33
White Human Shape and Leaks, 2001~2003
A big fire meant a fright to Dano. The mountain fires of Sun Valley had left an incurable trauma on Dano as a boy which had lasted three days and three nights with the deafening blasts of shells and ammunitions which had left undetonated during the Korean War. The word fire used to be a reminder of all the horrible things that broke loose.
Now there was a fire again. It appeared to be a quick yet blunt blow to all the residents. Luckily it happened on a broad daylight. And the luckiest part of all was that the fire was on a top floor house only. The fire was going on but there was no deafening blasts, not a whiff developing to a conflagration, either.
But the scene was disastrous. Since human shapes were not seen at the disaster scene, the proprietors of the tragic house must be going out. It was so sad that an uninhabited house was on fire. Black smoke was billowing into the air. It was two or three p.m. Dano was just back from a casual outing and was on his way to a hurried home on the 2nd floor house on the same line.
Fire engines arrived with roars of screams, with the firemen dashing onto the scene. You should have seen them. They really shook the earth; Their eyes were on fire, too; They shoved anyone in their way; Their desperate steps vied with each other for forward progress. Dano, standing near the elevator, was bluntly shoved aside.
In the midst of the tumult over the control of the wayward firework, smashing and shattering noises of the household goods were heard even down under on the ground floor. The throngs of concerned crowds were gathered in threes and fours, pounding their feet and blurting exclaims of astonishment.
Though agitated in one hand, they were evidently relived to see their own houses safe and sound and to see the fire broken out on the top floor, but not in the middle floors. In 30 minutes or so they seemed to get the blaze under control as the firemen came out from the elevator, smeared with dirt and smelling of gasoline smoke. They appeared angry and sad.
Clustered, the residents were wondering about the whereabouts of the sad proprietor of the burned-out house, kibitzing about the fire-prevention tips. A fast-paced gossiper kept rumor mills rolling that the culprit of the fire calamity was
the lady of the tragic apartment house, who unwittingly had forgotten to cut the flow of the gas by switching off the gas valve, leaving something boiling on the gas burner.
The poor family were not informed of their tragedy because they had no means of outside contact by wireless and no means of mobile communication at the time, either, only kept in the dark until they stepped into the apartment compound and near at the 26th Block. They could see their top floor house disappeared from sight and the hollow cluster of the wreck left. The lady of the household fainted at the scene and her husband was pretty much struck speechless and motionless. The neighbors of the same line got to the scene but found no words to comfort them.
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Why forget? It'll be useless to deride or blame those who're liable to forget. Dano almost always found himself without an umbrella when he returned which he had kept company early in the morning. It's been a fatal habit and Dano had almost always felt remorse for the lost companion. He felt himself a very ungrateful person from time to time. How about the other people? They would be likely more or less forgetful of their thankful companions. He was wondering at leisurely times where the umbrellas of the world had gotten together.
Episodes about forgetful people, particularly of those ladies in their mid-50s abounded. Dano himself happened to watch with his open eyes a middle-aged Seoul lady step into the swimming pool area naked, with no swimming suits on. A woman pool guard swiftly raced toward her, muffling her with her whole body and turning her around, with no more fuss. But among lots of amnesiac episodes, the episode on the top list would be that of a middle-aged lady, who, going out to the beauty parlor to do hair for her daughter's wedding, when the job done, returned to her home and slept it away.
Women's Sorority of the 26th Block passed the hat among the residents that they chip in to help the tragic fire victims. Through discussion, they agreed to donate five dollars each household, an expression of a modicum of sympathy. The women's sorority club also circulated along pamphlets alerting about how to handle gas and electricity.
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Of all the living places of Seoul Dano had lived out, he thought, Eunma (Silver Horse) had had the worst living conditions. Too cold among all things. Through the four years, Dano, Tschai and their three sons had literally gotten themselves frozen out. The heating system was pristine and ineffective. An apartment management union body, which was deployed from the Central Apartment Management Corporation or something, ran Silver Horse, for which the 20,000 more residents had no voice.
"It's a sheer nonsense," Dano thought. "It's so preposterous," Dano said publicly. The union members, with red-colored head bands tied around their heads, with their fists shooting into the air with blood-shot eyes, beating drums and bronze ggoenggari, chanting threatening slogans, made routine rounds of the apartment complex two or three times everyday, which made the residents transfixed dazed and scared.
"Why make so much noise?" Dano once stepped forward from the watching crowds. "Stop nuisance!" Dano stood firm before the marching union demonstrators. "What the hell is this fella?" The clamorous troops, restrained out of the blue by a strange man, mobbed around Dano, with one of them dashing to Dano to grab him.
"I'm a resident of this apartment complex. I want to live in peace!"
"What the hell are you talking about? Who is there that forces you not to?"
"You're the ones that destroy the peace of us residents, ain't you?"
"This is about our rights, do you know, this fucker?"
The union members and the throng, milling about for some seconds, most of whom were middle-aged ladies, agreed to convince themselves to disperse.
The moves to Eunma had been made for Tschai's sake only, for a small accessory store she had been running at Daechi-dong. It was a source of family financing. The moves from Mokdong to Kepodong to Eunma had shortened the time needed for her commute from hours to a few minutes. Dano did most of the trouble of packing because books had always comprised the most portion of the moving package.
Tschai got wind of the apartment folks' backbites about her husband Dano. She said brusquely one late autumn morning of 2001, demanding that he not inspire or motivate the residents by facing up to the union members of the management body. He was not entitled to do that. "What kind of entitlement am I supposed to have?" Dano demanded to know. "You're supposed to have the ownership of the apartment house," she answered. "We only live in a rental house, paying two years' rent in advance."
Despite Tschai's concern about Dano's meddlesome tendency and her advice that he refrain from interfering in the conflicts between the residents and the unionized management office, Mrs. Elderly, who was chairperson of the Conference of the Residents' Representatives, telephoned Dano to come out and help her with her outing. Mrs. Elderly, who was in her middle seventies, said pleadingly, "Mr. Wang, please come out and come with me to the meeting of the representatives." Fact was that the representatives of the residents of Eunma Apartment Complex were not able to hold meetings hampered by the militant union members from the management office.
Mrs. Elderly, who had been moved, consented by her erstwhile residents of three decades and unanimously recommended that she preside over the representatives' meetings of the big apartment complex, said to Dano, "The union members are in the way. Mr. Wang, escort me to the conference room of the residents' representatives, will you please?" "I'm sure I will, Mrs. Elderly!"
Her apartment house was on the 12th floor, situated on the southern sidewalk side Her rooms were aptly heated for the aged woman, which was so contrasting with the Siberian cold of the northern tip of the blocks, the 23rd to the 26th. Her rooms were simply furnished and on the wall closet mounted on the kitchen sink were tablewares neatly arranged.
"This is Mrs. History of Eunma, who has been living since the establishment of this apartment building," a resident representative once introduced Mrs. Elderly to Dano. She was tall, a little too tall, with her shoulders not stooped a little bit for her age, and slender, of course. "Her hobby is horticulture," the representative explained to Dano. She was leading a single clean life with the domestic aid of a middle-aged daughter. All assortments of flowers and plants filled her veranda garden.
Mounting an elevator and heading down the ground, Mrs. Elderly told Dano not to have an argument or a fistfight with the union people. "Be patient," she said. Getting near the management office, Dano found himself holding the old woman by the hand and the union people gathered in groups on both sides of the path they were to pass. "Where're you going," a union guy challenged. "Do ya have the right to ask such a question and do we have any obligation to answer?" Dano challenged back. "We have some things to talk with the representatives," Mrs. Elderly also defied them.
--------------------
In the midst of the clamour of the marching union members, and in the midst of the din of the sirens from the police cars which used to show up for calls of the repeated clashes between the management folks and the residents, Congressman Long of the district, whose office had been situated on the uphill overlooking Eunma, did not pop up his head. Dano was wondering whether Congressman Long had been pondering over his status only as a representative of the people, but not of the Gangnam people to which Eunma had belonged.
The geomantic energy of the yin might have prevailed. It was cold in winter and hot in summer. On top of the seasonal meteorological extremities, there were leaks. To cite a mode of speaking from the movie The United States President, leaks and nervousness was the problem. Naturally the major effect of the obsolete apartment buildings of three decades was leaks. A few days after the first-floor household ajumma complained about a leak from the room ceiling, there used to be a leak from the 2nd-floor ceiling, and vice versa.
The landlady of Dano and Tschai's rented apartment was Mrs. Kong in Pohang. Everytime there was a leak responsible to the owner of the 2nd floor house, Dano placed a long-distance call to Mrs. Kong to inform her of the water accident. He then hit the road for the prowl for town plumbers. To guide the plumber to the place of the leak and let him give the price for the plumbing job was Dano's homework. Then watching him fix the leak and after the work done, he paid the bill.
It wasn't a haunted house or something. It was merely hot and cold, situated at the tip of the northern west and, like an old dike, the old apartment house was leaking. Of the three sons of Dano's, Tai, Hua, and Kyo, Kyo had seen a spirit at his room on the night of the move.
The weather had been summer's in the middle of June. "I've seen a white human shape at the room, looking down at me," Kyo told his father Dano with pensive calm. Dano, feeling an onslaught of cold chill on his spine, didn't interrogate further on how it was like and what impression he had gotten. But inwardly he was praising his son's composure that he hadn't shrieked, and not made a scene, either.
"The world is replete with spiteful spirits," a local religious sect says. Dano had a belief in the theory but had a disbelief in their powers. Dano doubted that they were ubiquitous, that is, Dano suspected that they would have to reside at cold swamps, in deserted remote houses and at rainy grave sites. So Dano had once reclined on a roadside grave mound in the mountain hill around the midnight, which had turned out to be a very cozy place.
It was a great experience that Kyo, his third son, had spotted in his room "a strange white human shape." Dano was wondering why the being of the hinterland, that is, a spirit of the netherworld, had been left in the cramped and reinforced concrete wall, scaring the new resident. He was also wondering whether Mrs. Kong family had decided to vacate their house for the time being to a bridge family, which would have to encounter the ghost and get away with him--exorcise or not.
Obsession might have caused spirits, if any, to be lingering in the dreary patio of the urban living spaces. Malcontent might have been another cause that might be restraining him or her. Might have died from unrequited love. Might have not had an opportunity of consummation. A knowledgeable saying goes that cities have tons of malcontents.
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Months passed. The general atmosphere changed. Although patrol cars from time to time blared in and out of Eunma, militant posters of the union, which were hanging at major sites of the apartment complex, were torn down. Representatives, fleeing the fearful threats of the head-banded union members, sheepishly gathered to prepare for the litigation for the change of the management body.
Dano tussled with the union members but the tussles did not develop into fist fights. Dano saw to it that he would not be hauled away to the police box or something. But he was hauled more often than not off to eerie places by indescript human shapes or something. He was wondering why they were not resting at night, instead of disturbing his peace. He was lost often, led astray through thorn bushes, and after being awoken, he was angry at the previous night's abuses.
Has there been such weird terminology 'gweejeob' 鬼接, which would be loosely translated into "an intercourse with a spirit," or something. No, it couldn't be an apt term. He was forcefully laid. No, he was literally raped, kept in the dark and in powerlessness, by an uncanny malcontented female ghost. Why couldn't he be the master of his own body and soul and repel the evil spirit with one spank and yell?
Awoken, he was enraged with the condition he was forced to be put in, touched and attracted to an indescript force and indescribable heat, and clamped shut, and abused, with his bodily essence erupted. He was liberally violated with impunity and belatedly determined to seek and ferret out the one and throw it into the fire of hell which had done him insult after he will have been dead.
On the very afternoon of Dano's sexual abuse, the ceiling of Room 4, or Dano's third son Kyo's room ceiling collapsed and there were sudden bucketful downpours of water onto the room, which inundated the whole floors. A domestic catastrophe in 30 years' life in Seoul. Done out of the blue. There were yells up to the third floor neighbor. "What's all this about?" A male plumber hurried down the stairs and popped his head into the floor room and said. "It was all my fault. I mishandled the part of the water pipe..." Dano's sheepish interpretation was that the goddamned bitch had had a great belated ejaculation.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A Flintman's Recollections
32
A Flintman in the Era of the Internet, 2000~2003
“오늘 아침 보(洑)나오소!” onul achim bo naoso! "People, come out for dike works this morning!" The town crier had cried his lung out, standing on the top of the background hill. to get people together. Then the adult men villagers, after having had breakfast, had come out to work on the dikes taking shovels and picks, building the dikes, improving them and managing them. At that time Dano's father at Sun Valley had struck a flint to make a fire. The letter carriers had run the wilderness, gotten over the mountain hills, and crossed the stream rivers. The newspaper, carried by a postman three times a week, had given a great joy. And from time to time, it was thrilling when, manuscripts, which had been written on paper by pencil, sent to the newspaper company and through the pruning works of the editor, ran on the newspaper's Letters to the Editor section. Really thrilling.
The onset of the Internet, which had been made possible around the end of the 1990s in the Korean society, needed a new mindset of adaptation into and behavior modification for a new society. But the Internet slammed its way so suddenly into the country that it was unprepared and untrained, which inescapably resulted in conflicts among the community members. The medias, or, the press in general, did not set up paradigms of roles toward their users. The users, too, did not train themselves on the relationships toward the medias and the mutual users.
Dano had hassles on the online message boards of the medias, especially in the initiation period of the Internet, with the other members over the uses of the online terms. Dano tried to convince the other members of the so-called bulletin boards that they were there to "post". They were not supposed to "write" because they were not writers in the exact sense of the word, and because they were not the writers who belonged to the specific writers' association, either. They were not supposed to "read" because the online message boards were not libraries, or something. They were there to "debate." Dano turned out to be, for a long period of time, the butt of ridicule and criticism to the vernacular Koreans.
Dano did not "write" because he was not a writer who had been registered with any writers' union or something, and granted that he had been one, when he was scribbling something down on an online bulletin board in ways by which with the consonants and vowels of the local language were combined, he was composing messages, not writing.
He thought aloud that he, and the others as well, had to recognize the difference, that is, the difference of the mode of speaking. Dano marveled as a "flintman" at the rapidity with which what he had scribbled down on his desktop monitor was immediately published on the online message boards of the medias which might be hundreds or thousands of miles away by one clicking of the mouse. Courtesy of the venerable Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Lee Chan Jin.
The medias of Korea were trapped, from the cybernetic start, in the triviality of provincialism and specificity of ideologies. One of those aspects was that they began to record the viewerships by number of every post on their message boards, from which all the plagues originated. What had petrified Lot's Wife also turned the medias of Korea and their users into turmoil. A really self-incurred disaster. The otherwise innocuous curiosity, combined with provincialism and leftist-leaning extremism, transformed the Internet sites into the hell of hatred and curse.
The craze for the dominance of message board viewerships spurred the competition among the posters themselves. It could be figuratively said that dominant viewerships were like fashion. That is, the more numbers in the recorded viewers of the post in question could be compared to a pretty woman in Prada fashion. Problem was that "devils tended to wear Pradas"
Just like the women in fashion clothes are looked upon in wonder, the online members with huge viewership records were looked upon in awe. That's where the members of the online message boards began to be attracted to numbers. That's why the so-called computer nerds or geeks were from the earliest tinkering with computer buttons on the toolbar of the monitor.
The people, taking after the attributes of the nation, divided by ideologies into two different sovereign entities, tended to take positions on everything, which developed into sides. People took sides. They learned to take sides before learning to think together, work together, and live together. The medias took sides, too, and the audiences tended to be clustered under the umbrellas of the favorite medias.
Hatred was organized, too. People learned to hate medias before they learned to love, to be enlightened by, and to use them in good ways. The ideology of hatred had been created by militant ideologues; Slogans and pamphlets were scattered; Demagogues were rampant. A specific newspaper was pinpointed for destruction by hostile forces.
The Morning Calm Daily was just the one. On what counts? On the charges of benefiting the Japanese empire by extolling the Emperor of Japan. Though the newspaper media had once or twice run the pro-Japanese articles and editorials during the colonization period (1919~1945), it had greatly contributed to the enlightenment of the people nevertheless.
The flag-bearer and mastermind of the anti-Morning Calm Daily was Mr. Quon. Quon, who might have been in his early forties, was rumored to come from foreign studies, having his lecturer's post at several third-ranking colleges. He was reputed to be wielding the acerbic pen, who had no hesitation in blurting satirical comments on all the gamut of topics personal to public. Quon had virtually settled on the online message board of the Morning Calm Daily mainly during the night hours and posted pointed messages deriding the media family and their past practices. Problem One was that he was recording huge viewerships of 3,000 to 4,ooo per post, whereas commonplace posters like Dano recorded two-digit viewerships. Problem Two was that the media was powerless as to the public hacker, or heckler. Problem Three was he was having "enormous" following, which turned out destructive: The stoppage of newspaper subscriptions increased, such as they were.
Four-digit viewership numbers were a terror in themselves. Quon's messages full of mockeries, slanders, revilement, and derisions seemed to undermine the ramparts of the media and its family to a great extent. Dano questioned the media's wisdom of no response: why didn't they do anything to keep the devil from running wild? At one instant, the media appeared to let Quon run amok, by which the online message board of the media could get packed with cyber crowds. The media deliberately whetted their impulse to curse and attack a target media online. Nevertheless, could it be justified that one part of the population monopolized morals of society, and thereby lynch the other part with impunity? Wasn't it a kind of popular court? Was it possible that the one part of the population was absolutely right and the rest was totally wrong?
Above all things, Dano was wondering whether a certain member of society could be excused in violating the others' human rights under the pretext that he was "assigned" to correct and punish the 70-year-old media mistake of the flattery toward the Japanese Emperor. Dano thought such historical mistakes should be judged and punished by the state only, but not by a specific person or a group of persons. Dano also thought that the statute of limitations should strictly be applied to the history court. The judgement of seditionary and perfidious acts of the pro-Japanese inclination by persons or organs, if any, should have been done immediately after the Liberation of 1945. The then Syngman Lee government had decided to close the deal. It had been an open-and-shut case because of all circumstantial reasons within and without.
You can envision, of course, a speckless sky, but it hardly exists, and if it does, it exists only for a short while. You can't imagine a river bed without mud. Not only irises but also thorn bushes are populated in a mountain valley. You can't live in a perfect society with perfect people. That would be a hallucination at best, a deceit at worst.
That will be an impossible dream. Nevertheless, you can refer to North Korea that has become "perfect" after all that purge and liquidation of its people for the sake of socialist experimentation for the past 60 years. But it was a distilled nation that the ordinary people couldn't live just like fish can't live in distilled water.
The "distilled nation" of course indicated the one shorn of "the anti-revolutionary elements" who had been speckled with the perfidious pro-Japanese past. The dead Kim Il Sung and his Labor Party had created such a nation at last through the brutal purges, merciless self-criticisms and persistent "political studies." They named the state DPRK, or Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Was it really a democratic state? Bullshit. It was a hoax. Was it a republic? A republic Kim Jong Il's ass. How do you call the entity a republic that had been inherited by Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il? Was it a popular country, that is, the country "of the people, by the people, and for the people"?
An utter nonsense because the people of North Korea have had no rights even to move their place to live. In Pyongyang live only the privileged class. The dead Kim Il Sung and his clique had brought out their own metamorphosis of a nation through the great fuss of "past liquidation": A really unexpected consequence, or a premeditated result.
-------------------
The attempt at the "past liquidation," which had been masterminded by the then ruling party of South Korea Yollin Uridang, loosely translated as The Open Pen Party, and supported by the leftist radicals, had to be thwarted. Why? Because it could assuredly have incurred the unexpected consequence, or the premeditated result of South Korea's communization. To elaborate, the complete pursuit of the liquidation would have to dismantle the bureaucracy and wreck the industries, from which the anarchistic utter chaos would ensue, which would provide the basis for the proletariat dictatorships led by the labor class.
Why? The leftist radicals would lead such an anti-capitalistic atmosphere, in which the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966~1974) had run wild, that the people in the hierarchy ladder of Korean society wouldn't go unharmed. Would Dano, the first son of coal miner Toung Doung in the Mitsubishi Company go unharmed? He would, but Dano himself found his father blamable just like Lee so and so, the son of a prosecutor in the Imperial Japan because Dano's father had contributed to the wartime logistics of the colonial Japan.
----------------
Dano sensed a conspiracy of some sort. The Sherlock Holmes in Dano presupposed some backup forces involved in manipulating huge Quon's post viewerships. So he appealed one day to Quon's invisible supporters to blow a whistle on dirty ways of Quon's to magnify the numbers of his own post viewerships. Coded words would do. The very next day an informant showed up on the message board of the Morning Calm Daily who snitched on Quon's evil doings in some coded words, such as they were.
The crux of the snitch's charges was that Quon was abusing "the post of a lecturer" at Shangrilla College so that he used his students in order to inflate the viewership numbers of his own post. He taught art history at the college. He was not punctual. He used to be late for class lecture. He was not driving because he was an environmentalist. So saying he smoked at class for a while, blurting out a biting jest or two targeting the government or the MCD and inciting his students to go trample down the Stars and Stripes at the college gate.
Then he told his poor class audiences to click press the anti-MCD messages he used to post at night to pop up the viewership numbers, brandishing his lecture notebook, and threatening to let them "wear pistols" if the results were not satisfactory. In this case the coded expressions "to wear pistols" were interpreted to mean that the students were threatened by their lecturer Quon to get flunked if the post failed to attain 3,ooo or more viewership records.
Quon's online terrorisms were allegedly reported even to be financed by a shady organ which could be loosely designated as the Culture and Arts Promotion Foundation. How much? The money amounted to no less than 380,000 dollars. Taking advantage of the online encounter with him at night, Dano questioned the wisdom of his taking such huge money. Dano chided him about the illegality of taking money and doing the proxy work of libel on an organized and persistent basis. The online terrorist equivocated by saying that political parties also receive government subsidies from the Central Election Committee, or something.
"Are you a national agency?" Dano snapped, saying that his behaviors violate the Lawyers' Act or something. Dano also made a mockery of his pro-Japanese inclinations, pointing to a weird reality that he was living with a Japanese woman. Can there be a more Japanese-prone behavior than that of Quon who took a Japanese woman as wife. Quon "the judge of the era" was more often than not talking to his Japanese father-in-law in Tokyo, "Moshi moshi..." (Hello?) His international telephone line was busy.
A Flintman in the Era of the Internet, 2000~2003
“오늘 아침 보(洑)나오소!” onul achim bo naoso! "People, come out for dike works this morning!" The town crier had cried his lung out, standing on the top of the background hill. to get people together. Then the adult men villagers, after having had breakfast, had come out to work on the dikes taking shovels and picks, building the dikes, improving them and managing them. At that time Dano's father at Sun Valley had struck a flint to make a fire. The letter carriers had run the wilderness, gotten over the mountain hills, and crossed the stream rivers. The newspaper, carried by a postman three times a week, had given a great joy. And from time to time, it was thrilling when, manuscripts, which had been written on paper by pencil, sent to the newspaper company and through the pruning works of the editor, ran on the newspaper's Letters to the Editor section. Really thrilling.
The onset of the Internet, which had been made possible around the end of the 1990s in the Korean society, needed a new mindset of adaptation into and behavior modification for a new society. But the Internet slammed its way so suddenly into the country that it was unprepared and untrained, which inescapably resulted in conflicts among the community members. The medias, or, the press in general, did not set up paradigms of roles toward their users. The users, too, did not train themselves on the relationships toward the medias and the mutual users.
Dano had hassles on the online message boards of the medias, especially in the initiation period of the Internet, with the other members over the uses of the online terms. Dano tried to convince the other members of the so-called bulletin boards that they were there to "post". They were not supposed to "write" because they were not writers in the exact sense of the word, and because they were not the writers who belonged to the specific writers' association, either. They were not supposed to "read" because the online message boards were not libraries, or something. They were there to "debate." Dano turned out to be, for a long period of time, the butt of ridicule and criticism to the vernacular Koreans.
Dano did not "write" because he was not a writer who had been registered with any writers' union or something, and granted that he had been one, when he was scribbling something down on an online bulletin board in ways by which with the consonants and vowels of the local language were combined, he was composing messages, not writing.
He thought aloud that he, and the others as well, had to recognize the difference, that is, the difference of the mode of speaking. Dano marveled as a "flintman" at the rapidity with which what he had scribbled down on his desktop monitor was immediately published on the online message boards of the medias which might be hundreds or thousands of miles away by one clicking of the mouse. Courtesy of the venerable Mr. Bill Gates and Mr. Lee Chan Jin.
The medias of Korea were trapped, from the cybernetic start, in the triviality of provincialism and specificity of ideologies. One of those aspects was that they began to record the viewerships by number of every post on their message boards, from which all the plagues originated. What had petrified Lot's Wife also turned the medias of Korea and their users into turmoil. A really self-incurred disaster. The otherwise innocuous curiosity, combined with provincialism and leftist-leaning extremism, transformed the Internet sites into the hell of hatred and curse.
The craze for the dominance of message board viewerships spurred the competition among the posters themselves. It could be figuratively said that dominant viewerships were like fashion. That is, the more numbers in the recorded viewers of the post in question could be compared to a pretty woman in Prada fashion. Problem was that "devils tended to wear Pradas"
Just like the women in fashion clothes are looked upon in wonder, the online members with huge viewership records were looked upon in awe. That's where the members of the online message boards began to be attracted to numbers. That's why the so-called computer nerds or geeks were from the earliest tinkering with computer buttons on the toolbar of the monitor.
The people, taking after the attributes of the nation, divided by ideologies into two different sovereign entities, tended to take positions on everything, which developed into sides. People took sides. They learned to take sides before learning to think together, work together, and live together. The medias took sides, too, and the audiences tended to be clustered under the umbrellas of the favorite medias.
Hatred was organized, too. People learned to hate medias before they learned to love, to be enlightened by, and to use them in good ways. The ideology of hatred had been created by militant ideologues; Slogans and pamphlets were scattered; Demagogues were rampant. A specific newspaper was pinpointed for destruction by hostile forces.
The Morning Calm Daily was just the one. On what counts? On the charges of benefiting the Japanese empire by extolling the Emperor of Japan. Though the newspaper media had once or twice run the pro-Japanese articles and editorials during the colonization period (1919~1945), it had greatly contributed to the enlightenment of the people nevertheless.
The flag-bearer and mastermind of the anti-Morning Calm Daily was Mr. Quon. Quon, who might have been in his early forties, was rumored to come from foreign studies, having his lecturer's post at several third-ranking colleges. He was reputed to be wielding the acerbic pen, who had no hesitation in blurting satirical comments on all the gamut of topics personal to public. Quon had virtually settled on the online message board of the Morning Calm Daily mainly during the night hours and posted pointed messages deriding the media family and their past practices. Problem One was that he was recording huge viewerships of 3,000 to 4,ooo per post, whereas commonplace posters like Dano recorded two-digit viewerships. Problem Two was that the media was powerless as to the public hacker, or heckler. Problem Three was he was having "enormous" following, which turned out destructive: The stoppage of newspaper subscriptions increased, such as they were.
Four-digit viewership numbers were a terror in themselves. Quon's messages full of mockeries, slanders, revilement, and derisions seemed to undermine the ramparts of the media and its family to a great extent. Dano questioned the media's wisdom of no response: why didn't they do anything to keep the devil from running wild? At one instant, the media appeared to let Quon run amok, by which the online message board of the media could get packed with cyber crowds. The media deliberately whetted their impulse to curse and attack a target media online. Nevertheless, could it be justified that one part of the population monopolized morals of society, and thereby lynch the other part with impunity? Wasn't it a kind of popular court? Was it possible that the one part of the population was absolutely right and the rest was totally wrong?
Above all things, Dano was wondering whether a certain member of society could be excused in violating the others' human rights under the pretext that he was "assigned" to correct and punish the 70-year-old media mistake of the flattery toward the Japanese Emperor. Dano thought such historical mistakes should be judged and punished by the state only, but not by a specific person or a group of persons. Dano also thought that the statute of limitations should strictly be applied to the history court. The judgement of seditionary and perfidious acts of the pro-Japanese inclination by persons or organs, if any, should have been done immediately after the Liberation of 1945. The then Syngman Lee government had decided to close the deal. It had been an open-and-shut case because of all circumstantial reasons within and without.
You can envision, of course, a speckless sky, but it hardly exists, and if it does, it exists only for a short while. You can't imagine a river bed without mud. Not only irises but also thorn bushes are populated in a mountain valley. You can't live in a perfect society with perfect people. That would be a hallucination at best, a deceit at worst.
That will be an impossible dream. Nevertheless, you can refer to North Korea that has become "perfect" after all that purge and liquidation of its people for the sake of socialist experimentation for the past 60 years. But it was a distilled nation that the ordinary people couldn't live just like fish can't live in distilled water.
The "distilled nation" of course indicated the one shorn of "the anti-revolutionary elements" who had been speckled with the perfidious pro-Japanese past. The dead Kim Il Sung and his Labor Party had created such a nation at last through the brutal purges, merciless self-criticisms and persistent "political studies." They named the state DPRK, or Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Was it really a democratic state? Bullshit. It was a hoax. Was it a republic? A republic Kim Jong Il's ass. How do you call the entity a republic that had been inherited by Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il? Was it a popular country, that is, the country "of the people, by the people, and for the people"?
An utter nonsense because the people of North Korea have had no rights even to move their place to live. In Pyongyang live only the privileged class. The dead Kim Il Sung and his clique had brought out their own metamorphosis of a nation through the great fuss of "past liquidation": A really unexpected consequence, or a premeditated result.
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The attempt at the "past liquidation," which had been masterminded by the then ruling party of South Korea Yollin Uridang, loosely translated as The Open Pen Party, and supported by the leftist radicals, had to be thwarted. Why? Because it could assuredly have incurred the unexpected consequence, or the premeditated result of South Korea's communization. To elaborate, the complete pursuit of the liquidation would have to dismantle the bureaucracy and wreck the industries, from which the anarchistic utter chaos would ensue, which would provide the basis for the proletariat dictatorships led by the labor class.
Why? The leftist radicals would lead such an anti-capitalistic atmosphere, in which the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966~1974) had run wild, that the people in the hierarchy ladder of Korean society wouldn't go unharmed. Would Dano, the first son of coal miner Toung Doung in the Mitsubishi Company go unharmed? He would, but Dano himself found his father blamable just like Lee so and so, the son of a prosecutor in the Imperial Japan because Dano's father had contributed to the wartime logistics of the colonial Japan.
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Dano sensed a conspiracy of some sort. The Sherlock Holmes in Dano presupposed some backup forces involved in manipulating huge Quon's post viewerships. So he appealed one day to Quon's invisible supporters to blow a whistle on dirty ways of Quon's to magnify the numbers of his own post viewerships. Coded words would do. The very next day an informant showed up on the message board of the Morning Calm Daily who snitched on Quon's evil doings in some coded words, such as they were.
The crux of the snitch's charges was that Quon was abusing "the post of a lecturer" at Shangrilla College so that he used his students in order to inflate the viewership numbers of his own post. He taught art history at the college. He was not punctual. He used to be late for class lecture. He was not driving because he was an environmentalist. So saying he smoked at class for a while, blurting out a biting jest or two targeting the government or the MCD and inciting his students to go trample down the Stars and Stripes at the college gate.
Then he told his poor class audiences to click press the anti-MCD messages he used to post at night to pop up the viewership numbers, brandishing his lecture notebook, and threatening to let them "wear pistols" if the results were not satisfactory. In this case the coded expressions "to wear pistols" were interpreted to mean that the students were threatened by their lecturer Quon to get flunked if the post failed to attain 3,ooo or more viewership records.
Quon's online terrorisms were allegedly reported even to be financed by a shady organ which could be loosely designated as the Culture and Arts Promotion Foundation. How much? The money amounted to no less than 380,000 dollars. Taking advantage of the online encounter with him at night, Dano questioned the wisdom of his taking such huge money. Dano chided him about the illegality of taking money and doing the proxy work of libel on an organized and persistent basis. The online terrorist equivocated by saying that political parties also receive government subsidies from the Central Election Committee, or something.
"Are you a national agency?" Dano snapped, saying that his behaviors violate the Lawyers' Act or something. Dano also made a mockery of his pro-Japanese inclinations, pointing to a weird reality that he was living with a Japanese woman. Can there be a more Japanese-prone behavior than that of Quon who took a Japanese woman as wife. Quon "the judge of the era" was more often than not talking to his Japanese father-in-law in Tokyo, "Moshi moshi..." (Hello?) His international telephone line was busy.
Miss Pigeon
31
The Story of Miss Pigeon, 1995
Awakening didn't cry. On her face, she didn't show tears nor made a crying sound. But Dano knew that she was also crying. Dano knew she was all tears. That is, she was crying with all her face. All face muscles of hers were crying. It seemed, to Dano, as if minute particles of tears had been oozing out of her muscles. On top of all that, Awakening did all the filial piety she had not done since she had left her mundane father, and she did more than the rest of the family had done through their lives.
Awakening did, on behalf of all her secular family, did observe 49-day condolence prayers at Eunhaesa Temple, Youngcheon. The prayer ritual, which was held after all the secular funeral procedures had been done, was followed by more sophisticated procedures which needed patience.
Toung Doung's funeral at his worldly house took five days from start to finish. Because he was not pronounced dead in a hospital bed, his dead body didn't have to be frozen away in a dark hospital freezer. It was on the first half of April and the air was so aptly cool that he could also get away with lying through the condolence visits in the room, behind folding screens and in a cozy coffin with covers, though.
The bereaving relatives also took advantage of the geographical advantage of the rustic community. They put up tents in the garden orchard and treated the visitors who had just left the condolence room with meals, meats and drinks. The condolence visitors from the neighborly rustic towns made ant lines all through the funeral period, paying tributes to his life of honesty, integrity and diligence.
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Whereas the rest of Toung Doung's offspring got more involved in the after-death ritual and the management of the grave mound, Dano got preoccupied with the "reconciliation and reunion with his father." Illczin planted lawns and watered them, and manicured them. Divinist Odagaga had once told Dano that he had been able to "meet" his deceased father.
"How is it possible for one to meet one's parents again after death? Dano had once asked him. Mr. Odagaga had only beamed. Dano once had gotten a wind, at around the time when his father Toung Doung had been digging the family well, from a celestial tip (from cerebral images during sleep) that his father would work as a site supervisor of the Celestial Work Place. So his dead father might not have been in the grave; His father might have been nowhere, or he might have been everywhere.
Dano's dead father once or twice might have "come" to his first son's Mokdong Apartment, but he might have been disappointed at what he had seen. One of his nephews, or, Illczin's second son said in the presence of the relatives that "I saw grandfather in white durumaggi, (*Korean man's traditional garment which is loosely outfitted) one day at dawn. Innocent young men might have been able to have the opportunity of seeing the dead spirits. Illczin once asserted that he had seen white ghosts dancing on the rooftop of the water mill plant. Dano's third son Kyo (First, Tai; Second, Hua) would later admit to spotting "the white human shape" at his room of Eunma Apartment Complex at the very night of the move.
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In secular financial terms, his wife's accessory store was doing well while Dano's book copies were not profitable. His new book on "the conversion approach" as well as his old ones only got the contract money of about 500 dollars. There had been no more phones, faxes, emails or something from the publishing houses. There always had. The scant letters of recognition and praise for Dano's principle of the interpretation of the English prose showed that his readers were scattered yet unorganized.
There was an intermission type of episode in Dano's journey from savagery to civilization: From a flint man to an online netizen. It was just like an experiment, accidentally made, though, with which to verify the efficacy of communication with an animal species classified as avian class. Say, a ship was in distress, with sails broken and blizzards blowing. A poor creature, shaken by terror, starved and frozen, sneaked into a Mokdong apartment house of Dano's, seeking haven. Spotting a small pigeon, which had flown in, on a snowy day, from an open glass window on the veranda of the 8th floor, Dano approached him with a great care, with a sound of cooing and a gesture of feeding. A wet pigeon walked toward him with a grudging and suspicious gait. Returning from the Daechi-dong store at eleven o'clock at night, Tschai, sighting a strange visitor, expressed dismay at Dano's idea of keeping it. After some exchanges, she O.K.ed the guest's conditional stay: Come spring, it will have to leave.
The avian guest turned out odd. As if to have a right to do so, the busy body who would later be named Goosoon issued a noisy wake-up call at five in the morning. It was not the same kind of a severe din made when cicadas alarmed their villagers. Tschai showed irritation at the noise and the droppings, of all the nuisances. She had some knowledge of the avian droppings. She said the droppings of the pigeons were the most virulent in that they contaminated and eroded soil, and even the concrete pavement. Like the rest of the other world cities, Seoul had the enormous pigeon population around the city, mostly around the subway stations and city parks. Tschai was spreading the waste papers wide under the pigeon's nest.
What the uninvited guest irked the hostess more than the excretion of it was that it expressed its overt emotion toward Dano and Tschai too obviously. That is, it expressed familiarity toward Dano to an exhilarating degree whereas it revealed hostility toward Tschai to the extent that she pouted. It cooed rhythmically and literally necked Dano whereas it pecked at Tschai's hands fiercely.
Once a provisional lodging was permitted to the poor pigeon, Tschai suggested that they name the maverick. She wanted to know first how a biedulggi is termed in Chinese words. As Dano said 'Goo' (鳩), she named it Goosoon (鳩順) by adding a feminine suffix 'soon'. On what grounds she judged the small avian invader a female but not a male? Because the animal liked Dano so much.
Goosoon liked to be inside the room. Very presumptuous. When Dano was noticed to be moving inside the room she approached the glass window and pecked at it with its bill and asked to be let in. Dano was wondering whether it was wise of him to destroy the border between the animal however small, and a human, such as it is. In fact, millions of pets had been allowed to be inside the human living quarters. Once let in, Goosoon liked to sit beside Dano, and appeared flattering when Dano was reading, and obsequious when typing or writing something. She didn't eat much. Goosoon didn't get scandalized by rapacity. She ate a minimal amount of grain and drank a few drops of water. She liked to bathe, say, in a small plastic water basin. Dano dried her after that and let her warm herself on the ondol room floor.
Goosoon liked to be touched. Dano liked to keep company with her by keeping her inside the parka or something during the early morning stroll. She seemed to enjoy the warmth there inside. Getting to the Mokdong Park, Dano used to let go of him and walk freely on the park. She was flying here and landing there and seemed to enjoy watching the folks stroll and play shuttlecocks. At times she disappeared in the peer throng. Then Dano called her out "Hey, Goosoon," then she came flying to him. When going back home Dano opted to go first, saying "Goosoon, I'm coming home." When coming back home Dano found her already in her nest.
On the wee small hours of an early spring, Goosoon returned with mud all over her and exhausted. Dano wondered what had happened to her. Was she violated? Or raped or something? She did not croon nor alert in the morning. The next time he knew Goosoon appeared to be incubating eggs or something. Once she alighted on the nest, she did not come down unless when she was sipping some liquids. She hardly touched grains. Dano and Tschai discovered that there were two small eggs in there. Tschai was so touched by her sincerity that she gave a pledge that if she were to hatch eggs into kid birds she would allow them to stay for an extended period of time.
When three weeks or so were up, Dano found Goosoon got agitated: The eggs remained as it had been. It was a sad Sunday afternoon. The weather was warm; The afternoon sun ray of spring was shining through the glass window. All were gathered there: the Dano-Tschai couple and the poor Goosoon. Dano sought an expert opinion. A human voice from the receiver of a related authority advised Dano that he shake the eggs. "If you found the eggs in a liquid state, that means it would not be hatched," he said. Dano tiptoed and took the eggs and calmly shook them. They were full of liquid. Before he knew, just out of the blue Tschai shouted with rage: "What a useless brazen creature not to bear her young!" Her shouts would have sounded thunderous to the ears of the poor creature. Goosoon went flying out never to return.
The Story of Miss Pigeon, 1995
Awakening didn't cry. On her face, she didn't show tears nor made a crying sound. But Dano knew that she was also crying. Dano knew she was all tears. That is, she was crying with all her face. All face muscles of hers were crying. It seemed, to Dano, as if minute particles of tears had been oozing out of her muscles. On top of all that, Awakening did all the filial piety she had not done since she had left her mundane father, and she did more than the rest of the family had done through their lives.
Awakening did, on behalf of all her secular family, did observe 49-day condolence prayers at Eunhaesa Temple, Youngcheon. The prayer ritual, which was held after all the secular funeral procedures had been done, was followed by more sophisticated procedures which needed patience.
Toung Doung's funeral at his worldly house took five days from start to finish. Because he was not pronounced dead in a hospital bed, his dead body didn't have to be frozen away in a dark hospital freezer. It was on the first half of April and the air was so aptly cool that he could also get away with lying through the condolence visits in the room, behind folding screens and in a cozy coffin with covers, though.
The bereaving relatives also took advantage of the geographical advantage of the rustic community. They put up tents in the garden orchard and treated the visitors who had just left the condolence room with meals, meats and drinks. The condolence visitors from the neighborly rustic towns made ant lines all through the funeral period, paying tributes to his life of honesty, integrity and diligence.
-------------------
Whereas the rest of Toung Doung's offspring got more involved in the after-death ritual and the management of the grave mound, Dano got preoccupied with the "reconciliation and reunion with his father." Illczin planted lawns and watered them, and manicured them. Divinist Odagaga had once told Dano that he had been able to "meet" his deceased father.
"How is it possible for one to meet one's parents again after death? Dano had once asked him. Mr. Odagaga had only beamed. Dano once had gotten a wind, at around the time when his father Toung Doung had been digging the family well, from a celestial tip (from cerebral images during sleep) that his father would work as a site supervisor of the Celestial Work Place. So his dead father might not have been in the grave; His father might have been nowhere, or he might have been everywhere.
Dano's dead father once or twice might have "come" to his first son's Mokdong Apartment, but he might have been disappointed at what he had seen. One of his nephews, or, Illczin's second son said in the presence of the relatives that "I saw grandfather in white durumaggi, (*Korean man's traditional garment which is loosely outfitted) one day at dawn. Innocent young men might have been able to have the opportunity of seeing the dead spirits. Illczin once asserted that he had seen white ghosts dancing on the rooftop of the water mill plant. Dano's third son Kyo (First, Tai; Second, Hua) would later admit to spotting "the white human shape" at his room of Eunma Apartment Complex at the very night of the move.
-------------------
In secular financial terms, his wife's accessory store was doing well while Dano's book copies were not profitable. His new book on "the conversion approach" as well as his old ones only got the contract money of about 500 dollars. There had been no more phones, faxes, emails or something from the publishing houses. There always had. The scant letters of recognition and praise for Dano's principle of the interpretation of the English prose showed that his readers were scattered yet unorganized.
There was an intermission type of episode in Dano's journey from savagery to civilization: From a flint man to an online netizen. It was just like an experiment, accidentally made, though, with which to verify the efficacy of communication with an animal species classified as avian class. Say, a ship was in distress, with sails broken and blizzards blowing. A poor creature, shaken by terror, starved and frozen, sneaked into a Mokdong apartment house of Dano's, seeking haven. Spotting a small pigeon, which had flown in, on a snowy day, from an open glass window on the veranda of the 8th floor, Dano approached him with a great care, with a sound of cooing and a gesture of feeding. A wet pigeon walked toward him with a grudging and suspicious gait. Returning from the Daechi-dong store at eleven o'clock at night, Tschai, sighting a strange visitor, expressed dismay at Dano's idea of keeping it. After some exchanges, she O.K.ed the guest's conditional stay: Come spring, it will have to leave.
The avian guest turned out odd. As if to have a right to do so, the busy body who would later be named Goosoon issued a noisy wake-up call at five in the morning. It was not the same kind of a severe din made when cicadas alarmed their villagers. Tschai showed irritation at the noise and the droppings, of all the nuisances. She had some knowledge of the avian droppings. She said the droppings of the pigeons were the most virulent in that they contaminated and eroded soil, and even the concrete pavement. Like the rest of the other world cities, Seoul had the enormous pigeon population around the city, mostly around the subway stations and city parks. Tschai was spreading the waste papers wide under the pigeon's nest.
What the uninvited guest irked the hostess more than the excretion of it was that it expressed its overt emotion toward Dano and Tschai too obviously. That is, it expressed familiarity toward Dano to an exhilarating degree whereas it revealed hostility toward Tschai to the extent that she pouted. It cooed rhythmically and literally necked Dano whereas it pecked at Tschai's hands fiercely.
Once a provisional lodging was permitted to the poor pigeon, Tschai suggested that they name the maverick. She wanted to know first how a biedulggi is termed in Chinese words. As Dano said 'Goo' (鳩), she named it Goosoon (鳩順) by adding a feminine suffix 'soon'. On what grounds she judged the small avian invader a female but not a male? Because the animal liked Dano so much.
Goosoon liked to be inside the room. Very presumptuous. When Dano was noticed to be moving inside the room she approached the glass window and pecked at it with its bill and asked to be let in. Dano was wondering whether it was wise of him to destroy the border between the animal however small, and a human, such as it is. In fact, millions of pets had been allowed to be inside the human living quarters. Once let in, Goosoon liked to sit beside Dano, and appeared flattering when Dano was reading, and obsequious when typing or writing something. She didn't eat much. Goosoon didn't get scandalized by rapacity. She ate a minimal amount of grain and drank a few drops of water. She liked to bathe, say, in a small plastic water basin. Dano dried her after that and let her warm herself on the ondol room floor.
Goosoon liked to be touched. Dano liked to keep company with her by keeping her inside the parka or something during the early morning stroll. She seemed to enjoy the warmth there inside. Getting to the Mokdong Park, Dano used to let go of him and walk freely on the park. She was flying here and landing there and seemed to enjoy watching the folks stroll and play shuttlecocks. At times she disappeared in the peer throng. Then Dano called her out "Hey, Goosoon," then she came flying to him. When going back home Dano opted to go first, saying "Goosoon, I'm coming home." When coming back home Dano found her already in her nest.
On the wee small hours of an early spring, Goosoon returned with mud all over her and exhausted. Dano wondered what had happened to her. Was she violated? Or raped or something? She did not croon nor alert in the morning. The next time he knew Goosoon appeared to be incubating eggs or something. Once she alighted on the nest, she did not come down unless when she was sipping some liquids. She hardly touched grains. Dano and Tschai discovered that there were two small eggs in there. Tschai was so touched by her sincerity that she gave a pledge that if she were to hatch eggs into kid birds she would allow them to stay for an extended period of time.
When three weeks or so were up, Dano found Goosoon got agitated: The eggs remained as it had been. It was a sad Sunday afternoon. The weather was warm; The afternoon sun ray of spring was shining through the glass window. All were gathered there: the Dano-Tschai couple and the poor Goosoon. Dano sought an expert opinion. A human voice from the receiver of a related authority advised Dano that he shake the eggs. "If you found the eggs in a liquid state, that means it would not be hatched," he said. Dano tiptoed and took the eggs and calmly shook them. They were full of liquid. Before he knew, just out of the blue Tschai shouted with rage: "What a useless brazen creature not to bear her young!" Her shouts would have sounded thunderous to the ears of the poor creature. Goosoon went flying out never to return.
Reconciliation with Father
30
"Forgive Me, Father!" 1993
Someone or something is oriented toward someone or something. Just like bees are guided by airstream, just like salmon are guided by sea stream, just like ocean cruising needs a compass and a navigator, and just like foreign travellers need maps and tourist guides, do those, who go the faraway place of death, need guides of some sort? Since Dano missed one day of such ritual session the previous day, he prepared himself to take part in that day's morning ritual for the terminally ill parents.
He kept awake through the night for the event. When on daybreak he went up to the ritual building, he found that several applicants for the event had already been there. Dano filled in the application form with Toung Doung's name, age, sex, relation, and address. The presiding monk of the ritual stood six feet with stout build, brilliant eyes and resonant voice.
He later introduced himself as Monk Yonghwa, Dragon Fire. His ritual proceedings took on the mode of a premature report with the King of the Netherworld (the Paradise after death). With all the ritual proceedings of the offerings, bows, mantra chanting done, Monk Dragon Fire gathered Dano and others around and gave some pieces of advice.
The few minutes before and after one's death were very important in that the surviving people would have to take some special heed so that the deceased would not be ambushed in the traps of diversion. Yonghwa said that a person who just died had to go a long hard travel to the Nether World. He compared the journey of a deceased to a climbing, that is, a climbing up a steep hill. He looked at Dano and said, "The bereaving people will have to stop crying for a few minutes and to cheer him up, instead, by whispering to his dying ears, 'Don't be distracted, Father. Go straight, Father!'"
Exiting the portal of Guinsa Temple, Dano was lighthearted. Like a boy on a picnic, Dano was thrilled at his reunion with his father in half a month. The intercity traffic transfers were irritating, and his feet were fidgety on the snail buses. After a five-hour bus ride, he was virtually racing the stairs to the sunny sick room his father had been using. When he got into the room, his father was sitting up, with Illczin and his wife before him, surprised by Dano's sudden appearance.
With an elliptical greeting with only knelt postures and no bows, which meant that one's offspring was not supposed to give deep bows to the gravely ill elderly, Dano threw himself before his father and burst out crying, "It was all my fault, Father!" He kept on crying. He was wrong. He did wrong. He pained him. He hurt him. He begged him to forgive him. Perplexed were all of them present in the room. Toung Doung said weakly with sunken eyes, "Stop crying, son. I was not always right. Don't blame yourself so bitterly!"
How sad it would be that he was forced to decide on a place at which he would be buried. Toung Doung had his intention conveyed to his sons, Dano and Illczin that his burial place should be prepared in a hurry. He had made sure that he would not be buried at a certain hilly site of Sun Valley, Andong-gun, because it was so far away that he wouldn't be able to "see" his children and grandchildren, and even if they could come from time to time, they wouldn't get to the resting house of his.
When mentioning this, Toung Doung indicated his oldest son Dano offhandedly. He said that "a certain fella with a problem of weight" would balk at the idea of the call at his father's place, because it would be a hard job to do, so he would try to greet from far down at the foot of the mountain hill, instead, excusing himself, "You can see me from here, can't you? Please think that your son's showup here at this spot will suffice." So with the aid of a jiguan, a geomancer, who had been arranged by Dano's best friend Mr. Paragon at Euiseong, Dano and Illczin took a sunny low-lying place at a stone's throw from the orchard as his father's resting place.
"This place is better than all the other places," the jiguan had said at the time, "in terms of the peace of the deceased and the prosperity for his descendants, protected by the power of hills surrounding it." The comments of "the judge of the earth" were hollow and useless though, because the place was not his private property on which to lie down and rest but belonged to the county property, so in a considerable time the leaser would have to move to another place or something.
Like an elementary school boy, who dawdles on his vacation homework, Toung Doung appeared to be under pressure. He had his "parting plan" with his family suspended by his wife Boolim's sincere request that he put off the occasion in consideration of his sons' inconveniences. Now his grand reconciliation with the oldest son, who had sought forgiveness over wails, was made. And as if driven by a premonition, his first daughter who, born during Sun Valley days, had turned a Buddhist nun as a young maid by the Buddhist name of Awakening, returned a few days ago to observe and consecrate her secular father's final days on earth.
The date was set for the sad occasion. On the morning of the 15th of March, 1993, by the lunar calendar, Toung Doung said weakly, "It is time to go!" He was as light as a bird. Deprived of nutrition and hydration, he might have weighed less than 40 kilograms. He had emptied every bit of nutritional residue from his system. His eyes were sunken deeper than ever. He looked to be a skeletal type of a body. Some secular provisions had been made. Boolim had made him a clean new clothes. Toung Doung had made no wills except that he had handed down the apple farm of 6,000 pyong which equals about 20,000 square meters to his second son Illczin who had been supporting his parents and doing farm works, with the consent of the other two sons and the approval of inheritor Illczin himself.
Toung Doung climbed into bed which had been elevated on the head. Like almost all the ordinary seculars, he did not grandsit nor grandspeak at his dying moment. He was not a Buddhist believer, either. He was just calmly waiting for the moment. He had been endowed with an extraordinary encounter, a few years ago, with the Grand Buddha, though, which had been made in the middle of the East Sea, of all the places, in front of Naksansa Temple, Gangneung.
The cerebral fantastic scene, which had been developed on a grand scale, had been conveyed later to his immediate brother under him, Toung Young, who had framed it up with its saga: The Grand Buddha, materializing himself in the middle of the East Sea, had opened its grand mouth and solemnly pronounced a wise phrase consisting of seven Chinese words meaning in effect, that "After all the concerted efforts of yours with one clear and clean mind, you can rest assured."
A man was dying and the other surviving families were watching him die. For a long, long time he had been a strong supporter of a small decent family with his steely legs and arms. Now he was lying powerless, left alone with all the others waiting to part with him. He was taking last breath very heavily as Awakening kept reciting the mantra for the dead, pounding the moktagg, a wooden vase sounder. At one moment Awakening pronounced him dead. Dano, who kept standing with the others, felt an awakening chill running his spine. It was around 11 o'clock in the morning, with the April sun racing toward the middle of the sky. The sky fell down.
"Forgive Me, Father!" 1993
Someone or something is oriented toward someone or something. Just like bees are guided by airstream, just like salmon are guided by sea stream, just like ocean cruising needs a compass and a navigator, and just like foreign travellers need maps and tourist guides, do those, who go the faraway place of death, need guides of some sort? Since Dano missed one day of such ritual session the previous day, he prepared himself to take part in that day's morning ritual for the terminally ill parents.
He kept awake through the night for the event. When on daybreak he went up to the ritual building, he found that several applicants for the event had already been there. Dano filled in the application form with Toung Doung's name, age, sex, relation, and address. The presiding monk of the ritual stood six feet with stout build, brilliant eyes and resonant voice.
He later introduced himself as Monk Yonghwa, Dragon Fire. His ritual proceedings took on the mode of a premature report with the King of the Netherworld (the Paradise after death). With all the ritual proceedings of the offerings, bows, mantra chanting done, Monk Dragon Fire gathered Dano and others around and gave some pieces of advice.
The few minutes before and after one's death were very important in that the surviving people would have to take some special heed so that the deceased would not be ambushed in the traps of diversion. Yonghwa said that a person who just died had to go a long hard travel to the Nether World. He compared the journey of a deceased to a climbing, that is, a climbing up a steep hill. He looked at Dano and said, "The bereaving people will have to stop crying for a few minutes and to cheer him up, instead, by whispering to his dying ears, 'Don't be distracted, Father. Go straight, Father!'"
Exiting the portal of Guinsa Temple, Dano was lighthearted. Like a boy on a picnic, Dano was thrilled at his reunion with his father in half a month. The intercity traffic transfers were irritating, and his feet were fidgety on the snail buses. After a five-hour bus ride, he was virtually racing the stairs to the sunny sick room his father had been using. When he got into the room, his father was sitting up, with Illczin and his wife before him, surprised by Dano's sudden appearance.
With an elliptical greeting with only knelt postures and no bows, which meant that one's offspring was not supposed to give deep bows to the gravely ill elderly, Dano threw himself before his father and burst out crying, "It was all my fault, Father!" He kept on crying. He was wrong. He did wrong. He pained him. He hurt him. He begged him to forgive him. Perplexed were all of them present in the room. Toung Doung said weakly with sunken eyes, "Stop crying, son. I was not always right. Don't blame yourself so bitterly!"
How sad it would be that he was forced to decide on a place at which he would be buried. Toung Doung had his intention conveyed to his sons, Dano and Illczin that his burial place should be prepared in a hurry. He had made sure that he would not be buried at a certain hilly site of Sun Valley, Andong-gun, because it was so far away that he wouldn't be able to "see" his children and grandchildren, and even if they could come from time to time, they wouldn't get to the resting house of his.
When mentioning this, Toung Doung indicated his oldest son Dano offhandedly. He said that "a certain fella with a problem of weight" would balk at the idea of the call at his father's place, because it would be a hard job to do, so he would try to greet from far down at the foot of the mountain hill, instead, excusing himself, "You can see me from here, can't you? Please think that your son's showup here at this spot will suffice." So with the aid of a jiguan, a geomancer, who had been arranged by Dano's best friend Mr. Paragon at Euiseong, Dano and Illczin took a sunny low-lying place at a stone's throw from the orchard as his father's resting place.
"This place is better than all the other places," the jiguan had said at the time, "in terms of the peace of the deceased and the prosperity for his descendants, protected by the power of hills surrounding it." The comments of "the judge of the earth" were hollow and useless though, because the place was not his private property on which to lie down and rest but belonged to the county property, so in a considerable time the leaser would have to move to another place or something.
Like an elementary school boy, who dawdles on his vacation homework, Toung Doung appeared to be under pressure. He had his "parting plan" with his family suspended by his wife Boolim's sincere request that he put off the occasion in consideration of his sons' inconveniences. Now his grand reconciliation with the oldest son, who had sought forgiveness over wails, was made. And as if driven by a premonition, his first daughter who, born during Sun Valley days, had turned a Buddhist nun as a young maid by the Buddhist name of Awakening, returned a few days ago to observe and consecrate her secular father's final days on earth.
The date was set for the sad occasion. On the morning of the 15th of March, 1993, by the lunar calendar, Toung Doung said weakly, "It is time to go!" He was as light as a bird. Deprived of nutrition and hydration, he might have weighed less than 40 kilograms. He had emptied every bit of nutritional residue from his system. His eyes were sunken deeper than ever. He looked to be a skeletal type of a body. Some secular provisions had been made. Boolim had made him a clean new clothes. Toung Doung had made no wills except that he had handed down the apple farm of 6,000 pyong which equals about 20,000 square meters to his second son Illczin who had been supporting his parents and doing farm works, with the consent of the other two sons and the approval of inheritor Illczin himself.
Toung Doung climbed into bed which had been elevated on the head. Like almost all the ordinary seculars, he did not grandsit nor grandspeak at his dying moment. He was not a Buddhist believer, either. He was just calmly waiting for the moment. He had been endowed with an extraordinary encounter, a few years ago, with the Grand Buddha, though, which had been made in the middle of the East Sea, of all the places, in front of Naksansa Temple, Gangneung.
The cerebral fantastic scene, which had been developed on a grand scale, had been conveyed later to his immediate brother under him, Toung Young, who had framed it up with its saga: The Grand Buddha, materializing himself in the middle of the East Sea, had opened its grand mouth and solemnly pronounced a wise phrase consisting of seven Chinese words meaning in effect, that "After all the concerted efforts of yours with one clear and clean mind, you can rest assured."
A man was dying and the other surviving families were watching him die. For a long, long time he had been a strong supporter of a small decent family with his steely legs and arms. Now he was lying powerless, left alone with all the others waiting to part with him. He was taking last breath very heavily as Awakening kept reciting the mantra for the dead, pounding the moktagg, a wooden vase sounder. At one moment Awakening pronounced him dead. Dano, who kept standing with the others, felt an awakening chill running his spine. It was around 11 o'clock in the morning, with the April sun racing toward the middle of the sky. The sky fell down.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Prayer for the Sick Father
29
At Guinsa Temple, Danyang, 1992
It was not just the problem of speed but that of absolute quantity. Stepping out of the exam room of Dongguk University and walking down the slopy road toward the Changchung-dong Street, winding up the four-day war with incompetence and inefficiency, Dano felt sorry for her and missing Tschai at the same time. He walked with a hasty pace toward the taxi stand.
As regards Tschai, she had no expectations from husband Dano's belated obsession with a judicial post. That might be a reckless challenge toward the impossible. And that might be greed. She didn't have any idea about her becoming a judge's, or prosecutor's, or lawyer's wife. She was street smart. She was reputed to be tough, so much so that she would be able to plant her own tree roots even in the harsh climate of a desert. She only hoped that her husband would get started as the responsible man and father with a stable job.
Regrettably Dano, as a household owner, did not get settled in a safe place with a stable job, so the household troops could not stop getting mobile. The mastermind of the movement was Tschai, who planned, organized and materialized the movement to Mokdong Apartment complex. The apartment was the first of their own house in the true sense of the word, in 1989, 15 years since they lived in Seoul. All the resources originated from Tschai which financed the move, supported the household, and financed the education of three son children who had gone to higher and lower education facilities.
Tschai got much more troubled by public transit transfers caused by Dano's professional inability, and his father Toung Doung got a cancer onslaught. Tschai could not help but make transit transfers from bus to subway (Mokdong to Mullaedong), from one subway to another subway (transferring from Seoul College of Education Station to Daechi Station of Subway Line No.3). she spent almost four hours on her commuting transits to and from her accessory store at Daechi-dong. Toung Doung's disease, begun with minor ailments, considered as stomach ulcer which had been treated with alternative medicines, developed into cancerous tumors.
Dano wondered at some point and later from time to time when his father had been diagnosed as stomach cancer by Dr. Weird in Kyongseong University Hospital or so, in Seoul what the malignant tumors looked like which had been clinging like leeches. He blandly presumed that the tumors might have initially been stained by coal dust in the deep pit of a Nagasaki coal mine, later adulterated by sweaty knobs of the hard labor during the drought and famine years before the 1950s and then warped into gnarled stressful knots caused by the disobedient Dano and touched eventually by toxic farming chemicals inhaled in the course of apple farming, that is, all the crystalization of the toils, frustrations and stresses.
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Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, reclining on the hospital couch, Toung Doung had his body roughly handled by a resident, an intern and two other young nurses. They might have not noticed the presence of a strange man in his forties because the doctors and nurses had been engrossed in their own pleasant conversations about the joyful experiences of the last summer vacation, and they might not have realized that the elderly patient in his seventies lying before their eyes powerless came from the country. They virtually fiddled with the instruments--a computer monitor and a naessikyong, a gastrointestinal endoscopy,-- with a nurse or something fiddling with the monitor and with an intern fiddling with the long horrible hose.
Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, Toung Doung was wiggling like a desperate worm, nauseating and shrieking with pain. "Do then like this," the superior doctor or something directed to his inferior to do otherwise. After a fuss of trials and errors, they were able to show to Dano, an ugly conglomeration of tumors, with a look of perplexion on his face and with an awkward remark of "Oh, we didn't realize his son was here!"
Rising from his couch Toung Doung said "I almost died!" He should have angered at what he had been treated just a while ago. He did not deserve the clumsy treatment. Dano should have collared the doctors and yelled to the goddamned nurses. But the one was powerless and the other fought the urge to yell. The chief doctor of the Internal Medicine Section, said with haughty disaffection to Dano who called at his office, "The patient, who is 78 years old, that is, relatively old age for cancer treatment, and whose tumors are in a final stage, that is, so widely spread, is judged to be inoperable."
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He could not accept the fact that his father, who had been as stout as a bull and as green as a pine, would be soon to fall. How could it be possible that the huge pine that had been Toung Doung should be felled to the ground by the abominable disease of cancer. Toung Doung himself might have been self-conceited in his inviolability because he had never been bedridden in his whole life.
The chief doctor's pronouncement of Toung Doung's having fallen ill with the terminal cancer struck Dano himself as if he had been battered, all of a sudden, by a blunt weapon and that he might have subsequently passed out with a murky consciousness that he would be parting with his father sooner or later.
Once the hope of a hospital treatment was dashed, Toung Doung became a guinea pig for an experimentation with the alternative medicine. Illczin, Dano's brother, who had been living with the parents, made every effort to cure the disease. He made a mail order for an alternative medicine which had been advertised at a magazine from a medicine manufacturer whose name had been Isanghan or something who had been living in Naju. Illczin had not visited Isanghan, nor seen how the medicine had been manufactured, nor questioned, nor asked about the efficacy of the medicine. He believed in people and things in his own way, spent most of the revenues from the orchard for his beliefs.
Illczin worked the hardest among the three son children of the sick Toung Doung. Illczin's concern and efforts were being made in four directions, whereas the last son of Toung Doung, Nara, who had been born at the water mill house listening to the sounds of the rolling mill, was the second most active in the filial efforts. He was in his thirties and worked at the Department of Commerce and Industry as a seventh-grade official. He met Dr. Evereast at East West Hospital in Seoul and arranged for him to write a letter of recommendation to Dr. Nugusira in Tokyo who prescribed anti-cancer drugs for Toung Doung whose main function turned out to kill cancer pain.
Illczin's filial efforts took his father to a bee farmer at Mushin-dong at the outer precinct of Daegu. Toung Doung got roughed up there for almost a month by apian attacks. He virtually was roughing up, with Boolim taking care of him by his side at a hut room of the bee farmer's. He had his body given up for apian stings. The owner of the house, Mr. Amuge, who had had a strong belief in the efficacy of bee venom, stepped across to the couple's hangout and administered the venom to Toung Doung's body parts once or twice a day despite Toung Doung's grimaces and grievances. He picked out a bee from a small box of bees, held it in a pair of tweezers and put an end part of a sting on the desired body part. Toung Doung had had bulges and fluid scars as a result all over the body. When Dano visited the place to inquire after his father, Mr. Amuge rattled off case after case of the efficacies of bee sting treatment. He said he had once been a cancer victim but he had had his cancerous body stung by bees himself and cured of the disease.
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Illczin might have had a premonition that the rest of his father's life was numbered. Dano also had consulted a divinist, who had been practising, by the name of Odagada, his fortunetelling business at Naguon-dong, Chongno-gu, Seoul, who had told him some bad tellings about his father and some good tales about Dano himself at the same time. The guru of the Iching said that Toung Doung would pass away in two months and Dano would run into "a righteous man" in a week or so who would be willing to publish Dano's manuscripts on the Conversion Approach, a theory on the correct interpretation, as a speaker of the second language, of the English writings. Mystery Dano intuited at the time was how the fortuneteller had predicted Toung Doung's death date via Dano, or a strange person who was sitting before him at the time.
When the telephone rang the previous morning, he got a fright as usual through the spine, with his right hand reaching for the receiver shaking and his heart beating faster. It was Ilczin's voice over the phone that carried not a news of the parental doom but asking a brotherly favor of Dano. It was a sober call to know whether Dano would be able to go down to Guinsa Temple in Danyang to hold prayers for their terminally ill father. Saying that, he informed him that he would wire the money for the expenses.
It was a rather chilly morning for February. He stepped onto the elevator at his apartment house on the 8th floor, went down to the ground floor, got out of it and started walking to the village bus station. He saw a hawk appearing from nowhere circling the sky over the Apartment Complex. What an omen.
During the inter-city bus tour and after the arrival at the destination terminal, he felt as if his feet were being carried. He was not moving his own system. He was not the master of his own motor reflex. He was standing awhile even after passengers had left the place.
It was around noon. Some modest rustic cafeterias around the bus terminal were in full swing. The travellers who had just gotten off the bus wandered over to the roadside dining halls. The aromas of cooking foods pricked stimulated their appetites. A woman at a cafeteria across the road was gazing at Dano as if to invite him to her house.
Dano had a better idea. He stepped to a phone booth at the corner of the sidewalk, picked the receiver and slid coins into the slot of the booth and heard the phone buzzes going through. It seemed an age. They might have crossed the rivers and gotten over the hills. The coins were heard to drop with the clang. A familiar female voice returned with "Hello." "This is Dano. How are things going, Miss Allite?" "Going well. Your book is to come out soon, with proof readings done," she said.
The joyful tidings of the impending publication of his book stimulated his hunger. He crossed the road and entered an eating place and ordered deoduckjjim, a stewed condonopsis lanceolata flavored with pungent sauce. It smelled and tasted good. He ate up a bowl of rice in a nano second when the realization struck him cold that he was engrossed in satiating his appetite while his father had a hard time gulping even a plate of soup. That was a shame on him.
Dano got into a taxi which was waiting at the roadside stand. The driver, looking at him through a rear mirror, said, "You're going to Guinsa, aren't you?" Dano took an issue with the mode of his greetings. Then the driver in hat in his middle forties said matter-of-factly that Seoul passengers' usual destination used to be Guinsa.
Moving along a while, the driver then switched to a mode of his vehicular transportation. His suggestion was that unless you were rushed you might as well go slow. He said, "How about going slow?" Dano took a look at the dashboard. The speedometer of the car directed at 80/km. Dano said yes. The taxi driver boasted of the landscapes unfolding in the winding four-lane local highway along the blue river with the beautiful mountain hills in the background. They were beautiful, indeed. Dano then blamed himself who was appreciating the rivers and hills. The mountain hills should have been crumbling and the rivers should have dried ugly.
All through the ride, the driver tortured his passenger with pumoeunjungkyong, the mantra for the filial piety. He switched on the tape and made his passenger hear it out. The recorded voice of the cassette-tape mantra inspired his (or her) captive audience during the taxi ride with the "immeasurable love" of the parents, recalled their toils and asked them to repay their debts. The cab driver was used to reading his passengers' mind heading for Guinsa, knew their vulnerabilities and also knew how to subjugate them to ingratiating customers. He might have gawked at Dano who was lowering his head and spilling tears.
After 40 or so minutes' ride, the cab driver said, "You made it." It was a wide clearing which appeared to be used for a parking lot. Dano couldn't see Guinsa or something. "You can't get there by taxi," he announced. "Then?" Dano looked at him accusingly. "You have to walk from here."
Nothing was seen from there. It was a steep uphill. Turning a corner, pushing a flank of a hill aside, a portal was seen standing high up. Negotiating the uphill for a minute or so, he got there and stepping on to the entrance of the temple, he was overwhelmed by the huge complex of temple buildings. Really huge.
The first impression of Guinsa Temple was overwhelming. The impression was solidified as Dano stepped deeper into the precinct. The temple complex found itself hugely in the mountain valley tall and wide. The Buddhist buildings, whose height ranged from five stories to single, were arranged in orderly fashion, along both sides of the thoroughfare, by category of use.
Dano found the temple complex built on the rock foundation with steep upper slope on top of which was located the huge dining hall and its adjacent facilities. Dano, after having registered under the category of one-week prayer for paternal health with the front office near the portal, was guided to the prayer room on the fifth floor. The accommodation capacity of one room was fifty persons of the same sex but the room was not cramped but spacious enough to house four times as many prayers.
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"Don't get connected," the speaker system of the temple said in a low convincing male voice, not blaring, though. A while ago there had been a morning call and the whole crowds of the religious complex were busy preparing for the day's schedules. And the speaker systems installed indoors and the loud speakers of outdoors were reciting to the attentive ears some religious aphorisms, warning them not to get connected. "If you get connected, you'll pine over those with whom you've been disconnected. If you get connected, you'll get tormented by those with whom you've been connected."
What did they mean by "Dont get connected"? To paraphrase, the phrase might have meant that you should not or did not have to make a relationship or something. It was illogical after all that you could not make a human contact or something unless you get connected because the world consists of relationships, because you are the end result of relationships, because Guinsa Temple consists of relationships. and because the very reason for the existence of the temple is that there are many relationships to handle. Therefore, the context of the aphorism might have been: Don't make a new relationship except one you have sustained or you should have considered substantial. You should not start a superfluous relationship because basic, inevitable and commonsensical relationships would be put in danger.
Standing in a long line of the diverse dining population and stepping slowly along the slopy hillside road leading to the dining hall, getting near the meal distribution table holding the meal tray, sitting and eating among the large number of diners in the huge dining hall in which one thousand people were known to dine at a sitting, and looking at the busy dining room helpers, Dano had his throat choked with emotion. Meals were good, and side dishes of kimchi and others were good too. He consumed every bit of them. He felt he himself was brazen enough, thinking that his father was having a hard time eating gruels, much less eating solid meals.
Pray? How to begin it with? Dano was at wit's end as to the matter of the prayer. He didn't pray with sincerity ever, but he did assure to himself that he would take revenge on anything that was in his way. When he had been famished as a kid, he had not prayed to God for rich harvest but he'd decided himself to get rich. When he had been tormented by pranksters for long as a juvenile boy, he'd gritted himself and decided to get even. When his father had been hard at work, balking at the idea of allowing any person around him a minute's break to pee, he had avoided his contact, not praying for his health. When his grandma had been walking in all directions in search of medicinal herbs for her fragile grandson, he had not said a prayer of thanks for his grandma's efforts.
Dano had been obdurate all along. He had not known as a kid as to how to say even commonplace thanks or regrets. He should have been trained to do that. He once had almost killed his father. His father had been at work 10-meter deep down the earth ground, digging and building an embankment of the family well at the corner of the orchard. Father Toung Doung had been digging the earth, with his son Dano up on the ground bringing up soil and send the rocks down below with which his father would build an internal embankment in which a person could move around. Tound Doung had not been satisfied with the way in which the work was being done. The water had been spilling from the tin box of soils coming up and replacement rocks coming down. In an instant, a rock had slipped off his hand and dropped onto the head of his father, with him screaming. Coming out, Toung Doung had had his bleeding scars dressed and bandaged. Though he had not scolded his son, his son should have sought forgiveness nevertheless for his lack of suitable heed. But he had not. He had been scared all over.
The prayer session was guided by a young priest. He had made his appearance from a corner room and introduced himself and Avalakitesvara at the same time. That is, he had introduced a way in which Dano and others, the room prayers, who had numbered 38 at the time, had had to pray. He said you had to pray to and through the one effective personality--Gwansseumbossal, Avalakitesvara, the Buddha of Great Compassion. She, from the earliest times on, had been so compassionate and so effective that any prayer of yours would come true. So you had to virtually chant Gwansseumbossal with concentration, with the object of prayer in mind. You were not forced on any typical position as an ideal prayer position. But you were not supposed to lie on the room floor until midnight.
He was frustrated at first attempt and blushed with shame: He slept away while chanting the prayer word. He had dozed on and off whiling away three hours or so, and he had lain flat on the room floor. At midnight, he found to his amazement ten or so roomers still immersed in chanting the mantra. He went to the washing place and awoke himself by splashing his face with cold water. He sat down again with legs crossed and began the process afresh.
As he kept chanting the mantra, he found himself conversing with his father. As he darted his questions about his father's love toward him, they were returned with more questions about it. Dano did the late take, a real awakening that caresses, kisses and vocal expressions of love did not just constitute paternal love.
Although Toung Doung had not, all through his life, said a word of love to his sons, he had lived out his love with all his efforts. He had crawled on all fours in a hellish pit of a Nagasaki coal mine for his family: That was love. He had kept a vigil through the night, casting a concerned look at his feverish son: That was love. He had walked all the way to the town hospital, carrying on his back his son who had come down with pleurisy: That was love. He had built a nice wooden house of his own with his architectural skills: That was love. He had tilled the fields, toiled day and night through the year and planted apple trees: That was love. He had built a family well that was not dry: That was love. He had succumbed at last to cancerous tumors but he did not complain, nor whine nor accuse anyone about him: That was love.
Dano shifted gear and swerved off the designated route. Prayer changed to remorse and repentance. The agent appeared identical but the action changed. In fact, the doer changed, too. In the action of prayer, the doer hurted no one, but in the action of remorse and repentance, he hurted himself. He could not help hurting himself. He reflected on his past deeds; He regretted his mistakes; He blamed himself on his father's unhappiness and his pain of disease. Cries blurted out. He cried to his heart's content. Slumberers around him moved and the murmurers of prayer opened their eyes and complained: "What a noise."
At Guinsa Temple, Danyang, 1992
It was not just the problem of speed but that of absolute quantity. Stepping out of the exam room of Dongguk University and walking down the slopy road toward the Changchung-dong Street, winding up the four-day war with incompetence and inefficiency, Dano felt sorry for her and missing Tschai at the same time. He walked with a hasty pace toward the taxi stand.
As regards Tschai, she had no expectations from husband Dano's belated obsession with a judicial post. That might be a reckless challenge toward the impossible. And that might be greed. She didn't have any idea about her becoming a judge's, or prosecutor's, or lawyer's wife. She was street smart. She was reputed to be tough, so much so that she would be able to plant her own tree roots even in the harsh climate of a desert. She only hoped that her husband would get started as the responsible man and father with a stable job.
Regrettably Dano, as a household owner, did not get settled in a safe place with a stable job, so the household troops could not stop getting mobile. The mastermind of the movement was Tschai, who planned, organized and materialized the movement to Mokdong Apartment complex. The apartment was the first of their own house in the true sense of the word, in 1989, 15 years since they lived in Seoul. All the resources originated from Tschai which financed the move, supported the household, and financed the education of three son children who had gone to higher and lower education facilities.
Tschai got much more troubled by public transit transfers caused by Dano's professional inability, and his father Toung Doung got a cancer onslaught. Tschai could not help but make transit transfers from bus to subway (Mokdong to Mullaedong), from one subway to another subway (transferring from Seoul College of Education Station to Daechi Station of Subway Line No.3). she spent almost four hours on her commuting transits to and from her accessory store at Daechi-dong. Toung Doung's disease, begun with minor ailments, considered as stomach ulcer which had been treated with alternative medicines, developed into cancerous tumors.
Dano wondered at some point and later from time to time when his father had been diagnosed as stomach cancer by Dr. Weird in Kyongseong University Hospital or so, in Seoul what the malignant tumors looked like which had been clinging like leeches. He blandly presumed that the tumors might have initially been stained by coal dust in the deep pit of a Nagasaki coal mine, later adulterated by sweaty knobs of the hard labor during the drought and famine years before the 1950s and then warped into gnarled stressful knots caused by the disobedient Dano and touched eventually by toxic farming chemicals inhaled in the course of apple farming, that is, all the crystalization of the toils, frustrations and stresses.
----------------
Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, reclining on the hospital couch, Toung Doung had his body roughly handled by a resident, an intern and two other young nurses. They might have not noticed the presence of a strange man in his forties because the doctors and nurses had been engrossed in their own pleasant conversations about the joyful experiences of the last summer vacation, and they might not have realized that the elderly patient in his seventies lying before their eyes powerless came from the country. They virtually fiddled with the instruments--a computer monitor and a naessikyong, a gastrointestinal endoscopy,-- with a nurse or something fiddling with the monitor and with an intern fiddling with the long horrible hose.
Then and there in Kyeongseong University Hospital, Toung Doung was wiggling like a desperate worm, nauseating and shrieking with pain. "Do then like this," the superior doctor or something directed to his inferior to do otherwise. After a fuss of trials and errors, they were able to show to Dano, an ugly conglomeration of tumors, with a look of perplexion on his face and with an awkward remark of "Oh, we didn't realize his son was here!"
Rising from his couch Toung Doung said "I almost died!" He should have angered at what he had been treated just a while ago. He did not deserve the clumsy treatment. Dano should have collared the doctors and yelled to the goddamned nurses. But the one was powerless and the other fought the urge to yell. The chief doctor of the Internal Medicine Section, said with haughty disaffection to Dano who called at his office, "The patient, who is 78 years old, that is, relatively old age for cancer treatment, and whose tumors are in a final stage, that is, so widely spread, is judged to be inoperable."
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He could not accept the fact that his father, who had been as stout as a bull and as green as a pine, would be soon to fall. How could it be possible that the huge pine that had been Toung Doung should be felled to the ground by the abominable disease of cancer. Toung Doung himself might have been self-conceited in his inviolability because he had never been bedridden in his whole life.
The chief doctor's pronouncement of Toung Doung's having fallen ill with the terminal cancer struck Dano himself as if he had been battered, all of a sudden, by a blunt weapon and that he might have subsequently passed out with a murky consciousness that he would be parting with his father sooner or later.
Once the hope of a hospital treatment was dashed, Toung Doung became a guinea pig for an experimentation with the alternative medicine. Illczin, Dano's brother, who had been living with the parents, made every effort to cure the disease. He made a mail order for an alternative medicine which had been advertised at a magazine from a medicine manufacturer whose name had been Isanghan or something who had been living in Naju. Illczin had not visited Isanghan, nor seen how the medicine had been manufactured, nor questioned, nor asked about the efficacy of the medicine. He believed in people and things in his own way, spent most of the revenues from the orchard for his beliefs.
Illczin worked the hardest among the three son children of the sick Toung Doung. Illczin's concern and efforts were being made in four directions, whereas the last son of Toung Doung, Nara, who had been born at the water mill house listening to the sounds of the rolling mill, was the second most active in the filial efforts. He was in his thirties and worked at the Department of Commerce and Industry as a seventh-grade official. He met Dr. Evereast at East West Hospital in Seoul and arranged for him to write a letter of recommendation to Dr. Nugusira in Tokyo who prescribed anti-cancer drugs for Toung Doung whose main function turned out to kill cancer pain.
Illczin's filial efforts took his father to a bee farmer at Mushin-dong at the outer precinct of Daegu. Toung Doung got roughed up there for almost a month by apian attacks. He virtually was roughing up, with Boolim taking care of him by his side at a hut room of the bee farmer's. He had his body given up for apian stings. The owner of the house, Mr. Amuge, who had had a strong belief in the efficacy of bee venom, stepped across to the couple's hangout and administered the venom to Toung Doung's body parts once or twice a day despite Toung Doung's grimaces and grievances. He picked out a bee from a small box of bees, held it in a pair of tweezers and put an end part of a sting on the desired body part. Toung Doung had had bulges and fluid scars as a result all over the body. When Dano visited the place to inquire after his father, Mr. Amuge rattled off case after case of the efficacies of bee sting treatment. He said he had once been a cancer victim but he had had his cancerous body stung by bees himself and cured of the disease.
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Illczin might have had a premonition that the rest of his father's life was numbered. Dano also had consulted a divinist, who had been practising, by the name of Odagada, his fortunetelling business at Naguon-dong, Chongno-gu, Seoul, who had told him some bad tellings about his father and some good tales about Dano himself at the same time. The guru of the Iching said that Toung Doung would pass away in two months and Dano would run into "a righteous man" in a week or so who would be willing to publish Dano's manuscripts on the Conversion Approach, a theory on the correct interpretation, as a speaker of the second language, of the English writings. Mystery Dano intuited at the time was how the fortuneteller had predicted Toung Doung's death date via Dano, or a strange person who was sitting before him at the time.
When the telephone rang the previous morning, he got a fright as usual through the spine, with his right hand reaching for the receiver shaking and his heart beating faster. It was Ilczin's voice over the phone that carried not a news of the parental doom but asking a brotherly favor of Dano. It was a sober call to know whether Dano would be able to go down to Guinsa Temple in Danyang to hold prayers for their terminally ill father. Saying that, he informed him that he would wire the money for the expenses.
It was a rather chilly morning for February. He stepped onto the elevator at his apartment house on the 8th floor, went down to the ground floor, got out of it and started walking to the village bus station. He saw a hawk appearing from nowhere circling the sky over the Apartment Complex. What an omen.
During the inter-city bus tour and after the arrival at the destination terminal, he felt as if his feet were being carried. He was not moving his own system. He was not the master of his own motor reflex. He was standing awhile even after passengers had left the place.
It was around noon. Some modest rustic cafeterias around the bus terminal were in full swing. The travellers who had just gotten off the bus wandered over to the roadside dining halls. The aromas of cooking foods pricked stimulated their appetites. A woman at a cafeteria across the road was gazing at Dano as if to invite him to her house.
Dano had a better idea. He stepped to a phone booth at the corner of the sidewalk, picked the receiver and slid coins into the slot of the booth and heard the phone buzzes going through. It seemed an age. They might have crossed the rivers and gotten over the hills. The coins were heard to drop with the clang. A familiar female voice returned with "Hello." "This is Dano. How are things going, Miss Allite?" "Going well. Your book is to come out soon, with proof readings done," she said.
The joyful tidings of the impending publication of his book stimulated his hunger. He crossed the road and entered an eating place and ordered deoduckjjim, a stewed condonopsis lanceolata flavored with pungent sauce. It smelled and tasted good. He ate up a bowl of rice in a nano second when the realization struck him cold that he was engrossed in satiating his appetite while his father had a hard time gulping even a plate of soup. That was a shame on him.
Dano got into a taxi which was waiting at the roadside stand. The driver, looking at him through a rear mirror, said, "You're going to Guinsa, aren't you?" Dano took an issue with the mode of his greetings. Then the driver in hat in his middle forties said matter-of-factly that Seoul passengers' usual destination used to be Guinsa.
Moving along a while, the driver then switched to a mode of his vehicular transportation. His suggestion was that unless you were rushed you might as well go slow. He said, "How about going slow?" Dano took a look at the dashboard. The speedometer of the car directed at 80/km. Dano said yes. The taxi driver boasted of the landscapes unfolding in the winding four-lane local highway along the blue river with the beautiful mountain hills in the background. They were beautiful, indeed. Dano then blamed himself who was appreciating the rivers and hills. The mountain hills should have been crumbling and the rivers should have dried ugly.
All through the ride, the driver tortured his passenger with pumoeunjungkyong, the mantra for the filial piety. He switched on the tape and made his passenger hear it out. The recorded voice of the cassette-tape mantra inspired his (or her) captive audience during the taxi ride with the "immeasurable love" of the parents, recalled their toils and asked them to repay their debts. The cab driver was used to reading his passengers' mind heading for Guinsa, knew their vulnerabilities and also knew how to subjugate them to ingratiating customers. He might have gawked at Dano who was lowering his head and spilling tears.
After 40 or so minutes' ride, the cab driver said, "You made it." It was a wide clearing which appeared to be used for a parking lot. Dano couldn't see Guinsa or something. "You can't get there by taxi," he announced. "Then?" Dano looked at him accusingly. "You have to walk from here."
Nothing was seen from there. It was a steep uphill. Turning a corner, pushing a flank of a hill aside, a portal was seen standing high up. Negotiating the uphill for a minute or so, he got there and stepping on to the entrance of the temple, he was overwhelmed by the huge complex of temple buildings. Really huge.
The first impression of Guinsa Temple was overwhelming. The impression was solidified as Dano stepped deeper into the precinct. The temple complex found itself hugely in the mountain valley tall and wide. The Buddhist buildings, whose height ranged from five stories to single, were arranged in orderly fashion, along both sides of the thoroughfare, by category of use.
Dano found the temple complex built on the rock foundation with steep upper slope on top of which was located the huge dining hall and its adjacent facilities. Dano, after having registered under the category of one-week prayer for paternal health with the front office near the portal, was guided to the prayer room on the fifth floor. The accommodation capacity of one room was fifty persons of the same sex but the room was not cramped but spacious enough to house four times as many prayers.
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"Don't get connected," the speaker system of the temple said in a low convincing male voice, not blaring, though. A while ago there had been a morning call and the whole crowds of the religious complex were busy preparing for the day's schedules. And the speaker systems installed indoors and the loud speakers of outdoors were reciting to the attentive ears some religious aphorisms, warning them not to get connected. "If you get connected, you'll pine over those with whom you've been disconnected. If you get connected, you'll get tormented by those with whom you've been connected."
What did they mean by "Dont get connected"? To paraphrase, the phrase might have meant that you should not or did not have to make a relationship or something. It was illogical after all that you could not make a human contact or something unless you get connected because the world consists of relationships, because you are the end result of relationships, because Guinsa Temple consists of relationships. and because the very reason for the existence of the temple is that there are many relationships to handle. Therefore, the context of the aphorism might have been: Don't make a new relationship except one you have sustained or you should have considered substantial. You should not start a superfluous relationship because basic, inevitable and commonsensical relationships would be put in danger.
Standing in a long line of the diverse dining population and stepping slowly along the slopy hillside road leading to the dining hall, getting near the meal distribution table holding the meal tray, sitting and eating among the large number of diners in the huge dining hall in which one thousand people were known to dine at a sitting, and looking at the busy dining room helpers, Dano had his throat choked with emotion. Meals were good, and side dishes of kimchi and others were good too. He consumed every bit of them. He felt he himself was brazen enough, thinking that his father was having a hard time eating gruels, much less eating solid meals.
Pray? How to begin it with? Dano was at wit's end as to the matter of the prayer. He didn't pray with sincerity ever, but he did assure to himself that he would take revenge on anything that was in his way. When he had been famished as a kid, he had not prayed to God for rich harvest but he'd decided himself to get rich. When he had been tormented by pranksters for long as a juvenile boy, he'd gritted himself and decided to get even. When his father had been hard at work, balking at the idea of allowing any person around him a minute's break to pee, he had avoided his contact, not praying for his health. When his grandma had been walking in all directions in search of medicinal herbs for her fragile grandson, he had not said a prayer of thanks for his grandma's efforts.
Dano had been obdurate all along. He had not known as a kid as to how to say even commonplace thanks or regrets. He should have been trained to do that. He once had almost killed his father. His father had been at work 10-meter deep down the earth ground, digging and building an embankment of the family well at the corner of the orchard. Father Toung Doung had been digging the earth, with his son Dano up on the ground bringing up soil and send the rocks down below with which his father would build an internal embankment in which a person could move around. Tound Doung had not been satisfied with the way in which the work was being done. The water had been spilling from the tin box of soils coming up and replacement rocks coming down. In an instant, a rock had slipped off his hand and dropped onto the head of his father, with him screaming. Coming out, Toung Doung had had his bleeding scars dressed and bandaged. Though he had not scolded his son, his son should have sought forgiveness nevertheless for his lack of suitable heed. But he had not. He had been scared all over.
The prayer session was guided by a young priest. He had made his appearance from a corner room and introduced himself and Avalakitesvara at the same time. That is, he had introduced a way in which Dano and others, the room prayers, who had numbered 38 at the time, had had to pray. He said you had to pray to and through the one effective personality--Gwansseumbossal, Avalakitesvara, the Buddha of Great Compassion. She, from the earliest times on, had been so compassionate and so effective that any prayer of yours would come true. So you had to virtually chant Gwansseumbossal with concentration, with the object of prayer in mind. You were not forced on any typical position as an ideal prayer position. But you were not supposed to lie on the room floor until midnight.
He was frustrated at first attempt and blushed with shame: He slept away while chanting the prayer word. He had dozed on and off whiling away three hours or so, and he had lain flat on the room floor. At midnight, he found to his amazement ten or so roomers still immersed in chanting the mantra. He went to the washing place and awoke himself by splashing his face with cold water. He sat down again with legs crossed and began the process afresh.
As he kept chanting the mantra, he found himself conversing with his father. As he darted his questions about his father's love toward him, they were returned with more questions about it. Dano did the late take, a real awakening that caresses, kisses and vocal expressions of love did not just constitute paternal love.
Although Toung Doung had not, all through his life, said a word of love to his sons, he had lived out his love with all his efforts. He had crawled on all fours in a hellish pit of a Nagasaki coal mine for his family: That was love. He had kept a vigil through the night, casting a concerned look at his feverish son: That was love. He had walked all the way to the town hospital, carrying on his back his son who had come down with pleurisy: That was love. He had built a nice wooden house of his own with his architectural skills: That was love. He had tilled the fields, toiled day and night through the year and planted apple trees: That was love. He had built a family well that was not dry: That was love. He had succumbed at last to cancerous tumors but he did not complain, nor whine nor accuse anyone about him: That was love.
Dano shifted gear and swerved off the designated route. Prayer changed to remorse and repentance. The agent appeared identical but the action changed. In fact, the doer changed, too. In the action of prayer, the doer hurted no one, but in the action of remorse and repentance, he hurted himself. He could not help hurting himself. He reflected on his past deeds; He regretted his mistakes; He blamed himself on his father's unhappiness and his pain of disease. Cries blurted out. He cried to his heart's content. Slumberers around him moved and the murmurers of prayer opened their eyes and complained: "What a noise."
Mind Is the Key
28
Mind Is the Key, 1983~1985
The contrast became palpable. The Dano-Tschai couple, who had become man and wife with the union of two independent persons of counter sexes, turned out bizarre. That is, the consummated union, which had been considered as an inalienable one entity, had developed into two utterly different personalities. Whereas Dano still looked to be one personality with nothing but his own physical body which he could call his own, Tschai, who had originally been one person, her own woman, became a changed personality with assets, the offspring of three sons. That is, she bore three son children herself, who went to high school and middle school respectively, who she could call her own.
Tschai's accessory store was doing well so that she was able to support her family. She was also able to finance her three children with tuition fees, their seasonal clothing, and their pocket money. Dano had been idling away all along, doing nothing to stuff the house coffer. He had been thinking aloud that he had been working also hard but he had not been able to make his voice heard and himself known. And Tschai had not been in a position to police her husband's thoughts. In appearance, Dano had been goofing off to her annoyment. Voices were raised frequently; Yells were routinely shared; Fingers were pointed at each other from time to time; The mention of a taboo word, which could be defined and listed in the Civil Court, was made on and off.
After Dano's "goofing off" for the whole year of 1983 and failing in the first one exam of the two- time- chance Judicial Examination, Brother Illczhin wired 1,000,000 won to Dano, with a recommendation that Dano move to a quieter place other than his apartment room. Dano and Tschai decided to accept his kind proposal. Tschai called a taxi to their Dogok Apartment Complex the next day. It was drizzling. The early morning traffic on the drizzling Seoul-Busan Expressway was light.
Dano once thought big on a great national road of Seoul-Busan Highway, but at a certain point when the taxi swerved to a two-lane provincial road leading to Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, he had second thoughts on the challenge to a judicial post of court judge or something. The realm of language was regarded as supreme, real supreme. Make it or not, the exam would be final, he decided, looking out the car window from the passenger seat at the greenery of early spring passing by.
They were on hand out there to greet Dano and help him remove the package. His appearance made it more apparent that he turned out an "odd man out" case. That is, he was much too old for the scene to quit it. The landlady of the koshiwon, a boarding house built for the candidates who were preparing themselves for the exams for higher government posts, was an apparent divorcee in her early fifties who were thrown out of resources. desperate to survive. The monitor, or the captain of the boarders, guided Dano to their den of 20 tin-roofed compartments separated by a shallow side corridor. The monitor, who seemed to be in his late twenties, allotted Dano Room No. 16.
The previous host was just leaving the room as Dano stepped into the boarding house. A vague impression then was that he had been upset by something or offended by someone else. A more exact impression was that he got distracted by what the boarder himself could not pinpoint. Dano was wondering what drove him so nervous that he would have to leave the place in a hurry. Entering, he found the room so tightly spaced that a boarder would be able to lie down and set up a desk and a table on the rest of the room space.
Stepping out, after unpacking, arranging and setting done with the books and miscellaneous things, Dano found that a group of young boarders assembled around a wooden parallel bar outside the boarding house. Point of their talks was that they were having restless nights and that they couldn't concentrate on their study, with the sign of which vividly played on the bloodshot and blurry eyes while they didn't exactly say what had caused their insomnia or something. Room 16 boarder had just left with the other two colleague boarders.
One of the young boarders came up with a suggestion that he help Dano do the sights of the periphery. The Pyowoonsa Temple was a misnomer because the Buddhist shrine was not like a serious temple but rather like amja, a Buddhist hermitage cell. Walking steep uphill, Dano discovered that both sides of the hilly road leading to the cell were lined with rocks and decked in weird wild flowers. There was a pond below the cell yard in which there were various kinds of fish swimming. "Everything on the periphery has the monk's touch! He has a hand for beauty," he marveled.
A bell was tolled for lunch. The boarders got out of their den and came down the stairs for the dining hall which was a wooden house unit separated from the koshiwon in which a baap azumma, or a lady cook in her early fifties lived with a young daughter. The young aspiring diners entered the hall shuffling along in their slippers and seated themselves around a long wooden table on the ondol room floor with their legs folded Korean fashion. 'Special' food spread was laid out by the hostess who introduced Dano to the other guests. The azumma suggested offhandedly to the diners that Dano be seated at head table in one of the two opposite seats to which the folks in the room expressed consent with claps.
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The night study went on swimmingly. Dano was glued to the desk for hours on end even with no break for a relief. He got the hard subjects of the Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law alloted for the morning hours whereas he got the piece of cake Criminal Law for the night. When he thought he was ahead of schedule, he memorized model answers which he had prepared, scribbling them on the answer sheet pads. When he once stepped out of the room to pee, he saw the host of Room Nine at the opposite lying on the room floor with the door open and reading a newspaper. He seemed to have heard the first crows of the roosters at the village when he fell asleep sitting on the desk.
At a coffee break after breakfast the next morning, the host of Room 18, a young man in his early thirties with southern accent, invited Dano to his room. Dano was surprised at the sophistication with which his room was furnished with a variety of coffee wares. But the point was that he did not invite him to give him a coffee treat but he did want to know about the neighbor's nocturnal wellbeing.
Dano halfheartedly admitted to having experienced some displeasures, but didn't mention any details. Host of the room Mr. Kang elatedly said, "Room 16 has since been devastated because all the previous hosts have given up on the room. Why don't you move to another place?" Dano didn't like the idea.
"If a ghost were really at work, what good the mere room movement of a few meters will do? He'll be after me wherever I go. So I'll stand the room there," Dano said. It's an issue of pride, Dano thought aloud. It'd be ashamed and pathetic of him if he admitted to having suffered all the gamut of humiliations.
He'd been dragged, pulled, run, crossed, up the steep hill over the rocky crevices through the thorn bushes. He didn't see whoever it was and didn't hear whatever it was, but he was controlled, manipulated, and raped. Yes, raped. In a person's dormancy, if the person couldn't be his or her own person, and if he or she were abused for the sake of unidentified pleasure, you could rightly say that the person was raped.
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In every mealtime gatherings, the seats of absentees were watched with sympathy and fear. Dano was astonished at the numbers with which the exodus was progressing. The progression was headed toward No. 16. Some interruptions were made, though, because new arrivals made replacements. In the midst of the chaotic fuss over the bizarre exodus, there were some leisurely moments. Dano was mobbed around by some younger boarders who were very curious to know what brought him there.
There had been a previous search, of course. He had gone to a koshiwon nestled under Mt. Bomun on the edge of Daejon City. The boarding house for the judicial exam aspirants had been patterned after cabin-type rooms. Entering a patio of the house, Dano had been received by the landlady of the facility. After a due greeting, she was about to serve Dano a cup of tea when he almost dropped it.
He was exaggerating, of course. But fact was she was so beautiful. She struck him as fascinating. She had been such a beauty of whom even her toes, which had been not covered in socks at the time, had been beautiful. He was wondering why such a shining beauty had been living in near 'hiding' with frail-looking husband rather than living in the broad world.
As he took a brief tour of the precinct, he ran into a roomer who tipped him off to what had been brewing among the roomers: "They argue among themselves which often develop into fist fights." With that, he got out of the place because he could not recommend the place to himself or anyone who was preparing the exams for higher government posts.
"Why?" one of the two woman boarders questioned him.
"Because it was preposterous of them." Dano answered.
"What do you mean by preposterous?" she wanted to know.
"It means that the boarders of the koshiwon in Daejon were not properly served by the cook but thrown into a position to serve the lady cook, instead, in a way that they'd be favored by the pretty cook," Dano said. All the boarders there nodded their consent.
"We're so lucky then," Mr. Kang said, smiling.
"Why?" Ms. Bahn asked.
"Because our azumma is so humble-faced that we're at liberty not to flatter her," Mr. Kang said, giggling, with the others laughing with him.
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Dano couldn't have cared less. He braced for every invisible encounter whenever he entered and sat on the study desk. He even made "his soldiers" stand guard on the rampart. He posted a warning alert on the wall:"Ghosts, Off Limits!" Despite all that, nights tortured him to no end, and even on day time he had hair-raising chills. On nights, he was roughly hauled to the field, over the hill, across the rapid river, through the thorn bushes. He had scratches all over him. He stood the brutalities, nonetheless.
The sleuth in Dano started being active briskly. He thought for days on end what would be the motivating agent behind the conspirator or conspirators to drive out the temporary occupants of the place that the baap azumma had leased in order to accommodate those who were sitting for judicial exams.
The emotional factor of hatred was involved, Dano concluded for the time being. And the culprit, who had been engrossed in driving the exam students, was not a ghost or ghosts but the Buddhist monk himself and the proprietor of the shrine estate, Dano assuredly concluded.
Was there any lead? None but some circumstantial evidences or clues. First of all, Monk Stout didn't like the idea of leasing the modest housing estate for other lucrative purposes. He originally planned to run a nursing home for the aged who had gotten disabled or unsupported. But his initial purpose was frustrated by Mrs. Lim, a divorcee with a daughter, who had entreated him to lease the facility.
The monk couldn't decline her requests, which was his vulnerability. But he tried to get his frustrated wishes accomplished by other mean methods, that is, by evicting the occupants of the facility by his own supernatural powers. What a mean-spirited act of the meanest creature. Why didn't he say that he wanted the facility to be used as a nursing home for the aged so he couldn't lease it for the profitable purposes other than that? Why did he talk one thing and act the other? It was considered mean and double dealing.
Supernatural powers? Who in the world gave a particular person or persons such terrifying powers? How was he empowered with such horrendous powers? Was it not against nature? What the hell was meant by the supernatural powers anyway?
Legend has it that some highly trained Buddhist monks or gurus got so powerful that they could enter other persons' cerebral territory and govern their actions, during sleeping hours and through dreams. Dano conceded that there were such powerful men and he suspected that Monk Stout might be one of them.
Enter other persons' cerebral territory? In the real world, entering other persons' estate without the proprietors' permission constituted trespassing on private property which constitutes a crime, of course. Therefore, the behavior of trespassing on other persons' cerebral territory constituted a sheer violation of people's cerebral sanctity, Dano thought.
Problem was that he could not catch the criminal and keep him collared to the floor. Question was how and where he could materialize himself. Through the nostrils of the slumberer? Or, through the victim's navel as you had seen in the movie Matrix? Or, through the top of the head? Or, through the veins and nerve cells? Once in there, how could he arouse the consciousness of the slumberer and let it do his bidding?
There occurred a small accidental bang which shook the shrine borderline. It was a wordless protest or another demonstration of their powerlessness, wasn't it? The rest of the boarders, who had survived the ordeal of headaches and nightmares, made an onslaught of prankish looting on the kitchen of the temple, that is, the hermitage cell. They sneaked, under the influence of the darkness of night, into the kitchen and looted a big jar containing makkoli, home-brewed conventional liquor of rice. The looters then relished it, drank it with the others and got drunk. One of the revellers ran amok through the hill town all through the night, hollering, "Come on out whoever thinks he is smarter than me!" Monk Stout, with his ears opened to all that's running wild, got enraged to the top of his head, cut off all the utilities which had been connected to the boarding house.
Dano, chosen as a representative for apologies, with two other young men, walked up the steep slope to the ground of the shrine, where he called for Monk Stout, "Sunim, may we enter the room?" There was no response. Dano said then, "Sunim, we're entering now." The room was not locked from inside. There was seated a man in his middle 50s with stout build and the medium height. His eyes were warm rather than sharp.
The sleuth in Dano, while kneeling before him and presenting sincere apologies on behalf of the boarders for having stolen the makkoli container and for having made all the wild scenes, tried to detect any lead connecting to conclusive evidence that the monk had done all the bizarre attacks on the boarders who had had to leave the facility. The suspicion seemed to put into affirmation when the monk, hearing from Dano that the "candidates" had been suffering from insomnia because of the nightmares, solemnly declared that mind was the key, citing that the housing lot had not been constructed on the graveyards. He said, "Mind causes everything. All the worries and delusions come from the mind." Dano suppressed the urge to yell before him, "You violated their mind territory, didn't you, you coward monk?"
They switched on the light again and the water came out of the faucet again. Where did the light come from? Up from the Buddhist monk. Where did the water come from? Up from the Buddhist monk. He was the origin of things which enabled people to carry on with He empowered people and things down under. He was the power and originator itself.
Normalcy returned to routines but the population of "the down town" curtailed to a mere few including Dano so that the boarding house was about to shut down. Strange thing was that new arrivals came sitting at the dining table, which made Dano gawk up at the one at "the up town."
Hardly had two months and ten days passed when the second-stage subjective test of the judicial exam got seven days ahead, a last-pitch period. It was early morning. After packing the book box, he called on Monk Stout to his modest dairy farm where he was milking the cows. He wished Dano a good luck, adding "Do as usual." The jubang azumma had called a taxi for him.
Dano liked exams, whichever exam you name it. He liked the moment just like the angler liked it. He liked it in the same context that amorous partners liked the moment. Which could be had the moment immediately by consummation. Wires gotten taut to the extent that it would be broken any minute.
An inspector comes into the room with a scroll. Folks stop breathing. Heart throbs make thunderous thumps to every owner's ears. The inspector hangs high on a blackboard of a classroom a wrapped scroll attached with seals. Bells ring which could tear the air into pieces. He unfurls the scroll and reveals the two exam subjects for all to see.
Dano, who seated himself in Exam Room 16 of Dongguk University, whose vision began to deteriorate these days, and who rose and went forward to see what the problems were. Eyes were blurring. Veins were running and raw nerves were running wild.
Letters, which were needed to answer the exam problems, consisting of consonants and vowels, were about to burst out but his hands got stalled: His penmanship was so clumsy and so tardy: Briskly scribbling noises around him running on answer sheets sounded like those of a bullet train.
Mind Is the Key, 1983~1985
The contrast became palpable. The Dano-Tschai couple, who had become man and wife with the union of two independent persons of counter sexes, turned out bizarre. That is, the consummated union, which had been considered as an inalienable one entity, had developed into two utterly different personalities. Whereas Dano still looked to be one personality with nothing but his own physical body which he could call his own, Tschai, who had originally been one person, her own woman, became a changed personality with assets, the offspring of three sons. That is, she bore three son children herself, who went to high school and middle school respectively, who she could call her own.
Tschai's accessory store was doing well so that she was able to support her family. She was also able to finance her three children with tuition fees, their seasonal clothing, and their pocket money. Dano had been idling away all along, doing nothing to stuff the house coffer. He had been thinking aloud that he had been working also hard but he had not been able to make his voice heard and himself known. And Tschai had not been in a position to police her husband's thoughts. In appearance, Dano had been goofing off to her annoyment. Voices were raised frequently; Yells were routinely shared; Fingers were pointed at each other from time to time; The mention of a taboo word, which could be defined and listed in the Civil Court, was made on and off.
After Dano's "goofing off" for the whole year of 1983 and failing in the first one exam of the two- time- chance Judicial Examination, Brother Illczhin wired 1,000,000 won to Dano, with a recommendation that Dano move to a quieter place other than his apartment room. Dano and Tschai decided to accept his kind proposal. Tschai called a taxi to their Dogok Apartment Complex the next day. It was drizzling. The early morning traffic on the drizzling Seoul-Busan Expressway was light.
Dano once thought big on a great national road of Seoul-Busan Highway, but at a certain point when the taxi swerved to a two-lane provincial road leading to Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, he had second thoughts on the challenge to a judicial post of court judge or something. The realm of language was regarded as supreme, real supreme. Make it or not, the exam would be final, he decided, looking out the car window from the passenger seat at the greenery of early spring passing by.
They were on hand out there to greet Dano and help him remove the package. His appearance made it more apparent that he turned out an "odd man out" case. That is, he was much too old for the scene to quit it. The landlady of the koshiwon, a boarding house built for the candidates who were preparing themselves for the exams for higher government posts, was an apparent divorcee in her early fifties who were thrown out of resources. desperate to survive. The monitor, or the captain of the boarders, guided Dano to their den of 20 tin-roofed compartments separated by a shallow side corridor. The monitor, who seemed to be in his late twenties, allotted Dano Room No. 16.
The previous host was just leaving the room as Dano stepped into the boarding house. A vague impression then was that he had been upset by something or offended by someone else. A more exact impression was that he got distracted by what the boarder himself could not pinpoint. Dano was wondering what drove him so nervous that he would have to leave the place in a hurry. Entering, he found the room so tightly spaced that a boarder would be able to lie down and set up a desk and a table on the rest of the room space.
Stepping out, after unpacking, arranging and setting done with the books and miscellaneous things, Dano found that a group of young boarders assembled around a wooden parallel bar outside the boarding house. Point of their talks was that they were having restless nights and that they couldn't concentrate on their study, with the sign of which vividly played on the bloodshot and blurry eyes while they didn't exactly say what had caused their insomnia or something. Room 16 boarder had just left with the other two colleague boarders.
One of the young boarders came up with a suggestion that he help Dano do the sights of the periphery. The Pyowoonsa Temple was a misnomer because the Buddhist shrine was not like a serious temple but rather like amja, a Buddhist hermitage cell. Walking steep uphill, Dano discovered that both sides of the hilly road leading to the cell were lined with rocks and decked in weird wild flowers. There was a pond below the cell yard in which there were various kinds of fish swimming. "Everything on the periphery has the monk's touch! He has a hand for beauty," he marveled.
A bell was tolled for lunch. The boarders got out of their den and came down the stairs for the dining hall which was a wooden house unit separated from the koshiwon in which a baap azumma, or a lady cook in her early fifties lived with a young daughter. The young aspiring diners entered the hall shuffling along in their slippers and seated themselves around a long wooden table on the ondol room floor with their legs folded Korean fashion. 'Special' food spread was laid out by the hostess who introduced Dano to the other guests. The azumma suggested offhandedly to the diners that Dano be seated at head table in one of the two opposite seats to which the folks in the room expressed consent with claps.
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The night study went on swimmingly. Dano was glued to the desk for hours on end even with no break for a relief. He got the hard subjects of the Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law alloted for the morning hours whereas he got the piece of cake Criminal Law for the night. When he thought he was ahead of schedule, he memorized model answers which he had prepared, scribbling them on the answer sheet pads. When he once stepped out of the room to pee, he saw the host of Room Nine at the opposite lying on the room floor with the door open and reading a newspaper. He seemed to have heard the first crows of the roosters at the village when he fell asleep sitting on the desk.
At a coffee break after breakfast the next morning, the host of Room 18, a young man in his early thirties with southern accent, invited Dano to his room. Dano was surprised at the sophistication with which his room was furnished with a variety of coffee wares. But the point was that he did not invite him to give him a coffee treat but he did want to know about the neighbor's nocturnal wellbeing.
Dano halfheartedly admitted to having experienced some displeasures, but didn't mention any details. Host of the room Mr. Kang elatedly said, "Room 16 has since been devastated because all the previous hosts have given up on the room. Why don't you move to another place?" Dano didn't like the idea.
"If a ghost were really at work, what good the mere room movement of a few meters will do? He'll be after me wherever I go. So I'll stand the room there," Dano said. It's an issue of pride, Dano thought aloud. It'd be ashamed and pathetic of him if he admitted to having suffered all the gamut of humiliations.
He'd been dragged, pulled, run, crossed, up the steep hill over the rocky crevices through the thorn bushes. He didn't see whoever it was and didn't hear whatever it was, but he was controlled, manipulated, and raped. Yes, raped. In a person's dormancy, if the person couldn't be his or her own person, and if he or she were abused for the sake of unidentified pleasure, you could rightly say that the person was raped.
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In every mealtime gatherings, the seats of absentees were watched with sympathy and fear. Dano was astonished at the numbers with which the exodus was progressing. The progression was headed toward No. 16. Some interruptions were made, though, because new arrivals made replacements. In the midst of the chaotic fuss over the bizarre exodus, there were some leisurely moments. Dano was mobbed around by some younger boarders who were very curious to know what brought him there.
There had been a previous search, of course. He had gone to a koshiwon nestled under Mt. Bomun on the edge of Daejon City. The boarding house for the judicial exam aspirants had been patterned after cabin-type rooms. Entering a patio of the house, Dano had been received by the landlady of the facility. After a due greeting, she was about to serve Dano a cup of tea when he almost dropped it.
He was exaggerating, of course. But fact was she was so beautiful. She struck him as fascinating. She had been such a beauty of whom even her toes, which had been not covered in socks at the time, had been beautiful. He was wondering why such a shining beauty had been living in near 'hiding' with frail-looking husband rather than living in the broad world.
As he took a brief tour of the precinct, he ran into a roomer who tipped him off to what had been brewing among the roomers: "They argue among themselves which often develop into fist fights." With that, he got out of the place because he could not recommend the place to himself or anyone who was preparing the exams for higher government posts.
"Why?" one of the two woman boarders questioned him.
"Because it was preposterous of them." Dano answered.
"What do you mean by preposterous?" she wanted to know.
"It means that the boarders of the koshiwon in Daejon were not properly served by the cook but thrown into a position to serve the lady cook, instead, in a way that they'd be favored by the pretty cook," Dano said. All the boarders there nodded their consent.
"We're so lucky then," Mr. Kang said, smiling.
"Why?" Ms. Bahn asked.
"Because our azumma is so humble-faced that we're at liberty not to flatter her," Mr. Kang said, giggling, with the others laughing with him.
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Dano couldn't have cared less. He braced for every invisible encounter whenever he entered and sat on the study desk. He even made "his soldiers" stand guard on the rampart. He posted a warning alert on the wall:"Ghosts, Off Limits!" Despite all that, nights tortured him to no end, and even on day time he had hair-raising chills. On nights, he was roughly hauled to the field, over the hill, across the rapid river, through the thorn bushes. He had scratches all over him. He stood the brutalities, nonetheless.
The sleuth in Dano started being active briskly. He thought for days on end what would be the motivating agent behind the conspirator or conspirators to drive out the temporary occupants of the place that the baap azumma had leased in order to accommodate those who were sitting for judicial exams.
The emotional factor of hatred was involved, Dano concluded for the time being. And the culprit, who had been engrossed in driving the exam students, was not a ghost or ghosts but the Buddhist monk himself and the proprietor of the shrine estate, Dano assuredly concluded.
Was there any lead? None but some circumstantial evidences or clues. First of all, Monk Stout didn't like the idea of leasing the modest housing estate for other lucrative purposes. He originally planned to run a nursing home for the aged who had gotten disabled or unsupported. But his initial purpose was frustrated by Mrs. Lim, a divorcee with a daughter, who had entreated him to lease the facility.
The monk couldn't decline her requests, which was his vulnerability. But he tried to get his frustrated wishes accomplished by other mean methods, that is, by evicting the occupants of the facility by his own supernatural powers. What a mean-spirited act of the meanest creature. Why didn't he say that he wanted the facility to be used as a nursing home for the aged so he couldn't lease it for the profitable purposes other than that? Why did he talk one thing and act the other? It was considered mean and double dealing.
Supernatural powers? Who in the world gave a particular person or persons such terrifying powers? How was he empowered with such horrendous powers? Was it not against nature? What the hell was meant by the supernatural powers anyway?
Legend has it that some highly trained Buddhist monks or gurus got so powerful that they could enter other persons' cerebral territory and govern their actions, during sleeping hours and through dreams. Dano conceded that there were such powerful men and he suspected that Monk Stout might be one of them.
Enter other persons' cerebral territory? In the real world, entering other persons' estate without the proprietors' permission constituted trespassing on private property which constitutes a crime, of course. Therefore, the behavior of trespassing on other persons' cerebral territory constituted a sheer violation of people's cerebral sanctity, Dano thought.
Problem was that he could not catch the criminal and keep him collared to the floor. Question was how and where he could materialize himself. Through the nostrils of the slumberer? Or, through the victim's navel as you had seen in the movie Matrix? Or, through the top of the head? Or, through the veins and nerve cells? Once in there, how could he arouse the consciousness of the slumberer and let it do his bidding?
There occurred a small accidental bang which shook the shrine borderline. It was a wordless protest or another demonstration of their powerlessness, wasn't it? The rest of the boarders, who had survived the ordeal of headaches and nightmares, made an onslaught of prankish looting on the kitchen of the temple, that is, the hermitage cell. They sneaked, under the influence of the darkness of night, into the kitchen and looted a big jar containing makkoli, home-brewed conventional liquor of rice. The looters then relished it, drank it with the others and got drunk. One of the revellers ran amok through the hill town all through the night, hollering, "Come on out whoever thinks he is smarter than me!" Monk Stout, with his ears opened to all that's running wild, got enraged to the top of his head, cut off all the utilities which had been connected to the boarding house.
Dano, chosen as a representative for apologies, with two other young men, walked up the steep slope to the ground of the shrine, where he called for Monk Stout, "Sunim, may we enter the room?" There was no response. Dano said then, "Sunim, we're entering now." The room was not locked from inside. There was seated a man in his middle 50s with stout build and the medium height. His eyes were warm rather than sharp.
The sleuth in Dano, while kneeling before him and presenting sincere apologies on behalf of the boarders for having stolen the makkoli container and for having made all the wild scenes, tried to detect any lead connecting to conclusive evidence that the monk had done all the bizarre attacks on the boarders who had had to leave the facility. The suspicion seemed to put into affirmation when the monk, hearing from Dano that the "candidates" had been suffering from insomnia because of the nightmares, solemnly declared that mind was the key, citing that the housing lot had not been constructed on the graveyards. He said, "Mind causes everything. All the worries and delusions come from the mind." Dano suppressed the urge to yell before him, "You violated their mind territory, didn't you, you coward monk?"
They switched on the light again and the water came out of the faucet again. Where did the light come from? Up from the Buddhist monk. Where did the water come from? Up from the Buddhist monk. He was the origin of things which enabled people to carry on with He empowered people and things down under. He was the power and originator itself.
Normalcy returned to routines but the population of "the down town" curtailed to a mere few including Dano so that the boarding house was about to shut down. Strange thing was that new arrivals came sitting at the dining table, which made Dano gawk up at the one at "the up town."
Hardly had two months and ten days passed when the second-stage subjective test of the judicial exam got seven days ahead, a last-pitch period. It was early morning. After packing the book box, he called on Monk Stout to his modest dairy farm where he was milking the cows. He wished Dano a good luck, adding "Do as usual." The jubang azumma had called a taxi for him.
Dano liked exams, whichever exam you name it. He liked the moment just like the angler liked it. He liked it in the same context that amorous partners liked the moment. Which could be had the moment immediately by consummation. Wires gotten taut to the extent that it would be broken any minute.
An inspector comes into the room with a scroll. Folks stop breathing. Heart throbs make thunderous thumps to every owner's ears. The inspector hangs high on a blackboard of a classroom a wrapped scroll attached with seals. Bells ring which could tear the air into pieces. He unfurls the scroll and reveals the two exam subjects for all to see.
Dano, who seated himself in Exam Room 16 of Dongguk University, whose vision began to deteriorate these days, and who rose and went forward to see what the problems were. Eyes were blurring. Veins were running and raw nerves were running wild.
Letters, which were needed to answer the exam problems, consisting of consonants and vowels, were about to burst out but his hands got stalled: His penmanship was so clumsy and so tardy: Briskly scribbling noises around him running on answer sheets sounded like those of a bullet train.
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