THE OUTLINE OF THE PHILOSOPHY lecture proceeded down the blackboard in a long accordion: What is a good argument? What is the ideal concept for our intellectual lives? In a crammed auditorium where I attended metaphysics and epistemology lectures, it dawned on me that here was what I had been doing my entire life: separating what was Korean in me from what was American, trying to identify that which could be synthesized from both sides without inconsistencies, and this project had been a philosophical pursuit. Descartes had devoted his life to locating contradictions and striking those that turned out to be false, in order to see if science were possible. But I wanted to know if I in any consistent way were possible. The solution up until then had been to amass achievement visible in both cultures, pursue a workable synthesis of beliefs, and shift my behavior depending on the local culture, while trying not to disappear through it all. America or Korea: both countries claimed me, both rejected me. What, then, was the method by which I should choose and believe?
When the fall reached its prime, the air consistently cool and dry, I was up at three in the morning. After two or three hours of sleep, without the assistance of an alarm or caffeine, I was awake. Tingling with electrical impulses snapping and sparking, I slid from my bed straight into my desk. Without any lead-up or warm-up or any up, I blew through a paper. My thoughts made their way onto the computer screen fluently, the pads of my fingers dancing on the keyboard. The heaping mess of texts beside me I consumed in one mental and visual gulp, the ideas instantaneously comprehensible.
I pressed save. Blowing out of my room, I passed Francis’s, quiet and dark. Outside, the brisk wind slammed against my body, and I leaned down the hill toward the computer lab, the buildings rising up around me. I felt victorious. I am awake and winning at life! I screamed inside. The robots who were asleep and losing, I pitied. Just then, a breeze sideswiped me. The wave took a turn up toward the canopy of trees in a generous swell, shuffling the chattering leaves, made them separate, gave them lift. Gave me lift. I grew jauntier. Lusciously, the breeze surged once more, tapped cold pins through my fleece, and as it died away, I shivered, I am winning.
I no longer thought of myself as a student of economics but of philosophy. It turned out I’d had my fill of economics during the Asian financial crisis. Instead of the story of limited resources, trade, why people paid for what they did—I wanted another story. I wanted, to put it simply, the story of me.
By the spring, those early mornings when I was writing my philosophy papers in a barely coherent frenzy, when I was convinced I was winning at life, were a distant memory. After the holidays, we returned to school—Abby was rested, Francis’s refrigerator restocked—but I hid in my room with the lights off, tracking the flicker of passing feet in the narrow sheath of light under the door and wondering how I could be so depleted after vacation. In Texas, I had counted down the hours and ultimately changed my flight after telling Umma I needed to get back to study, though the spring semester hadn’t even begun. The days in Houston were the same as ever: me colliding with my brother, sheltering my sister, sitting sideline to Umma and Appa’s battles, which never deviated from the script and merely reprised the complaints of yesteryear.
Now I burrowed under the covers as the phantom of sadness drew life out from my legs, tagged weights to my arms and head, entombed my body along the length of my extra-long twin. It is nearing six o’clock and time to get food in the dining hall, I reasoned while trying to wiggle a pinkie finger. Break free from whatever this is, I rallied weakly while trying to wiggle a pinkie toe.
Even if I were to conjure the strength needed to peel myself from bed, dress and walk the x number of yards to the dining hall, how could I muster saying hello to anyone, maintain presence among friends, sustain the conversational volley with banter striking the right trifecta of lightness, intelligence, and humor…?
As though my legs no longer worked, I scooped each up and plunked them off the bed. I crawled into clothes and shoes. The clock rudely blinked the time. I did not think to say to myself in encouragement, There’s only one way to live—one foot in front of the other.
Instead, what I said was, I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life.
Inside the dining hall, I avoided eye contact, grabbed whatever did not disgust me, and plopped myself at an empty table. I sawed my lettuce until my friend Jamie from my philosophy classes appeared, and soon another friend and another. Joining me at the table, they chatted and sawed their lettuces. Jamie had a laughing mask of a face and a rubbery Gumby body, and I heard his voice as if it were a dying echo in a cave. He was holding court, talking politics. Jamie Olson from Mississippi loves politics, I reminded myself. I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life. Jamie lifted a forkful of lettuce. I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life. The black chasm of his mouth yawned open. I hate my life I hate my life I hate my life. The world slowed down. In a desert faraway, clocks and watches were melting. And suddenly, the meaning of words died away and the truth was revealed.
They are robots, and I am a robot, too. The jagged revelation flashed through my brain. I stared, the camera closing in tighter and tighter on the moving lips. How did the lips say those things? Did they mean what they said?
I started instant messaging Francis, even though he was only a wall away. Since I couldn’t bring myself to leave my room, it was an easy way to pretend I still engaged with society.
HBOMB: Are you eating with the Asian Invasion tonight?
FRANCISPKTIGR: Yup. Wanna come?
HBOMB: Nah
FRANCISPKTIGR: haha ok ok
HBOMB: Why do you like them so much?
FRANCISPKTIGR: It’s better than pretending you’re white
HBOMB: gasp, am I a Twinkie?
FRANCISPKTIGR: No
HBOMB: Don’t you think Koreans have really negative traits
FRANCISPKTIGR: Like wut
HBOMB: black and white thinking
FRANCISPKTIGR: wuts black and white thinking?
HBOMB: when you think it’s all or nothing, no middle ground.
FRANCISPKTIGR: I don’t think Koreans are like that
HBOMB: What about when they scream at each other and get violent and say the worst shit you can never take back?
FRANCISPKTIGR: Who does that?
HBOMB: Everyone.….
My parents
FRANCISPKTIGR: Your parents sound weird
HBOMB:…
Your parents don’t act like that?
FRANCISPKTIGR: Nope.
I stopped typing. Another ding from the instant messenger, but I didn’t look at the screen.
If Francis was right, I had been doing the same thing to Koreans that I worried Americans did to me: deducing to a conclusion based on the one instance of my parents. If my parents fight, and my parents are Korean, then all Koreans fight. If Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal, then all mortals are men. This was illogical.
I turned over the times in my childhood when I’d seen other Koreans regard my parents, especially Appa, with mild quizzicality. It never occurred to me that my parents’ dynamics might be theirs, not their nationality’s. I picked up the phone.
“Hello?” Francis answered.
“What are your parents like?”
“Oh, hey, why are you calling me? You’re so funny.”
