My name is Hae Sung Shim Brown. The long and expensive name change process was brought to a close by a court order that made Hae Sung my official and legal first name on January 10, 2010. On a cold and wintry day in February 1976, my parents who were not prepared with a name as it is not customary to name your child right at birth in Korea, came up with Michelle Jung Shim in the hospital after the doctor and nurses made the suggestion to. It is customary to have your "moon halmoni" (a Korean godmother), who after spending some time with the infant getting to know his/her personality, bestow a first name. My moon halmoni gave me the name Hae Sung, which can be translated to "brightest star in heaven," a couple weeks after I was born and after my birth certificate with my American name had already arrived in the mail.
I never felt like a Michelle and though I love the name and the Beatle's song (my mother was a big fan) I tried desperately over the years to find a nickname that would replace it. My campaign for a more suiting moniker worked for the most part, as to this day I have quite a few nicknames...which I believe are more terms of endearment than an alias. I have been stumbling on the words to explain why I changed my name. I do not stumble because I lack surety that this is the right transition for me. I stagger because there are a lifetime of experiences, achievements coupled with more than enough failure, more interests than I know what to do with, passion that has been known to render me blind, and way too many years than I want to admit where I was ashamed of who I was and where I came from...which deter me from a simple explanation.
I have a deep desire to help people and yet I am unsure of how to apply what skills, knowledge and experience I have to make me a more effectively helpful human being. I generally try to give more, be more, hear more...in order to help those around me. I STILL want to DO more. I would like to enlist YOU, as a sounding board for the ideas and thoughts I have on this matter. Hopefully my progress into a more helpful human being will encourage, or at the very least amuse you. I would also like to use this blog to promote poetry, art and helping the human condition. I pray that this will be an endeavor of hope and positive change. I have an ocean full of dreams that I fish from and I am trying to find one that will take this life from dull to BRIGHT.
Thomas Krampf has been a close friend of my mother and I, since I was in grade school. He is an incredible man and poet. He wrote and dedicated the following poem to me in his book "Taking Time Out: Poems in Remembrance of Madness" (Salmon Publishing, 2004). I continue to be PROFOUNDLY humbled by this and the memory of this moment, when I was a preteen in rural New York, is one of the beloved blue colored beads on the necklace of my life. "Life is a train of moods like a string of beads: and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hae Sung
for Michelle
In her mind,
The child draws a picture.
She tries to picture how he fell.
Maybe high-up.
There is glass.
Maybe it is yellow.
Or shatterproof.
The window is open.
He is walking near it.
Or maybe as he falls.
Like in the movies.
On the river.
There is a boat.
And one it waving.
But maybe not.
Only watching.
The sun comes up.
But she knows this isn't so.
It isn't a movie,
She knows.
Because she asked him.
The distance in the dark.
Without measuring.
Between a deer's eyes.
And expecting an answer.
(She knew she would get it).
He said it was great.
And he was there.
