{"id":77,"date":"2003-09-21T07:48:44","date_gmt":"2003-09-21T07:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=77"},"modified":"2012-01-31T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T07:49:07","slug":"dadeumie-sori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2003\/09\/dadeumie-sori\/","title":{"rendered":"DaDeumie SoRi"},"content":{"rendered":"

At last. I think perhaps I understand,
\nstanding at this bus’s rest-stop half
\nthe way to Seoul; sweet guitars abloom
\nin my ears, and coffee steam a haze
\naround my face, standing, silently
\nstaring. The woman absently sweeps
\nthe floor, puts coffee on, bringing out
\nthe breads, arranges the newspapers,
\nturns around the doorway’s closed<\/i> sign.
\nSomeone else’s drabbest morning chores
\nfrom outside, fascinate. Some strange
\nmesmerism is at work in these dull things:
\nirreplaceable, necessary. Imagine…
\nthe world’s things, every one where it belongs. <\/p>\n

— Gord Sellar,
\nPublished in Diet Soap #4<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The DaDeumie<\/i> is a traditional tool of the traditional Korean housewife. In the times preceding the use of modern heated irons, clothes were pressed by beating them with the DaDeumie<\/i>, a pair of unweildy wooden sticks that were used in a method somewhat reminiscent of a drummer practicing patterns on a snare drum… a constant tok-tok-tok-tok-tok<\/i> sound of the cloth muffling the impact of the wood against the stone beneath was the result. As the Korean word for “sound” is SoRi<\/i>, this sound was called the DaDeumie SoRi<\/i>. According to a a student and friend of mine, this sound was famously described by a scholar or poet as one of the five most beautiful sounds in Korea. When I first heard this, I was shocked at the idea that a rather cumbersome and taxing physical task that wives were stuck performing could be beautiful. But now, I think I understand a little… the question of whose work, and how it is performed, is less the issue of beauty than the fact that when done it is a part of that dream we humans have to have a well-ordered world around us, and well-ordered selves within, so that the inner and outer tranquility and order are a tinned reflection of one another; nobody can say which reflects which, but the harmony is apparent to all, just the same. <\/p>\n

By the way, I have tried the DaDeumie<\/i>, and let me tell you, those housewives must have been strong and had great endurance. <\/p>\n

Oh, and, let it be known this is only the second draft of this poem. I may change it later. But my friend Sun Hwa asked to see it, so I have posted it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last. I think perhaps I understand, standing at this bus’s rest-stop half the way to Seoul; sweet guitars abloom in my ears, and coffee steam a haze around my face, standing, silently staring. The woman absently sweeps the floor, puts coffee on, bringing out the breads, arranges the newspapers, turns around the doorway’s closed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-kr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-1f","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}