My
THOLOGY

I'm watching my five-year old son through the window where just outside he is in mortal combat with a water sprinkler elemental.  He runs by the window waving and smiling as he prepares for another assault with his broom. 

I'm sitting at my under-used drawing desk.  Pens are strewn about as if to subconsciously remind myself to draw more.  A recently bought Hawkgirl figurine  reflects my latest interest in Justice League heroes from an era of responsibility rather than Generation X-Men. 

The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook sits on top.  Money has taken on a new definition for me - security for the future and my family.  I'm much more money-conscious now but the usual 20% waitress tip is still the rule for me.  CDs, IRA, and APY are some of my favorite letters of the alphabet these days.  I  have fun making a few bucks selling off old games and books on EBay ($200 last month).  Some books I will never sell though. 

The bookshelf behind me has four levels.  On the bottom shelf are the dusty old medical texts.  Searching on the internet is more up to date.  The old Barbara Bates Physical Diagnosis tome shows breast exam techniques that would get you slapped for sexual harassment today.  I use the old books sometimes for drawing reference and ideas.  Knowledge used to be heavy, bound, and solid; now thanks to the internet it's weightless, free, and sometimes completely unreliable.  Old arcana make a good foundation - either way, heavy books make good bricks.  

The next shelf up is overflowing with books on Corean art, artifacts, language, costumes, mythology; none of it is on the Korean War.  It's easily more than any one library or bookstore I've seen has on those subjects.  I don't really look at them much anymore.  At some point in the past two years I realized my own Corean myth.  I'm just not very Corean.  An avid fan, yes.  A hapa searching for a heartfelt identity, check.  But eventually I had the painful realization that it's time to take the Bubba Gump hat off and stop running, Forrest.

Kids had something to do with that.  I couldn't keep carrying around that kind of vulnerability and spend that amount of energy to be accepted and still be the unbreakable father I wanted to be.  No more Corean language study, no dreams of seeing the homeland again.  I'm just not that Crusader anymore.  I've gone mercenary, paid in nothing cheaper than my children's love.  They are my homeland.  The rest is just a fable I wanted to believe. 

 

The third shelf up contains my art and drawing books.  My first love, my neglected love, my nagging ball-and-chain.  Books I honestly don't need anymore except for  maybe a little two-point perspective here, an elbow or knee refresher there, an iota of inspiration, or a love tap from Psyche, Galatea, the Muses and the caryatids. 

 
Sitting on top of the bookshelf on one side is a stack of books I'm selling off on Ebay.  Manga drawing books are like bubble gum: a delicious jolt at first but eventually as appealing as juicy cardboard.  There's old graphic novels I don't need to read again.  Fast sellers are old Ultimate Fighting discs from back when people other than "The World's Most Dangerous Man" actually thought he might be the world's most dangerous man.  We want our myths. 

On the other side are half-complete sketch books.  Half-full of dreamy potential and half-empty of dreams never realized.  When I peruse them, sometimes I surprise myself in a good way and then wonder if this will be the last good drawing I did.  I have glorious plans for these illustrated splinters of my psyche, my personal mythology, but the story takes so long to write, and there are so many distractions.  Besides I humble  myself, everyone has a story to write, but not everyone is a writer.  

I look through the window in front of me again.  My beautiful wife is taking a stroll with my little girl.  My little boy is washing my car with a broom full of wet grass.  He turns and waves.  

I turn away from the books, close the laptop, and smile back.
 

I got this short email a couple days ago.  I have to admit it really moved me.

After all of my rants and complaints about medicine, people are still going into medicine?  Thank you.  For the last part too.  It almost made me reconsider and rewrite my Corean paragraph in the entry above.