Category: DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, Letters to the editors, Popular & established authors, South Korea

Letter from Jo Eun Young to Matthew, COTW editor

!Epic Tomorrows

Dear Matthew,

I hope you have been doing well.

After returning from Europe, I took about a week to recover from jet lag and regain my energy.

For this journey, I printed fifty copies of our leaflet, and I was able to leave forty-eight of them at bookshops along the way.

My first stop was the conference in Siena, where I shared the leaflet with professors and several students in Korean Studies. They were genuinely interested, especially in the translations, and I promised to send them the original Korean poems after returning home.

After Siena, I visited Florence and Rome. The experience was quite different from my visit to Lisbon in 2019.

In Lisbon, I felt warmly welcomed. Perhaps it was because Fernando Pessoa is celebrated throughout the city, with bookstores and shops proudly displaying books and souvenirs inspired by him. It felt like a city that embraces its poets.

Florence and Rome, however, felt different. After returning home, I found myself reflecting on why.

First, Florence and Rome are much more tourism-oriented cities than Lisbon. Perhaps people naturally saw me as a tourist rather than as a writer.

Second, I wondered whether my limited English, together with being an Asian visitor, made communication more difficult.

Third, many of the bookshops I visited also operated as cafés, restaurants, or bars, which may have made it less practical for them to introduce or display independent literary projects.

Because the leaflet was written in English, one bookseller—who I believe was probably a staff member rather than the owner—suggested that I should instead visit bookshops specializing in English-language books.

In Florence, every bookshop kindly accepted my leaflet. In Rome, one bookshop politely declined. It appeared to be one of the busiest bookstores in the neighborhood, and the staff explained that any decision to display printed materials had to be discussed and approved at a staff meeting.

I cannot say that I was enthusiastically welcomed everywhere, but I also realize that this expectation was my own. If even one person becomes interested and a genuine connection begins, I will consider this journey worthwhile.

Most importantly, this small adventure was meaningful because I was able to share a leaflet that we created together—you, the illustrator Han So-jin, and I. Thanks to this project, I wandered far beyond the usual tourist destinations and explored the small streets and independent bookshops of Florence and Rome.

Back in Korea, I am currently teaching as a professor while also working with a local cultural foundation on a project interviewing independent neighborhood bookshops. Looking back, from March through August, I have been on a continuous journey through local bookshops in both Korea and Europe.

Thank you, Matthew, for accompanying me on this journey through your work and encouragement.

Now many projects are waiting for me again.

I hope to spend this summer working, reading, writing, and loving.

With my sincere gratitude,

JO EUN YOUNG

P.S.

I’ve been documenting this journey on my Instagram (@bella_joeun), if you’re interested.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, Reflections, Ukraine

Dancing During War (Ukraine travel memoir) #1

!Epic Tomorrows

by Keith Hennessey, 2024

This is a serialized travel memoir from a well-intentioned yet ill-informed US/Canadian perspective that shares stories of fierce vulnerable Ukrainian dancers in the middle of a war/invasion. This isn’t well researched journalism. Yes you can share with friends —Keith

*******

Dear reader,

This is a 5-day collection of stories, observations, and experiences from my trip to Lviv, Ukraine in August 2024. 2024 was year 3 or 10 or 30 or 100 of the war between Russia and Ukraine, also known as, Ukraine’s righteous defense against Russia’s colonial invasion, depending on which historical date or “truth” you want to prioritize. Numbers of people killed and other data are based on what I could find online in summer 2024.

First, some historical dates to explain the above numbers, 3, 10, 30, 100:

1921-22: (100 years ago.) Russia, as part of Soviet expansion, invaded and annexed/occupied Ukraine, including a violent suppression of Ukrainian literature, culture, and language.

1932-33: In the violent take-over (forced nationalization) of Ukraine’s vast and fertile private farms, Stalin’s regime caused the Holodomar/Terror-Famine, an agricultural genocide that resulted in at least 4 million Ukrainian deaths. Followed by massive displacement, both internally and by emigration.

Nov 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of dissolution of Russian-dominated Soviet Union.

Aug 1991: (30 years ago.) Ukrainian independence, and intensification of Russian efforts to control and/or destabilize Ukraine, to keep Ukraine within the Russian sphere of economic, military, and cultural influence. The US and Europe have been very active in this larger global competition, pulling Ukraine away from Russia towards Europe, maybe with promises to join Europe (and maybe even NATO?)

Feb 2014: Maidan Revolution / Revolution of Dignity, culmination of the Euromaidan protests (2013-14), which ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president.

2014: (10 years ago.) In response to the Maidan Revolution, Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine’s Donbas region and then annexed Crimea. There has been an ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine since then, which Russia escalated in 2022. Ukraine re-prioritized Ukrainian language education in and out of schools.

Feb 2022: (3 years ago.) The current Russian invasion of Ukraine, occupying significant areas of Eastern Ukraine, ongoing bombing of civilian infrastructure in several areas of the country including the capital Kyev. An unknown number of thousands of Ukrainian civilians dead, estimates of over 100,000 military dead, and over 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country from a population of 41 million. Russian military deaths have not been clearly reported but it seems that over 100,000 have died.

*******

Through a friend I reached out to a couple of Ukrainian contact improvisation dancer-organizers saying I’d heard that there was a desire for international teachers to come to Ukraine, to share skills, witness life during war, and soften some of the isolation they have felt since 2022. A small festival was organized around my visit which included a talk, 3 days of classes and dance jams, an informal performance, and a closing hang out at a semi-rural sauna/banya. Over 50 people participated, from several cities and towns around Ukraine including Lviv, Kyiv, Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkiv, with 25-40 people at each class, talk, jam, performance.

These notes are intended as both a curious travelog for my friends and as a small act of solidarity with Ukrainian dancers feeling isolated, abandoned, and hungry for connection, witness, and support. Writing helps to organize my memories and thoughts and also helps me process what has been a deeply emotional few days. You are witnessing my witnessing.

I do not name all of the people I met and whose stories I’m sharing here. They know I took a lot of notes and photos and consented to my sharing this report with friends and beyond. They also have access to the document and know that I welcome their comments, corrections, edits. Neither my notes nor memories are precise or complete. I heard almost everything through translation and gaps of cultural understanding. I selected what to share. Any historical info was grabbed from Wikipedia and quick internet searches simply to create a broader context for the stories I heard. Please do your own research and don’t quote me. Supportive corrections are welcome. All errors, misunderstanding, and omissions are mine. Apologies to all.

At least some of you reading this should consider going to Ukraine.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, Reflections

Beyond

!Epic Tomorrows

One of the aspects of an entity having an identity is being able to express it by a code. Whether it liberates or binds its actions is left to perspective. When declaring an entity as identical to another, we are satisfied at evaluating whether one is a replication of the other, but this is seldom sufficient to capture such replication. Idempotence can now step in to eradicate the doubts of variations when we often replay past interactions between entities in angst, asking whether their outcome would be the same. A singular entity should be comprehensible via its expression of Indivisibility, Oneness and Unity. These form such a wonderful trinity where taking the first two together form the pillars of individuality, whereas the third is the expression of a grand final state leagues beyond individuality alone, yet maintaining continuity with everything that comes before.

Such strong forces, each of these attributes describe. When applied to a person, they express themselves as questions. Questions that some might try answering for themselves, over an entire lifetime, only never to reach the semblance of an answer. Some might be tempted to avoid them all together, only to encounter other similar forces forming a boundary that feels almost pre-determined. Whether resulting from external engulfment or emerging from internal undertaking, we cannot escape entification. 

If a country is to be taken as an idealized result of the entification of a People; and a culture, the result of a shared history, the former would have you be one among and the latter would prod you to be one alike. 

However, for a Person, when such questions and forces assert their influence as we endure that endeavor to attain the magnum opus that is Unity, the result is a void that rationality alone cannot diminish.

What comes beyond rationality? Is there, or should there even be such a way of enacting, where it is not rationale alone that drives our actions to fruition? How should one act when the greatest tool that one possesses does not work?

Yet introspecting on such a thought is unmistakably human. The perspective of Humanism so cleanly captures the interactions that drive results when one inevitably finds oneself in the void. We act nevertheless. We act surpassing uncertainty. We act scared, hopeless and trembling in the darkness. We Act.

That is what I have learnt after acting to flood the embedded void within, after leaving my home country and venturing beyond what seems to be —seas, identities, countries and finally Peoples. 

Beyond historical, cultural, socio-economic and political… 

Beyond rational, natural, visceral and real…

There exists us, The Human. 

Sandeep Satish Budhya, Child of The World

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Israel, Palestine, Popular & established authors

Fences in the West Bank

!Epic Tomorrows

Hello from Charlotte Mendel,

I am doing Protective Presence in the West Bank for 6 months and, for part of each week, I stay with a cluster of Palestinian families who are being targeted by extremist settlers. I have been hit, kicked, cursed—on my first day the army confiscated my passport and detained me. I experience it like a nightmare; I loathe every minute—my first head-on experience with a distorted ideology that justifies evil—and it’s my own fucking people! But also my first experience of the immense bravery of my fellow Israelis and the solidarity they are creating with Palestinians throughout the West Bank. And my Palestinian family is still in their homes, and they know that they are not alone.

Strong fences are one of the best protections for these families. My sister Tessa and I have launched a fundraiser to purchase 500m of metal fencing that the settlers won’t be able to cut through https://chuffed.org/project/185832-fences-for-taybeh.

If you love Israel like I do, please donate to the campaign. These settlers are destroying everything that Israel once stood for. If we want Israel to survive and thrive, we must fight this evil, for the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Thank you!

Charlotte

*******

LEFTIST ZIONIST STATEMENT, by the chief editor of Centre of the Web (this will be reposted at the bottom of all COTW submissions from Israel-Palestine). 1. I am against the antizionist misinformation and hate movement, including the very unholy alliance between Hamas and its sympathisers, and the so-called progressive left (of which I used to be proud to be a member); I am a left wing zionist; i.e. I assert the right of Israel to continue to exist, to not be destroyed, to not be dismantled (often used as a euphemism for destruction). 2. Like the original Kropotkin-reading zionists, my politics is anarchistic. My ultimate belief in a stateless global society does not mean that Israel should dissolve before any other state. Considering global history, it should probably be one of the last states to dissolve. However, the dissolution of a state is not the dissolution of a people or its historical link to its homeland. 3. Hamas (Queer-hating, women-oppressing, Jewish-world-domination-conspiracy believing Hamas) are not a liberatory movement. Their founders had strong links with movements whose representatives met with Nazis in Nazi Germany, to collaborate on eradicating all Jews. (Do your research). This is nothing to do with resistance against so-called settler-colonialism. Moreover, extremist settlers in the West Bank are not representative of Israel as a whole. 4. I am not Islamophobic. I support a peaceful solution in the Middle East in Israel-Palestine and the wider region. This of course includes an end to the horrible government of Netanyahu, and an end to the destruction of Gaza. It also includes an end to Hamas and all associated groups and governments, including the Iranian regime. This does not mean I support Trump and Bibis war. 5. Supporting the same ends as another, does not mean that I support another`s means. 6. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Think about that before you get into bed with Hamas. // Thank you. In solidarity with Standing Together, Movement Against Antizionism and Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Ecology of the absurd, England, Exclusive to COTW

Building Silent Haven: Chapter Three

!Epic Tomorrows

Featured image: ‘Aerial View’ 1996, acrylic on board

In 2000 I found a studio, housed within and named after an old Chocolate Factory, where the plan was to house 100 artists. It was a walk across the park from my flat and near to the allotment! I was creating my little natural world in London! I was the first artist in and my work became freer. I painted, sculpted, crafted, and made clothes, mostly from recycled materials.

‘Red Still Life’ 2000, oil on canvas

I came across a leaflet for a residency at Dorland Mountain Arts colony in California, applied for it and was accepted. Somehow, I made the money to go and so I made drawings of an ambitious painting I wanted to do there. I tentatively bought a huge roll of canvas thinking that I could cut it down when I arrived if it was too big.

In March 2001 I arrived at Dorland and I was shown to where I would be staying for the next month. Wow! The Retreat was sensational. It sat nestled on a remote hillside with fabulous views all around. It was a massive building with a canvas roof and windows which showed the moon coming up at night. The wood burner was the only source of heating and I had never lit a fire in my life. I soon learned and became an expert.


The Retreat

Robert, a permanent resident showed me inside the house and when he got back to the front door, he said “oh, and there is this…” He lifted a pole at the side of the front door and the whole front wooden wall opened out onto a concrete balcony. The amazing thing was, there was a massive drawing board attached to this wall and it was exactly the size of my canvas! Needless to say I didn’t cut it down and I spent the whole month painting outside.

Front wall, living space, and communal dining room

‘Past Life Present’ 2001, oil on canvas

My work had got bigger and bigger over the years, from tiny black and white graphics to this, a massive, colourful oil painting on canvas. It is about a vision I had of me and my relationships to people in a past life as Native Americans. The other people in the painting are from my present life.

I met a beautiful man called Ben at Dorland, who made amazing sculptures in wood. We hung out together throughout the month. I realised later in the month that I had fallen in love with him, but he had a girlfriend so I never told him. Keeping my feelings to myself was hard. When I left Dorland, I got onto the Greyhound bus and began to feel ill. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I was getting up to ask the driver to take me to a hospital when I instinctively pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and started writing. I wrote a 46-verse love poem about Ben on the bus and when I had finished, the pain in my heart had gone.

Dorland was an amazing break from my madness and gave me the motivation and energy for the beginning of a new life.

Ben