- nothing to fear
- where have you been all this time? Were you off somewhere singing, putting cats to sleep on the porch, drifting about in the rapids of time, the glow of the morning sun and the rain of a summer afternoon beating down as you pass by, your lips shut tight like a bloodsucking plant? The me that is nowhere to be found now, the me that will turn to ash and vanish, turn to darkness and rot - that me extends a squalid hand at the final moment of this crash, having entirely deserted and abandoned my life.
- in truth, I was not me. The me that was born into an animal body and lived as a slave to poverty and insult was nothing but the emptiness that had been momentarily bewitched out of me by an evil spirit. That distant me is precious and beautiful. No matter how decadent and corrupt my body becomes, I will, like a desert orchid that blooms once every hundred years, come to you bearing This frigidness toward life.
- i’ll cry out in the end and weep for fear of leaving this world without ever once discovering the me inside me, the ugly something inside me.
- but then I see her: another me passing by like a landscape of inanimate objects outside the window of the empty house quietly collapsing in the rain.
- traffic has come to a standstill
- at any rate, you and I have never knowingly met. And though we might one day a long time from now cross each other’s paths on the subway or at someone’s funeral or at a highway rest stop, we won’t recognise each other. It could indeed happen.
- human beings are capable of becoming perfectly pure at some moment in their lives. It doesn’t matter if they’re royalty or literati, middle class, working class, or the lowest class. For many people that moment must be the moment when they are clasping hands with each other. Memory finds its way back through blood, through body heat. Right at that moment. But now is not that moment. Right now doesn’t mean anything at all.
- boozy-breath drunken ramblings
- put up with this one
- comical to associate that memory with her
- ranted inwardly
- walk on eggshells around you
- the sky was overcast and the forecast said the weather would be even worse by the afternoon. It was as cold as it was hazy, and the damp, frigid air seeped all the way down to my bones
- the praying family looked pious and cultured
- my body twisted with awkwardness
- the wind blew through the branches and scattered the lacework of snow that had settled there
- after a dull and interminable length of time had passed, one of them finally spoke
- was this hatred I was feeling? Or a dull affection buried deep inside? Or was I merely acting out some dramatic emotion in order to endure this chaotic life? I had no idea.
- my eyes started to well up with tears. Up until that moment I’d never really understood sadness. The fierce, mob-like sadness that would come over me, clear and strong. Where did it come from? Was it real? This sadness that crept up and cut through all of my routines and my boredom and my repetition and my drama, like a sliver of glass piercing my flesh and sticking in the soles of my feet?
- i hate the formulaic lives you and your Mother lead
- it seemed like he was suppressing his anger, or his wounded pride. His voice was high and peevish.
- if I never saw him again after that day, I would think of him a hundred years from now. That photo of him was the last I would see of his face. His final face in some distant future.
- she said, her voice filled with conviction
- feel wretched with them and never breathe a word of my own feelings to them, I would in the end encounter that other me in the mirror
- i knew full well that what my Father wanted was not these silly notes telling him how the family was doing. Silence. The silence inside a prison. The prison of time called life. The prison of class and circumstance. The prison of a code untranslatable into the language of the other. The prison of the flesh. The prison of sweaty hands that can’t let go even at the moment of falling. The prison of Cheolsu.
- an endless litany of excuses regarding an old incident that no one cared about or believed in anymore.
- at ten o’clock, the lights shut off throughout the building and the flashing lights of cars all pointed in the same direction, like stars floating below the surface of a river. I would listen to the song on repeat with my legs propped up on the desk and my back pressed against the chair, and when it ended, I would spring up out of my chair like a corpse come back to life and pace back and forth across the Darkened office.
- oddly enough, time repeated itself. It outlived memory. Back then Cheolsu was nowhere to be found, and it would be no different in the future. Meaningless sensations lingered on my skin as clearly as teeth marks that refused to fade. Time pushes away that which is intended, rejects that which is rejected, forgets that which is sung about, and is filled with that which it turns its eyes from, such as the white hairs of a loved one.
- what my Brother had promised when he squeezed my sweaty hand as if he’d never let go was not money or letters. It was the erasure of time that goes by the name of money and letters. I understood that. The sort of time in which people could become the purest they’d ever been; cancel any unimportant plans they had; and Long for a random, distant ideal. Our blood, which refused to be moved by a warm prayer over breakfast, a conversation with a loving family, a life that evolves step by step - that was what made my Brother free.
- what he had left to me was a Long-Long-lived frigidity. The stillness of a beautiful, taxidermied want.
- i’m turning into taxidermy
- when i insert the key, the lock creaks with rust before finally opening. The rain falls hard. The walls that haven’t toppled over sit askew, as if the ground below them is slowly sinking.
- clouds drift through my head. Blue sky so deep you’d never know the end of it, clouds from Africa, a slow-moving Breeze, thunder and lightning. Pacing in front of a gas station on a night as black as lacquer. An hour when even the radio is silenced by rain.
- it is older and more run-down and out of place in this world. Bricks line the gray dirt courtyard devoid of even a single rosebush.
- the whole world has quieted down because of the rain. Figures of people appear and disappear in the darkness.
- he leaves teeth marks on my arm that will outlast memory
- when you die, I’ll have you taxidermied. Then I will have you forever. I will spend the light of morning and the despair of midday and the lunatic peace of evening with you. Never will you lie at rest in a royal tomb. And that is how I became an absolutely meaningless thing and survived time.
- while everyone else was tormented by a restless anxiety, like the dizziness you feel on a spring day, which made them question what they were doing with their lives
- he knew how to accept the tedium without the ennui
- if you gently stroke my lips and the palm of my hand right now, you will find them strangely cold and icy, a feeling of endless distance that even I can sense.
- he stood up, as if rescued from the moment by having something else to do
- furlough
- porn magazines stashed just out of sight
- these case studies show us that, just as with other social institutions, domestic violence has less to do with any inherent characteristics of the family as a primitive community of relatives and more to do with the changes wrought by modernisation with its complex and diverse variables. As the causal factors, triggers and control factors correlated with domestic violence intensify and diversify, it becomes harder for us to draw a clear conclusion.
- i probably sounded curt. The more brusque my voice grew, the more slippery hers became, as if she were greasing her vocal cords
- to TOP it all off, now I Had to tote along a bundle of cold chicken
-
- bore no resemblance to the type of job
- every person and every procedure marches on at a measured pace. that's how things get done, just as the less delicate components of a machine submit to the will of the machine without any conscious thought or shred of volition while being steadily ground down. so while I was busy not having any conscious thought, I became a cog.
- for the purpose of solemnly achieving that ethic itself
- it's possible I harboured a vague sense of fear back then
- when I was working, the hours went by at what I can only call a measured pace
- has since found a more modern solution to that primitive final step of production
- every now and then I picture a subway train at night packed with people I used to know and random people whom I will meet by chance in some distant future. most of the people I knew long ago now live their lives without me, and those whom I will meet by chance one day do not know me now. they walk by apathetically, their faces gloomy beneath the dim lights of the City Hall subway station, jostling my shoulders as they pass.
- Even now I think maybe my family is just a random collection of people I knew long ago and will never happen upon again, and people I don't know yet but will meet by chance one day. their dim, indistinct faces will ultimately, and meaninglessly, become the faces of the people in my life, though at the present moment they are unfamiliar strangers with no influence over me whatsoever. the shoulders of strangers that bump against mine in the subway. the lukewarm touch of a hand proffering a tip in a restaurant.
- the leisurely spring or autumn sky would stretch out beyond the windows of that deserted classroom
- not bothering to conceal my surprise
-
jun 22 2018 ∞
sep 13 2018 +