Diary of a Madman, XII; pt. 2: Glass Jars and Jazz Clubs

He stumbled out of the bar, fresh out of money and pride. The world was spinning--he was sure it wasn't the liquor. That's when they get you, he thought, as he stumbled around his jacket pockets for a smoke. The night was still vibrant; people all around him just blurs on an unsentimental spectroscope. He lit his cigarette and for a minute, he held a light brighter than the moon. He whistled an old tune he learned on the radio, something about how wolves were more apt to come out during rainy nights to hunt for their prey. They had real acumen--perceived as merciless but only come out when no one else was around. As he was about to walk away, the bartender came out and spoke to him in Japanese. He never knew why the bartender always insisted on speaking to him in Japanese when it was clear that he didn't know any. He just turned and smiled and listened as the bartender let out a stream of unfamiliar sounds. Then he said in Korean,

"Joon-suk, you forgot your briefcase."

"You know I don't know what you're saying to me"

"But you do."

With that he handed the briefcase to Joon-suk and went back into the bar. Joon-suk chortled as he held the familiar briefcase in his hand. It was heavier than it could ever be. It wasn't the contents of the briefcase, but the fustian meaning of what those contents had. Nothing is irrelevant; there couldn't be or meanings would cease to exist.

Joon-suk worked for an anti-corruption agency in the city, the largest and most respected, in fact. That was easily to explain though: the firm was so well funded that they could afford to handle every case of corruption with a top-notch attorney. He had gone to school for ten years, wanting to become a legislator for something that mattered, but he ended up in a position that had him revealing legal loopholes in contracts and transactions drawn out by overeager corporations, essentially revealing specific people for doing what anyone probably would've done in a similar situation: opportunities to earn more money. It was a popularity contest, and he was on the panel to decide who would make the biggest news. He could easily list five or six names of people who were much more worthy of putting in jail, but they were too expensive to reveal. They were either too small to bother bringing to the public eye, or they were far too high up, basically shedding money everywhere they went, consequently leaving everybody bowing as they passed.

Nonetheless, he had recently swept up what could be the biggest case of scandal and bribery of the decade, having caught a military general taking hefty bribes for excusing the sons of big mobs from going into compulsory military service, thereby preventing any government spotlighting on the shady shiftings of the underworld. He just had to submit his report and it would be finished. The associated mobs would go to jail not for bribery, but the countless actions they've been committing under the thick veil of currency. Hundreds of kids who couldn't do anything else but work for mobsters would end up on the street, probably pushed into committing petty crimes so that they could feed themselves--terrorizing for a living. Gone would be the structured, organized crime of this mafia ringleaders, and then would dawn more banditry. He would be the blade that would cut up a swelling wound, revealing the far uglier, much more festering problem underneath the inflammation. The truth was that it was society that was sick. The society had become gilded and obsessed with wealth, essentially replacing humanity-based morality into a fiscal one.

Dozens of contracts signed and stamped by this general were photocopied and carefully archived in manila envelopes that would provide enough evidence to successfully litigate these mobsters. It was all very sub rosa as well--he would submit his report through an intricate internet system that guaranteed his anonymity. There was virtually no way he could be caught in this act.

But it wasn't about being caught and threatened that Joon-suk was concerned that evening. It wasn't why he was as drunk as he was at that moment. It was something more philosophical: how limited was his perspective? One of the first classes that he took in law school was that anything that could be interpreted as "worth fighting for" were battles that were too complex to assign the trivial descriptions of good or bad.

It was something like a triangle placed on a flat surface, or a prism. The tip, the topmost point, could represent the "event," though that was somewhat philosophically noxious as well. In any case, if that apex was construed as the event, every part of the prism, the numerous strands that led to that apex, were the different elements that were somehow associated to how that event occurred. Innumerable intentions were all set off at once like fireworks, lit by some indeterminate force, and thus resulted an event that these associated elements would understand and interpret in their own way. Everybody thought that what they did was somehow right, each and every one of the equipped with a meticulously designed justification. Ultimately, it was he who would decide the recipients of the punishment. Ultimately, it was someone who was completely unassociated and irrelevant who put to rest all those other contentions.

He lost his breath just thinking about the precarious ground he stood on. Who was he to do any of this? He had to imitate objectivity, neutrality, and the loss of identity en route the foolproof internet submission system made sure that there was no humanity, thus subjectivity, in this whole procedure. It wasn't he, but his labor that was valued.

There was no humanity in his work, though that's why he wanted to go into law in the first place, and then dozens of misguided kids would rampage the street, since they now think that they've been wronged by society, which more or less may have wronged them, resulting in people who are just walking around, minding their own business, to be more at risk of being mugged, robbed, or even murdered.

This societal existence that we lead, he thought, was something that was unfathomable. It was sublime. It was terrifying. Any and everything that he did caused some rippled in this system that affects others for better or worse. He could study his moral standards and try to perfect them, but his inevitable consequentiality was beyond the realms of any powers of rumination. It couldn't be understood, because the nature of a single individual in society was the society itself, so to understand the whole, which produces the one, led to dead-ends that he could neither fully conceive, thus precluding rectification, nor prevented in any way. All roads led to the same destination:

I have no idea.

He smoked his cigarette as he waited in a taxi queue. There were four others in front of him, maybe a dozen behind him. Those who were too drunk to be orderly kept cutting in line in front of him, but what could he really do? Would they even listen? If they did listen, to what effect would his talking to them really have?

He removed a glass jar from his briefcase that was filled with cigarette butts. He unwound the the top and threw his lit cigarette inside. He let out a sigh and the smoke rose far, far above him.

Diary of a Madman, XII: Glass Jars and Jazz Clubs

He's in Seoul now, standing on the eighth storey of a building located on a major rotary, staring partly at his reflection in a wide window, partly at the cars and people below. He's in a jazz club. It's around 9:00 PM.

The club is dimly lit, mostly by dark crimson Chinese lanterns that hung listlessly from the ceiling. The fluorescent Johnny Walker sign at the bar gave the place a feeling of clean-cut modernity. There's a lit stream flowing down the middle of the floor, decorated with exotic-looking pebbles, small Oriental paper dragons, and off-white rose petals. The Tosca Tango Orchestra's Mi Otra Mitad de Naranja was playing faintly in the background, dwindling from its discordant fortissimo. The few patrons in the club were drinking quietly, much like him, alone.

The joint was called Purgatorio. People came here to wait before going somewhere else, unwind after work or school, or simply to be alone with one's thoughts. The owner was also the bartender who ran the place with his wife, a Japanese-born Korean who came back. She prepared the dishes in a separate room, coming out only to receive compliments as a culinary artisan.

He started coming here, to Purgatorio, his second year of high school. The owner never asked questions about his age. He came in alone, sat by the window and drank without disturbing anyone--much like he was at that moment.

His reflection in the window acted like an overlay for the city behind it. The city moved; every second of its existence it breathed faster, throbbed, and pulsated with so much activity that it was impossible to comprehend. He watched, perched in that height, like a gargoyle, office workers speeding home, taxi cabs rushing to squeeze in a few more customers, and trucks traveling unhurriedly, expecting a long journey. He watched people standing in line to wait for the bus to pick them up. He watched all the people entering and exiting stores and buildings. He watched people sitting around, smoking, chatting, or idling. He watched the faces in the restaurants; a few of them were staring, like him, while others were engaged in conversation.

The song changed to a Brubeck number he couldn't put his finger on. He always came here on the wrong days, he thought. This place had a live band on Monday and Friday, but he always came on Wednesdays and Sundays.

He never had to step outside to come here: the building was connected to the subway system, so he could get here always underneath the ground. He'd get on a train and it would snake him around the city, quickly and efficiently.

He wasn't thinking about anything in particular that day, at that time, in that place. He usually went there to think something through, something that required more than his undivided attention. He would sit there, settle into his favorite spot, let his fingers absorb the cool touch of the leather couch, and suck up the atmosphere through a ravenous osmosis. His mind would slowly calm, like a thin layer of dust settling on the surface of still objects. At the slightest disturbance during this stage, his concentration would shatter incorrigibly. His breathing would normalize and the world would slip off of him, regardless of how it tried to latch on. Then he broke down every one of his thoughts and memories, organizing them carefully into glass jars, and then placing them in various locations in his mind.

After this cautious exercise, he would examine each thought, each memory, without refrain. He would remit no detail in this examination. He colored-coded them with words, details--language.

That day, however, he had nothing to think about. The day had passed like any other. He was on vacation, so he had more free time than he would've liked. His life became inflated like an enormous balloon, while he, something separate, held on from a string that was tied superfluously from the bottom. The weight of his body and then of his life balanced each other out, so he would gain no elevation but never touch the ground. He would hover through space, setting in the direction of the wind.

Suspended in that space, he wondered if it was the weightlessness of the balloon that permitted the wind to blow it about, or if it was the strength of the wind that caused the balloon to move.

No, that's not it.

He remembered a line from a film: it wasn't a question about the wind, or an object, but his mind that perceived this interaction.