I've Been Tagged!

An old friend of mine, the dearest knitter Nikki tagged me. A cute game. I've been tagged! The rule is that I have to come up with 6 weird things about myself. As Nikki has said about herself, I would say the same thing about myself; I do not quite think that I am even nearly normal. I am the weirdo!

1. I speak and write in both English and Korean. I was brought up in Korea, educated in normal Korean schools, and my parents only speak Korean. My relatives live in the States, Europe, China, Japan and Africa. Some of them work as missionaries. We speak Korean, English, and French at home but not everyone can speak all of them, so the rule is that basically we all have to speak Korean. Thus, this might not be the whole reason why I speak English. And I don't speak French. My grandfather speaks Japanese, but I do not speak Japanese either. I speak Chinese. So whenever people question me how I speak English, I try to come up with some good reasons but I usually end up making up some plain reasons which lead me to face no more further queries.

2. I love philosophy. I do love philosophy. People again inquire of me what made me give my life away for the ultimate source of depression. I truly love this though, not the depression part but the work of philosophy. And it actually does never drive me depressed. It mostly is like a very clever and clear way to stick to the bright side of life.

3. I don't like wearing socks. I love sandals and I put on my sneakers barefoot often. (they don't stink bad though!)

4. I can't eat spicy food and I am Korean. I hardly eat red Kimchi. Budaejigae, especially, gives me an enterohemorrhage.

5. Outside of Korea, when I tell Chinese people that I am Chinese, they believe me, and Japanese people believe me when I tell them I am Japanese, but Koreans do not believe me easily when I tell them I am Korean.

6. I am 'Miss List'. I love making lists. I love organizing things. My room often remains quite messy and I am rather forgetful. But I love making lists and scrapbooks.

I am not sure whom I have to tag. I know not so many of them who run their blog and visit mine. Well, but I think, I know who I will have to tag this time; I tag my German professor, Stefan Carl. (So, his 6 weird things will be listed in German!)

Hi Haruki

'Literature is a mysterious smile.'

When I first started writing as a little girl in 1990, my writing teacher told me that 'simile' is the scantiest strategy. I was a neat drawer as a small person but I was not a competent narrator. My teacher was a modest storyteller. He roamed from place to place to meet small stories. He told me that writing was an agony. He said tiny timid flowers on the ground were more beautiful than those gorgeous ones without fear. He passed away one day early in summer of 1994. I was eleven. When I heard about his death, and went to the funeral, and even after taking care of the memorial address as one of his most cherished pupils, the only thing I was recalling the whole time was his fart. After 18 years, I still remember that so clear. He was a very quiet man, with great politeness. My own mother put much respect on him as a teacher and a writer.

It was after a month when I burst into tears so suddenly in the class over his death. And that was it. All I could remember was his favorite tiny purple flower and his fart. He used to talk about the flower quite often but it was only one time that he farted in front of me. But actually it was only his fart which flashed on my mind when I heard about his death. I do not remember anymore if I could not hide my laughs when he farted or I thought about it seriously since it was something which feels inappropriate but in fact is natural. He did not say much about my writings. He told me that I should be as low as violet to be a beautiful person; many loud words are not refined. When I was writing a peom about the moon, the only thing he said to me was that the great poet talks about the moon without saying any words about the moon. I wanted him to be fair with my writings and that he demanded that the moon should be described without reference to the name of the moon was not regarded as fair to me.

Haruki talks about life without talking about it though. I shook my hands with him without rejection. His world did not seem lofty so I did not fear for this stranger. There is a thing that even death cannot overcome; the acceptance of life. It is just as low as violet. I have been sent to many great teachers but none of them taught me the secret of their stupendous skills. As a small person, I have dreamt of many splendid things that I might be able to do when I grow old. But they just told me to live my life. I shall know oneday, how to talk about life without talking about it, but only after living it fully. This strange connection between life and its rhetoric reveals the tears of beauty of life.

Because, Life is a mysterious simile.




after Murakami Haruki's Norwegian Wood
a photo of a lone trumpet in Prague CZ, Jan of 2005, taken by
Angel Hye-young Kim

Bach Und Jazz

Although it is almost bizarre to picture J.S. Bach playing Jazz piano, the intuitive passion of both looks alike to me; the fluent stream of the temperate sadness. Beethoven chokes me sometimes with his overly out laid passion. The emornous chunk of emotion is hard to swallow down without pain. It makes my eyes go blind.

Bach's music brightens up my sight with its regular breathing of thinking. It does not blech out the agonies of life. Jazz does not burst life with sadness. Its passion is modest and acceptable. They are well composed and generously liberal.

Passion and temperance: the path to the truth, whether we are already on the way or do not even see the mouth of the path yet, may be revealed through the beauty of the abstruse relation of two of them.



Hans Koller Trio, 25 May 2005 London, drawn by
Angel Hye-young Kim

The Problem of Depth

Nobody knows your depth; this was the phrase I used to say to others to encourage them; but this has been the very clear representation of the pain that I have to go through, or maybe, overcome(?). This justifies the whole reason why I have longed to study hermeneutics so long.

When I was thirteen, I read about this woman. Of course she is fictional. She is an artist. She faces the criticism that her works do not have depth. Her painful journey to seek 'depth' brings her 'death' instead. I was confused; I did not know what led her to death; weather the critics or herself.

A few years later, I saw a movie about a young writer, for free. In the movie, an old successful writer tells the boy that anyways nobody knows his[the boy's] depth. Is that an arrogant composure of the successful one? Or, is that the hidden truth that is too light to be caught easily? Almost intuitively I knew that they would like this line and be encouraged by it. Because it is a very powerful spell which can distract anyone from thinking too much. Do not die for depth. It is not something you should give your life to. It maybe is just clever or rather human. I still do not know.

I could not know the depth of my writings. My drawings are shallow, they do not conceal any secret of the interpretation of the world. I told the artist woman after her death that she was simply sacrificed by the common notion which is rather empty and completly polis-oriented. The key of her death was only the problem of political predominance. To avoid death, or to gain life, you should know well how to let them to tumble into the abyss of depth. To live or to die, that is the problem! Am I winning in this internecine war?

Self-portrait

Angel Hye-young Kim

Things That Last

I believe that, some things do not come back; as the year of 2006. It is amazing how human beings tolerate this unbearable emptiness as they lose some things, for most times very important things forever. Some things do not come back once they are gone. I would love to add at the end of this sad proposition 'as people'. Some things do not come back once they are gone, as people.

Pains and hurts do not go away once they are placed in our hearts. They do not leave. While the mountains go lower and the rivers go higher, pains and hurts rotate ceaseless. Some things last once they have come.

Here is the secret of life; only the things that do not come back change the things that last. When the tears of the weak and weary as each and every one of ourselves soak the whole land and the air in its pain, the light and fragrant breeze whispers through the trees. The colors of leaves were humming with its ancient freshness. The old forest is always old but it is never old. It is new every moment. It lasts, but it does not last. As they endure time, may we bear the unceasing segments of life.



Angel Hye-young Kim