Ichi-go Ichi-e 2019.09.02
I am here.
Feelings — sensitive, irritable, burdened, annoyed, uncomfortable
Attitude — dissatisfaction, thirst, anxious, hungry, empty
Suddenly, a memory — that director back then, that teacher... at the time, wasn't I projecting myself onto them?
Low resilience — lowered self-esteem — a life with nothing to show off
Ah, so that's it. I was trying to show off.
Ah, right. I was living with the thought, "all I have is passion and vision."
I want to be loved. My dream was only to be a loved husband.
- (vicious cycle) low resilience — lowered self-esteem — a life with nothing to show off
A person called me
Take away what others love to show off
Take away what I had planned to show off
What on earth is this person called me?
I am here.
Sitting here
Thinking
Alive
Worrying
Spending only a fleeting moment worrying about the person called me
Most of my time, worrying about my Seoul living arrangements
and about the Seoul job I scraped together as a desperate measure for a living
I live drowning in the anguish of a daily life that is just barely enduring
Thirty-eight — they call it "samp-pal-gwang-ddang" — "nal-sam-je" (the third of three rough years), they say
Without even a tiny corner of my own to put my mind down
From the Monday evening commute, I've been wandering all over.
And when I turn on my smartphone,
I rage at the cunning of politics and the press and worry about the world. Or rather, pretend to worry.
Pretending to know, trying to weigh rights and wrongs.
Is there any easier way to let your urges out than blaming and cursing something?
But isn't it like endlessly scratching between your toes?
Outrageously refreshing, but behind the brain's short burst of pleasure, that thinking, that tone, that attitude
leave scars on my memory and in my head, and those scars keep getting deeper over time.
Here. I am.
At Elvin, a coffee shop in Hyehwa, sipping a just-brewed Mandheling.
I pause, and try to cut a channel into the thoughts that had stopped flowing
to think about the person called me,
with this warm coffee, I open a stream for thought.
Tables, chairs, sofas.. all the same. Ten years ago, Elvin in Hyehwa-dong
Off to one side, a poetry-collection cover catches my eye — "We Are Gradually Becoming Strangers," Song Young-hee
The moment the title caught my eye, I reflexively stood up and reached for the book.
It felt like something I was saying to myself.
A Rainy-Day Day
(excerpt)
Suddenly, like forgetting the keypad code to the front door
You wouldn't come to mind easily
Even the name I used to call you, I couldn't remember at all
(excerpt?)
It really isn't easy
to hold out thinking quietly only about myself
These days, it really is too much.
To drink coffee at this hour
makes my heart thump.
Maybe it's the lines from the poem, I tell myself as an excuse.
Time to go. The guests who'd stopped coming a while ago don't seem to start again. Looks like I'm the last customer.
