अ Novel

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.

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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.