Autoconstrucción¹

My second life began with fabricationmy other name plucked from a bookby Auntie Kyung, in a plane ride to Californiafrom Seoul. In the breach that was the Pacificwhat was familiar became interpretationthat always-constant point of reference:ghost-shades of adolescence towardtransformation—that different placerewritten: where I was born. Life becameabout arriving, property lines and furniture, newrooms thus dividing walls, eating spaghettiwith chopsticks, a washing machine and neverdrying clothes out in the sun. My father’s absenceand golf clubs, cardboard boxes and accumulation.That’s why we marry, my friend Alex explains.That’s why we write and get tattoos.

Objet Trouvé

Mid afternoon hour’s changinglight—fetching. Thunderstorms in distanceresemble washed-over paintings, bluesanded down pale. In a dream, therewere no paths or roads. Justpiled-up stones where trees beganto grow. In another dreama hat, obsidian, wire mesh, broken shellsand plastic buoys. Hula-hoops. He said,This is an encounter, all the while I thoughtit impasse, watching the delicate rupture, floodof light darkening into vast openspace. I was left with found fragments,possibilities after points of convergencebecoming equilibrium. I told himthere was never enough disciplineonly shared language.

¹A term created by the conceptual artist Abraham Cruzvillegas, meaning “self-construction” or “self-building.”