When I lived in Seoul, I commuted everyday to my high school. Depending on my mood, I would catch the local or district bus and walk up the large hill that my school was planted on, or I would hail a taxi from outside of my apartment and nap for the fifteen minute ride. Other times I would wake up earlier than I had to, take a long shower, and then deliberately take a much longer route than was ever necessary to get to school. I remember those particular days the clearest. I would leave my apartment around 7 AM, walk to the closest subway station, which was either Saejul or Eungnam-dong, then take the metro for three or four stops to get off at Sinchon, where my school was. I would expand what could be as short of a commute as ten minutes to one that can take almost forty.
I remember those days the clearest because those are the days that I felt like my joints, muscles, and bones were as tight and rigid as bronze. Old ladies would beat me up a flight of stairs, young toddlers would race past me up a hill, and people with heavy loads would lap me in no time. I would walk, not entirely conscious, lost in my thoughts about the most frivolous matters. These silly thoughts were like delicate, silky veneers of dust that formed on my mind.
As I passed by brightly lit stores and sleepy-eyed clerks, my body lost sense of itself and I became an entity that was entirely ephemeral. The world would flow through me, and I through it, and I wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference anymore. I was just heavier matter. I was actually just air stuck in place, in a form, and encapsulated underneath uncomfortable flesh.
I wish now that I could have thought of more important matters than the things that I actually did ruminate on. I wish that I could’ve pondered my place in the universe, or the meaning of my existence. I was exposed to philosophy, whatever that means, in the 6th grade of middle school. I remember that day, but I’ll save that story for some other time. Since that day, however, I remember that I stopped believing in God because it felt like I was copying someone else’s homework.
No, what I actually thought about was girls and films. In one particular instance, this must be sometime in 10th or 11th grade, I was taking the long route to school. There was a girl whom I adored more than I can now remember. She was younger than I, and surely enough, I wasn’t the only one who liked her. She had the kind of face that made any hairstyle look trendy, and whatever outfit she wore, it became an extension of her, moving with her and providing her with a graceful definition. Her body was still childish, but we all noticed her development into womanhood.
I was a much more prolific writer in those days than I am now. I wrote scripts for stage and screen, novellas, poems and satire. I took the world around me and blended it with my words, until I couldn’t differentiate between my writing and my reality. If I didn’t write for some period of time, I grew anxious and defensive. It was like the tapping of the keyboard reaffirmed my very existence. It rooted me to the ground.
In any case, that one day, as I was commuting to school, I was staring off into space again. I was lost in thought about this girl. I already had a girlfriend at that time, so there was always some guilt involved – perhaps that's why I decided to take that long route more frequently those days. Her face was brightly lit in my mind. I examined every portion that I could recall from memory: her eyes, nose, and lips. I admired the genius of nature to produce such a gorgeous assembly of parts. Her beauty wasn’t typical. It was, if anything, so versatile that it was difficult to read her emotions. She didn’t look like your typical Korean either. I had committed to this mental exercise several times during those days, admiring her beauty from memory. I never quite got past her chin though, whenever I went from bottom-up.
It wasn’t that her chin was particularly well-formed; rather, upon contemplating any one part of her face, I couldn’t resist taking the whole into consideration. It was like reading a novel and noticing in one’s peripheral vision some dialogue that’s about to take place. There is this strange urge to skip down to read what the characters say.
I, more or less, never interacted with her in any way. There was only this once:
One day, I was seated on some benches in an obscure part of campus. It had a view of a large field, where the other students ran around or played sports. She sat down on the next row of benches, so she was maybe several feet away from where I was. I’m rather sensitive to heat, so I was in the shade of a large elm tree.
I hadn’t thought of her for a long while at that point, which might have been because I was going through a rocky patch in my relationship. She didn’t bring with her a book or anything to occupy her attention. She just sat there, staring off in the same direction that I was.
My body felt light and I was confused. I didn’t know how to handle the situation. My most brilliant moments were in my writing, but outside of that, I didn’t have much confidence. I didn't have the DELETE key to erase the undesirable.
So, instead, I sat there in silence. I felt her presence jolt through the distance between us. I felt the silence weigh down on my shoulders. I closed my eyes and tried to dissemble the moment. I wanted to savor it, even though it didn't go the way that I would’ve liked it to have.
Each moment we sat there together, I felt her presence fill into me. We didn’t know each other, I didn’t even know her name at the time, but nonetheless, I felt as if the separation between where I ended and she began blurred and became indistinct. I imagined my thoughts materializing into color, and how that distance between her and me became a spectrum of vivid, lush reds and full-bodied oranges.
I want to say that it was more than just lust that I felt at that time. I even want to say that it was more than simple attraction. I don’t know what to call it. If I saw her today, I may no longer have any feelings towards her. I may not even consider her appearance notable. That moment I spent with her, and all those moments that I didn’t, however, became, like my writing, an anchor to my existence. Through her beauty, I felt more alive. That’s the type of relationship that we had. I don’t think I would want it any other way.
