What They're Doing Now: Ellice Park
Note: What They're Doing Now is a series on our blog that shares updates from participants who have submitted to us in the past. If you were featured on I Am Korean American at least six months ago, we'd love to hear from you! Please email info@iamkoreanamerican.com.
Hi, Project sponsors, project viewers, and project participants...the project being I Am Korean American dissemination,
Last time I wrote, I pretty much shared that I do art, that I enjoy and really cherish certain relationships--and in light of being invited to share my (Korean American?) experience by someone I admire, I find this whole ethnic/national identity thing more complicated and confusing than it might need to be. I recognize that it's really influential in coloring people's perspectives; it's even shaken me a bit. But at the end of the conversation, it's not something that makes us who we are unless we let it be, or make it so--it's just a component of what we are given or presented with upon birth.Today when I write, to say what I've been up to.. I think that's the funny and interesting thing, in follow up: "you can tell us what you're up to these days", Jenny wrote. Because in that gesture, it is acknowledged that... what we are, and what we do, can never imagine being who we are; it is all the periphery, a shadow or a filler.So--what have I been up to?I've taken some time off from MICA {art university}. I'm living with my parents in the midwest. I learned how to cook a little bit from my grandmother, before she flew off to ATL and now Korea. I've been picking myself up from a broken dating relationship. I've retreated into God and received a lot of spiritual, mental, and emotional healing. I've been experiencing lots of healing and bonding with my family, particularly my father. I've begun trying my feet at running with some friends. I've tried one day of the Insanity workout, and walked like a dinosaur for the following week, completely bed-ridden. I've made a handful of new friends. I'm teaching Sunday School, in particular working with sixth grade boys and girls. I've been reading, and playing the piano here and there. I've gotten into a car accident in our cul-de-sac with the curb, and a parking ticket on a dark and stormy night. I've blogged quite a bit. I've been self educating by inhaling as much of the library as I could, selectively. I've enjoyed Suze Orman quite a bit, as well as childrens' sign language books. The news is no longer something I have to do to try to keep up with the world's spin, it's something that I enjoy engaging in to reaffirm that I am a global citizen. I've spent some time in the studio, but also establishing my relationship with art--it's not who I am, it's not even what fulfills me. It is just something I do because I can, and have a lot to share. I've bonded with friends here, and am working out boundaries.I feel like that brings us full circle, and attention back to the "I Am Korean American" project: Boundaries. Personal, invisible geography. Somehow, the activity of doing and thinking and other verb forms with '-ing', has invited the question of what we're '-ing'-ing around. The mistake would be to say that the '-ing' is the center, wouldn't it?" I know this is kind of a loopy, thought-process'y, perhaps philosophical if we were to be bourgeois, response to "what are you up to these days?", but ...after all, the follow up is for "I Am Korean American", so doesn't it make sense?"
