Distance
It is a distance that is ever present and constantly growing or closing. It may be the distance between the doorsteps of our homes and the hotel reception or between the workplace and the arms of family. It may be an hour or a day to that familiar beach, bus, or couch or it may take months and years to find a certain finally. The distance between our houses and our homes, between our dreams and our realities, between our words and our meanings; these are lengths we traverse daily under and among the traffic of colors, clouds, and sunlight.
A destination to which we are constantly departing, arrivals that are continually moving one month or city away, these are the distances in which we linger, in which these photographs dwell. They recall the sublime, the mundane, the familiar and the far. The titles, placed ambiguously between each piece, do not commit to one image or the other. They are given the freedom to move in between. They hint at possible cities of destination and departure. Sometimes they suggest the viewer on the ground and the location from which the planes are sighted. They serve as cues and invitations to intertwine one's own places and events far or near to themselves.
– John Choi
Beijing.
A hard summer to breathe. A friend I miss.
Milton.
After a match under the sun
we lay on the grass exhausted
agreeing on memories and the shapes of clouds.
Boston.
Boarding school
on the other end of the country.
Bellevue.
Sitting down at the park
I watch a plane and imagine its window views.
My dog watches birds and who knows
what he is imagining.
Hawaii.
Coming up for air, I see the sky
and the beads of water fall off my goggles.
Northridge.
Looking up from the playground
I imagine my mom returning
with each one that flies eastward.
Mexico.
Our teacher points out the figure of a lying woman
across the top of a mountain ridge and recalls a story of the gods.
Cleveland.
The red eye flights welcome my landings with sunrise, sometimes.
South Africa.
Living with Korean Buddhists.
Watching stars fall every night
and meditating before the sun rises.
Seoul.
Crossing the Pacific Ocean,
looking for a peninsula of relatives.
Costa Rica.
The waves wash over the shore until the water
is thin enough to mirror the sky.
I watch one person leaving behind
a trail of footprints in the rain, slippers in hand.
New York.
There is one person in this city I come to meet.
Texas.
Where I gazed at passing aloe fields and warm waters of the gulf of mexico.
Where my parents divorced without my knowledge.
Los Angeles.
A close friend called me and told me
he had an hour in the city.
I drove for thirty minutes
and we sat down for a drink
before he caught his transfer to Korea.
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