Sit still, be quiet, and get your wife a visa...

So, it's been a few months since my last post.  And I've missed a lot of opportunities to blog:
*I feverishly read Chang-Rae Lee's A Gesture Life while on a ferry between Estonia and Finland
*I attended an intellectually stimulating conference (also in Estonia) of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature.
*I've done a lot of reading and research on stuff I'll be working on as a PhD student.

So what's my excuse?  I'm gonna blame the government.  Governments, actually.  The long, drawn out process of getting a visa for my wifely-doo was sucking my will to live from early May until just a few days ago.  That's a bit much, actually, but it was taking a lot of my time and mental energy - and the record does reflect that something was sucking away my will to blog, if nothing else.  Again, I blame the governments of the USA and ROK and perhaps bureaucracy in general.  Let me explain the process and hopefully you will sympathize rather than empathize...I don't want you to stop reading due to the soul-crushing tedium.

1st Period: Winter 2011
This was before I was married.  I had to declare, in various ways, to both the Korean Government and the US Embassy that I would be getting married.  This cost somewhere around $100, if memory serves.  In my simple little brain I assumed this meant that both governments would be able to draw the logic conclusions.  Well: Korea did but the US most decidedly did not.  This leads to the second period.

2nd Period: Winter/Spring 2012
For some reason, I had to declare - to a different part of the US Embassy - that the woman I had married was now my 'Alien Relative.'  I honestly don't see how I could marry a Korean and not have said spouse as an 'Alien Relative.'  It seems that some column in some government spreadsheet somewhere should've reflected the forms filed in the 1st period.  Charles Robinson: Married to Alien/Alien Relative --> YES  Something like that.  But no.  I had to fill out a form virtually identical to the the declaration of marriage form and pay another $300 dollars or so.  And this process was simply to make my wife eligible to apply for an immigration visa.

3rd Period Spring/Summer 2012
About a week after we filed the 'Alien Relative' declaration, my wife received an email with 'instructions' on how to apply for the visa.  They reminded me of those matrix puzzles we sometimes did in math classes in elementary and junior high school. ("John hates spaghetti and can't work on Tuesday evenings"; "Sally hates that John hates spaghetti and refuses to work any shift John doesnt't work"; "Mary wants to work on Wednesday mornings and paints pictures of unicorns in her spare time.")  And this is where our woes actually began in earnest.

The first problem was the medical stuff, which got drawn out and expensive-ized when the doctor mistook my wife's recent cough/cold/bronchitis for "possibly TB or Pneumonia."

As this drama progressed, the government also expressed vague distaste for my lack of (US) tax documents accurately reflecting my income.  It turns out that if I had concealed my Korean income completely, everything would be fine.  But since I 'declared' my Korean income with a document that the visa officer could read but couldn't accept, and since said officer couldn't 'unsee' the 'unacceptable' document, I had to spend about $400 dollars on a tax expert to sort out the tax issue.

But finally, we have the visa in hand and we will be on our way to the US in about a week .  I hope to blog more frequently as my graduate student life (re)commences, but we shall see.  Another thing to look for in the future is a new blog I may be starting with my friends from University of Chicago, but it is a little to soon to give any substantial details.

Until next time!

Writing, actually

It's National Novel Writing Month again, the time of year when I feel crappy about all the writing I haven't done in the preceding year and do penance by writing unreasonable amounts for a period of about 30 days.

NaNoWriMo also ends with my birthday, which is kind of cool.

I started late this year with my novel and so as of day 5/6 (international dateline issues, you know?) I have only about 2,000 words.  But I'm optimistic as those 2,000 only took about half an hour last night.  Meaning: I have a pretty good idea.  Here's the rough synopsis:

Why did Jeff disappear? And where did he go? By all indication he disappeared via airplane. The only problem is no one knows where he actually went. Jeff's supposedly best friend, Grant, tries to sort through his memories, his prejudices, and his worldviews to figure out exactly where his hauntingly similar best friend has disappeared to, and why.

Pretty crappy, right?  I'm not at the polishing stage yet, so this blurb is really just a snapshot so I can remember what I'm writing.  The working title is 'Mutatis Mutandis.'  The basic idea is to write about the post-millenial tension of the washed up suburbanite.

Like me...

...and this is my cue to talk about the other things I'm writing these days.  Let's list them in order of time spent.

1. This blog.  I won't get meta.  If you are reading this you know all about it.  So enjoy, instead this pic of my workspace at home.

2. Personal Statements.  The big secret is I'm getting ready to apply to PhD programs.  Five of them.  And naturally each department has its own formula for the application essay.  Sometimes they even ask for separate 'intellectual' and 'teaching' statements.

I have been spending four or five hours a week finding a sleek and sexy way of explaining that I want to read 19th century American literature and think about it and also think about French theory, but not in a bad way.  If you are unfamiliar with the terrain of the contemporary American English department, this is actually quite a trick, due mainly to the reigning school of that that has, among other tricks convinced itself and many others that it is NOT a school of thought.

COUGH, COUGH!--New Historicism--COUGH!

I will be devoting more time to this assignment in the next two weeks, as submission deadlines are fast approaching.

3. Short Stories.  Last weekend, a draft of a piece called "A Fun Birthday Thing" was workshopped by the fine people at the Seoul Writer's Workshop.  It was characterized as 'a sad, asymmetrical love story.  I'm gonna let it rest for awhile as I build up my portfolio of short stories.  Perhaps, sometime within the next year, I will attempt publication.  But I am wary and lazy--a bad combination.

I always want to do more writing.  For some reason, these days I'm really enjoying reading--like binge drinking levels of enjoyment.  So reading and writing are currently sitting across the table (in my brain) eying each other like a wife and a mistress who have just learned of their triangular entanglement.

The only solution is to spend plenty of time sitting still and being quiet.