[Crying in H Mart] # Chapter 5-2: Where is the wine? (~65p)

 

 

 

 

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[Review previous expression]

 

- During the past 2 weeks, I was so overwhelmed by tons of work that felt helpless not to convince myself to finish the project. But, my advisor assured me not to do my best until back to Korea. So I could be fueled by newfound optimism.

 

•  [chatgpt]: Over the past two weeks, I was so overwhelmed by tons of work that I felt helpless and couldn't convince myself to finish all the projects. However, my advisor assured me that I didn't need to do my absolute best until I returned to Korea. This advice filled me with newfound optimism.

into the vacuum of our reading, 

 

Into the vacuum of our meeting, co-lab member’s question brought us back to the meeting.

As the deadline approached, ideas rushed through my mind on how to complete the paper. 

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[Summarize this chapter]

Music and playing guitar were her teenage life's outlet. But her mom didn't advocate her not to go to college instead being a starving musician. Unfortunately, she had to face 중2병, and underwent a mental breakdown, leading to plummeted GPA scores. However, her mom tried to cover her mistakes to build her daughter's good track record. Consequently, she could enter the college she was interested in before.

 

[chatgpt] Music and playing the guitar were her outlets during her teenage years. However, her mom did not support her decision to skip college to become a starving musician. Unfortunately, she experienced '중2병' (a Korean term often used to describe a phase of adolescent rebellion or identity crisis), which led to a mental breakdown and a significant drop in her GPA scores. Despite this, her mom attempted to mitigate these issues to maintain her daughter's good track record. As a result, she was able to get into the college she had previously been interested in.

 

친구: The author aspires to write songs or become a singer-songwriter, but her mother forbids her from pursuing this path.

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[Quotes that I liked ]

 

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[New Expression]

 

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Page 56

 

(p. 56) he was stoned all the time.:

(p. 56) hapless requests that I deftly roped into my private mission to befriend him.

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(p. 56) it felt impossibly cool that Nick already had one.

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(p. 56) They put out one EP before disbanding,

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(p. 56) I diligently hunted down from a friend of a friend.

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(p. 56) I pored over the lyrics,

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(p. 57) Eventually I worked up enough courage to ask if he wanted to “jam.”

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(p. 57) how horribly inept I was at the guitar.

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(p. 57) I tried to quietly hunt and peck for the right notes, attempting to hone in on a simple lead line vaguely rooted in the scales I thought I knew, before eventually apologizing and giving up completely.

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(p. 57) Nick took it in stride.

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(p. 57) own, I decided to sign up for an open mic night at Cozmic Pizza,

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(p. 57) I emailed the link to local bands and promoters and begged them to add me to their bills.

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(p. 57) I was “big enough” to land a slot at the WOW Hall opening for Maria Taylor.

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(p. 58) moral support

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(p. 58) for my set.

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(p. 58) but even so it hardly felt glamorous.

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(p. 58) She was intimidating.

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(p. 58) I held my breath

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(p. 58) “Where’s the wine?”

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(p. 58) I fumbled through open chords,

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(p. 58) I sang teenage songs about longing for the simpler times, not realizing that’s exactly what these times were supposed to be.

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(p. 59) She jolted her torso forward into the last strum, and the members of the band, who’d stood stock-still through the entirety of the first two verses, collapsed in unison into the chorus.

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(p. 59) even as I watched them play to a small ridge of at best thirty people

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(p. 59) a revelation.

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(p. 59) I had glimpsed the life of an artist, and it felt, for a moment, like a path slightly more within reach.

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(p. 59) He was proud of me, and it felt good that someone I looked up to was seeing me in a new light.

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(p. 60) the husband easily flustered when he had more than three tables to deal with.

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(p. 60) the text sprawled out before me like a Mad Lib.

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(p. 60) If she liked something, she stuck to it, ate it every day, seemingly never tiring of it, until one day she’d just move on inexplicably.

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(p. 60) burst into Korean

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(p. 60) wavy tresses.

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(p. 60) She flipped the page again.

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(p. 61) bellowed a steam bath

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(p. 61) squirting

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(p. 61) She swatted

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(p. 61) with token obedience.

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(p. 61) and met my eyes across the table.

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(p. 61) My mother leaned in

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(p. 61) I bobbed my left leg up and down nervously, trying not to explode.

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(p. 62) you’ll shake the luck out.”

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(p. 62) “What if I don’t want to go to college?” I said brazenly, wrenching away from her grasp.

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(p. 62) lobbing it around with my tongue, creating an air pocket that let out the steam.

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(p. 62) as if I had just pledged faith to a satanic commune.

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(p. 62) I watched her try to collect herself.

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(p. 62) she erupted.

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(p. 62) to chase her and beg for forgiveness.

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(p. 62) My mother crumpled the receipt into the cup holder, closed the mirror,

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(p. 62) trying my best not to tremble as she stared me down from behind her dark lenses.

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(p. 63) The allure of life as a starving musician wore off quickly.

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(p. 63) a glorified squat.

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(p. 63) Without my mother as an anchor, I strayed even further from the responsibilities we’d been arguing about over the past year.

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(p. 63) I was pulled into a vicious cycle of truancy.

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(p. 63) I skipped classes, missed assignments, became ashamed I had gotten so far behind, and then kept

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(p. 63) I didn’t want to be confronted by the teachers who cared about me.

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(p. 63) I fantasized about dying. Every object in the world seemed to become a tool for it.

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(p. 63) The freeway a place to get pummeled, five stories high enough to jump off.

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(p. 63) my GPA had plummeted,

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(p. 63) addressed a letter to accompany my college applications explaining that this shift in mood and performance had been indicative of a mental breakdown.

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(p. 64) I yearned for my mother to speak to me but tried to appear stoic, knowing full well my constitution was much weaker than hers.

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(p. 64) She seemed unfazed by our distance right up until the day I packed to leave for Bryn Mawr, when at last the silence was broken.

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(p. 64) In one fell swoop, my mother gripped me by the hip and spun me around to strike my backside with her palm.

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(p. 64) At that point, I weighed more than her, and the strike hardly hurt, aside from the embarrassment of feeling much too old for the practice.

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(p. 64) Hearing the commotion, my father made his way up the stairs and looked on from the hallway.

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(p. 65) I stared back at her defiantly,

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(p. 65) I tried to fight her off but discovered there was a physical place I would not go, a strength I knew I had to overtake her but could not access.

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(p. 65) My father hovered over us, unsure of his place in it all, searching for a reason why a kid like me could wind up so miserable.

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(p. 65) She let out a little cluck, the kind of sound let out when you think something is a real shame, like passing a dilapidated building with beautiful architecture.

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(p. 65) More than anything, I was just shocked she had withheld something so monumental.

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(p. 66) I envied and feared my mother’s ability to keep matters private, as every secret I tried to hold close ate away at me.

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(p. 66) She could surprise you with how little she needed you. All those years she instructed me to save 10 percent of myself like she did, I never knew it meant she had also been keeping a part of herself from me too.

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