seabound1.

Yearning

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 When he was over 40s, he quitted his job as an editorial writer. He worked for a local newspaper. He concluded that the job prevented him from writing literary works of his own. He could not keep it any more. He was forced to concentrate all his time and energies on worldly affairs which was essential for the job of writing journalistic articles. He realized that he had an irresistible yearning in a corner of his mind that he would write literary works personal essay-turned novel of his own style.

At the bottom of his resignation of the job was there an indirect factor. It was deeply related with two visions, which would turn up before his mind's eye, lingering about for a while and run out of sight .One of them was the little sea, which is no more, ebbing and flowing in front of his house in his boyhood, and the other, the corridor of the sanatorium surrounded with the arborvitae woods where he had spent 4 or more years in his twenties.

One day ,out of sheer desire to see and smell the sea, he took a bus bound for Tongyung, a city and harbor by the seaside of Namhae, the south sea. He imagined that Namhae was a one night stop for the little sea which went out for a journey to the wider ocean He stood at a quay, looking at the horizon. Nd he wandered about a few  islands on the south sea . Next he went toward the east sea  and in succession to the west sea. O the road to three sea sides of the Korean Peninsular, probably there was in his mind's eye a hopeless yearning for the little sea lost .

The sea of Namhae reminded of tenor Ruciano Favarotti's  tone color by the remote thin fog-covered horizon and deep sky  when stood at the top of the island named Yokji. on facing up with the sea ,the light was so bright that  for a moment he could keep his eyes open, feeling dizzy. In spite of himself  he collapsed on the earth, closing his eyes.The temporary condition of diziness he felt was due to both sun beams reflected on the surface, but the deep cliff under his foot. After a while  he stood up again looking afar to the horizon dividing the sea, with the ears given toward the sound of waves breaking on the rock down the sheer cliff. How enormous was the roar of the sound rising from down!  H stood still for a while looking at the other black-colored islands as if half -circled  roofs of cottages.

He saw the sea of Donghae ,with his eyes half-closed, in a bus running along the sea side. To him sleepy in the bus the sea, with the wild waves on the surface, running past by was the color itself, in cobalt blue.  Running by the seaside the rhythmic sound of the bus engine gave him a rest. Donghae was to him a sea that he felt like that. In the running bus what his eyes were heading for was not the sea in the present but a corner of the seashore in the past. on the road along the seashore  the water color passing by the window of the running bus made him feel the places in the present meaningless. for example, What was caught up with in his half-colsd eyes was not the seashore where he was, but a  pier of Mukho harbor, familiar to him, which he was expected to see in a few hours .

The day when he arrived for the first time at the Manripo seashore of the sea of Suhae, he saw the sea twice, once in the sea at an ebbing tide,and the other time walking along the way by the sea at full tide. The void sea- the slime bottom of the sea with the end of the ebbing tide flickering afar- suddenly sprang up before him at the moment he took a corner of the winding road bound for the seaside. At the sight of the voidness unexpectedly reminding of that of the little sea lost he just let out a sigh of surprise and wonder. The voidness let him feel a sharp pain at a part of his left chest which he got  heavyly affected  in his youth. In his memory the little sea in his boyhood  had the wide slime bottom at ebbing tide, alluring him to come in  to catch Sok, a kind of crayfish living beneath the bottom. In a word, At Manripo ,a searesort of the west sea He met the most impressive emptiness in the sea.

Returning home from the sea bound journey ,he cofined in his study fro a while,writing on the paper little by little what he wish to express in prose.Since then he would see it through what was not the sea. such as a line of essay by Anton Sunack,a piece of Subert ,or a landscape of an unknown painter.This was the starting point to began as a journey to his writing life