I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season! Thank you for a beautiful year and all the love and support you’ve given to me and White Chrysanthemum. It has been an amazing journey since publication day in January. I can’t wait for 2019 and the adventures ahead!
The Turkish translation for White Chrysanthemum is out just before the start of the new year! Thank you to my publishers, Arkadya. (Translated by Dilek Parsadan)
I spent the day immersed in Lee Bul’s surreal world of futuristic and sometimes brutal art on exhibit at the Hayward Gallery London. She creates obscene beauty and entire worlds with everyday materials. My favourite display was her porcelain sculptures of robot parts, which fuses old Korea’s traditional celadon pottery with steampunk fiction. They could very well be unearthed relics from some future civilisation, dug up and glued back together by archaeologists of tomorrow. The exhibition ends 19 August so make it down there before it ends! It’s well worth the visit. Link
These locks of love on top of Namsan (Mt.) in Seoul echo Paris’s love lock bridges. They hang as a promise between lovers that their love will last forever. Young love, old love, new love–can they all be true love? (The dreamer in me hopes the answer is yes!! ❤️)
Cherry blossoms along the path of my daily walk to the underground station near Dongguk University, Seoul
Cheonggyecheon with a view of Spring Tower in Downtown Seoul
‘The Song of May’ by Jung Jinsoo 1988
National Museum of Korean Contemporary History
It’s spring in Seoul, and the flowers are out showing off their petals.
A thousand Wednesday protests pass in Junghak-dong,
But still they call you liars.
Your aged backs bend beneath their hate.
Why is it easier to believe that you are whores,
Than to believe soldiers become beasts?
Who are these deniers of history?
Look at every nation, I say to them,
Show me an army that does not rape.
Iraq.
Syria.
Congo.
Sudan.
Bosnia.
Liberia.
Rwanda.
Chechnya.
Afghanistan.
Sierra Leone—there is no end.
The truth of war is known: ‘And I will gather all nations against Jerusalem for battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses plundered, and the women ravished…’ At least Zechariah documents his shame.
To you grandmothers, I say, Bend no more, the shame is not yours to carry.
Mary Lynn Bracht 