The Convergence Factor

I am in Changwon now. Thursday night now, I arrived Sunday night and was met at the airport by my employer’s husband and my good friend Trey, who I knew when I was back in Missouri. The above image is a fair depiction of how I’ve been feeling so far this week thanks to jet lag. Yesterday I woke up at like 5:30 AM, went for a 6 mile walk, came back, took a nap, and then went to work. After work last night I went to the grocery, fell asleep at 11:00, and woke up at 6:30. Better, but still not so great. Establishing a good sleep pattern again is going to be one of the less pleasant things about the move, but oh well. Another week and I should be OK.

This is the view out one side of my apartment. I have two small balconies on opposite sides of the building, which itself is rather narrow. The apartment itself is OK. Nothing to sing praises for, but it could also be a hell of a lot worse. I can make it work well. I have a fridge, a cooktop, a toaster oven, and a clothes washer. No dryer, oven, or microwave but oh well. The TV gets a range of Korean stations, including some version of FX that seems to be American programs with Korean subtitles. A finicky but effective water heater and a surprisingly effective air conditioner provide heat and cold respectively.
I have a kitchen/eating area, bedroom, bathroom, and a small second room that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with in the long run. Darkroom maybe?

I can’t read Korean yet, can pretty much say hello and little more, and when I get in a cab to go home or to the store, I show the driver a piece of paper on which Trey has written the name/address of the place in Korean. I studied Hangul a bit tonight but it’s rather daunting. I’ll get the hang of it, I just can’t expect too much from myself when I’m exhausted, confused, and really wanting to go to bed.

The hardest part of everything so far, though, is loneliness. I feel fortunate to have a good friend here already, and I know I’ll make others (especially among other expats), but all the same it’s pretty lonely at the moment. There’s a severe feeling of isolation that comes with arriving in another country knowing essentially nothing, knowing practically nobody, not being able to read street signs, having to guess whether what you think is in a package you pick up at the store is actually what you think it is, and spending your nights alone in the middle of all the confusion. I will learn the language, I will get to know plenty more people, it will get a lot easier. For now, though, it is tricky. Having things like email, skype, etc helps, but they don’t change the reality of your situation and that’s the hardest part of it.

What I’m really looking forward to most, I think, is getting adjusted physically and regaining my sense of adventure. I want to go out and explore this city, country, etc. I want to make photograph after photograph of really interesting things. I want to get the most out of it. Getting closer to getting back on track for that, but I still need a bit more time.

Expect more in the way of writing/photos this weekend.

I’m on the edge of the leap, about to depart into a totally unknown period of my life. I had my interview Wednesday at the Korean consulate in Chicago, will pick up my passport and work visa from the consulate this afternoon, and tomorrow morning around 7:00 AM I will get to O’Hare airport, check my bags (hopefully without getting gutted too badly by fees), and eventually board a plane.

Aside from picking up my work visa, until it’s time to go to the airport I just have to try to relax, get some reading done in the Murakami novel I picked up for the trip, study some Korean, and generally try to keep myself from stressing out over the whole thing. If I sit and think too intently about the fact that in around 24 hours I’ll be taking off on the first leg of my journey (Chicago to Detroit), I start to get that uneasy feeling that often comes when anticipating a big trip or a major life change (or in this case, both at once). Realizing that within about 24 hours after that, I’ll be in South Korea adds to the sense of anticipation all the more.

I’m nervous about the whole thing, but that’s not to say that I’m not excited. I’m extremely excited, in fact. I am actually sort of surprised that I’ve been sleeping as well as I have the last few nights, all things considered. Before I left for Mongolia a couple years ago, I found myself to be pretty useless for the week beforehand. That experience is probably helping now, though, as thankfully my first experience traveling overseas will not be when I move to another country for a minimum of a year .

Lots of thinking, though. Many hours now spent trying to sleep over the last week (the last two nights excluded), exhausted but mind racing too much to drift off. I left my old, 2/3-filled notebook in Ohio when we left for Chicago earlier this week, having chosen to start a new notebook fresh when I started on my journey to Korea. I picked up a new Miquelrius for that purpose specifically, and I’ve started in on the first page, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten as when I sit down to write I don’t even know where to start. It’ll probably start to flow once I get to the airport and am waiting for my first flight, though, if experience holds true here.

I’m also trying to put a lot of thought into how to get the most out of the photography I will do while there. Maintaining creativity in the face of huge things like moving to another continent is tricky. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with everything going on around you and let all the chaos force your creative medium completely out of the picture, at least for a time. I don’t want that. When I went to Mongolia in 2007, I had enough on my mind that I ended up missing out on a lot of the experience, and that really stinks. I have no intention of letting anything like that happen again in the time I spend in Korea and overseas in general. Hell, I don’t want that to happen again in any part of my life, regardless of where I am. When problems stand in the way of joy when they don’t have to, it’s a losing proposition. We can do better than that.

Anyway, though, photography! Partly as a tactic to come up with entirely new ideas and directions, and partly as a way to help keep photography at the front of my mind where it’s less susceptible to being overwhelmed by everything else, I’m making all sorts of mind maps, lists, sketches, etc of all the various kinds of photography I can opt to work on. This helps keep motivation up, I have found, and even when motivation isn’t what you might want it to be, you have a lot of good reference material on hand to draw direction from. It acts as a reserve of creative energy that can be used as a starting point when you otherwise can’t find one.

Once I get set up over in Korea and have room for things like 3 ring binders and such, I’ll get a new idea binder going. Here in the US, I have two thick binders that contain categorized sections, each with big stacks of notes and ideas on various subjects. They’re my reserve of ideas, photographic and otherwise. They’re too big and heavy to take with me, but there’s nothing that says I can’t get a new one going as soon as I land.

I digress. I depart in less than 24 hours and overall I’m feeling great and very excited. I’ll start posting again and will post a lot more and with a lot more photographs as soon as my computer arrives in Korea, which I’m hoping will be on Monday, though there’s a slim chance it’ll be waiting for me when I get there. Also expect to see a great deal more activity on my flickr.

Time to get back to finishing off packing…

In Ohio still for a few more days, then on Tuesday I go up to Chicago. Wednesday I have my interview at the Korean consulate for my work visa, and with luck I’ll fly out on Monday to Korea!

So close, so exciting, so much to do, and so little Korean learned…

I have my work cut out for me.

In other, unrelated news, today I figured out a good way to modify my toe strap doubler design to make it a little more versatile and (far more importantly) immensely reduce the pain-in-the-ass factor in manufacturing by changing the way I will make them. In practical terms, this means I’ll be able to make a lot more doublers a lot more easily and they’ll be stronger and more consistent to boot. I intend to offer them in both Hypalon coated Nylon (ultra durable) and a couple colors of leather (less durable, more stylish). Updates will follow.

Edit: I have ONE print left now, of the horses in Mongolia. Last chance to buy a Palladium print for a while, as it won’t be until some time next year that I will likely be able to offer Pd prints again.

2 Palladium prints left. Both are of this shot. Approximately 6×9″ in size. Signed, numbered, edition limited to 25. These are the last Pd prints that will be available for a while. Price is $90 plus shipping ($10 international, $5 domestic).

Email me at david(at)davidrmunson(dot)com if you’d like to purchase one.

What you see here are the 3 remaining Palladium prints available at this time. I won’t be able to resume Pd printing until some time down the road when I am able to set up to do it in Korea, which may be as much as a year from now (though I hope not, I really like this process). So, if you’re interested in any of these prints, now is a good time to get one before they’re gone. Available are two prints of the shot of horses in Mongolia, and one print of snow in Denton, TX. All are part of editions limited to 25 prints each. Price is $90 plus $5 shipping within the US ($10 shipping internationally). These remaining prints will go with some speed, so if you’re interested you may want to act quickly.

Contact me at david(at)davidrmunson(dot)com to reserve one. Payment can be made by PayPal or money order.

Something around 30 days now until I leave for Korea, but less than two weeks until I leave Texas to go back to Ohio to spend time with family before my departure. So close! So much to do!

It is crunch time to say the least. I keep meaning to post here, keep thinking I should be writing about the process of getting everything together and making it happen, but everything that does need to happen, that does need to get done keeps getting in the way. Things are a bit overwhelming at the moment to say the least.

Progress is being made, though. I’m getting rid of a rather large portion of my wardrobe, have already gotten rid of a filing cabinet and work table and my old computer, have found a home for some studio equipment and my computer speakers, etc.

In short, I’m attempting to get rid of everything in my life that I don’t need, and reduce to a minimum items that fall into the category of things I’ll keep in the long run but won’t take with me. When it comes down to it, I’ll show up in Korea with my bike in a box, my clothes in a big backpack, my camera bag, and a carryon. Computer will be shipped separately. Fitting all my stuff into a few bags would be simpler, too, if I weren’t a photographer. I am a photographer, though, and that means fewer clothes to make room for more cameras, etc.

This is one of those times when I have to be willing to put money down for what is important to me. I’m packing my bike in a box and taking it on the plane. I’m shipping my computer ahead. My backpack with all my clothes and my tripod will be oversize and overweight on the plane. All extra money, and I don’t care. I’d rather not have to pay so much, obviously, but oh well. These things are important to getting the most out of my time in Korea.

I’m tying up loose ends left and right. This includes filling in a few small gaps in my photo gear that I want to arrive in Korea having addressed, such as a 35mm f/2 for my Canon, a couple more compact flash cards, a Yashica twin lens camera that works, and a quick release system for my tripod head. All taken care of, none hanging over my head.

Now in my last week at the UNT Library, I’m working long hours today and a few other days because either tomorrow or Thursday I’ll have to drive to Austin to get an apostille for my background check for my work visa application, and in doing so won’t be able to come in except for maybe a handful of hours in the afternoon/evening.

This week is really complicated.

If you’re interested in purchasing prints (see link at top right), you have through Sunday evening to place your order and ensure I’ll have what you want. Otherwise, print sales will be limited to existing stock of prints, which is quite small. Due to my upcoming international move, I have to effectively stop printing until such a time as I can get setup to resume, either in Korea or remotely via arrangement with a printer here.

I wish I could say I was making incredible progress cleaning, de-cluttering, and generally getting my physical life prepared for something as radical as moving to another continent, but the progress made falls well short of incredible. Not that I haven’t gotten anything done, but by now I would have hoped I’d gotten through more. I’m keeping up with the critical things needed for getting everything set up for my job in Changwon like background check, transcripts, etc. And I am getting through some things at my apartment like putting most of my books in storage, getting rid of my old filing cabinet, and at least attempting to sell some studio equipment I have lying around like a couple Autopoles.

It’s all the little stuff that accumulates around the edges of your physical life that represents the greatest challenge as well as the area in which I still have the most work to do. I hope to get through a lot of that stuff this weekend. My work schedule is now steady and normal, the academic term is over, and I have the apartment to myself for the next week, so distractions and many of the other complications with time management and whatnot that I’ve been dealing with until just now will not be around to get in my way, or at least not as much. I’m also catching up on sleep, and that will help out a great deal I think. Heck, last night I got to sleep at 10:00. I honestly can’t remember the last time I got to bed before 1:00 AM, and it’s usually notably later than that.

Anyway, sometimes progress is hard-won. You can’t let that stop you, though. Even if it’s just a matter of wading through all the superfluous crap that has built up in the margins of your life and addressing it is such an immense gumption trap (hint, read Pirsig’s ZAMM) that you practically can’t even get started, you still need to do it, work through it. Otherwise all those loose ends just continue to complicate your life, continue to weigh you down, and it’s much harder to move on. It’s the sort of stuff that keeps you stuck, and being stuck is not a way to live one’s life.

I just deleted about 90 bookmarks and I’ll be deleting many, many more. Most of them, in fact. I realized that of the hundreds and hundreds of bookmarks I’ve accumulated over the last eight years, I’ve gone back and used maybe about 40. The rest have got to go. Same goes for a lot of other stuff in my life in that everything excess must be cleared away.

I’ve been talking about doing this for a long time and once in a while will actually do a little something about it, but it’s never enough and rarely does the effort last very long. Frankly, a lot of it has been due to lack of focus, which is something with plenty of causes, but largely has to do with there constantly being too much stuff in my life. I know I’m not alone in this by any means. One of the most horribly complicating factors in modern life for people in general is the presence of too much everything. We try to stuff so much crap into the getting-things-done part of the day that we can’t properly concentrate on the few things that are going to make the most difference. Our physical surroundings are often so full of crap that keeping them from spiraling into an uncontrollable mess requires an inordinate amount of energy, and even when things are organized we’re still surrounded by so many things that it creates endless distraction. In what free time we manage to set aside for ourselves, we are rarely productive and tend to fill it with various media that only create further distraction.

We are spreading ourselves too thinly. We are distracting ourselves endlessly, creating loose end after loose end that never gets tied up properly, only pushed into a corner at best. We fill our minds with knowledge we don’t need that distracts us from what we do need. We fill our homes with possessions we can’t afford that only serve to, again, distract us from more important things in our lives. Our lives are too full. Too full of all the things it was never meant to be dominated by in the first place.

Planning an international move helps one see just how much crap we end up surrounded by because when you have to pack your life into a handful of suitcases and a camera bag, not everything fits. More than that - most things don’t fit. Sure, you can put some of it into storage back home to be waiting for you when you someday return home, but the things that are actually worth storing don’t make up a particularly large proportion of what you own. Not for me, anyway - I do realize that people who have more nice furniture and things they’ve put some real investment into have more to deal with here, but it remains that most don’t need most of what they have.

And so, as I try to get ready to go to Korea, I’m trying to get rid of all that stuff I don’t need so that when I leave I’m not leaving much behind and not taking a lot with me - only the most important stuff on both accounts.

Over the last few years I’ve already been doing a lot to pare down my books, so what’s in storage at my friends’ place isn’t unreasonable by any means. Getting rid of clothing I don’t need won’t be too bad, as I don’t have a ton to begin with and what should go is fairly obvious. What few pieces of furniture I have here in Texas are easily dealt with. My archived negatives and other photo stuff I’m not taking with me will go into storage. I’m selling my scanner and some other things like that. What’s really going to be the challenge is all the little stuff around the edges. I have at least two boxes full of what can only be described as miscellaneous crap. I’m not getting rid of all of it, but definitely a most of it, and there’s just so many small, random things there that it’s hard to even get started sorting through it.

On a positive note, in cleaning I have managed to condense all my unexposed film and I have more of it than I thought. Enough that it’ll be worth taking with me, even though it’s bulky enough that it’ll take up half my carry-on. I have something like 70 rolls of 35mm film and 50 rolls of 120 film on hand. I’m not shooting any more film before I leave because I don’t want to create a backlog of undeveloped film again (currently working through what I already have), so it’s all just sitting in a couple massive ziploc bags waiting for whatever comes next.

Clearing out all the unnecessary crap in your life is difficult but decidedly worth it. That’s essentially what I’m attempting to get at here in my meandering sort of way. Hopefully once most of it is gone and I can think a bit more clearly, my blog posts will become a bit more focused as well…

An excerpt from a series I’m working on that focuses on shoes done in through extensive wear on the bike. I’ve found that fixed gear people do to shoes things that most people would never, simply because your average, sensible person would get new shoes before they got half this bad. We wear out our shoes like we wear out our tires. I mean, what other group of bikers looks at a rear tire that’s showing casing halfway around and says, "eh, it’s got another day in it still?"

The series was shot in my friend’s garage, everything about as improvised as you can get. Lighting was a single Quantum Q-flash fired through tracing paper taped up between two tripod legs. Two reflectors for fill. No PC socket on my camera, so it was a matter of opening the shutter manually on B, firing the flash by hand, and closing the shutter.

Changwon City, South Korea

No, really. An opportunity has opened up and I’m not going to let it pass me by. I don’t have a ton of time to get everything taken care of before I need to leave, so I’m going to need some help raising the money I need and getting a little bit of equipment together. More specifics will follow, but next stop is South Korea in July.

Shit yeah.