In Here Now

I took a walk today, as I did every day. My walking route has been shifted from a riverside in a bustling town to one of two sloping hillsides. Which way do I go today: to the shrine or to the temple? It depends on my fickle mood at the moment. Walking my way, at a crossroads, this way or that way? Finding a pretext of not going that way, my sudden will is leading my body toward the city park and the so-called ‘shrine.’ My immediate question arises: how are they shaping the landscape? It takes twenty minutes from my abode to get there. Now I must see for myself. The park is located near the old town center of Gwangju City, my hometown.
I’ve frequently been there, because old trees with still wild glasses and bushes draw me where the air remains fresh as ever. I made circles along the footpaths for another twenty minutes. I used to love to walk here, but I discovered that the city men started to change the parkscape completely, for better or worse.
They’ve already removed all the natural wild grasses and bushes including tall bamboos, leaving only taller trees, fortunately, and now they are making new footpaths with different forms, each at a certain distance, using quite dissimilar materials, such as flat woods, pebbles, solid bricks, blocks, concrete tiles and a mixed rubber-substance for soft step stairs and walkways. They install new benches and decorative fences densely along the new trails. They are planting not only the usual lawn but also various kinds of short grasses and flowers in patches, and they set up lampposts. Aren’t the park designers too fussy? This new area like other ‘new’ riverscapes that have been renewed, and haven’t they faked them too much? Will it likely be a place to pleasantly stroll along this unsightly bent scenery? Well, not for me at least. Not me.
Above all, I don’t understand why they carried off all the dovecotes from the trees. The nests were a comfortable home for the doves that would hatch their young in them to live and breed in the park. After the disappearance of a large number of pigeons, you could see just a few left that were pecking at breadcrumbs you scattered on the ground. They don’t know that they will soon face hard times with the coming cold winter. It’s a pity.
Not to change the subject, but the park was constructed by Japan’s colonialists for their gods and the souls of those killed in their army. They called it ‘the god’s shrine,’ in honor of Japan’s imperialists who had conquered Korean land 100 years ago. No traces of it remain today, except the many broad step stairs, and each was made shallow to accomodate their women in tight, long, one-piece kimonos and soft sandals or wooden clogs. Those old stair stones were replaced today.
I still vividly remember that on Japan’s national memorial days, we Korean elementary school boys and girls had to stand aside while Japanese students were, stepping up onto stairs. When raining, they were all wearing raincoats and high rubber boots with umbrellas while we were inevitably taking an unpleasant shower. Not all of us were in rags and barefoot, but some were in their homemade shoes, now soaked through. The ceremony proceeded in Japanese, everyone deeply bowing their heads eastward where their emperor and palace were located.
Not only bad things occurred to me during the Japanese occupation, though. When I was a second grader, Miss Ikeda happened to be in charge of our class. She was young and pretty, even to a child’s eye. She was Japanese. She was particularly tender and paid attention to me not only in class but outside of it, too. She sometimes took me to her home. After leaving school, she changed her western suit to a Japanese kimono. Giving me sweet things, she talked about this and that in her own language, which was not yet language familiar to me, since it was my second year of exposure to the Japanese. Petting me tenderly, she put her arms around me to show affection. I did like her, too. I remember I also touched her thin arms that had long soft hair when she rolled up her sleeves and showed them to me. The next year, when I was a third grader, Mr. Takesida was our teacher. He was a relatively old Japanese man with his shortcut moustache and also always affable to me, even though I wasn’t so bright and much taciturn. My teachers said I had big shining eyes with an innocent smile. Was I a mere doll for them appearing stupidly naive? I’m afraid they may have thought so.
Sorry for a pointless description. Let me get to the point. In fact, I’ve enjoyed walking along the riverside during last half a decade since I retired. The trails along the river have bushes of silver grass with their ears swinging when it’s windy. What’s more, there are herons and ducks. I counted them - one, two, three ... up to eleven. You could see one, two were putting their beaks into the water to catch something. Some stood still on only one long leg. And a third flock were flying, one chasing another. Standing still for a while, I loved just observing them or any thing else in its natural state, putting out all other thoughts.
One day I found, however, a band of the city men and engineers started to loudly decorate old shabby bridges of the town’s central part with new tall or low different types of arches on them. You could see three or four bridges at a glance. The distance between them was so close that there was neither harmony nor integrity found in the setting. It looked as if I were watching some street tramps each wearing different types of top hats. Imagine. Is that view appreciable enough to be noticed? At night, in addition, all kinds of colored light beams crossed themselves on all the bridge arches. Gwangju, our city’s name, literally means a sort of ‘Lightshire,’ if rephrased in English, so that the city has focussed the industrial investment in LED (light-emitting diode) with its special R&D (research and development) projects. It’s all right, but it has to be lopsidedly pushed and applied to anything that way? Confusing and annoying, really. I used to like crossing the stream on two stepping-stone bridges every time I retuned. I decidedly stopped crossing them since I saw new concrete cubic blocks being installed next to them. My excuse for not going there anymore was that there has been a lot of invisible dust blown away from both of heavy traffic streets right along the river. Am I wrong?
The other hillside road I favor is a meaningful route for me, because I could pass by the place where I was born, There was a thatched cottage of ours surrounded by the woods along with a thatched barn where chickens, pigs, and a couple of pet rabbits were raised. It was the only house with no neighboring houses at all, and behind it was the sole Buddhist temple also covered by the forest canopy, which consisted of mostly pine trees and the few oaks that produced edible acorns I used to collect. Toward the hill, a large flock of squawking crows flew back over our thatched roofs and into a nest each twilight. That detailed scenery from my early days remains vivid although it has been a bit more three-quarters of a century ago.
The surroundings were so quiet that I could hear from the temple sounds both of a moktak, a wooden percussion instrument rhythmically beaten by a monk, and simultaneously a chanting voice from Buddhist scriptures at dawn and sometimes even in the daytime. I also heard the rooster’s crowing before dawn. No more my native house, no more a forest, now a large village has formed on the hillside. Far beyond it, there is now an elementary school building with a spacious playground. It’s my destination, where I take speedup my steps and make several circles around the grounds sweat pours gently off my face.
In returning home, I walk down along the narrow alley. Crossing leftward, there is another path leading to my very native place, and ahead is a bit of neglected flat ground seen. Approaching there, however, I often hesitate without even realizing it, since the spot had been no other than a deep underground water well solely possessed only by our family. From my earliest days, I myself used to throw a wooden bucket connected to a rope into the hole well and then pulled up the rope with a heavy bucketful of water. I remember that water bucket and ropes we often replaced. The wood changed color over the years, and rope was made by twisting straws and linking them into a long string using my own two palms and fingers to about fifteen meters in length.
Recalling memories of childhood, I stay a moment around the home where I was born. At the same time, my mind rather blanks out and feels somewhat strange. All of a sudden, I seem I am nowhere or far out there for a while. Then I realize here no traces of my past remain. No dark deep hole well that my Father with workers might have constructed a long time ago, perhaps, before I came into the world. I think of my family and my humble happy parents who had three sons and two daughters of which I was the youngest. I smell the doengjang soup that tastes subtly savory - um, still palatable - Mother (or my sisters) used to make it from fermented soybean paste. And I hear Father whispering into the night. I dream of the old days.
Would I just indulge in my small memories of the past and reminiscing enough to stimulate my own sensibility, a sort of ‘if there is?’ Or could I be elated when I have hallucinations or I can deceive myself as if I could still hear from the temple the chanting voice of a monk with his beating moktak sound at silent dawn? Persimmon trees with their orange-colored fruits and a fig tree with its sweet fruits backyard used to grow here. And cicadas singing heard in summer and a spacious yard swarming with red dragonflies flying seen in the fall. What’s more, there were pleasantly simple vine plants with small white flowers in blossom, together with pinky morning glories clustered around the hedges of our cottage. Even all the paths were hidden under an immense blanket of snow in the whole world before the then young kid’s eyes. And that bleak, bewitching landscape has been being still reflected vividly in my now well-poised mind’s eye. These memories enliven me through my bedridden days where I have been for a while.
One thing is sure, however. I could reach that place on foot in less than thirty minutes from my present home whenever I wanted to do. Thinking back to my own sweet time and bitter ones as well getting there, as if it’s like Winnie’s winning happiness (even though she’s buried up to her neck in a mound of earth in the play of ‘immobile,’ entitled Happy Days), ain’t I not also happy, being able to chuckle like her in bed yet?

November 18, 2009 --- 머리말 중에서

TRAVELOGUE I

Journey Is Long, Money Short

“Life is a journey,” so begins the line. “Where did you come from/ And where are you going to?/ Wandering on the way/ Like a drifting cloud ...” I’m not quoting this from any great book but just translating it from a once-popular Korean song into English. Not all, but my sentimental generation, would have liked to sing or listen to it. I still love the tune so much that I sing it aloud whenever get drunk at a party. Even being sober and alone, I find myself ever and anon singing it under my breath.
At a party, when I was to leave Scotland I was somewhat moody. Why didn’t I feel like singing the song for my Scots friends? I got a big hand from my audience, of course, since I claimed that the song was a classy farewell song like ‘Auld Lang Syne’ by their poet, Robert Burns. I doubt, however, that my tune was enjoyed by everybody at the party, since none of them had the slightest knowledge of the Korean language and its songs except for me. Ha!
“Life is a journey .../ Let’s have not affections/ Anymore for anyone/ Nor keep your lingering feelings/ Anymore for anyone.” If you keep on listening to the song, you would thus find that it’s a stale but fitting metaphor. Life is a journey, a long journey, isn’t it! Life, like a winding road, turns around and round up-hill all the way, yes, till the very end. The day’s journey will take the whole long day from morning to night. We all are commuters coming from and going to.
Or a Sisyphus with a stone of fate, aren’t we? Imagine that Sisyphus, a god whose task is to roll a huge stone up to a hilltop but when the summit is well-nigh gained, the rock, repulsed by some sudden force, rushes again headlong down to the plain. Again he toils at it while the sweat bathes all his weary limbs, but all to no effect. His labor goes on day by day, week after week, month after month, and eternally year after year.
Is it lucky for us being human with we know an end, however? We’ll definitely be relieved at a sudden moment after a long journey, and nothing - no more sound, no more fury, to more agony. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Say, let’s forget it. Let’s get down to earth. Not ‘life is a journey,’ but ‘journey is life.’ And if you find a road that goes straight, not turning round and round, you’ll become bored. Yes, it was last summer.
Driving through the St. Gotthard Pass of the majestic Alps, reaching an altitude of 2,108 m above sea level, we turned round and round a hundred times up to the zenith, where we looked down its panoramas with winding paths we had just traveled. Looking down the winding paths far below us, I experienced an epiphany. Heaven above me and the road below me, they are all I seek.
From that moment, I began to love any and all roads over the world. You know more of a place by having traveled its roads. In reality, however, my travel expenses were short, even saving money by not buying a paper-made sticker, the cheapest souvenir that most thrifty tourists would shop for as evidence of their travels. The worse condition for me was my limited passport with no visas open to certain national boundaries. I couldn’t take a trip to Eastern Europe. I wished I could travel through the Gobi desert, through Siberia, even to the North Pole.
This is not a big world now. Man can orbit it in a few hours. But we, common people, can’t have a chance to travel as much we want to, unless we are wealthy enough. We are free only to take an imaginary journey, with a map of atlas on our lap. Even if we have a passport open to any country, now we don’t have enough money to go through all the world’s roads. If we have some money, we have to satisfy ourselves as a tourist - a globetrotter - flying over or driving through some roads leading to a ruined castle or a museum.
I was a nine-month tourist last year under the name of a research fellow, wasn’t I? Before that I had had a chance to travel abroad for ten months once, and two years abroad another time. I like to take a trip, but presently I don’t have a passport in my pocket, nor money enough. Shall I then ruminate over memories of my journeys? For what? For my readers or for myself? I don’t know the reason as I don’t know where am I going. Anyway, I’m going to recall my memories for nothing, believing that joy is not a station you arrive at, but a matter of forward momentum. Happiness is found along the way, not the end of the road. And writing itself, I believe, is vigorously joyful journeying.

September 10, 1981


The-Sun-Usually-Doesn’t-Rise-on the Kingdom

The English channel appeared after a four-hour fright from Athens. We would be landing at Heathrow Airport in thirty minutes, at last. I kept looking out of the plane’s small window, but couldn’t see the sea at all. The weather was totally changing from what it had been. It was winter, but fortunately the skies had been clear with no clouds.
With a map on my lap, I could identify, through the window, the Adriatic Sea between Yugoslavia and the Italian Peninsula, the snow-capped Alps, large cities that were mere dots, the Ardenne plains of France and the dark forest of Benelux.
The plane was gradually easing downward into dark clouds. My field of vision from the window was completely shut out by the fast streams of fog. We were then told that London’s wet weather was welcoming us. Instantly reflected on the window was a scene of English gentleman on the street, each wearing a swallow-tailed coat and a silk hat with an umbrella.
It was merely my imagination, not in the window. In reality, the clouds were still streaming fast outside the window. The nose of the plane was continually downward as it circled several times. I felt as if we were falling into a deep valley or an abyss. I saw clearly a streak of lightening and heard loud thunder.
Obviously our plane was struck. It was shaking so violently that a stewardess walking on the aisle appeared to be staggering. She was, however, walking straight. Was it an air-pocket? Not only I, but all fellow passengers must have been seized with some fear. A woman in front of me was crossing herself. What long minutes!
Out of the clouds appeared some buildings with the control tower and planes on the ground as our plane smoothly slided along a wet runaway. I confirmed I was still alive and worked the muscles in my neck.
Out of the airport, my taxi headed for the central part of London. The windshield wipers were busy cleaning raindrops off the windshield.
“Nice weather, isn’t it?” said the driver, winding up the door window.
“...? Yes, it is ... but not for me.” I bluntly resisted his joke, not because of the weather, but because of his previous attitude toward me. When I hailed his taxi at the airport, he opened the trunk lid for my suitcases but didn’t help me put them in. Lighting his pipe and puffing it, he just spat out, “Welcome home, sir.”
A series of small events between the driver and me is another story. Essentially, my destination to ‘Spring Gardens’ was confused with his ‘Spring Street,’ and my ‘Hotel St. George’s’ was again mixed-up with his ‘St. George’s Hotel.’ Was it intentionally? To make things worse, my taxi was involved in a minor car accident in which little damage - or just a scratch - was done, and a long argument between my taxi driver and the other driver ensued. Anyway, I saw my taxi driver got a ten pound bill from the other.
Thanks to those happenings, seeking my hotel by that taxi was enough to discomfit me, but I eventually took up sightseeing parts of London. When I reached my hotel it was already getting dark, though it was still three p.m. by Greenwich Mean Time.
The Easter holidays found me returned from Edinburgh and back in London with the intention of making use of the bigger libraries. Why not be a sightseer when fed up with museums and libraries? On a clouded windy day in late March, I saw several long lines of cars along the iron railings of Buckingham Palace. The other queues were also not made up of ordinary people but the noble-looking people and celebrities invited to an audience with the Queen. All were dressed up like people attending an indoor banquet but exposed to the wind and sleet without overcoats and umbrellas. The day’s weather was described, according to an evening newscaster, as “the Arctic-like blizzard even the Royal Family couldn’t escape from.”
A clear, blue sky throughout a day could hardly be seen in the climate as long as I remained in Scotland. The weather seemed to be a continuation of caprice: wind after cloud, rain after fog, or vice versa. I still remember that one day with seven-and-a-half hours of sunshine in London headlined a newspaper reporting a record since such and such a year.
“When are you going to have nice weather?” asked I once impatiently of a Scottish friend.
“When are you going to leave here?” He asked in return, and continued, “We’ll have it after you leave here.” We laughed.
In May, however, there were a few days of sunshine. The British gentlemen and ladies who had a longing for sunshine then turned out to be half-nudists in their gardens or on the streets. Was this one of the reasons why many Britons have gone overseas in search of better climates and settled there for good? Anyway, the Empire on which the sun never set has ceased to be now, but it still remains the kingdom on which the sun usually doesn’t rise.
Whatever it has been, I now miss the choppy weather in Edinburgh, as Joyce, a friend of mine, used to say, “I love the windy, rainy weather.” I love to remember the views through the windowpanes of my room, particularly where rain at times pelted against them and small rivulets ran down to form pools beneath the windows. I miss the sounds of rain showers on the cobblestones of the old streets in Edinburgh.

October 3, 1981

Out There: Travelogue as Self(e)scape를 우리말로 옮기면 “여기 아닌 어딘가에: 자기성찰 및 자기일탈”이라 할 수 있다는 저자의 변이다. 저자가 겪은 학생신분과 학자로서의 해외생활 경험과 여행을 통해서 보고 느낀 대로 외국어(영어)로 기록한 기행담론이다. 지구촌의 각 다른 문화적 역사적 풍물과 인물들에 대한 저자 나름의 시각, 특히 저자자신의 문학과 미술의 안목에 비춰진 곳곳의 현장답사의 기록이다. 따라서 갖가지 사물과 사람 관찰의 기록이면서 동시에 저자고유의 개성에 투영된 풍물과 인물에 대한 자기표현이며 그러한 글이기에 저자의 자기성찰이자 자화상이라 할 수도 있다. <br/> 본 저술은 저자가 Travels: Landscape, Peoplescape and Self-escape 라는 제목으로 출판(영국 Durham: The Pentland Press, 1993)한바 있는 초판을 그 후 대폭 확대 집필한 기행담론이다. <br/> 언어란 모국어이든 외국어이든 음성 또는 문자를 통하여 사상 감정을 표현 전달하는 일종의 사회적 활동이다. 언어의 문화적 배경 또한 중요한 요소이다. 우리말은 우리말의 언어체계와 문화적 배경이 있듯이, 영어는 영어 언어체계와 문화권의 배경이 있다. 영어문화권의 이해 없이 영어만을 잘할 수 없고, 또한 영어를 실용적으로 잘 말할 수 있다고 해도 글로 잘 쓸 수 있는 것은 아니다. 문자 언어체계는 구술언어와는 또 다른 양상이 엄연히 존재한다. 그러므로 말하기 위주의 영어학습에 치우친 현재의 영어교육풍토에서 모범적인 영어글쓰기가 제시되는 서적이라면 균형적인 영어학습에 좋은 지침이 될 것이다. <br/> 이 책은 영어 글쓰기를 시도하는 독자에게 사물과 사람에 관한 관찰과 자기표현의 한 예시가 되며 또한 영미를 비롯한 기타 해외 문화권의 이해에 도움이 될 것이다.