Poetry Break: "Aqua Not"

Anonymous, Bottle of Ouzo (ca. some weekend or other)

"WARNING: THAT BOTTLE NO LONGER EXISTS. (It was consumed shortly afterwards)"

(Borrowed from Wikipedia)

I've been spending long hours at my computer for over a week now, trying to shape a conference paper that I'm working on with Myongsob Kim (aka Kim Myongsob), a political scientist at Yonsei University. Our paper is titled "The Two Koreas and the Clash of Civilizations in East Asia," and the conference is the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Korean Association of International Studies (KAIS), which is being held in Seoul from the 12th to the 13th of May.

I'm not actually a KAIS member, nor am I an expert in things Korean. My field is Western history (and, it now seems, Medieval English literature), but Myongsob and I share interests in *The Big Picture*, so we work well together.

I just hope that I don't get embarrassed by my ignorance.

But whether I'll need to blanket my embarrassment, lighten my obscurity, or celebrate my success, I've got the 'solution' right here:

Aqua Not

If the ocean were ouzo,
I'd drink me to drown;

Ah, that potion would ooze -- oh
So drinkably down;

Such a notion were ooh -- so
Unthinkably sound;

If the ocean were ouzo,
I'd drink me to drown.

Sung to the tune of "If the Ocean Were Whiskey" ... and sung repeatedly in Greek restaurants throughout the length and breadth of Tuebingen, Germany from the time that I penned the song in 1990 to the time that I left humming it in 1995 as I boarded a plane for Arkansas and a more settled life with Sun-Ae.