In search of the lost sea

In search of the lost sea

 

              A boy's little sea

The little sea is to a boy as good as another Badug , which is the name

of his dog, his favorite friend. Every morning the little sea awakes him.

He usually gets up listening to the sounds of the little sea and steps down

to the front yard closer to it right ahead. At the end of the yard

the stone bank is set up to keep his house from overflown by the sea water. 

The sounds of the little sea is familiar to his ears. Everyday he sees it 

ebbing and flowing and hears the sounds it whispers by the winds

and waves.

 The boy falls asleep in Summer nights, hearing the sound which the wind

ripples the surface of the little sea , and in Winter at dawn,

gives his ears still in bed, with his eyes half opened, to hear

flocks of wild ducks in it at the right moment flapping their wings.

In Spring, at high tide, he looks down lowering his head

to silvery fish playing in flocks beneath the water surface and

in Fall ,wet afternoons,he looks through windows to the little sea

smelling of seaweed  mixed in the wind.
He usually goes out ,with Badug leading him,to a playground

in the center of the village to meet boys in his age at play. 

The playground is where at the harvest season the villagers

thresh grains and stack hay ,and at the lunar New Year or

the Full Moon Harvest Day flock to enjoy traditional games of Yut,

drinking and group dancing .

There is another place to attract him and his dog.He goes there everyday.

The playground is a part of the water front about 30 yards away

from his house which is haunted by a tramp selling Yeot ,

Korean hart taffy ,hauling a handcart , with  a  lot of Yeot stick

on it. When he shows up before us making a familiar sounds to us

with a big scissors on his right hand, at first every boy there

on hearing the sound runs to his house and return in a hurry to his cart

grasping pieces of copper wire, old books or empty bottles

on the hands to exchange with Yeot sticks .Every boys likes him. T

he boy respects him  as much as he wants to be a tramp selling Yeot

in the future like him . 

 

In the evening the boy often slips out of his house to go to a hut 

without the knowledge of his mother.In the hut lives a man

, half blind and unmarried,named Myunggu about in his thirties.

The hut is kind of a hideout where in the evening 5 or so  youths 

of good-for-nothing get together for playing'flower cards', Korean

traditionally favorite card game. The man always welcomes the boy,

who never comes without something to please him,say, pieces of

cigarettes or couples of red-ripe persimmon put in the pockets,

The boy easily gets tempted by  the old tales he tells him.

The boy is familiar to the story of Alibaba and 40 thieves or

Sindbut adventure or a Korean Arirang tale heard several times there

in the hut. Among the old tales his favorite is the ghastly story of

a wolf-turned school boy, who every dead of night from 1 oclock to

3 steals out of the dormitary to the cemetery in the hill  at the back

of his village and turns back to his bed with blood stains on his mouth.

 

Every day the little sea approachs the embankment of the house 

to meet the boy and Badug. Sometimes In the late morning ,

sunny and warm , the little sea looks like Badug's sleepy face 

and another time at the the tide of ebbing, it reminds the boy

of seagulls dancing above over it. 

The little sea never stays still at one place. It waits for the boy

to return home from school or the playground ,moving in waves

against the upper part of the stone wall .Sometimes the boy gets up

in the early morning to find it playing with wild ducks diving up and down

far at the edge of the mud flat bottom of it at low water tide.

Now and then it never moves at the embankment as if it were sleeping ,

and listening to the sound of the breeze blowing on the forest of reeds

along the left seaside it abruptly awakes to run farther and farther 

toward the wider sea.