Episode 14:The Temporal Shower
It was a lesson from the TIME lecture at Hanyang that teaching is learning. It was also a precious lesson that a thorough preparation and rehearsal of it is a must for the success of any public performance. I also had a grim realization that there always are people that go me one better.
How good of you it would be if you could fix your defaults or mistakes immediately after or after some decent passage of time! You could kiss and make up. You could tear the divorce agreement paper into shreds and hug each other.
The used-up utensils, biodegradable cups, used-up glass or plastic bottles could be recycled. Ragged clothing could be patched for subuses, say, table cover, tin cover, children's sack, etc. The used toys could be subused to fix the leak, that is, to stem the leak.
Bruised minds could be healed in an apt facility by a licensed pro with a loving care for a considerable time period. Wounded or mangled bodies, bodies with the malignant tumor, could be fixed to a considerable degree with medical surgery.
It was not that there had not been a bright side to the "messed- up" lecture of mine. Along with the aftermath, or the lessons learned, there had been another chance in store for me to fix the previous mistakes. I had another college lecture waiting for me to give the college guests down there. The thing is, I was left with another TIME lecture to do at Sogang University lecture hall at the opposite location of Hanyang about one hour later after the class hour. The two lectures, of course, for convenience's sake and for technical reasons, were utterly the same: the same article with the same content of the same date.
That had been an irritating yet titillating experience. The dim-witted lecturer of me more often than not thought the goblin might have worked. The thing is, the moment I was about to exit the lecture hall winding up the lesson of the hour, that is, one hour and 30 minutes, a mistake or two of the lecture, sometimes fatal, dawned on me.
The correction of a lecture mistake or two was done the moment the doer had realized it. I used to peruse the part the mistake had been made, seek the reason that it had been caused, and analyze the relationships to get the context mutually meaningful. Which was termed by me "a linguistic shower." So cool as to freshen me up.
The rest of time had usually been spent on temporal travel. It was the winter season and the cold wind was blowing, which meant aloofness, loneliness, and isolation, and made to the urban traveller recollect whichever things related to what had passed and what he had lost.
The wind, particularly the cold winter wind, was to me a catalyst for remembrances of things past. Walking out of the campus, negotiating down the slopy road pushed by the wing of the wind, to the Hanyang Station, decades of the phantasmagoric images were ganging upon me. I like the wind very much. The wind has been marijuana to me. Really.
Getting on board the train, whether being seated or not, I used to make myself resigned to the whirlpool of the temporal travel. The images were fighting each other to claim primacy. "It is a baby son," the woman dependents of an offshore coal mine of the Mitsubishi Corporation were mobbing mom and me from the ruined country of Chosun.
The noise of the footprints in the snow was usually sunk by the screams of "Help!" Flashes were hitting on the startled faces in the "tent" of refugees. The subway car reeked of dung heaps scattered all around off the Cheongdo River. Startled, I opened my eyes, looking sheepishly around, seeing nothing happened.
Through the mid-afternoon calm inside the subway car, I would listen to the rhythmic monotony of the click-clacking noise. The village dogs across the stepping stones were baying furiously. The Taso Tsao's army troops might have been killing away.
Red eyes were aiming at me."Cut off the water!" mom screamed. I startled up, kick opened the room door and ran up to the water gate. I shuddered on the seat, with eyes still closed. "The next station is Sincheon!" I heard the station announcement in a dream.
-------------------
It would be an excitement if someone was waiting for you at a hotel lounge with some gift, at a cafe of cozy ambience with a good news, or at home with a warm meal. Grandma was always waiting for her grandson at home with a warm bowl of rice wrapped with a hot cloth on the ondol floor.
The Sogang audience were expecting me at Martyr Daegon's Hall, so the ten more minutes' walk from Sincheon Subway Station to the entrance of the university and some more minutes of slopy uphill negotiation to the hall were not hard for me.
I was made to stand before the podium there at Hanyang, but here at Sogang I was able to sit at a lecturer's seat before a podium table. So comfortable. The lecture hall was cozy and mercurially warm. The audience were always considerate, attentive, and polite.
They got the linguistic details right. They well understood what had been referred to or analyzed by me. They well absorbed the diagrams presented from time to time by the lecturer which showed syntactic relationships in expositions.
I made the difference by the time factor, by the subterranean travel of 40 some minutes, and by the "temporal shower" (of course coined by me). In other words, the time factor of the subway travel was a pottery kiln which had "baked" a cute pottery urn, that is, the TIME lecture made during the college winter break.
The TIME lecture at Sogang was a relative success. The thing is one hundred and several tens of the initial audience wound up with the shrunken number of one hundred and some several listeners, who got up and gave me the cheerful clap.
Using this opportunity I sincerely apologize to the disappointed students who had come to the Hanyang lecture hall for what I had ruined their precious hours. And I appreciate the patience and enthusiasm of those college students who had come to Sogang for their eager attendance and support. I miss the hours which I had shared at Mapo with Too Tall Mr. Park and Too Fat Mr. Song for their laughs, humors, and encouragements.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
अ Novel
Episode 13: Ended with a Whimper
There was an onset of acute waist pain the day before yesterday. (November 1, 2010) It came "like thieves." But an onset is spoken wrongly in my case. The recurrence of waist pain is the right statement.
In fact, the onset of waist pain has been an annual or biennial "event" for the past six or seven years. It's been a repetitional and expected incident rather than event so that it can be prevented.
I could do that but I didn't. That's been too much indulgent of me. It's been embarrassing of me that I was not prepared for the evident and worst consequences. I had to reduce weight first of all.
Obesity is known to be the cause of all diseases. I weigh a little too much and I naturally have had high blood pressure and as I stated above I have had waist pain and recently I begin to see the doctor for the treatment of a specific delicate organ of mine.
Voracity is always the problem. I've been an overeater myself. I can't stand hunger. People say I lay waste any meal table set for a certain occasion. I had emptied six tins of meals in the army mess hall, of course during a green army private.
I think it's time I controlled or suppressed over-appetite. "Eat half the meals you are supposed to take," people say. I make every determination to cut down on meals. "Let's make it two thirds rather than half!" That's a deal.
Against the backdrop of the obese guy vulnerable to appetite, Cha Hee was able to control her appetite, keeping her relatively slim physique. Contrary to her husband, who had collided head-on with the establishment, subsequently plunging his wife and family into the edge of famine and homelessness, she was getting along well with the locals and well- prepared, say, for the unfortunate incident.
Cha Hee didn't make a scene, nor did she make another visit to anyone to plead her husband's case. Wife didn't urge me to sue the company, and I didn't think that out, either. Cha Hee was really street smart. Her body and soul was standing fast on earth. Cha Hee didn't imagine something to be done for her or for her family. Cha Hee acted before she thought, or Cha Hee acted while she thought.
Just as my father, as a tenant farmer, was always hitting the field, ploughing the land and cutting woods, Cha Hee used to hit the pedal of the sewing machine since we had come up to Seoul. She hit the pedal even when I was working at The Korea Times because the envelope of the pay check was so lean and she had to make ends meet.
When I was actually fired from the newspaper company, she parted from the sewing machine. She opened a modest shop of her own, instead. Thing is she bid and got a contract from a market building with some money, which had been saved by tightening the belts of the family members, plus a modicum of my severance pay.
It has been 1982, the eighth year since we landed in Seoul. The last and third son was born at Black Stone Town in 1976. Kyo, the Seoul child, like the two older brothers of his, was playing with his peers, who had not gone to the children's house or kindergarten, at the children's playground or something.
Cha Hee, after opening the shop, had played somersault, or existential juggling of some sort. She had cooked meals for the family, gone to the Namdaemun Market by bus with one transfer, and made a good buy of toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and all gamut of colorful trinkets, and coming back to the shop, sold to purchase.
She had earned more from a shop owner of an accessory store than from a seamstress. "Accessory ladies are trendies," she had said, lamenting the lack of fashion apparels on her. But she was reluctant to act out on herself.
-----------------
It was not that there had not been one or two persons who had been out to save me from being plugged from the news media society. Kim somebody of the advertising section of the Korea Times had done his best to hire me there, to which the guy had been opposed. I appreciate Mr. Kim for the effort. I miss him badly. I'm looking forward to the day of a no-chance encounter.
There had been not much niche left for me. Which means my job opportunities had been blocked off by a lot of impediments. Of course I couldn't stand behind the podium of an elementary school teacher again. It had been technically impossible and of course it would have been brazen of me to do that.
I was still relatively young but there was not much left in which for me to get a job. It was not necessary to prepare other document except for the official appointment from the Education Bureau of the local jurisdiction, in the teaching establishment. But in the cold reality, they asked for a resume, a valid and powerful resume, to be hired.
Yes, the resume was the problem. They requested the possession of a resume at every place where I went, and they asked for the submission of it when they met me. When they spotted a good resume their faces brightened, and when they did not their faces darkened.
What do you mean by a resume? It is a French word meaning a personal history. It is actually written with an accent on the head of the last syllable "e" (accent aigu), and pronounced as such (raisumei).
What are you supposed to do to feature a good resume which will brighten your interviewer's face? Good birth might be a desirable factor. But integrity, diligence, originality, creativity, and bravery are requisites, I am afraid.
It was just myself that had made me the person of a bad, or poor resume, but no other. I had been lazy and expecting when I had been asked to put a harder push. I had been timid and scared of everything that I had been asked to challenge.
I'm figuratively speaking, of course, but when I look back on "the truncated life" of mine in many corners of life, that is, the frustrated expectations or ambition, was utterly ascribable to myself but to no other. I was totally to blame.
It was naturally so shameful of me that more often than not I had put the blame on society when I was asked to submit a decent resume with a college diploma on it. The smug hubris of the then interviewer was not to blame but the sullen aloofness on the part of the interviewee was to blame.
It was TIME, the world-famous weekly magazine, that had saved me from the feelings of dullness and uselessness. What mattered first of all was not the life condition I could enjoy as the decent income earners. Several young scholars, who had gotten acquainted with me through chance encounters at a downtown foreign language institute or two, got me a stint as a lecturer of the TIME articles, of course with a wink at my resume issue.
TIME was a good material piece for teaching and learning the English language. TIME had actually been a dream piece, and of course it's now been one, too. It's a mystery that TIME news magazine of all the foreign language news magazines with a global fame, which has been being published in English, has from early on become favorites as a teaching and learning material.
I liked TIME as a Normal School boy at Andong City. I liked its general design, the title of the magazine, and its red borderline. I liked the urgency of the headlines taking place at the interval of a week.
I remember I stated somewhere earlier that I had been rumored to be very good at English at the town during my high school years. I also remember I stated that the mistaken notion had originated from the bizarre behavior of mine that I had always held the TIME magazine in my hand.
You tend to be deceived by the understated or overstated facade. Though an old saying goes that you should not judge by appearances, you do and we do that in almost all the cases of the real life. Appearances are really important.
I think that the serious and sincere efforts should be made in both ways: We should try to make good appearances in a variety of aspects of life and we also should make big efforts not to be deceived by them. That seems to be really and equally important.
If you see a man and a woman getting together in a very intimate way, you know by instinct that they are in love. But we are surprised to know that people use the same situation to camouflage that they are splitting.
A podium is a place on which you display your appearances. Steve Jobs shows his best when he makes his presentations, but when I stood on the podium of an auditorium of Hanyang University in Seoul on a winter's day in some year in the 1980s, it meant disaster.
I was overwhelmed with the "huge" audience. As a country boy, that is, as a countryside school teacher, it was the first time that I had ever had such a huge crowd as my audience. The auditorium was really packed, with the leftover students standing against the stair wall and sitting on the aisle floor. The audience of college students seemed to number 350 or more.
All of a sudden, there was a blurry audience down below the podium. The cold sweat ran down my cheeks and on my back, with my mouth going dry and choked. The hour ran long like hell. I didn't remember an iota of what I had said. At last when the hour bell rang, I had no eyes to look at my audience with.
"You're afraid of the stage," people say. But the stage phobia is a misnomer, I'm afraid. My thought is that I had been scared of the audience, but not the stage.
People talk about their dreams of standing on the stage, yes, as an entertainer, performer, or actor. They imagine themselves standing on the stage getting ovation, that is, a standing ovation. But they don't imagine themselves frustrated by the audience. My eternal perception is that the audience is a fearful being. The audience is fear itself.
The thing is, debut on the stage does not count but preparedness really counts. But people hurry success on the stage in spite of their unpreparedness. As a result, they are frustrated at an attempt or in the first phase.
My lecture of the TIME magazine articles at Hanyang University was an onus to me from the beginning because the previous lecturer Mr. Iron Kim had recorded a great success as "the legend" of TIME teaching. The huge crowd which had mobbed my debut lecture was the sheer aftermath of his success.
Alas! A sign of a disaster loomed large from the beginning. The standing audience which had been filling the stairs mostly walked out of the lecture hall in the mid-lecture, and almost all the off-the-seat audience, which had been sitting on both of the aisles, vacated the hall in the second day lecture.
My lecture was disastrous itself. I equivocated on the spots on which clear-cut explanations had been necessary. I very often made evident mistakes to which the foolproof audience was seen from the podium to shake their heads, by which my heart sank.
The seats of the lecture hall were progressively vacated, at which the disappointing academic audience quit the lecture. The perplexed lecturer from time to time had to make confessions of mistakes in the previous day's lecture, by which some bulk of the audience left the hall.
The TIME lecture, which had really begun with a bang, ended with a whimper. The proud number of the packed audience, at the end of the winter-recess campus extravaganza, was reduced to the poor twenty-some guys, for whom I send my heartfelt thanks, and I apologize for the disappointing lecture, to the folks who had come to my lecture with high expectations.
There was an onset of acute waist pain the day before yesterday. (November 1, 2010) It came "like thieves." But an onset is spoken wrongly in my case. The recurrence of waist pain is the right statement.
In fact, the onset of waist pain has been an annual or biennial "event" for the past six or seven years. It's been a repetitional and expected incident rather than event so that it can be prevented.
I could do that but I didn't. That's been too much indulgent of me. It's been embarrassing of me that I was not prepared for the evident and worst consequences. I had to reduce weight first of all.
Obesity is known to be the cause of all diseases. I weigh a little too much and I naturally have had high blood pressure and as I stated above I have had waist pain and recently I begin to see the doctor for the treatment of a specific delicate organ of mine.
Voracity is always the problem. I've been an overeater myself. I can't stand hunger. People say I lay waste any meal table set for a certain occasion. I had emptied six tins of meals in the army mess hall, of course during a green army private.
I think it's time I controlled or suppressed over-appetite. "Eat half the meals you are supposed to take," people say. I make every determination to cut down on meals. "Let's make it two thirds rather than half!" That's a deal.
Against the backdrop of the obese guy vulnerable to appetite, Cha Hee was able to control her appetite, keeping her relatively slim physique. Contrary to her husband, who had collided head-on with the establishment, subsequently plunging his wife and family into the edge of famine and homelessness, she was getting along well with the locals and well- prepared, say, for the unfortunate incident.
Cha Hee didn't make a scene, nor did she make another visit to anyone to plead her husband's case. Wife didn't urge me to sue the company, and I didn't think that out, either. Cha Hee was really street smart. Her body and soul was standing fast on earth. Cha Hee didn't imagine something to be done for her or for her family. Cha Hee acted before she thought, or Cha Hee acted while she thought.
Just as my father, as a tenant farmer, was always hitting the field, ploughing the land and cutting woods, Cha Hee used to hit the pedal of the sewing machine since we had come up to Seoul. She hit the pedal even when I was working at The Korea Times because the envelope of the pay check was so lean and she had to make ends meet.
When I was actually fired from the newspaper company, she parted from the sewing machine. She opened a modest shop of her own, instead. Thing is she bid and got a contract from a market building with some money, which had been saved by tightening the belts of the family members, plus a modicum of my severance pay.
It has been 1982, the eighth year since we landed in Seoul. The last and third son was born at Black Stone Town in 1976. Kyo, the Seoul child, like the two older brothers of his, was playing with his peers, who had not gone to the children's house or kindergarten, at the children's playground or something.
Cha Hee, after opening the shop, had played somersault, or existential juggling of some sort. She had cooked meals for the family, gone to the Namdaemun Market by bus with one transfer, and made a good buy of toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and all gamut of colorful trinkets, and coming back to the shop, sold to purchase.
She had earned more from a shop owner of an accessory store than from a seamstress. "Accessory ladies are trendies," she had said, lamenting the lack of fashion apparels on her. But she was reluctant to act out on herself.
-----------------
It was not that there had not been one or two persons who had been out to save me from being plugged from the news media society. Kim somebody of the advertising section of the Korea Times had done his best to hire me there, to which the guy had been opposed. I appreciate Mr. Kim for the effort. I miss him badly. I'm looking forward to the day of a no-chance encounter.
There had been not much niche left for me. Which means my job opportunities had been blocked off by a lot of impediments. Of course I couldn't stand behind the podium of an elementary school teacher again. It had been technically impossible and of course it would have been brazen of me to do that.
I was still relatively young but there was not much left in which for me to get a job. It was not necessary to prepare other document except for the official appointment from the Education Bureau of the local jurisdiction, in the teaching establishment. But in the cold reality, they asked for a resume, a valid and powerful resume, to be hired.
Yes, the resume was the problem. They requested the possession of a resume at every place where I went, and they asked for the submission of it when they met me. When they spotted a good resume their faces brightened, and when they did not their faces darkened.
What do you mean by a resume? It is a French word meaning a personal history. It is actually written with an accent on the head of the last syllable "e" (accent aigu), and pronounced as such (raisumei).
What are you supposed to do to feature a good resume which will brighten your interviewer's face? Good birth might be a desirable factor. But integrity, diligence, originality, creativity, and bravery are requisites, I am afraid.
It was just myself that had made me the person of a bad, or poor resume, but no other. I had been lazy and expecting when I had been asked to put a harder push. I had been timid and scared of everything that I had been asked to challenge.
I'm figuratively speaking, of course, but when I look back on "the truncated life" of mine in many corners of life, that is, the frustrated expectations or ambition, was utterly ascribable to myself but to no other. I was totally to blame.
It was naturally so shameful of me that more often than not I had put the blame on society when I was asked to submit a decent resume with a college diploma on it. The smug hubris of the then interviewer was not to blame but the sullen aloofness on the part of the interviewee was to blame.
It was TIME, the world-famous weekly magazine, that had saved me from the feelings of dullness and uselessness. What mattered first of all was not the life condition I could enjoy as the decent income earners. Several young scholars, who had gotten acquainted with me through chance encounters at a downtown foreign language institute or two, got me a stint as a lecturer of the TIME articles, of course with a wink at my resume issue.
TIME was a good material piece for teaching and learning the English language. TIME had actually been a dream piece, and of course it's now been one, too. It's a mystery that TIME news magazine of all the foreign language news magazines with a global fame, which has been being published in English, has from early on become favorites as a teaching and learning material.
I liked TIME as a Normal School boy at Andong City. I liked its general design, the title of the magazine, and its red borderline. I liked the urgency of the headlines taking place at the interval of a week.
I remember I stated somewhere earlier that I had been rumored to be very good at English at the town during my high school years. I also remember I stated that the mistaken notion had originated from the bizarre behavior of mine that I had always held the TIME magazine in my hand.
You tend to be deceived by the understated or overstated facade. Though an old saying goes that you should not judge by appearances, you do and we do that in almost all the cases of the real life. Appearances are really important.
I think that the serious and sincere efforts should be made in both ways: We should try to make good appearances in a variety of aspects of life and we also should make big efforts not to be deceived by them. That seems to be really and equally important.
If you see a man and a woman getting together in a very intimate way, you know by instinct that they are in love. But we are surprised to know that people use the same situation to camouflage that they are splitting.
A podium is a place on which you display your appearances. Steve Jobs shows his best when he makes his presentations, but when I stood on the podium of an auditorium of Hanyang University in Seoul on a winter's day in some year in the 1980s, it meant disaster.
I was overwhelmed with the "huge" audience. As a country boy, that is, as a countryside school teacher, it was the first time that I had ever had such a huge crowd as my audience. The auditorium was really packed, with the leftover students standing against the stair wall and sitting on the aisle floor. The audience of college students seemed to number 350 or more.
All of a sudden, there was a blurry audience down below the podium. The cold sweat ran down my cheeks and on my back, with my mouth going dry and choked. The hour ran long like hell. I didn't remember an iota of what I had said. At last when the hour bell rang, I had no eyes to look at my audience with.
"You're afraid of the stage," people say. But the stage phobia is a misnomer, I'm afraid. My thought is that I had been scared of the audience, but not the stage.
People talk about their dreams of standing on the stage, yes, as an entertainer, performer, or actor. They imagine themselves standing on the stage getting ovation, that is, a standing ovation. But they don't imagine themselves frustrated by the audience. My eternal perception is that the audience is a fearful being. The audience is fear itself.
The thing is, debut on the stage does not count but preparedness really counts. But people hurry success on the stage in spite of their unpreparedness. As a result, they are frustrated at an attempt or in the first phase.
My lecture of the TIME magazine articles at Hanyang University was an onus to me from the beginning because the previous lecturer Mr. Iron Kim had recorded a great success as "the legend" of TIME teaching. The huge crowd which had mobbed my debut lecture was the sheer aftermath of his success.
Alas! A sign of a disaster loomed large from the beginning. The standing audience which had been filling the stairs mostly walked out of the lecture hall in the mid-lecture, and almost all the off-the-seat audience, which had been sitting on both of the aisles, vacated the hall in the second day lecture.
My lecture was disastrous itself. I equivocated on the spots on which clear-cut explanations had been necessary. I very often made evident mistakes to which the foolproof audience was seen from the podium to shake their heads, by which my heart sank.
The seats of the lecture hall were progressively vacated, at which the disappointing academic audience quit the lecture. The perplexed lecturer from time to time had to make confessions of mistakes in the previous day's lecture, by which some bulk of the audience left the hall.
The TIME lecture, which had really begun with a bang, ended with a whimper. The proud number of the packed audience, at the end of the winter-recess campus extravaganza, was reduced to the poor twenty-some guys, for whom I send my heartfelt thanks, and I apologize for the disappointing lecture, to the folks who had come to my lecture with high expectations.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
अ Novel
Episode 12: I Am So Sorry, Grandma!
There should be a regret. I should not have raised hell. I should not have risen from my seat. I should have gone to the rest room and freshened up to say cheese.
Though a disciplinary committee of some sort had been held by my request, the committee persons were not prepared nor willing to hear complaints from me. They were only sitting tight with their mouths shut. Awkwardly I had to read my position piece by myself.
It was blameworthy of me that I had faced up to the managing editor. I had to be criticized and punished for that. But in some respects Mr. Yun had caused the disturbances. I wished that the committee would take commutational considerations out of the circumstances. That was it.
The swift disciplinary decision handed down by the company was a "recommended" resignation. Booted out of the work place, I had no place to go to. The end of 1981 was drawing near. The street was so dreary, with the fallen leaves blown scattered. and with people, hunching their bodies in piercing cold, stampeding to their homes.
Wife had her share of disappointment, anger, frustration and resentment. But she did not make a scene. She did not get angry at me, either. She got angry at nothing but at everything.
Hardly had she been informed of my dismissal from the company when she hit the road for my survival, to no avail. On a cold winter morning, she visited the company president's mansion but she was rebuffed at the gate. She gave up on the effort after one more appeal with a certain line of political connection, which had been a naive idea of her own.
Amnesia is just the problem. The reason why I have been shrouded with the clouds of amnesia so early is a thorn in the eye. It looks like I have just been in panic just because of that. The crux of the problem is that I'm inclined to forget what I'm supposed to remember. I am afraid that I'm thrown into the labyrinth of forgetfulness. I wonder whether I'm in the second stage rather than the first stage of the senile dementia, that is, the Alzheimer's Disease.
I am lost from time to time using the mass transit system. Just two days ago, I went by my original destination two or three stations past. In an effort to ride the reverse train, I had a hard time stepping up and down the stairs because of the strained or regressive knee pain. In my case, stepping down the stairs has been harsher on me.
More often than not I lose words, that is, I'm lost in the rain forests of words. It takes minutes in rare cases, but it takes hours in most cases to recollect just the word I had been about to use. With no hiatus, day in day out, with no hesitation, with no consideration of my friend's discomfort, I knock on the door of Google. I'm startled to find that any attempt of mine at a better writing piece would be impossible without the competent aid of the Google search.
I'm scared to death that my amnesia might one day be a threat to the safety of our house, and that of the whole apartment of the same line. The problem is that the pot's contents on the electric oven are more often than not overly cooked to the extent that they are charred.
Amnesia turns out to be also a threat to my health. I almost always lose the exact time at which I should take the medicine, and take it at haste at a wrong time. Three small capsules of medicine, which have been prescribed to lower my high blood pressure, are taken at a dawning hour, and another capsule of medicine is taken after morning meal for the treatment of the weak teeth, and two capsules of medicine for the treatment of the expansion of glandular prostate (not sure still about its nomenclature) should be taken one capsule each after morning and supper.
I'm confused about the temporal relationship, forget it very often and I more often than not lose confidence in myself doing that (Did I really take the medicine?). Recently I made it a rule to give every and each action a surety sign and whisper to myself "I am taking it," and after I'm done, say it again, "Yes, I assuredly took it!"
My filial amnesia, that is, the amnesia of my filial duties particularly toward grandma, is the most fatal. I'm angry at myself. I'm extremely pissed off when reminded of my perfidy to grandma. I'm in such a bad mood I can't forgive myself for being so ungrateful a person.
Grandma had been just like mama to me. Grandma had loved me with all that had been capable for her. She had given me all the best food but breast feeding. She had made the best, prepared the best, and saved the best for her grandson.
Grandma had been my secretary, my librarian, and my spokesperson, and for all that her unthankful grandson had been lacking in appreciation, forgetting all that for a long time. Grandma had never dumped or shredded pieces of paper scribbled on by me.
My belongings had been categorized, bound and wrapped in knots and threads and put into cute colorful sacks and deposited deep in a room closet: academic documents, diplomas, classroom credentials, and documents of appreciation. She had always spoken for me when rebukes had been in store for me.
Grandma had doctored me real nice. She had been versed in the nomenclature of wild plants, their roots, leaves and seeds, and their medicinal effect. She had literally hit the hills and forests, searching for the medicinal herbs which would be used for curing the sick grandson.
Grandma had been so versatile in domestic and unanticipated complications that she had once exorcised me. I got so "possessed" every other day on the summer days of 1949 immediately one year before the Korean War broke out.
I got contracted with a bizarre disease every other day. I got nothing other than chills which gave me a big shiver. Then grandma took me to the front garden and let me lie down. Then she called out all evil spirits and ordered them to leave. She threw a knife or something into the air, of course to kill them.
Presto! Grandma had finessed the eviction of the evil spirits from "her darling puppy." After one day of peace the other evil spirits came again. In that sequence, grandma's fierce struggle with those "miscellaneous spirits" had continued for no less than 100-some days.
----------------------------------
Today (November 1, 2010, Seoul) I got my access to a specific online site rejected. The online door keeper restrained me at the gate with a scowling face, showing me "NSAPI plug in" rejection board, which indicates that any attempt to log in the site has been being frustrated.
I'm so vulnerable. I'm so powerless. I don't have any means to explain me, and to defend me. I hate myself for being so ignorant and powerless. I don't have an iota of computer knowledge which has more often than not been inflicting on me all assortments of harassment and violence.
Though I have been ransacking the online trails I've trodden the previous two weeks, I can't find that I have to be censored and disciplined beforehand. I think it is against common sense that the online supporters of a specific politico, that is, Representative Park somebody of the ruling party of all the political parties, have been going berserk, counting the days that have been left for the term of the incumbent government to end, assuming that it is taken for granted that Rep. Park somebody would be elected the next President. Do I think wrong?
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Grandma's adoration of and affection for me is listless. I can't pay back an iota of debts I had been indebted to grandma. Though she had run literally all the mile carrying her sick grandchild on her back, I hadn't carried her even once on my back. When I came to make a late realization, looking for my grandma, she is not here.
I Miss You, Grandma
When Grandma passed away
It was on early winter night in November
The chrysanthemums were in withering glow
Under the setting moon...
I lament you in your weaning years
Kept in a patio just like a pig pen
Shut off from your past
Shut off from your offsprings....
I am sorry Grandma, so sorry
I am so shameful Grandma,
of my being such an unfilial grandson
I regret with my broken heart that
I had not crushed your sad cage...
Grandma, long-trimmed in white chima
With a long face but with fire words
You warmed around and pleased folks
With long delicate hands good at cooking...
Grandma, coming from Euiseong Kim clan
Wedded to the poor Bannam Park clan
Just off a mountain hill peak
You had a hard time making a decent living...
Grandma, widowed in earlier years of her marriage
Took the helm of a famished family
In the ruined country
Keeping house wise and safe...
Grandma, you endeared yourself to me greatly
Running all the mile to the town clinic
Carrying your sick grandson on your back
and waiting in the dark alone for the late-coming grandson
Holding the lamp on the pine hill pass...
Oh, Grandma, I owed you much too big to pay
But I said no sincere words of thanks to you
I did a belated take that
I had been so ungrateful....
Having been an evil doer so unthankful
I am feeling a deep remorse today
and will remain a sinner forever
Oh, Grandma, where can I find you and
kneel down and beg forgiveness from you?
There should be a regret. I should not have raised hell. I should not have risen from my seat. I should have gone to the rest room and freshened up to say cheese.
Though a disciplinary committee of some sort had been held by my request, the committee persons were not prepared nor willing to hear complaints from me. They were only sitting tight with their mouths shut. Awkwardly I had to read my position piece by myself.
It was blameworthy of me that I had faced up to the managing editor. I had to be criticized and punished for that. But in some respects Mr. Yun had caused the disturbances. I wished that the committee would take commutational considerations out of the circumstances. That was it.
The swift disciplinary decision handed down by the company was a "recommended" resignation. Booted out of the work place, I had no place to go to. The end of 1981 was drawing near. The street was so dreary, with the fallen leaves blown scattered. and with people, hunching their bodies in piercing cold, stampeding to their homes.
Wife had her share of disappointment, anger, frustration and resentment. But she did not make a scene. She did not get angry at me, either. She got angry at nothing but at everything.
Hardly had she been informed of my dismissal from the company when she hit the road for my survival, to no avail. On a cold winter morning, she visited the company president's mansion but she was rebuffed at the gate. She gave up on the effort after one more appeal with a certain line of political connection, which had been a naive idea of her own.
Amnesia is just the problem. The reason why I have been shrouded with the clouds of amnesia so early is a thorn in the eye. It looks like I have just been in panic just because of that. The crux of the problem is that I'm inclined to forget what I'm supposed to remember. I am afraid that I'm thrown into the labyrinth of forgetfulness. I wonder whether I'm in the second stage rather than the first stage of the senile dementia, that is, the Alzheimer's Disease.
I am lost from time to time using the mass transit system. Just two days ago, I went by my original destination two or three stations past. In an effort to ride the reverse train, I had a hard time stepping up and down the stairs because of the strained or regressive knee pain. In my case, stepping down the stairs has been harsher on me.
More often than not I lose words, that is, I'm lost in the rain forests of words. It takes minutes in rare cases, but it takes hours in most cases to recollect just the word I had been about to use. With no hiatus, day in day out, with no hesitation, with no consideration of my friend's discomfort, I knock on the door of Google. I'm startled to find that any attempt of mine at a better writing piece would be impossible without the competent aid of the Google search.
I'm scared to death that my amnesia might one day be a threat to the safety of our house, and that of the whole apartment of the same line. The problem is that the pot's contents on the electric oven are more often than not overly cooked to the extent that they are charred.
Amnesia turns out to be also a threat to my health. I almost always lose the exact time at which I should take the medicine, and take it at haste at a wrong time. Three small capsules of medicine, which have been prescribed to lower my high blood pressure, are taken at a dawning hour, and another capsule of medicine is taken after morning meal for the treatment of the weak teeth, and two capsules of medicine for the treatment of the expansion of glandular prostate (not sure still about its nomenclature) should be taken one capsule each after morning and supper.
I'm confused about the temporal relationship, forget it very often and I more often than not lose confidence in myself doing that (Did I really take the medicine?). Recently I made it a rule to give every and each action a surety sign and whisper to myself "I am taking it," and after I'm done, say it again, "Yes, I assuredly took it!"
My filial amnesia, that is, the amnesia of my filial duties particularly toward grandma, is the most fatal. I'm angry at myself. I'm extremely pissed off when reminded of my perfidy to grandma. I'm in such a bad mood I can't forgive myself for being so ungrateful a person.
Grandma had been just like mama to me. Grandma had loved me with all that had been capable for her. She had given me all the best food but breast feeding. She had made the best, prepared the best, and saved the best for her grandson.
Grandma had been my secretary, my librarian, and my spokesperson, and for all that her unthankful grandson had been lacking in appreciation, forgetting all that for a long time. Grandma had never dumped or shredded pieces of paper scribbled on by me.
My belongings had been categorized, bound and wrapped in knots and threads and put into cute colorful sacks and deposited deep in a room closet: academic documents, diplomas, classroom credentials, and documents of appreciation. She had always spoken for me when rebukes had been in store for me.
Grandma had doctored me real nice. She had been versed in the nomenclature of wild plants, their roots, leaves and seeds, and their medicinal effect. She had literally hit the hills and forests, searching for the medicinal herbs which would be used for curing the sick grandson.
Grandma had been so versatile in domestic and unanticipated complications that she had once exorcised me. I got so "possessed" every other day on the summer days of 1949 immediately one year before the Korean War broke out.
I got contracted with a bizarre disease every other day. I got nothing other than chills which gave me a big shiver. Then grandma took me to the front garden and let me lie down. Then she called out all evil spirits and ordered them to leave. She threw a knife or something into the air, of course to kill them.
Presto! Grandma had finessed the eviction of the evil spirits from "her darling puppy." After one day of peace the other evil spirits came again. In that sequence, grandma's fierce struggle with those "miscellaneous spirits" had continued for no less than 100-some days.
----------------------------------
Today (November 1, 2010, Seoul) I got my access to a specific online site rejected. The online door keeper restrained me at the gate with a scowling face, showing me "NSAPI plug in" rejection board, which indicates that any attempt to log in the site has been being frustrated.
I'm so vulnerable. I'm so powerless. I don't have any means to explain me, and to defend me. I hate myself for being so ignorant and powerless. I don't have an iota of computer knowledge which has more often than not been inflicting on me all assortments of harassment and violence.
Though I have been ransacking the online trails I've trodden the previous two weeks, I can't find that I have to be censored and disciplined beforehand. I think it is against common sense that the online supporters of a specific politico, that is, Representative Park somebody of the ruling party of all the political parties, have been going berserk, counting the days that have been left for the term of the incumbent government to end, assuming that it is taken for granted that Rep. Park somebody would be elected the next President. Do I think wrong?
---------------------------------------
Grandma's adoration of and affection for me is listless. I can't pay back an iota of debts I had been indebted to grandma. Though she had run literally all the mile carrying her sick grandchild on her back, I hadn't carried her even once on my back. When I came to make a late realization, looking for my grandma, she is not here.
I Miss You, Grandma
When Grandma passed away
It was on early winter night in November
The chrysanthemums were in withering glow
Under the setting moon...
I lament you in your weaning years
Kept in a patio just like a pig pen
Shut off from your past
Shut off from your offsprings....
I am sorry Grandma, so sorry
I am so shameful Grandma,
of my being such an unfilial grandson
I regret with my broken heart that
I had not crushed your sad cage...
Grandma, long-trimmed in white chima
With a long face but with fire words
You warmed around and pleased folks
With long delicate hands good at cooking...
Grandma, coming from Euiseong Kim clan
Wedded to the poor Bannam Park clan
Just off a mountain hill peak
You had a hard time making a decent living...
Grandma, widowed in earlier years of her marriage
Took the helm of a famished family
In the ruined country
Keeping house wise and safe...
Grandma, you endeared yourself to me greatly
Running all the mile to the town clinic
Carrying your sick grandson on your back
and waiting in the dark alone for the late-coming grandson
Holding the lamp on the pine hill pass...
Oh, Grandma, I owed you much too big to pay
But I said no sincere words of thanks to you
I did a belated take that
I had been so ungrateful....
Having been an evil doer so unthankful
I am feeling a deep remorse today
and will remain a sinner forever
Oh, Grandma, where can I find you and
kneel down and beg forgiveness from you?
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