. here are two ways of being amongst the billions there are on this planet.

05. it must be said: the recipe writing in momofuku is top notch; it has a character of its own. and the photography/design in benu is so fucking stunning. trust phaidon to turn out an aesthetic wonder of a book.

06. the flip side of reading as pure escapism, though — at one point, the book ends. at one point, we run out of pages, and we’re ejected back into our realities, at which point, sometimes, the only option is to find the next book to chase the next high and avoid the crashing low. sometimes, though, we’re left in better shape because the reading has fortified us and given us better insulation. i suppose it’s a gamble of sorts, one we play while hoping for the latter.

07. god damn, though, i love food.

a. here’s a story photographs don’t tell: these days, it’s about simple things, simple tasks — making a grocery list, walking to my favorite pie bakery and eating a slice of pie, cooking dinner. it sounds stupid, maybe, but, these days, i feel like i’m skating on thin ice, and i’ve got to keep moving or else i’ll fall through, except i’m just moving for the sake of moving and it’s exhausting and it feels like a matter of time before the ice gives way under me. this is what suicidal depression feels like.

b. i get so scared attaching “suicidal” to “depression.” depression on its own — to the healthy mind — and, hell, maybe even to the depressed mind, though in a self-loathing, self-hating sort of way — seems relatively harmless. it sounds like something that can be overcome, although that’s really a product of how we’ve made depression fill in for basic human sadness when depression actually runs much deeper, more insidiously than that. you attach “suicidal” to it, though, and it immediately takes on a different tone. ooh, now we’re talking about dying, ooh, how dark, ooh, how melodramatic.

c. one of the worst things about suicidal depression is silence. it’s not being able to speak, whether because it’s just not physically possible (seriously, sometimes, words just don’t come out) or because there’s so much fear attached to it — a fear of being dismissed, of not being taken seriously, of being taken too seriously. there’s also a sense of exhaustion attached to it, too, because there are only so many platitudes you can take. it’s guilt, too, guilt because you’re likely making everyone else feel like shit, because people might be trying to be there for you but you’re not being receptive, because you’re not taking to any of their solutions even if they seem practical and rational.

d. here’s the thing to remember, though, the crucial detail that changes everything: the depressed mind, the suicidal mind, operates outside pragmatic rationale. it has a logic of its own, and it is a logic that sees and acknowledges dying as a viable solution.

e. the thing about books that act as records is that they often come after the struggle. they come after the creators have survived, have achieved success, and struggle is something that can be viewed in retrospect. i wonder a lot about whether or not i should write so openly about suicidal depression now, if maybe this writing is best saved for later (if there is a later), for after this has passed (if it ever does), but i wonder, too, if this is a form of self-censorship. isn’t there value in putting these words down now and making them public? i want to say yes because i think it’s important not to attach the clause of survival to every story because, sometimes, the truth is that we don’t survive, and that’s why i think it’s important to see things for what they are, as they are, when they are, even if they’re in really dark places that scare us and put us off and make us uncomfortable. and so we find ourselves here.

f. which is not to dismiss books that act as records, like benu and momofuku. we need records; we need stories that remind us that, sometimes, the only option is to fling ourselves off the precipice and take the crazy risks and work hard and trust ourselves even amidst the insecurities and the fears and the probabilities stacked against us. we need reminders of this, and, sometimes, we need them more than we do at other times, and i’m glad that they’re there. these books were a tremendous source of comfort to me over the last few days, and, in times like these, that means the world.

g. oddly (maybe), my lasting impression from benu and momofuku was the thought, huh, i guess maybe there is a space in the world for me. this is why i want to create and write and share.

i knew it from the beginning, from when quino and i did everything ourselves, but by this point i knew the difference between momofuku and mcdonald’s: caring. caring about every detail. when you start to cook on autopilot, when you buy into bullshit people write about you, when you stop paying attention to details — not to mention big things, like seasoning — no amount of press in the world will make up for it. i preached this to my crew. what is the point of cooking at all if you’re not gonna do it right? (momofuku, 223)

x. i often wonder who the market is for cookbooks, and i wonder this because i feel like i do not fit into that market. i so rarely cook from cookbooks, and i look at cookbooks as reading material — but it’s not like i’m losing sleep over this.

x. that’s one thing i loved about benu so much because lee even directly says this in his introduction (which i’ve quoted before). it’s not so much about me attempting these recipes as it is gaining a different perspective, picking up some really cool knowledge about food and food production that i wouldn’t have come across in my average daily life, and learning to see culture (even my ethnic culture that i grew up with) in new ways. it’s learning to think of language in different ways because, like i said, food has its own language, and language, often, is something we take for granted.

x. this was a thing i loved about both books, that lee and chang pay tribute to different aspects of korean culture, and this was one of my favorites from benu, and i will leave you with this:

the term haenyeo, or “sea women”, refers to the legendary female divers of jeju island, an island province off the coast of south korea. they free-dive into the deep waters for various edibles and play a major role in the seafood trade on the island.
[…]
it is generally accepted that the first known documentation of female divers in jeju dates back to the seventeenth century, during the joseon period, when the primary role of the haenyeo was to supply the royal court. their financial independence eventually helped to establish a matriarchal sub-culture that is unique to the island and in stark contrast to the rest of korea which has deep roots in male-dominated confucian thought. although it has become a dwindling tradition in modern times, with most haenyeo well into their seventies, the sight of these daring women and their floating buoys is still very much a part of the life on jeju island today.
[…]
as a chef, any encounter with the farmer, the fisherman or with anyone who has pulled up their own sleeves to get you the raw materials you cook with can be an educational experience. with these women, however, what i learned is not so much related to food or the products they supply. they are living emblems of korean cultural heritage and embody the resilience of its people and, in particular, the strength and self-sacrifice of its women. and for me, their unwavering spirit is much more beautiful and palpable than can be imagined through any folklore. (benu, 220)

[dec 5] here’s looking for meaning at the bottom of a bowl.

December 9, 2016

but there are dreams that cannot be
and there are storms we cannot weather
- les miserables, "i dreamed a dream"

it’s friday, which means this week is at an end, which means, hurrah, we’ve survived another week. five days of posting done, something i doubt i’ll repeat again, because i do think it’s better to sit on something, let it stew, and work it over and over until it’s more than a slapdash idea.

it was my birthday on monday, and it’s something i largely let slide under the radar — and it probably would have gone totally under the radar had i not written that here. it’s been a difficult year, probably the darkest i’ve seen thus far, and it’s been a year of navigating disappointment after disappointment, of losing hope and feeling the ground fall out from under my feet (again), of continuing this race i always seem to be running against time, a race i will never win.

i guess i wanted to commemorate surviving, though, of still being here at the end of 2016 and not just letting the moment pass dismissed. i also wanted to take on a small challenge in an attempt to give my brain something to chew on, and, in this, these five days have largely been successful — i’ve finally made significant headway on an essay i’ve been wanting to write for a few months now, one i plan to pitch, the prospect of rejections and the fear of personal essays be damned.

and don’t worry — the diary-esque-ness of the last five days won’t stick around. i’m pretty sure i’ve said this before, but this space is a constant work-in-progress, and it’s been confirmed that i don’t quite enjoy that kind of posting. i prefer longer forms, so we’ll go back to semi-regular posts of more depth.

thank you, as always, for reading.

chuko serves one of my favorite bowls of ramen, and, as it turns out, their wings are damn good, too. the last time i ate at chuko, it was october 2015, and they’ve since moved into a larger space up the street, still just a few blocks away from ample hills (because ramen and ice cream go together very well). get the pork broth with the roasted pork; it’s a bowl that surprisingly isn’t salty or too heavy; and the pork is so tender, pairs well with the menma and bitter greens. it’s a bowl that’s perfect for these colder, darker days when the future is unknowable and offers no hope.