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9-27 camp.
shook his umkyoung in frustration. “Yeah, you could ask for that.”
Jun Do stared up toward the island’s north promontory, volcanic black, limned in dwarf spruce. This was a world wrought for its own sake, without message or point, a landscape that would make no testimony for one great leader over another.
faraway and inward. Presumably there
He woke to the voice of the girl who rowed in the dark. She’d been rowing in the nude, she said, and under a sky that was “black and frilled, like a carnation stemmed in ink.” She’d had a vision that humans would one day return to the oceans, growing flippers and blowholes, that humanity would become one again in the oceans, and there’d be no intolerance or war. Poor girl, take a day off, he thought,
“If everyone who had it shitty and bit the dust became a fart,” he said, “the world would stink to the treetops,
Someone’s canary dies, and they hear a tweet in the dark, and they think, Oh, it’s the ghost of my bird. But if you ask me, a ghost is just the opposite. It’s something you can feel, that you know is there, but you can’t get a fix on.
“what everybody gets wrong about ghosts is the notion that they’re dead. In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range.”
“To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero.”
“Sleep during the day,” Jun Do told him. “At night your thoughts will come clear. We have looked at the stars together—chart them each night. If they are in the right places, you’re doing fine. Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past. Do not try to picture people’s faces—you will despair if they don’t come clear. If you are visited by people from far away, don’t think of them as ghosts. Treat them as family, ask them questions, be a good host. “You will need a purpose,” he told the Second Mate. “The Captain’s purpose was to get us home safe. Your purpose will
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The cat’s in the cradle, the baby’s in the tree. The birds up above all click their beaks. Papa’s in the tunnel, preparing for the storm, Here comes mama, her hands are worn. She holds out her apron for the baby to see. The baby full of trust lets go the tree.
the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.”
Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
Arirang Festival.
