Flamenco Journey 3

                      II. flamenco fever

 

                                 

                        1. room-sharing

 

 

                                 

Portland, July, 2001 ,from: Gohk 

Hello, Jh!

How are you doing?

Saving trouble, I hasten to inform you that I am okay,

doing well here in the downtown of this city. 

 

Strange things will happen in strange places.

Now I am in a city named Portland,enjoying a  heart-beating,

experience of room-sharing you would not believe as real. 

It would probably  be no way in Korean society. Could you

believe me if I whisper a hint  to you that I am getting along

in a small studio , the living room of which is divided into halves

by a movable curtain, together with a German lady named Thani 

in her twenties .

 

 

Well, it is now taking place here! Since last May,

in so small a studio originally for a single person or

newlyweds, I have shared the room of in it together

with her. As for the room , it is divided by the partition

wall of texture set in the center of the room.

The other part of it is Thani’s space and this one for me

is convertible, as occasion demands,to my sleeping room 

for the night or to a shared living space for the day time.

We share a bath and a toilet by the  doorway and also

the telephone at the kitchen. This space is now where I stay.

​

Yes, I am greeting nights in such a queer situation,

some sweet and some exciting. This luxury is given to me

as a rarely good luck for the first time since I wandered

from hostels to hostels in Vancouver and Seattle,

where in most cases no less than ten people stay

in a single room. It would be not easy to picture in your mind

an actual situation where me,this reckless friend,  has stayed.

 

It was very confusing for the first few days.

In the dark night  pricking my ears up, I could sense

a delicate movement in the opposite space. 

One night I could not sleep with the faint sound of rustle

that raised an image of her undressing in my mind.

That was not a trifle. The next day  I couldn't do well 

at my job, exhausted and asleep, as a  hotel housekeeper .

 

There  is another more confusing case I had to face with.

 It is when my blue-eyed roommate was wanted on the phone.

In such case, I hurriedly open the door  to inform her of it

without knocking.Then she gets very angry for it , eyeing me

with  some contempt .It means that it is a common sense

that youI should not open the door without permission .

One day I did it inspite of myself waiting no permission

from inside, as she was wanted on the phone and I knew

that she was in. She of course got angry at me.

So I could not but apolozige for such a mistake .

But this time I felt mistreated. For at the moment wondered​ 

in anxiety whether she might be ill in bed. So I did it hurriedly

not waiting for her answer.  

 

 

 

Once I had to suffer her bitter insult owing to garlic smell.

 One night I enjoyed a Korean traditional dish of pork

thickly flavored with garlic over liquors in a snack bar

with a Korean acquaintance.

Then the next day at around noon when I barely woke up ,

she urged me to open all the windows, shouting that

the studio was filled with offensive smell of garlic.

I could not but get up and open  windows one by one.

Well, Sure enough it was true that  I was enough happy

in the very night with the dish with garlic to my taste .

For a moment  I felt insulted and mummered faint anger

only in the mouth , That was all.  Frankly speaking,

such offensiveness in her manner is just a trifling thing

compared with her refreshing attractivenesses

 

By the way, one day  late at night she came in, and only

exchanging looks entered her room without saying a word .

She seemed completely tired and worn out. Next day I  was

very worried by the deep silence in her room. She made no

indication of her presence , though she was sure to be in . 

 So I knocked to open the door, entered her room,

not waiting for the answer from inside. And I quietly put

on the desk a plateful of blueberries that she loves.

At a glance she seemed to be barely able to rise up to sit.

​Then still in bed,she said toward me surprisingly

in the tender and friendly voice, that she appreciated

my concern and needed to sleep more.

 

 That night was a wonderful moment. it was the first time

for her to step inside my space  and unexpectedly gave me

a ticket for the musical ‘Aida,’ saying that she didn’t have time

to go to theatre. At that night we had warm talks in the kitchen.

From then on ,we came to feel closer to each other ,and 

the atmosphere of our studio turned soft and warm.

We began to have more private talks.

Now I came to know that she shared the studio 

with a girl student from Finland in love of  Klimt,

an Austrian painter. There is an ink print of  the painting,

‘Die Erfullung’ by Klimt  now hanging

on  the wall which ,Dani said,was presented 

by her Finnish friend. 

 

Under such a warm atmosphere Thani laughed out

loudly when I said to her that living together with her  

in a shared  room is such a big thing for me

(since my wife is there in Korea), adding that in Koea

this would be easily regarded as a accident of immorality.

She said that there is no problem of sharing a room

with anybody in orer to save money. But she said

her case is a little bit special, because it is not common

for a female student in her twenties to share the room

with an old man like me in the second half of fifties.

 

 I came to know that Thani, as a self-supporting student, 

has been earning money for her education and living

through such a part time labor as is  unbearable even for men.

And I realized, too, that in particular  the next day after

she did her job as a part-time painter, It was hardly possible

for her to get up for the entire day time.

That was another  beautiful aspect of hers.

​

She already made me look shabby with her fluent English. 

What a beautiful and proud soul she is!  .

 Anyway we came to get closer to each other since then.

From then on whenever she did not wake up as usual 

in the morning, I would get ready for her breakfast, thinking

that she was exhausted due to her previous day’s job.

I even washed her dishes . Sometimes We stayed together

in her room, conversing to each other about art and music.

Furthermore she let me borrow albums of famous flamenco

singers since she knew that I am deeply interested in flamenco.

Ocasionally according to my request, she dances flamenco

with no hesitation in this small place. once her dancing let me

feel  as if  there suddenly appeared the girl made of tree

in a fable, who , they said,was born of the tree under the help

of 4 travellers in the Swartzwalt in Germany !

 

 These days we go out together to watch flamenco shows

at the Broadway theaters . But dating with her in the down is 

pleaseant and sweet. But it is  occasionally bitter. it would not

be easy for you to imagine such a queer situation  as this:

An Asian man like me of small figure in his fifties dating with

a German girl ,tall and slender, in her twenties! Hey, Joon.

Give me your ears a moment and listen to this poor friend.

These days I have my white hair dyed dark brown

in her absence. What is more, I wear  high-heeled slippers

even in the living room to get me to match well with her

in height .

 

 The lines  written in my diary,as below, about her

at a moment would help you to guess how meaningful to me 

her being is:

 

Thaniella! Once you said:

"my first favority is flamenco

and the second is blackberry".

Were July full of the sweet scent oh Blackberry ,

 I would cross the Willamete over Hawthorn Bridge , 

 with the fruits in my backpack

 to cafe Bolero,

 where at night of every saturday 

 the  Schwarzwalt girl dances flamenco.

 

 Once she kindly whispered at me "my first favority is flamenco

and the second is blackberries." adding that when she was sick

in bed, dreary and lonely ,she  calmed down her thirst with 

the blackberries I gave her. At  the moment I was really moved.

I have never forgotten the very day  when, seeing me entering

with a bottle of Pignot Noir in my hand, she smiled brightly and

suggested ,'how would you like me dance flamenco tonight?' 

'Why not.' I replied surprisedly.That night I uncorked the wine 

and  she danced  flamenco for me!

​

See you,

Gohk

 

 

 

 

Portland

july,2001

 

Dear Jh: 

Please keep it  only to yourself. My wife there should be completely

kept ignorant of such a thrilling life as her husband is enjoying here.

What I have searched for in my family as a poltical scientist you know ,

is to keep it status quo, not to be in conflict . I really don't want

to break the balance of power in my home among my wife,

my aged mother aand me.

 

 Now  with my restless heart I am writing  this to you .

My roommate Thani is to introduce a flamenco bailaora  to me, 

who studied in Jerez of Andalusia ,Spain. Her name is Lau whose

arms in the movement, she says, is  fantastically enchanting.

I am waiting for the upcoming July when I can see Lau dancing.

Dani promised that she would sure do it for me  before she flies 

for her holiday with her younger sister  to Jamaica 

in the Caribbean Sea.

 

 Strangel to say,it was simply because of my curiosity

about flamenco, in particular, baile, that I came to choose

Portland  instead of  LA familiar to me.

Vivid in my memory was the image of a flamanenco

performer on the stage I happened to see when I visited

this city at the first time and heard  that I could often see

flamingo performances here. In fact, now and then I have  had

an imagination of  ‘a dancing woman with far-seeing eyes turned

toward the invisible path of a bird  flying to the other world.’ 

Another image in my imagination is that of a blind gypsy bailaora

dancing barefooted, whom Jean Grenier was said to be enchanted

to see at a café by the seaside.

 

I am enjoying a rare feeling free with some self-restraint 

presented by my age of fifties which , as you know,

passed out of the tunnel of  confusion in the mind

due to sexual imaginations which are likely to oppress,

awake or asleep, hot-blooded youths. 

​

Did you happen to see the film of 'as good as it get',

in which Jack Nicholson  plays? 

I was moved by these 2  lines of dialogues in the film

of what the heroine said to Jack:

'Sex is not so great as we think it is ! Last night

I and he shared a wonderful feeling of fullness

that sex can never gives.'

​

Hi, Joon!

This morning I awake to find myself  left alone,

and there vacant on the wall of the living room

where the picture by Klimpt was placed.​

She left Portland a week ago.

 

​I wish you well.

Gk