A Cafe View on A Day in Chamshil, SeoulL
I used to carry a drawing kit—wherever I went in Korea. In it would ba a lead pointer (visible in the picture—the blue cylinder with the black top and conical receptacle), pencils, markers, pens, a kneaded eraser, a soft eraser, graphite inserts and lead-holders (gravity-fed and mechanical drafting implements that are in the pencil family used by draftspersons and engineers).
I drew more and wrote in my journals–constantly. I never completed large works reflecting my potential—but a large body of sketches, which can be seen in the margin, and on Instagram. The more important thing was that life was infinitely more interesting, multicultural, exciting—and extremely civilized and charged with love.
The cafés of Asia are sometimes annoying, but they are usually what cafés used to be in the West—cozy, aesthetically inspiring places of refuge, where people sincerely go to relax–completely—without any worries at all, to interact (mostly with each other, with a friend or group), read, study—and to make friends or have a date.
Unless Americans have traveled abroad, they can’t understand the differences. I say that with regret—because I know that there are wonderful places in the US (far too many I haven’t seen) upon which some of these cafés in Asia are based—but where everyone has to be concerned about guns, snark, saying the wrong thing; and these aspects of culture basically don’t exist in Japan or Korea—not in the way they do at home. I’m not putting down America—I’m forming a description of and contrast from what I saw and experienced, so people can understand what I felt in Asia.
There are aspects of the West which are easier to negotiate—which is in how we can talk to virtually anyone. That can be achieved with a lot of charm and confidence, however, in Japan and Kore—but it’s not the way over there.
I do imagine Korea has changed, though—becoming more and more like the West, as it is has grown to be increasingly open to mixing with the people of the West and other cultures.
Returning to the positives of Korean and Japanese cafes, there’s really no other way to explain them except delightful. Though, granted—when they aren’t ambience-challenged, a thing one must weather in the chain shops, featuring dance-club and bar-level blaring music that is more appropriate for breaking hearts or titillating high-schoolers and gangster rap enthusiasts. Otherwise, they are decorum-focused, offering nuance—and they feature bathrooms made for human beings: impeccably clean, picturesque, even, cozy and accommodating—more like a place you’d love to steal time in and read a book, rather than get out of as fast as possible (like an American bathroom—uncomfortably & suspiciously large, dark, lacking proper accoutrements and offering a commode large enough to fall into—adorned with a freezing seat and fixtures from a local prison)–because it looks like it was designed by a contractor called ‘Cheap, Dirty & Farm Animal Friendly Construction LTD.’
On the particular day that inspired this post—the day I snapped this picture in Seoul—there was a young woman behind the counter of the coffee shop I was in. I don’t remember her name or too much about what she looked like, except that she had short hair—and was very friendly & receptive (which is easy to inspire when you are a New Yorker who loves to talk to people—especially people who are respectful, shy and engaging when addressed). I was extremely interested in only becoming friends, but even these tidbits of memory serve to inform me about what the world was like when I was a decade younger (or a little more) and infinitely more intrigued and plused. I hope we can all find this in this new year – but, of course we also have to worry about our country supporting a genocide and ethnic cleansing; we have to worry about a fascist who has been eroding democracy and decorum in here….
The worst part about getting old is not getting old–it’s watching our world get worse. Optimism in the face of these things is necessary — but optimism discounting the reality of these things is delusion. Then there’s the environment. We’re going to be fossil fuel free by 2050? I’ll be my parents’ age — in my 80s. That means, embarrassingly, that we are still on our knees before the fossil fuel companies — with the politicians (mostly the Republicans and to some extent the Democrats) leading the charge to put cushions down, because they’re not serious about standing up straight for 25 years.
CA,
New York
