Stuck in a library

Life is made up of a bunch of stories. There are sweet ones and sour ones. The sweet ones are treasured and they are taken out to be reminisced like my daughter's drawing that was made when she was little. The sour ones are buried deep and never to be taken out so often; they are the ones that keep pulling me back making mr stand still and pause to think while I am on the bus looking outside of the window, or sitting at a park bench, but neither two cases are often have been rendered into my daily living nowadays. However, I have come across another sour grape that I had to chew and take it out of my mouth; I would bury deep and take out in the future or perhaps never be taken out as I have already accumulated lots of them and I don't have a place to put it in the jar as it is full.

Have you ever been fired? Yes, I have been, but today I am sitting in a library reading the New York Times after being dismissed from my work in the morning.  Upon arriving at work, my boss summoned me to her office upstairs and talked about an incident that happened this other day claiming that I was being insubordinate to the supervisor. Couple of days ago in an earlier meeting with her about the incident, I told her that I did not know she was my supervisor and she did not dispute the claim. I thought things were going fine as I was having an interaction with the "new supervisor" and followed her order as I told her to do something conceding to be subordinate to her. However, it seems that resolution did not go through and the issue came resuscitated by the upper managers: it looks like "insubordination" is a big thing in this business.

When I went to work this morning on 2/24/2020 just to be pulled into an office, he told me that my behavior was not proper and I would be on what is called "leave of absence for the day" and she commanded me for dismissal without saying anything else. Immediately, I left the workplace and got in my car to get out of the parking lot, but thoughts came across my mind where I was supposed to be heading. After driving aimlessly for a while, I pulled into an empty parking spot to catch a breath trying to keep myself calm: I am not fired but I had a trepidation of getting fired, which is rather an odd thing to happen: for all the cases that I have encountered in this situation, there was no such thing as this sort of thing "prelude" termed as in music called "leave of absence for the day." Capitalism has come a long way, and as it developed further its jargon has increased.  One thing true is that my boss has not fired me yet. What is also true is that my boss knows that I am such a valuable worker for the company, and they would surely feel sorry for letting me go since the company is in the depth of needing more manpower to run the business. They may have to carry out more discussion today with additional people, and I will find the outcome tomorrow as I was told to come  back in the morning. I have been working for the company almost one year and my review is due immediately: the company is taking this as an opportunity to reevaluate me and decide to send me home permanently or keep me for another year.

Anyway, I can't go home now to tell my wife that I was dismissed at work: I am stuck in the library. My lunch is kept out of the refrigerator in the trunk. I feel that capitalism has become so tyrannical lately although I have been fortunate to not experience it for a good chunk of my career, but nowadays it seems like an avoidable element in my life. I live with it thinking that not much of its trade has been left in my life to withstand corporate manipulations, exploitation and racism as my time is drawing near to walk out of the quagmire, and say enough is enough.

A call for shaman ritual with new flairs to stop racism

When a person is hit by a car and hurt badly, there is a place has been set aside for the injured person to be taken immediately like an emergency room in hospital. However, when it comes to injuries from hate crimes, there is no such place would come to mind easily, and no person will pull over to rescue the victims in the dire situation. Despite hate crimes can be common occurrences in our daily lives for minorities living in the U.S., they often go unnoticed and victims are rarely exposed in the media. The cruelties of the crimes are not publicized getting brushed under the rug.  In fact, such practice has been the norm for the century.  However, I believe that the norm has to be broken and whatever the dark has to be exposed in order to bring changes the environments with free of the hate crimes. The society has to take many measures that can eliminate racism, but one of the ways that I would suggest is employing ancient rituals for shamanism as a tool to vanquish racism. 

One of the major problems of blocking racism is that there is no effective tool to do it.  As much as the country is smeared with racism, there should be a greater force out outcries that put the racism under bay not only in the police force but also enforcing the people not to engage in the hate crimes. 

I come to concept of employing shamanism as a way for the society to tackle racism because racism is a human disease that would not be easily expunged, like a terminal illness, that has elements of enigmatic in human sphere. I participated in celebrating the first day of new millennium in a large crowd at downtown, wishing for better world coming ahead, but the racism is still prevalent in the U.S. even after twenty years later. 

Growing up in Korea, I saw many religions coexist in peaceful manner, and even loud banging sound of the shaman ritual would be heard walking in the neighborhood.  Witnessing a shaman ritual was being performed in my house when my grandmother was ill  influenced me making it to be a part of my cultural identity.

Recently, I watched a primitive performance of Nam June Paik on Youtube video: he wore a traditional  Korean clothing and performed a ritual when he was involved with Avant-Agrde artists in Germany. The ritual was performed in Western soil in Germany. The snippet of the ritual was performed by the artist ushering in a kind of society that he envisioned in the world, that is the western and eastern culture would be merged in the future as communication media become more advanced and widely used.  After a decade of his parting, the reality is such that East and West have become closer than ever before culturally. I think that Nam June Paik performed this ritual as a way to hasten the arrival of dynamical cultural exchanges would be unfolded in the future when internet was not well developed.

As a way to showcase the event of his work, a hanging of a slaughtered cow's head was displayed at the entrance of the building. Such bizarre display may have been seen when he was young, living in Korea, even though it appeared new to me. I find this fascinating that a collaboration effort involved: putting the bull's head hung on the door: the man narrating on the video tells that he was involved in the event as a participant of the cultural merging, i.e. holding the dripping blood of the bulls head. This enactment is a symbolic gesture as if telling the world that world has come closer in understanding i.e. fetching a decapitated bull's head at the slaughter house for the first time, and carrying the blood dripping head 'to the location and hanging over the door, which seems to me that willingness for human understanding is widening, experiencing the task that used to be done solely by local exclusive people in Korea. It looks to me that Nam June Paik performed the elements of the ritual as a step toward merging different cultures. However, I am not trying to bring up his foresight or his artistic  here, instead I want to mention the ritual was performed as an artistic gig, shedding fresh dimension of human expression. The idea that Nam June Paik showcased the event of his work with the ritual. I find it interesting to watch the ritual performed again, which gave rise of thought to me that what it means to watch the ritual performed by an artist instead after having lived in U.S. for more than four decades experiencing various racism including hate crimes. 

I want to link the primitive ritual as an antithetical force against racism. I think a rebirth of the ritual is to be made in modern time especially in the Western countries, as a way of dealing with racism, as an antithetical force to the infliction. The ritual can be performed like a play: it can be developed further as some sort of a performance on stage dealing with angst from racism such as hate crime. There is so much toxicity to take from the racism, and the ritual can be utilized dissipating forces from the toxicity that would exert psychologically. My personal interpretation in the symbolism of presenting a slaughtered bull's head is to fend off the forces that hit upon us in crude way at calamity, such as in hate crime, trying to retaliate them in the gruesomeness, making them to retract and stop any further exertion or retroactively dissipate of negative power that the offender would want to exert to them. The problem with hate crime is the lingering effect of harmfulness in one's spirit, and I think that the gruesome display of the head can be interpreted as symbolically intervening to vanquish such negative forces.
When a person falls into a victim of racism, the person will become loss of beauty of surrounding and beautiful  memories; smell of flowers, faces of his friends, and ability to smell the flowers. It will perhaps take a long to be rediscovered. In order to usher in the effect and restore one's spirituality, a ritual can be performed. For Farmers, it was called upon when  their patience is running out after a long period of drought. For a woman who suddenly became a window, it was called upon to withstand the attack of devil swallowing up her spirit in despair.There comes in point in time when we run out of patience. What do we do then? Korean resorted to this primitive form of ritual. The first of its kind is performed with respect to nature when in drought. Korean culture is rooted with farming,so the ritual comes into play when in drought: I have seen in the  neighborhood back
in Korea, where a performance of these rituals were performed, and in fact, a shaman performed the ritual when my grandmother fell seriously ill. As a person who was brought up in a culture that primitive religion such as shamanism survives and had been exposed, there have been times when I was seeking a spiritual refuge. The ritual has been performed mainly throughout the history to alleviate human suffering of various sorts such as bringing cure for diseases; however,
there are rituals that are emotionally charged. Such rituals are there as a means of expression through which our calamity is to put  behind us for good. However, the latter kind of ritual is what I am
pointing at, which can be developed and employed depending on circumstance, like there are different flavors of ice cream and types of bandages, in such events as hate crimes for the victims(what I call this is third case): in handling angst associated injustice of society due to racism. The idea the second case is to call upon the spirits by shaman, and their victims or family members or friends are participated in reenactment of a certain incident or at the calling to resolve emotional issues that have been lingering, at the hands of shaman mitigating the two parties during the ritual.
For a typical scenario of latter case is as follows: when a husband( or a family member dies) died suddenly, the insurmountable sorrow fallen on family members would have to be addressed quickly in order to stop psychological damages and making come to terms with the unfortunate situation has risen and thus be comforted. To do that the shaman would ask the family member to bring a piece of clothing that the husband used to wear and perform the ritual to call his spirit to be present among the family members and explain what happened, and the shaman would in return convey his messages to the family member to lay their worries in rest for them to start a new life without him. The ritual is employed to avert psychological damages would be inflicted had no measure been taken, when an accident has rendered to ourselves suddenly in crude way in the first place, by creating an event through a ritual of which is conducted in gentle way for a party or an individual to be able to
understand (or to come to grips with) a certain tragedy "putting it down and "letting go" of it in gentle fashion. The gruesome way hanging decapitated cow's is hung at the door might signifies the gruesome way the tragedy has encroached upon so suddenly. When my grandmother was ill, a shaman was called upon and performed a ritual;however, not in the way of hanging a newly slaughtered bull's head on the door, but it was rather a pig's head laid on a table at which ritual was performed. I want to insert a new genre in the ritual, the third case,as a performing art that address racism, especially hate crime. The victim of hate crime is dejected, and can become depressed with emotional wound that has been inflicted upon, at the loss of faith in humanity. The individual is no different from a widow who become depressed at the loss her husband or a person like my grandmother who fell grievously ill. The problem is that remedies for averting emotional toils at the onset of the event is not readily available. For hate crime, there is no prospect that hate being thrown at them would be dissipated anytime soon that there could be a long road ahead for recovery in the aftermath. The objective of the ritual is to chase away the bad spirits that would hunt victim, in part, by applying gruesome element employed in the ritual. The gruesomeness in the ritual signifies an antithetical force of racism. The ill-effects of hate crime that is so damaging to the psyche, and putting the bad memories behind and recouped oneself to normalcy in life is hard. The effects of hate crime renders a shade of aspect that is so disheartening to the victims. The loss of faith is a major problem for them, and the solution to make oneself on the path of recovery may be varying depending upon one's religious background. As a person who have seen the ritual performed in Korea, I have been seeking ways in which I can part myself with bad memories from the past, and Nam June Paik's employment of the ritual rendered me a possibility of ritual evolve into a ritual performance that address the issue. Hanging a cow's may have been seen when Nam June Paik was young and it came to me as new, but I can correlate to fending off the forces that harmed us trying to make the retreated and stopped. The problem with tragedy is the lingering effect of harmfulness in victim's psyche, and I think that the gruesome display of the head is to vanquish such negative forces being exerted to the victim. 

Feel-Effect of Racism

It would be interesting how one's experience with racism encountered affect one's emotion and lead to further formulate one's character. I don't think that afflictions of racism would go away easily. it will manifest in some way or another molding the shape of the society exuding distinctive flairs in their culture as here I am writing down and have people to read in order to finger point of those memories to  I have encountered a garden variety of racism living as an Asian in the United States, and certainly I feel that it affected my sense of perception of the world and the surroundings. For instance, I would avoid or reluctant to visit certain places where I have encountered racism, or hard time visiting the places with clear mind without apprehensions.  When I think of racism, the first thing that comes into my mind is being stared at overtly by shop keepers without smiling at me.  I am not a handsome person in Korean standard, but my physique does not seem to any relevance in any minuscule level attracting suspicious stares from the shop keepers. They were not pleasant experiences at all. The worst of it happened on one day afternoon at a store of university where I was attending. I was just killing time off in the store in between two classes.  Apparently, I was followed by an attendant of the store while I was browsing picking stuff up and putting them down.  As I was exiting the store, I was stopped by two tall men, and asked to follow them into a corner room. The manager waiting in the room asked me to take out everything in my pockets to have my body searched.  I took out all my stuff out from my pockets and placed them on a table  as I was asked to by the manager.  When nothing unexpected came out of all my pockets, the store manager then let me go just saying "sorry." I was new to the country at that time, although the incident came as an event that I had never experienced back in Korea, I knew that I had to suck it off and treat it as a mere incident wishing never to happen again brushing myself off at that time: I could not defend myself verbally as I could not speak English well.  However, nowadays, it bugs me making me feel that I should have done something other than merely walking out of the store as if nothing had happened. Although I am feeling regrets once awhile not having thrown a punch at the manager's nose to feel compensated from the humiliation felt, the incident has made an indelible apprehension on my part whenever I go to a store in the U.S.

   Nowadays, the technologies have advanced as stores equipped with many sophisticated surveillance cameras and tens of monitoring devices are equipped in corners of the area around the country.  Before such facilities came about, the horrible stories of under scrutiny of suspicions were prevalent and often broadcast in the media. Such experiences are less likely encountered in major department stores and grocery stores anymore;however, they are still experienced in Mom&Pop stores or in public places where such facilities are not equipped.   Being stared at stores or in public places is not a pleasant experience of which disturbing effect could induce tossing and turning at night lasting couple of weeks, knowing that its spawning  is largely based on casting a dark could over one's head of criminality.  The suspicions often based on faulty reasoning  will not only  impact negatively to the society damaging interracial harmony but also it will breed fears based on biases and damaged trust upon one another.  The advancement in surveillance technologies may have not reduced underlying causes of racism, but, I think, that it has reduced  hassles from racism on superficial level, on daily encounters of various sort, which, in fact, make up large racial glitches that are not reported in newspapers or on television. I would call this as a "feel-effect of racism." Handling the work of the suspicions set aside in a remote secluded area has made a great stride in advancement in surveillance capabilities, which, in turn, allowed reducing the feel-effect of racism, getting fewer wooing nights with steam rising above one's head when one think about how day has past.