The Makgeolli Diaries

Artist: 이화중선 (李花中仙)

Song: 소상팔경

Album: 한국의 위대한 판소리 명창들 (Ⅲ)

Makgeolli Tour 2010: 16 July, Ganggyeong

After Deoksan, we drove further south to Ganggyeong. It is known for 젓갈, an essential condiment in the preparation of kimchi and two of my favored corean foods for quality makgeolli drinking: 족발 and 순대. The town was half asleep and the sky heavy with a rain that threatened but never poured out. We stumbled into a restaurant called “Dalbong Garden” and ate in a soothing silence. The salt was heavy-laden in everything and I achieved a strange high afterwards.

Makgeolli Tour 2010: 16 July, Deoksan Brewery

We began our tour in Deoksan, which was close by Cheonan, our take-off point. The master brewer/owner himself was there to show us around. He was responsible for designing most of the buildings that comprise the microbrewery/distillery. 

Strangely, not in Deoksan, but in Cheonan was where we drank

Deoksan Makgeolli first. 닭갈비 & a starry night 

laid out our future: we’d have Deoksan under our feet soon.

                                ——

Name: Deoksan Ssal Makgeolli

Maker: Saewang Jujo

Stats: 80% Rice, 20% Flour — 6.5% Alcohol

Makgeolli Tour 2010: Prologue

Let us say, “It began in the time of the cicadas.” Post monsoon season, when the rains ceased and damp odors were released from the earth in a temporary afternoon lull. When the bugs come out. Corean summers are drawn out afternoon siestas, spent fanning oneself beneath the jeongja pavilion and sipping makgeolli in the shade, grown deaf to the electric buzz of the fat lusting insects. Reina and I thought that we should investigate what the country had to offer, on a chance summer when she and I had space and time to make such investigations. We were alert drinkers anyway, extra-aware of any opportunities in which one could go further than most in the love of intoxication and camaraderie. We needed a reason to drink more, but to drink wisely: to drink with brewers and with amateurs of the trade and the drink. Travel and drink are exceptional friends after all. And makgeolli a constant white-throated companion, a safeguard against malnutrition and the blindness wrought by stronger liquors. Plus, we wanted to find daepo jib (makgeolli pint houses) and mix with regulars, eat neglected panchan. The idea occurred to us one day while eating in Jeonju… 

Poem at 30 Years of Age

12 July 2011

My benefactor Pablo, astral brother, 

tells me that “today is that day, the day

that carried a desperate light that since

has died.” But I do not believe him. 

My head is woozy with recollections

of a steady and unceasing light, 

the light of genuflections & white liquors.

(The whiteness of a coreana’s leg!

& the whiteness of my beloved’s thigh

in moonlight, as we sip makgeolli.)

Yes, a white light that seeps into everything,

which is not desperate but conciliatory,

and which fills the cup I drink with images

of wayfaring and companionless conversations

carried in a silence full of listening

to the oblivious converse of drinkers. 

One is not more than the three decades

that group up in the empty belly, 

One is not more than the drink one drinks alone. 

(30 years and I am less than 1. 

I am the forgetfulness of the cup,

the forgetfulness of broken maths

and spilt milk.)

What seeps in me is the white light

of occasions, the solitude

that collects in the murky gaze

of a window’s reflection. I drink

not to myself but to the Self that had been

a number of persons, a pool of them

cupped in gold, and bathing. “I is another.” 

I and Self drink to all 30 of these selfless selves!

Adventures in Hyperreality #6

Sitting on the 2nd floor (the 3rd, the 4th?) 

they think of what to say. There is nothing

to say. Except where they are.

(“Where you go; that is where you are”

— a saying of Confucius,

or someone similarly lost in translation)

And where are they? At a coffee&beer

joint, under lamplight, in a black&white

photo, contemplating the Situation. 

“We are in some kind of movie, aren’t we?”

“Yes. In fact, I hear a man speaking of us.”

“What is he saying?”

“He is saying… we are where we go.”

“Well… that’s obvious! Anything else?”

“That we have nothing to say.”

“Are we not saying something now?”

“Yes… I mean… yes, I suppose we are.” 

They drink their coffee&beer

and sit quietly for the next hour.

Outside it will seem that there are no people,

only more buildings, more stores and cafes

and pharmacies and billiard halls stacked

upon other rooms, in which couples sit

in silence for the remainder of the night,

struck dumb by the multiplicity

of secret entrances that steal

into the heart of Situations.

(via hongdae)

The symmetry of streets in mod cities

is, should be at least, quite the same. 

Yet it can be argued that in Seoul

(in SK for that matter) the symmetry

is actually forced into geometric salience.

When you turn left, the lines drive you

not you the lines. Not you the car.

(via inlovewithsouthkorea)

Accidental Sijo #2

Butterfly, butterfly! At night

where do you fly to sleep? 

I’ve traveled a long way

and look for a motel to stay. 

At night the town burns up,

and a butterfly leads the way.

(via inlovewithsouthkorea)

Adventures in Hyperreality #5

There is a texture to everything, 

including a busride.

Passengers who ride into lighthouse tropics,

who stare out into the rainsoaked streets,

see everything, see the stars

soaked in the haze of everydayness & collisions.

We are going to Gangnam

to eat yogurt and mark time on a smartphone,

to peoplewatch. Like we do on the bus,

thru windows, feetless pedestrians. 

(via inlovewithsouthkorea)