Autumn Delicacies

nikoru

9/23/2026

What is an oyster if not the perfect food? It requires no preparation or cooking. Cooking would be an affront. It provides its own sauce... It is food at its most primeval and glorious, untouched by time or man.

Anthony Bourdain

View of the Oyster Farm from the Lobster Shack Pier

In a coastal town by the sea, my partner and I celebrated life with oysters and Guinness at their annual festival over a long weekend. We dined on the former food of the poor being shucked and served all over town. We walked along the beach each day in sun and salt. In the evenings, a feast for the eyes - a murmuration of starlings danced in the skies heralding the sun that would soon set over the bay.

Murmuration in Whitstable

I Am The Autumnal Sun

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature
— not his Father but his Mother stirs
within him, and he becomes immortal with her
immortality. From time to time she claims
kindredship with us, and some globule
from her veins steals up into our own.

I am the autumnal sun,
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief…

Henry David Thoreau

Chasing Sunsets Not People In Whitstable

A Celebration Through Feasting and Meditation

Recently friends and I gathered to celebrate the change of seasons and the Autumnal Equinox, a few days early. This modern life is at times rather inconvenient to these celebratory days that once used to really matter.

The elements of our meal were composed around this bottle of wine purchased last year on the road trip, moving a van full of belongings that were too delicate and precious to ship of fly over, with a friend. The white wine by the same winery (mentioned in the previous entry) was drunk at last year's Autumnal Equinox and it somehow seemed fitting to have the red this year.

Slow-cooked beef short ribs, sweet potatoes, green beans, pomegranate kale salad, and a nearly Waldorf salad. For dessert, four different cheeses, fresh apple slices, seeded crackers, a homemade apple and tomato chutney, and a selection of gluten-free treats.

Today we celebrate nature and the changing season, the balance between light and dark, between work and rest, between reflection and action, and pilgrimage. For me, this journey is not in forest, field or climbing mountains but on pebbled beaches with nowhere to hide, exploring the landscape of myself. A few days ago, I began putting oil paint to stretched canvas in my tiny kitchen studio. A small series of past, present, future. Of hope, a wish, and a dream.

A minimalist pencil drawing of poppy flowers and buds on long stems by Nikoru

Ongoing: memoriam museum exhibition

Omma Poom Park Peace Museum

15 June 2025 - ongoing

Omma Poom Park and Peace Museum Bongilcheon-ri, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea

"For two days, my series Walls Within was on display in the park during this special event alongside other creations by some of my fellow KADs. The park director, Yong Nam Lee and I decided to extend the exhibition at the conclusion of the grand opening event. Since July 2025, Walls Within has been kept on display in the Peace Museum. I received photos of WW from a fellow KAD friend and Londoner who visited them earlier this year. One more person who now knows Kori Marrone to whom the four lanterns are dedicated to in memoriam."

In September of 2018, the Omma Poom Park in Paju City was formally dedicated at a ceremony attended by local government officials, Korean adoptees from all over the world, birth families, and supporters of the adoptee community. Since the dedication, the work on the park continued, and its formal opening took place this summer of 2025.

The date was set for the grand opening... there was a two-day celebration organized by Me&Korea, a non-profit organization that provides Korean adoptees opportunities to learn about our roots, on the thirteenth and fourteenth of June. I attended this celebration by first traveling to the city I was born in, Seoul, and then to Paju with a fellow KAD, a dear friend who is currently traveling the world solo.

The city of Paju, Korea is located just south of Panmunjeom at the 38th parallel and Demilitarized Zone. Beginning in 2017, Paju began developing a memorial park named Omma Poom, dedicated to the approximately 200,000 children who were sent away to be adopted and raised around the world.

The park’s name, Omma Poom, carries deep significance: "Omma" means "mother" in Korean, and "Poom" evokes the comfort of a mother’s embrace. The park is designed to serve as both a tribute and a space for healing.

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