usb preface and more

               -contents-

 

preface

 

1. the sea in the mind

          

  

2.  mustache

. 

3, hosteling  in North West        

        Seattle

        Portland

     4. transcontinental Greyhound journey

        ?

        ?

     5. In love of Flamenco 

        Jerez

        Madrid

     6.train running in the circle

        Moscow & Petersburg

        Siberia

     7. Chaconne

         Maria Balvarova

         Po Kim

   

8.Interview.?​

      

Postscript

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preface

 

This essay-turned novel shows you in the beginning a man in his 40s who happens to have an imaginary idea that the little sea he used to live by in his boyhood still loafs around somewhere in the wider sea not far from him in the company of a group of seagulls.

In his boyhood he lived by an inland sea which opened upon

the gate toward the wider sea.

So he travels with a vague longing to find ?the little sea, He goes to his first destination, a  city and harbor

of the South Sea to go by ship to the islands. Next he goes

to the seaside of East Sea and there takes another bus running

northwards along the seacoast to a harbor, which he have once

visited in his 20s. Running all the way to the harbor he keeps

his eyes turned only to the sea, And lastly there he turns 

toward the West Sea to reach a village named Manripo beach.

The little sea is of course not found in any seaside. And also

he knows that the little sea is nowhere but in his mind,

Since then on he has traveled overseas, unconsciously with the little sea in his mind, and writes. Now he realizes one thing:

He can catch the little sea through another way: to write. 

So he writes to see it. and on writing, he is reminded of a line of advice in a letter Reina Maria Rilke sent

to a youth who wanted to write poems.The point of which is is this:

Whoever wishes to write poems, has to see many cities, 

to meet many people, and to read many books. What is more,

he has to recollect many days gone by ephemerally

with the countless stars twinkling in the night sky.

 

This time the man, looking to be much older than before, appears as a hosteller in Seattle and Portland of North West, USA, and in Spain with Rilke's advice in his mind's pocket ,and running by train days and nights through Siberia toward Irkusk, this time with a proverb of Siberian tribes in his backpack of imagination: It is only upon Baikal in autumn that

a man learns to pray from his heart.

 

Several years ago the author of this story had a book written in English

and published in USA, the title of which was Flamenco Journey, 

As a Korean essayist, I did it in English as the original manuscript

was based on the emails written in English to and from

an American. 

And I decided to have it published in USA for  a purpose:

to earn my grandchildren's pocket money. I have been

a nobody writer who couldn't make enough money

by creating  literary woks. So I did it so.

 

Once again I wrote another book in English  for a simple purpose:

to give a bit of educational stimulation to Jaden, a  4-year-old grandson in illiteracy living in LA . I  thought that my emails directly sent o the little boy could let him to learn  Alphabet 

by stimulating not only his curiosity, but also his self -respect, For the simple purpose, I wrote this manuscript. The most important thing for it was, I judged, that I myself should raise up my English  to the higher level  to do it.. So I came to write another book in English..Below is one of the emails I sent to my Grandson:

 

Hi, Jaden;
How are you ?
How is your condition, today?

This is your grandfather,
getting worried about your injured arm.

Your Grandmother said that
because of the bandaged arm ,
you became the center of interest  at the preschool yesterday.
Grandmother said that
your friends got much interested in your bandaged arm.
Is that true?

Grandfather is thinking of Jaden, your mother and father,
And also Dongshig, the dog in your house.
Does the dog like to play with you, Jaden?
Your grandfather was happy last spring
to play with Jaden and Dongshig in the garden of your house.

These days, do you like to read books
together with your mother and father ?
What is the name of the book you like very much?

Grandfather wants to share emails with you, Jaden
and also hope that Jaden will email to grandfather someday

Grandfather
in Masan,
South Korea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The sea in the mind

                       

                       1.

 

When Moon was over 40s, he quitted his job of working for a local newspaper. He concluded that he could not keep up writing news items any more in the newspaper owing to his personal reasons

Most probably his resignation of the job was deeply related with the sea in his mind. In this regard, one day in a private meeting  after he quitted the job, he once revealed his mind in this regard to a few closest friends like this. “My mind is like a bird flying toward the sea, so I cannot take root into the soil of the real life.” He added to it,“ I could not rub out the sea in my mind, which incites me to see the seaside far from me with a mysteriously magnetic power impossible for me to resist, I cannot help it. Anybody who have had a strong desire to deeply breathe in the sea smell can understand me as what I am. ”

One day he took a bus, out of sheer desire, to saunter about by any seashore, bound for Tong Yung, a city and harbor one and half hour away by bus. He reached the city and walked alone alongside the quay, imagining that somewhere here in the South Sea here the lost little sea could stay for a temporary rest, which had left him in his boyhood for a journey to the wider ocean. Standing by the quay he inhaled the air and was allured by the familiar sea smell, infiltrating into his nose, to get on aboard a liner bound for islands. So, he made a round tour through a few islands.

Next to the South Sea, he went eastward to the seaside. And after that , in succession, to the west side. Probably there must be in his mind a hopeless yearning for the little sea lost while the bus which he got aboard was running along the three sea sides of the Korean Peninsular.

 

At the right moment when he faced with the South Sea at the top of the YokJi, the first Island he arrived at, the sea suddenly reminded him of tenor Favarotti's voice color, The light on the water surface was so dazzlingly bright that he could see nothing, feeling dizzy. For a moment, in spite of himself he almost collapsed on the earth, closing his eyes. It might be caused by both sun beams reflected

on the surface, and the deep cliff under his foot. After a while,  he could see afar the horizontal line between the sea and the sky, 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! He stood still, looking at the other black-colored islands as if half-circled roofs of cottages.

 

He saw the East Sea afar,with his eyes half-closed, in a bus running

along the seaside.The sea with the wild waves running past by him was

the color itself, in cobalt blue.The bus running by the seaside with the rhythmic

movement and sound of the engine gave him a sleepy rest. In the rocking bus 

what his eyes were heading for was not the sea in the present, but the seashore

in the past. The factual place he was passing by was meaningless to him

intoxicated by the sea in cobalt blue. For example, what was caught up

with in his half-closed eyes was not the seashore where he was, but a  pier

of Mukho harbor, which he was to reach in a few hours .

 

And while he stayed by Manripo, a well known beach of the West Sea,

he met the sea twice in a day, once in the middle of the sea at the low tide,

and the other time by the seashore at full tide. At the first sight of the void sea,

which showed up before him at the moment he took a corner of the winding

alley to the seaside, he let out a sigh of surprise .The emptiness of the sea

,with the end line of ebb tide flickering seen from afar, reminded him

of the little sea in his mind.

 

In his boyhood the house his family lived was adjacent to the seaside of an

inland sea which they called 'the little sea'. At that time every morning

the little sea awoke the boy. He used to get up listening to the sounds

of the little sea and step down to the front yard  to see the sea

right ahead. The stone wall at the end of the front yard kept the house 

where his parents and sisters and a dog named Badug lived with him,

from overflown by the sea water. Everyday he saw it ebbing and flowing.

 

The boy went to bed in Summer nights, hearing the sound of ripples

of the little sea and in Winter at dawn, gave his ears, with his eyes half closed

still in bed, to hear flocks of wild ducks flapping their wings. In Spring,

at high tide, he looked down, lowering his head over the rock wall, 

to silvery fish playing in flocks beneath the water surface and in Fall,

wet and windy afternoons,  he could smelled, through the open windows,

of seaweeds in the sea at ebbing. He usually went out, with Badug leading him,

to a playground in the middle of the village to meet boys in his age at play there. 

The playground was where at the harvest season the villagers used to thresh

grains and stack hay. And also at Lunar New Year or Full Moon Harvest Day

they flocked to enjoy Yut game, one of the traditional games ,drinking and dancing.

There was another playground to attract him and his dog.

 

The playground was a part of the seaside bank about 30 yards away

from his house and the place was haunted by a peddler hauling a handcart ,

with Yeot sticks to sell on it. When he appeared making a familiar sounds

of scissoring to the boys, most of them ran to somewhere and soon returned 

to his cart, with pieces of copper wire, old books or empty bottles grasped

in their hands to exchange with Yeot sticks .Every boys in the village liked

the peddler. Believe or not, the boy at the time had a dream:

to be a free tramp like him someday. 

 

The boy often slipped out of his house in the evening to go to a hut 

without the knowledge of his mother. In the hut lives a man, half blind and

unmarried, named Myunggu in his thirties. The hut is a hideout

where in the evening several youths of good-for-nothing got together

for playing 'flower cards', a Korean traditional card game. The man always

was delighted to see the boy, who never came without something to please him,

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

The boy easily got tempted by the hut owner telling old tales to him.

'Alibaba and 40 thieves' he loved was heard at first in the hut. 

one of his favorite among the many tales the uncle told him was

a ghastly story about a school boy. who stole out of the school dormitory

every dead night around 1 o'clock to the cemetery located at the back hill

of his school and turned back unobserved ,after a while to his bed,

with blood stains on his mouth.

 

Every day the little sea approached the rock wall at the end of the yard 

of the house to meet the boy. Sometimes In the late morning ,

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

another time at the tide of ebbing, it reminded the boy of seagulls 

whirling around above over his head. 

The little sea never stayed still at one place. It waited 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 got up

at dawn to find it playing with wild ducks diving up and down

afar at the edge of the mud flat of it at low water tide.

Now and then it seemed to sleep quietly under the rock wall, 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 

form the boy.

 

One day in the little sea at high tide appeared a whale, called Mulchi

by the villagers, The sea was delighted at the very rare visitor,

which appeared after a long  absence. Then this time the appearance

of the exotic whale turned out to be not a usual thing to the little sea,

as its appearance provided a momentum for the little sea for the first time

to have a strong curiosity beyond the horizon out of the narrow inland sea.

The boy has never seen  Mulchis before .However, he know  that

 the giant whales making a rare visit to the little sea are  on friendly terms

with human beings, in particular, boys in his years,

 

The little sea used to think it natural  to lead its living within the boundary

of the inland sea, repeating  its routine tide of ebb and flow .

Then Mulchi's unexpected appearance caused him to realize

that there could be other seas beyond the horizon, wider and deeper than itself.

Usually the little sea, free and amiable, the boy imagined, 

liked to make friends with humans and dogs. Then unexpectedly it once 

turned mad and brutal at the time of Saraho typhoon ,hitting the house heavily destructed and Badug lost in the sea.

Since then, the little sea came to undergo a delicate change.

In a way his little sea, at tide of ebbing, gazed beyond the horizon

to the remote open sea. However, the boy seemed to be unware that the little sea would

risk making a long journey far to the open sea where the exotic whale was sure to come from. 

 

The older the boy got, the farther the little sea went out. Actually it 

stepped back further and further from him before he noticed it.

one day, at the time of ebb ,the little sea gave its ears to the sound of the wind coming from outside and gazed at the exit of the water way on the right side, Then the boy was unaware of it.

 

After that, he flied overseas to Europe to reach Montmartre, Paris,

in particular. While he was making a round trip, he said, to the seashore

of the Korean Peninsular, from the south through the east till the west,

He cherished in his mind the little sea he used to live by in his boyhood.

In a meaning, It was the inland sea in his mind that enticed him to make

a round trip to the seashore.

 

On the other hand,

in case of his first overseas travel to Paris,

it was a word of 'Bohemians',the meaning of which he was getting  

interested in that enticed him. His concern about the word grew bigger

and bigger after he read the passage 'below':

"Bohemians and the Gypsies, in the most prevalent perceptions of both,

shared some characteristics. Both groups are known for their vagabond

lifestyle, for their merry poverty, for their disregard of money for the pursuit

of music, color, and relationships. They are groups that have different

priorities than the dominant cultures of their societies..."

In this regard  he surprisingly began to regard himself as a bohemia,

asking to himself:Then what is different between me and them?

They have different priorities than the dominant cultures of their societies,

and ignore money for the pursuit of music and color?

So do I. As you know, I hate to have a job and long for the artistic life.

Most of all, I am  a good-for nothing to my family.

Then what is different them and me?

And he often criticized himself,thinking that he is not a true Bohemian,

but a pretended Bohemian who has a steady income but chooses

to live in Bohemia for the fun of it. In short, the two factors enticed him

to go traveling, for one time seawards, and another time overseas.