虎 , 龍

During my late morning nap, I dreamt of a legendary animal. It was half tiger and half dragon, beautifully golden in color. Its tail, easily three times the length of its body, was tangled around its own torso and neck, debilitating the animal. I began to undo its tail from the body, starting from the end. However, neither the beast's magnificent beauty nor its incapacity to free itself moved me. I felt nothing but distance and detachment. As the irony would have it, this creature...was me.

I was awakened from my dream by a phone call. My sister, who was taking a day off work, wanted to come over with mom. I said no--it was the first time I ever refused a visit by my family. I fell immediately back to the unconsciousness of sleep brought on by deep exhaustion. By the time I woke up, the sun had already set and my body had succumbed to fever yet again.

Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren

Hermann Hesse

Von der Wiege bis zur Bahre
sind es fünfzig Jahre,
dann beginnt der Tod.
Man vertrottelt man versauert,
man verwahrlost, man verbauert
und zum Teufel gehn die Haare.
Auch die Zähne gehen flöten,
und statt daß wir mit Entzücken
junge Mädchen an uns drücken,
lesen wir ein Buch von Goethen.

Aber einmal noch vorm Ende
will ich so ein Kind mir fangen,
Augen hell und Locken kraus,
nehm´s behutsam in die Hände,
küsse Mund und Brust und Wangen,
zieh ihm Rock und Höslein aus.
Nachher dann, in Gottes Namen,
soll der Tod mich holen. Amen.

071224

Christmas Eve.

I woke up late morning. My only thought was to eat something so I can take my medicine--the flu symptoms had come back. After eating a cereal bar and two tangerines, however, I fell back asleep on the sofa.

After a disturbing dream full of anger and resentment, I woke up at 4 in the afternoon. My body had completely given in to the illness during my nap, and I felt pretty darn awful about the dream, too. I did not want to drive out to my sister's house. I came very close to calling to say I wasn't going to make it. But I changed my mind. If anything, I would be fed better over there than I could feed myself with my given condition.

I was only good until the end of dinner. As soon as the fork and knife went resting juxtaposed on the side of the plate, I excused myself and went to sleep in the guest room. The task of sitting up had become too much of a demand on my body. So I went away, asking them to wake me when dessert was being served. Before my consciousness blacked out again, I silently wished for someone to have a better Christmas than me.

When I woke up, thankfully feeling a bit better, everyone had either gone home or gone to bed, except my sister. We sipped Aberlour 10 year Scotch (best she had in her cupboards), watched a couple episodes of Frasier (our old favorite--she and I often felt like Frasier and Niles of our family) and just chatted about things. I told her again about my particular dislike for OC, not that anything could be done about it.

I turned down her invitation to stay the night--I much preferred my own bed. On my drive home, I thought about the year Christmas lost its meaning for me. It happened way too early for me, in 1984.

Winds are gusting again.

Smoke

담배 - 김소월

나의 긴 한숨을 동무하는
못 잊게 생각나는 나의 담배!
내력을 잊어버린 옛 시절에
났다가 새 없이 몸이 가신
아씨님 무덤 위에 풀이라고
말하는 사람도 보았어라
어물어물 눈앞에 스러지는 검은 연기,
다만 타붙고 없어지는 불꽃
아 나의 괴로운 이 맘이여
나의 하염없이 쓸쓸한 많은 날은
너와 한가지로 지나가라

Smoke - Kim So-wol

Smoke, the unforgettable urge,
the companion to my wearisome sigh!
Some say it is the grass
growing atop the grave of a mistress
born in the old forgotten days,
her body untimely withering away.
The wavering black smoke,
the spark of light burning, disappearing,
Oh the pain of my heart,
the endlessly lonesome days,
do pass me by like the dissipating smoke.

p.s. My dad smoked one or two cigarettes a day, Dunhill being his brand of choice. The smell of it still persists, though faintly, on his old ivory filter, some twenty plus years after its last use. When I picked up the on-again, off-again habit at twenty-four, I typically smoked no more than my dad. I recently bought a pack of cigarettes after a long hiatus. This time, I can smoke no more than half a cigarette once a week. My body rejects it--I am obviously not healthy enough to smoke. But for those personal moments, as brief as they are, I have a silent companion who understands it all.


"I like cigarettes. . . . I like to think of fire held in a man‘s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his own expression." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

My dad used to smoke one or two cigarettes a day, Dunhill being his brand of choice. The smell of it still persists, though faintly, on his old ivory filter, some twenty plus years after its last use. When I picked up the on-again, off-again habit at twenty-four, I typically smoked no more than he. I recently bought a pack of cigarettes after a long hiatus. This time, I can smoke no more than half a cigarette once a week. My body rejects it--I am obviously not healthy enough to smoke. But for those personal moments, as brief as they are, I have a silent companion who understands it all.


I lit up a cigarette this evening. Benson & Hedges Ultra-lights Menthol and a lighter in hand, I stepped out onto the balcony, wrapped up in a blanket to protect myself against the chills of the night. Sitting on a little stool, I was staring directly into Sirius, the alpha star of Canis Major, or known better, appropriately, as the Dog Star.

I brought the lighter close to the tip of the cigarette, now resting between my lips, and lit up. With a short inhale through the little white stick, the tip turned into an amber glow. As I exhaled, the cigarette let out a delicately thin, white smoke of a sigh. I perched my feet up on the ledge and leaned back, staring again at Sirius.

Cold winter night, cigarette is such a tempting companion.

Two things always come to my mind every time I smoke--my dead father and a poem. Dad used to smoke no more than one or two cigarettes a day, Dunhill being his brand of choice. He always used an ivory filter (he probably hated having cigarette smell on his hands), and the smell of his Dunhill still persists some twenty plus years after the last used.

A Wistful Fairy Tale

A castle with a grand staircase built out of cold, gray stone blocks.
A contract-bound woman.
The pain of lovers separated.
The ultimate elopement of the lovers to the "new world."

The unusually narrative dream of last night was full of high drama and intense emotions. Throughout the course of this dream, I went from being the unseen observer to an insignificant extra to, eventually, the story's protagonist. The gusty winds woke me from my tiresome dream. As the morning light began to fill my eyes, the delicate details of this dream fell through the crevice of my mind like the grains of sand in the fist. But its operatic ending, with a soprano singing a beautiful aria as the lovers disappeared into the night, is still resonating in my head.

071219

The throat feels better today, but the headache persists. Any sudden movement of the head feels as if the brain is bashing against the skull. It's awful to get sick so soon after starting a new job.

I have worked at this new place for a week now. Somehow I have surrounded myself with people who cannot tell uni from unagi, or Puccini from porcini...mere mention of any of those things just raises question marks on their faces. And the lack of certain amount of tension (whether it be a deadline or a design emergency) in the office makes me feel a little bit uneasy. Oh, did I mention the quartet of carolers in Victorian outfits hired for the Christmas party for the design group? No need to say any further--I feel like an outsider, a stranger. I was not prepared to be so desperately homesick.

John Baldessari, Gavel, 1987

p.s. Today marks my uncle's would-be 71st birthday. He passed away two years ago, after a number of years of estrangement from his family. They never quite forgave him, even after his death.

071218

Flu and fatigue came crashing down on me Monday. Sore throat, fever, headache, muscle aches.... I can only think of short, choppy sentences. I realize now that an act of creativity, even as pitiful as this blog, requires a healthy body, which I have not presently.

Heather Flowers

It was the night of my new company's holiday party. The food was less than mediocre, served buffet style, and they did not have any single malt Scotch. Having worked only two days there, I knew less than my fingers could count out of over 400 people. I left soon after dinner. I much preferred to come home to a sip of heather flowers.

071214

Debussy brought me a little magic this afternoon. I was soaking in nostalgia through his enchanting music, just as the nostalgia of Bvlgary perfume prompted a man to pick up the phone. Though our conversation was brief, I felt home again in his voice.

Random thought...01

This,

may be path I have taken, but one thing is for sure--
I always walked along the road that lay ahead of me.

071212

An old journal entry cast a ray of light into the cave of my mind. It was written in August of 2000, three days into my first job in commercial interior design. For reasons I neglected to disclose, I came home and cried that day. I confided in my then boyfriend who saw me go through three jobs in one year. After hearing me out, he said,

"Do you know what a mouse does when it gets cornered by a cat?
It fights back."

This turned out to be one of the best advices I have ever received. It not only changed my attitude about my job, but it changed my mindset completely. A month or so later, he asked why I wasn't complaining about work any more. I said I didn't have anything to complain about. He said he felt threatened by my new job. Few weeks later, I left him. I stayed at that job for almost three years and set my career path.

I have a new fight that starts tomorrow. I plan to win it. And with the new outfit I picked out to wear tomorrow, I'll look good doing it.

071211

I visited my sister this afternoon. She and her family moved to OC a week before me. As a housewife with a toddler, her only outing destinations were shopping malls and we headed to a less than fantastic mall nearby (my suggestion to just hang out at her new house, partially due to my aching back, was duly ignored). After walking around a bit, we sat ourselves on the bench near the play area for children in the middle of the mall, straight black coffee in our hands. We were watching my nephew playing in and out of various toy cars and trucks, when I said,

"I think I'm gonna die in OC."

There was a hint of sarcasm in my voice, a trait my sister is more than used to.

"Why, are you that bored?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I mean that literally."

It was the morning of last weekend, exactly one week since moving down to Mission Viejo. The moment my mind was awake, even before my eyes were open, one thought came fluttering about in my head--I'm going to die here. What a conclusively morbid declaration to have.

"L.A. offered me a sense of freedom, " I went on, "that I could pick up and move to New York next month if I so desired. I know what mom has to say about my health, but that freedom was still out there, always flirting with me. But now--I don't see myself going anywhere after this. That sense of freedom is lost. This is where I end."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I've been feeling a bit trapped since moving down here," said my sister.

"No, no. If you feel trapped, there's a sense of, or an urge to, escape. There exists a concept of 'beyond'. What I'm experiencing is like the desert silence, the kind so deadening that your whole existence gets suspended in time and space just by closing the eyes. Except, now, opening my eyes doesn't seem to be an option. This freedom that I seem to have lost is not for the physical mobility but for that of the mind. Languid mind makes the body idle. So I'll just live, until I die, here in OC."

I could not tell if the brevity of my sister's response was due to lack of rebuttal, or because she didn't grasp my words, or because my nephew was done playing.

"We need get you out more often," she said.

Driving home later in the evening, I thought more on this subject. The roads were lined with trees turning their seasonal color. Up above, the winter sky was pouring its bright, twinkling stars. Close to 10 PM, most of the neighborhood was already asleep. All these things that now surround my every day are constant reminders of the loss and my unspeakable pain for that loss. They're like a consolation prize that I'd rather lock up...but can't.

(s)He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

It's a sleepless night. All those winter stars combined cannot soothe me to sleep. Something about this night recalls in me the song about a blackbird.


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing
And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.

Snow

Snow died early this afternoon. He was suffering from pneumonia, rare for rabbits, with his little body already succumbing to a walnut-sized tumor. His weakened muscles made him incontinent, and he was gasping for air.

Rabbits let out a death cry the moment they die. It is the only sound they would make in their short lives. Snow wasn't given the chance for that one and only cry of his life. I can't determine if that's a blessing or a misfortune.

071207

I wake up this morning in between the rain. The glimpse of sunlight peeks in through the clerestory window in my bedroom, dissipating my dream. The moment I open my eyes, I have one thought only in my head--that I am not ready to face this day.

My French lop named Snow is ill. He hasn't eaten since Sunday and he is malodorous. I must make another century mile round trip to take him to the doctor. At eight years old, however, he has lived three years past the average life expectancy for lops. My hunch is that this may be his time.

Too many deaths happened in the last few weeks. I am not ready to face another, especially when it is a physical death of a living being.

071206

A lunch turned into a seven-hour outing.

The drive to Culver City was just over an hour. After a leisurely lunch and a brief stop at my former workplace to say my goodbye to the office poodles, I took a gelato break at the corner cafe. I was still too full from lunch for dessert. But it was the hesitation that held me there, that strange sense of "home not being home any more" feeling that I never got used to despite bakers' dozen moves in three decades. I sat there wondering if telepathy really works. It didn't. At 3 o'clock, I got up to head back home.
I figured it would take me an hour and a half to an hour forty-five minutes to get home. My estimate was off--way off. The drive along the 405 freeway took 3 full hours. I regretted not accepting G's invitation to stop at the art gallery for a jewelry show with her and her friends that evening. But it worked out fine--I took advantage of the hideously long drive home to finally let myself...grieve.

Once home, I started to organize a whole plastic container full of my old school papers that have been accumulating since high school, from course syllabuses to term papers. And among them were ten notebooks in varying sizes plus a packed 1-1/2" binder, all containing the handwritten records of my thoughts, my activities, and my obsessions--my diaries since twenty years ago.

Evidently, my journal keeping was most active during my college years. In my freshman year, I wrote almost a full page of college rule paper every other day or so, filling up the whole binder. I wrote little in my second year, but I filled two medium size sketchbooks' worth during my junior and senior years. Back then, I wrote mostly in Korean, and because I wrote so frequently, my penmanship was tidy and almost pleasant to just look at. How I've changed over the years. Now my writing is predominantly in English which, if handwritten, is hardly legible even to myself.

But no matter how I have changed, one thing is for certain--that throughout it all, it was me all along.

The Awakening

I dreamt I was in Michigan again.

I was swimming from Lake Michigan towards Lake Portage along the channel. The sapphire blue water, glistening beautifully in the warm sunlight, felt pleasantly cold against my body. Midway through the channel, a wave of current rushed toward me, pushing me back toward Lake Michigan. I kept swimming on, but another wave pushed me back. Every attempt I made only pushed me out further into the middle of unfathomably vast body of water, until I lost my way back.

But dear Kate, I will not have Edna Pontellier's fate.

071201

7:30 AM.

Being lost in a deep sleep, it takes a few moments for me to realize that the sound from my cell phone is a phone call, not the morning alarm. It is my mom.

"Are you done with your shower yet?" she asks.

I answer with an utterly incomprehensive response.

"Huh?"

"You're not up yet? Do you know what time it is?"

Only then do I look at my clock and realize that I overslept by an hour and a half.

The movers are to show up in an hour. I decide I have no choice but to forego the shower. But because of that, my now short and always stubborn hair must be slicked back. And in my moving day outfit of black yoga pants, a white long sleeve T-shirt and a black short sleeve T-shirt overlayer, I look like a boy.

A short time later, my mother and my sister show up, breakfast in hand. Mom makes this day an exception and lets me drink coffee. As we sit down to eat, she spots a plastic bottle containing small blue and white pills on the table. She reads the label. Having worked at a pharmacy before, she's familiar with many prescription drugs, but this one stumps her.

"What is this for?"

"It's an anti-depressant, mom."

"Why do you have such a thing?"

"My doctor thinks I need it. I've been staring at it, but I'm not taking it."

Really, I should be more careful with the things I leave out.

With their help, the last minute wrap ups come about more easily. The time is now 8:50 AM, though, and the movers are not here. I call the moving company to ask about their whereabouts, and thus begins the moving day fiasco.

When I made a call to make an appointment last Tuesday, initially they said they charge four hour minimum to Orange County. I went ahead and booked them for Saturday. Few minutes later, they called me back to say that they have to charge five hour minimum to Mission Viejo because of the distance. I said that's fine. However, the lady with the moving company thought "that's fine" meant "fine, I don't need your service" even though I meant "fine, I'll pay for five hours." I guess she did not hear me say "see you Saturday" before hanging up the phone.

After clarifying the miscommunication, she apologizes profusely (as she should) and reroutes one of the afternoon appointments for me. She cannot guarantee the exact time, though. So my sister takes off to go to her office, as my friend, M, arrives. M is not an early bird, and I feel bad that she got up this early on a Saturday morning to help me.

To make the long story short, the three of us sit and wait for the movers, like Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot, for six hours. M does not speak Korean. Mom does not speak English. I have to either channel the conversation both ways, or have two separate conversations simultaneously. For six very long hours.

By the time the movers finally arrive, the wind picks up significantly. The palm trees lining the sidewalk of my street are swaying back and forth with an incessant sound of rustling leaves. Cold, windy yet sunny day...I am overcome with the desire to drive to the dessert, but I cannot. The guys empty my apartment in about half an hour. The speed and the efficiency with which they move is truly admirable, especially when one guy single-handedly lifts and carries my Stones coffee table made of cast concrete.

I barely make it in time before the Leasing Office closes. I complete my paperwork and receive my keys. The truck shows up only a few minutes after I locate my apartment. Unloading is more difficult than the loading, though, because the apartment is on the second floor. The guys are tired, too, I'm sure. The move is complete, including the dismantling and re-assembly of my bed, in four hours flat. I send the guys along with the five hours' rate plus tip and some soft drinks for the road.

My sister shows up again, this time with her coworker, R. She brings a housewarming gift--a vacuum cleaner, which had not been a necessity for the hardwood floor that I so loved for the last five years. R assembles the vacuum, wires my VCR, DVD and television, and finds a wireless signal to "borrow" for internet access. I'm glad to have this contact with the outside world.

Later, all five of us go out for dinner. I quickly learn that closest non-fast food restaurants are at least five miles away. After a bit of driving around, we end up at Lucille's BBQ. It is one of those loud chain restaurants with almost inhumane portions of food. Five starving people order three dishes, eat to their heart's desire and still go home with enough food boxed up to feed three others easily. I'm afraid such chain restaurants are all I will find in this area.

After dinner, others take off but M sticks around for a while. I want very much to be alone, but I figure her visits will not be as frequent as before. I offer to put her up for the night, but she insists on going home. I walk her to her car. The air is incredibly chilly. But being away from the pollution of light that floods the city, the stars shine brilliantly, especially Mars, the Red Planet, in its peak.

Midnight.

I find myself alone in a new apartment in a new neighborhood. The move is complete. I wonder what my dream will be tonight.