- his sensitivity to the presence of others
- ups the ante
- understood her gaze to be one of complicity
- an indiscriminate connection, their existences briefly aligned
- desolate
- live like this indefinitely
- expend her energy in looking out for her
- she became difficult to read. So difficult that there were times when she seemed like a total stranger
- on bright days the tree would spread its countless branches and let the sunlight scintillate its leaves, seemingly communicating something to her. Today, a day sodden and stupefied with rain, it is reticent, and keeps its thoughts unspoken.
- getting by snatching pockets of sleep here and there, never more than an hour at any one time
- despite the scandal hanging over her, steadfastly refusing to disappear
- time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream, a life which she had to constantly strain to keep from breaking apart
- even as a child, she had possessed the innate strength of character necessary to make one's own way in life
- through the sheer inertia of a life lived in this way, she would have been able to conquer everything, even time.
- preceded by the sound of quick, purposeful footsteps, a young doctor approached from the other end of the corridor
- she peers into her sister's empty black pupils, but all that she sees reflected there is her own face. The strength of her own disappointment takes her by surprise, plunging her into despair. 'You're actually insane.' It's a thought she hasn't been able to countenance these past few days, but now, for the first time, she asks Yeong-hye the question. 'Have you really lost your mind?' An inscrutable fear makes her draw back from her Sister
- this pain and insomnia which, unbeknownst to others, now has In-hye in its grip
- perhaps, at some point, she had simply let fall the slender thread which had kept her connected with Everyday life. If it hadn't been for him, perhaps she too might have relinquished her grip on that thread
- the feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but Endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.
- there wasn't even a scrap of happiness that she could glean from this
- minor niggle
- mobilising everything at his disposal
- life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.
- was it not perhaps her own image - she who had left home at nineteen and gone on to make a life for herself in Seoul, always entirely under her own steam - which she had seen mirrored in this man's exhaustion?
- an unbroken stream of invective starts pouring forth from her mouth
- renounced
- disillusioned
- she became resigned so easily, and her habit of gloomily suppressing the dregs of this resignation suffocated Him
- he found her patience and desire to do the right thing stifling, which made him still more inclined to see it as a flaw in her character
- once the vague mix of guilt, regret, and uncertainty had passed
- his tone more ambivalent than cold
- studying the now-obsolete performance posters
- looking at them he felt afraid, excited, and somehow oppressed.
- image about to unfold in front of him
- threading his way through the crowds of theatregoers who had thronged into the foyer
- not that two years was considered terminal as far as fallow periods went, but it was still long enough to make him anxious
- how could he have known this energy would coalesce into such a preposterous image?
- graphics of people worn down by the vicissitudes of late capitalist society
- the carnality, the pure sensuality of this image, was nothing short of monstrous
- another image as intense and enticing as this one simply didn't exist
- he spent hours seemingly lost in a daydream, mulling over how to make the image become a reality
- branded as some peddler of cheap titillation
- if it hadn't been for the image he would never have had to go through all this anxiety, this discomfort and unease, this agonising doubt and self-examination.
- he was becoming divided against himself. was he a normal human being? more than that, a moral human being? a strong human being, able to control his own impulses? in the end, he found himself unable to claim with any certainty that he knew the answers to these questions, though he'd been so sure before.
- however much he combed his memory, he couldn't recall anything like this having happened to him before.
- indulge in introspection
- there'd been a time when she could spend hours like this, weighing up all the variables that might have contributed to determining her fate. of course it was entirely in vain, this act of mentally picking up and counting the baduk stones that had been laid out on the board of her sister's life.
- she gets up and walks over to the window, where the dark grey of the sky is gradually lightening, the landscape growing brighter at the edges. the light touches upon Mount Ch'ukseong's forest, rekindling its summer colours.
- her face flushed almost puce
- catatonic patients
- lucid
- many of them whose utterly blank gazes indicate minds shut up in their own private worlds
- she had said nothing, only stood and watched the flaming poplars kindled by the evening light
- her face was wreathed in smiles, her eyes shining as though she'd just woken up from a happy dream
- my gaze was arrested by the sight of goldfish Swimming lazily in a glass bowl, but what I saw there brought me up short
- taking in the sight, I sorely regretted the many things it seemed I'd ended up losing somehow or other, to have left me in my current plight
- but it was Monday, so there was no chance of any such reprieve
- compelled by responsibilities which refused to be shirked
- it was a prospect i found difficult to contemplate
- niggled at my conscience
- seized by strange, ominous premonitions
- wasn't in the habit of entertaining outlandish notions
- the voice of a man with strongly fixed ideas
- what shadowy recesses lurked in her mind, what secrets I'd never suspected? In that moment she was utterly unknowable
- Inconceivably complex
- debilitating
- to him she radiated energy, like a tree that grows in the wilderness, denuded and solitary
- the feeling he'd had at that moment was one that, even now, he found himself unable to explain with any degree of accuracy
- he was worn out, and life revolted him.
- thus regarded her as nothing more than an object of pity, albeit a fairly inscrutable one
- her voice had no weight to it, like feathers. it was neither gloomy nor absent-minded, as might be expected of someone who was ill. but it wasn't bright or light-hearted either. it was the quiet tone of a person who didn't belong anywhere, someone who had passed into a border area between states of being.
- the sexual desire that flooded through him was a product of his mental re-enactment of these past experiences, not something he'd actually felt at that time
- enticing lack of superfluity
- rather than provoking lust, it was a body that made one want to rest one's gaze quietly upon it
- the image of her naked was now stamped indelibly on his brain, burned into him like a brand
- if he was to escape from this agonising situation, the inexplicable compulsions that were gradually taking him over, he needed to get outside.
- as though resigned to having lost this argument
- at that point he was already slipping into a death-like sleep
- he struggled to identify the source of the roiling confusion inside him, which the sight of her prone body had stirred up
- with her words sounding in his ears like a lullaby, one he could make neither head nor tail of, he plunged over the edge of consciousness and into a seemingly bottomless sleep
- ascetic
- the kiss was a palimpsest of memories, of all the countless kisses they'd shared in the past
- stilted
- it was surprising that the process hadn't provoked in her even the slightest feelings of desire
- golden petals scattered pell-mell over her thighs
- well used to this, she keeps her eyes averted from those probing gazes, that mix of suspicion, caution, repugnance, and curiosity.
- provoked a flurry of jealous slander from those who knew her
- the lighting, her movements, the atmosphere these evoked - all were breathtakingly compelling
- toyed briefly with the idea of adding music
- "It's okay now," she muttered, but it wasn't clear who these words were intended to comfort; the boy or herself.
- as she rolls up her trousers to keep them out of the wet, she notices the flaxleaf fleabane which broken through the asphalt here and there.
- There'd been something faintly unsettling about the quiet smile playing around her mouth. what seemed to be happening was that she was retreating from herself, becoming as distant to herself as she was to her sister. a forlorn face, behind a mask of composure. this was clearly nothing like the melancholy that sometimes afflicted her husband, and yet in certain respects they were both baffling to her in exactly the same way. they were both descending further into silence.
- the lives of all the people around her had tumbled down like a house of cards - was there really nothing else she could have done?
- the whole thing descended into a cheap, tawdry scandal
- realises how blasé she's become when it comes to the mentally ill
- the ostensible reason for her not having wanted to be discharged
- unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled her to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind
- just then, she was discomfited to find herself struck by a guilty conscience, which she'd so far managed to avoid. suddenly it was there like a lump in her chest, weighing her down.
- for the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. it had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. a time which she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. all of it self-inflicted.
- this had been a Long while back, when his tongue still tripped over certain words. The strange vague sadness of a child near tears had surprised her, she remembers.
- the truth of the matter was something she simply felt, horribly clearly.
- if everything hadn't splintered apart
- she doesn't vomit; instead, she opens her eyes. Her black pupils fix on In-hye. What is stirring behind those eyes? What is she harbouring inside her, beyond the reach of her sister's imagination? What terror, what anger, what Agony, what hell?
- 'perhaps this is all a kind of dream.' ... 'I have dreams too, you know. Dreams... and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over... but surely the dream isn't all there is? We have to wake up at some point, don't we? Because... because then...'
- the bleeding continued for around another two weeks, then the cut healed and it stopped. But she felt as though there was still an open wound inside her body. Somehow, it seemed this wound had in fact grown bigger than her, that her whole body was being pulled into its pitch-black maw.
- a strange pain gripped her chest. It was an oppressive, constricting feeling, as if the walls of the house were slowly closing in.
- she took one more look around at the various objects inside the house. They did not belong to her. Just like her life had never belonged to her. / her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.
- the pain feels like a hole swallowing her up, a source of intense fear and yet, at the same time, a strange, quiet peace.
- she instantly turns to In-hye, fixing her with her shining eyes. Her yelling intensifies, and a continuous torrent of words streams out.
- the writhing movements of those bodies made it seem as though they were trying to shuck off the human
- had he staked everything of himself on those strange, desolate images - staked everything, and lost everything?
- she reels along the corridor, staggering like a drunk
- her face is only staring wordlessly back at her, like always, betraying not even the faintest hint of emotion.
jan 24 2017 ∞
jun 22 2017 +