Q and A
My birth name is Lee Kwang Soo. I was born in Daejeon, Korea on December 16, 1970 and adopted to the United States on October 12, 1971 when I was ten months old. There was a plane. It was San Francisco. Holt Adoption Agency. The water's chill must have been preparing a song. Korean adoption is a body of water. I am one of the waves. One of the war fractures. The idea that did not detonate. This is love and nothing to do with love. For the adoptees I have met in the last year and a half while traveling and reading from my book, can I begin to tell you what our conversations have meant? I am thinking of you in this new year. There is a light for us. Perhaps, a star with its wide shine. Have you thought about returning? Yes. I have returned. We turn and we turn, don't we? I wonder: how audible is desire? How much is carried in a name? And if all the stars spoke one common language, would they even know what to say?
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2 comments:
Lee --
I've meant to mention to you, at some point when I was coming by here -- and it kept slipping my mind --
Last January after I blogged about the reading here (you and Brian Thao Worra and Sun Yung Shin), I got a comment my blog (in the blogpost about the reading) from a guy I hadn't heard from in 40+ years. We'd been in grade school together in Minneapolis.
We just exchanged brief comments, haven't stayed in touch since then, just a friendly hello, sort of the internet equivalent of a chance meeting on a street corner.
It didn't occur to me to ask him how he'd come across my blog -- he's not a poet, as far as I know, and it didn't sound like he'd been Googling for people from the distant past.
Then it occurred to me that when I knew him in grade school he had an adopted younger brother who was from Korea. I don't know for a fact, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was some thread related to Korean adoption that led him to my blogpost about the reading last January.
Just passing this along -- amazing, isn't it, the vast weave and interweave that our lives make in the world.
Very interesting, Lyle---and thank you for sharing this story with me. I think you're right that it may very well be how he found you and reconnected (your blogpost about the reading). It is amazing, the "vast weave"---indeed.
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