Tao of K-drama: Building as Cousin

My colleague Margaux Simmons and I share a belief that EVERYTHING on Earth is related, including the soil and the bricks and the toxic waste dumps and bluejays. Everything -- we're all cousins. I wouldn't have thought that a K-drama about a Mafioso would have so much to say about this topic. In fact, I watched because of the fascinating analysis of the building and the show done by Professor Eunju Hwang of Sogang University. I have just finished watching that drama -- Vincenzo -- and there is so much to say about this story of a Korean adoptee who grows up in Italy and, following the murder of his Italian parents, joins the Mafia and rises to consigliere. 

At the top of the list is the building, Geumga, which is a vulnerable and lovable presence throughout the show and a place I had the opportunity to visit with Professor Hwang. It is a real building known as the Sewoon Cheonggye Shopping Center, built in the 1960s as an electronics center. Vincenzo helped a Chinese gangster hide money under the building. Because the gangster has died, Vincenzo wants to get the money as well as a file of incriminating evidence on top business and political leaders, which is also hidden there. The valuables are protected by an elaborate security system and much of the show is about getting around the obstacles for its retrieval. But in that process, what is valuable shifts from gold to cousins, among them, Geumga, which ceases to be seen as a disposable building and is recognized as a treasure. 

The transformation of the inhabitants follows closely on the heels of the transformation in the understanding of the building. The people who live and work there also understood themselves to disposable, easily pushed around, barely making a living in a building that was not meant to endure. Vincenzo -- the gangster with a heart of gold -- impresses them with his ingenuity, fighting skills and unflappable demeanor. They quickly come to count on him to show up at the right moment and change the outcome of events. But this also inspires their own fighting spirit. Over the course of the show, the motley crew emerges as a powerful fighting force, capable of protecting their beloved Vincenzo and their beloved building. A corrupt politician wants to know who stands in his way and they shout, "The Geumga Cassano Family!" Of course, once they identified as part of his family, Vincenzo, who seemingly has an unlimited supply of money, sends them shopping for designer suits, worthy of the Cassano name and image. 

K-drama in general, I have argued, features an arc of restoration. What is the restoration for Vincenzo, who starts out murdering people and ends up murdering people? This is third of many astounding features of this show. Recapper Ren Buenviaje describes a scene in the last episode in which Vincenze seeks the advice of Jeokha, Buddhist monk,who is part of the Geumga Cassano, to think about his future. The monk notes that Vincenzo can't be a Buddha because he has sinned too much. But, he says there is another character in the Buddhist cosmology.  

The monk likens Vincenzo to Vaisravana, who he describes as the scary face at the front of temples that protects Buddha’s ways and all ways human. Vincenzo might not find enlightenment, but he’ll get compliments from Buddha from time to time.

This allows Vincenzo to have a different vision of what he is doing with his life: fighting evil while protecting the innocent. Part of what has been so helpful to the Geumga Cassano family is Vincenzo's explicit naming of evit throughout the show. He names his own actions as evil, and is careful to get consent from the growing team for participating. The naming has helped to solidify their own sense of harms and perfidies of the opposition, pharmaceutical chaebols, loosely modeled on the Sackler family and its promotion of oxycontin. At one point, an intelligence agent who is undercover at Geumga to see what Vincenzo is up to, says in adoration, "He is not Mafia -- he is Che Guevara!" For all those of us who grew up admiring the feats of the Commandante, that is just a perfect moment. 

I think we shy away from naming Evil -- Vincenzo calls us to task. The last word of the show is that evil is vehement and vast. 

But we have also learned that we have the capacity to fight back -- and win -- protecting all who are considerable "disposable,." In these challenging times, that is an important message. And we have learned much about our cousins -- buildings, evil companies, poisons promoted as medicines, designer clothes, people who can stand up to injustice, people who love each other and one another. The list of cousins is, to riff on the closing of Vincenzo, encyclopedic and precious. 

Tao for Travelers: The Flow of Healing

When we travel, we place ourselves in the hands of strangers. We depend on them to accept and help us. When I woke up last Saturday morning (May 6) with a scratchy feeling in my throat. I did a Covid test and was pleased it was negative.  However, the cold came on like a Mac truck, and I feared the home test was wrong. I wrote to Dr. Bora Lee, who has been so kind to my family and me, and asked for advice. She wrote back immediately and said if it got worse, she could see me. Monday I was feeling a little better, but went for a PCR test. I got the test down at the Yongsan-gu Community Center, which is an imposing building around the corner from where I'm staying. As opposed to any other Covid test I've had, the young man who did the test jabbed the back of my nose fast and deep and said, "OK, that's that." He said I'd hear on Tuesday. Could one jab like that work, I wondered.

Tuesday morning I got the result that I had Covid. It came with a certificate saying that I was quarantined for 7 days from Monday, the day the test was done. The long text message, in Korean, was followed by a phone call from a public health worker who spoke English. She asked a lot of questions and explained the procedure. I said, "Well in the US, we only quarantine for five days, so can I go home on Saturday?" She laughed at me, and said, "Quarantine ends Sunday at midnight and then you're free to go." 

Happily I really like my apartment in Itaewon, and I had enough food, assuming I ate rice three times a day. I texted the results to Dr. Lee and she said she would see me that afternoon. She had the day off from her job in Incheon because it was her daughter's K-pop dance recital. She was squeezing me into her busy day. I was enormously grateful. She even picked me up and took me by cab to the National Medical Center where I was seen by a pulmonologist. My oxygen saturation was normal, which was reassuring. I explained all the symptoms, and got Paxlovid for the virus and painkillers and antihistamine for the rest. I left with all the medicine I would need. I went back home by subway -- happily it was not crowded and I kept distance from others. 

After that, there wasn't much to do except make a chart for taking medicine and set alarms to remind me to take it. I had no energy and my mind was cloudy. Professor Eunju Hwang wrote that she would order groceries for me and what did I want? I said I had food. She wrote again and said, "I'll order groceries for you." So I sent what I could think of -- not brilliant -- all I could imagine was chicken soup! Happily, the groceries came, I made chicken soup and the healing began. 

A lot of the healing involved me NOT doing, so that I wouldn't get in the way of Nature. The body knows how to heal -- I am fully vaccinated so my body was sending antibodies into the fight against the virus. the body knows how to use the food for energy and sort out the essential vitamins that are crucial to the metabolic process. The conscious me -- the Ego -- really had no part to play except to calm down. It was quite intimidating to be alone -- truly alone -- in Seoul, and feeling so sick. I tried binge watching a K-drama, but picked Dodosolsollalasol -- which should be called Dodo, after the extinct bird -- which irritated me. Rather than tackling the central issue and sending people off stronger, that K-drama refuses to tackle the issue, passing the problem on to the next generation. As a family therapist, I was incensed. So I had to quit that drama. Just don't watch it, is my two cents. 

So instead, I stared out the window, texted with family and friends, and slept. And slept. And slept. What weird, technicolor dreams with the most vivid, amazing images. I didn't really like them. As the days went by (really 1) the Paxlovid taste accumulated in my mouth. Granddaughter Lily said to get cinnamon candy. I'm really at a loss in Seoul because I don't know enough Korean to work the apps. She said, "Just ask Eunju." I was feeling like this was an imposition, but I did anyway. Eunju ordered them for me, no problem, and that worked like a miracle. Not only did cinnamon candy take the Covid taste away, but also it enabled me to eat, which gave my body energy and vitamins I needed for the fight. Eunju even wrote to ask again what food did I need? She thought the chicken soup might be running out, which it was. And she asked, "How about bread? do you need bread?" The truth was that the loaf I had gotten on Saturday was a bit stale and I was eeking out the last slices, so I said yes. And in a bit more food arrived, including the most glorious half loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread I ever saw! I kissed it and cut a slice.  

As I near the end of my quarantine, and get ready to take the Monday flight home, I am reflecting on this twist of events. I started to study K-drama because I was sheltering-in-place to avoid Covid. I came to Korea as part of that work, knowing that there was still Covid in Korea and that my plan to be out and about would put me at risk for the infection which I'd so diligently avoided for three years! So here I am, with Covid. But I am able to appreciate how different it would have been for me, if I'd gotten it earlier -- I was exhausted from overwork in March 2020, we hadn't worked out treatments, there were no vaccines. We have all these tools now and Korea has a well-developed system for connecting people with the treatments they need. Dr. Lee and her colleague looked at me with experienced eyes -- they'd seen a lot of Covid and knew what they were dealing with in my case. And people had discovered such arcane things as cinnamon candy is the trick to handling Paxlovid. This is the result of worldwide effort, carried out at every level of scale. 

I've been studying the Tao, whose founder, Lao Tzu, observed, 

If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,

There must be peace in the heart.

"Making peace" -- as he points out -- is a complex project, and one we talk about all too little. But in the achievement of the world's fight against Covid, we have demonstrated these steps: an international effort to find a vaccine, a national effort to distribute vaccines and treatments and institute an array of public health measures, local efforts to help people understand what was happening, household efforts to adapt to the demands, and the call to each of us to have peace in our hearts as we went through this. 

I am a beneficiary of all this worldwide effort. Not that we did it perfectly, but that we did cooperate to control a pandemic, perhaps the most international cooperation the world has had to date. 

What was left for me, in between the alarms reminding me to take my pills, was to have peace in my heart. To go with the flow of Nature's healing, leaning on the kindness of strangers who'd become friends, supported by family and friends from around the world, supplied with food, shelter and medicine, and aware that no further action was required on my part -- I was to let Nature take her course. 

I'd wanted to know what the Tao of K-drama was, and this illness has been my own little mini-drama, revealing not only what it was, but how it was at work in my own life. As we say at Faith + Works UU Congregation of Orange, "Amen!"