Looking Glass
Translation by Ethan Fenlon, a first year ETA in Cheonan, Chungcheongnam-do Since Narcissus, Western literature has dealt with the motif of the mirror with a tinge of distrust: mirrors distract, mirrors disturb, mirrors lie. However, in his 1938 poem “Looking Glass,” Yoon Kon-Kang probes a more terrible truth, and questions what would happen if the “I” in the mirror were to disappear completely. Taking after other Korean modernists like Yi Sang who explore the paradoxical nature of gazing on one’s own reflection, Yoon nonetheless blazes his own trail in this piece, reflecting (ha) on solitude and the self. Looking Glass Nobody’s coming, no one is waiting in a room like the sea— While transfixed by the face reflected in a boundless looking glass, someone may break in, stealing it away without leaving a trace… Oh oh! When the silence is deafening, isn’t loneliness death? 면경(面鏡) 올 사람도 없고 기다릴 사람도 없는 바다속 같은 방 안― 테 없는 거울, 그속에 비친 얼굴을 뚫어지라 쏘아볼 때, 누가 자취도 없이 들어와서 저 거울마저 빼앗아간다면…… 오오! 소리없음을 ‘정적(靜寂)’이라면 외로움은 한개 색다른 ‘주검’이냐? [Featured photo by Gaia Gonzales]
Through Mud and Myth
By Johanna Alexander, a second year ETA in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do The importance of history, they say, is that if we know the mistakes of those who came before us, we can avoid repeating them in the future. I’ll grant them this: it’s good advice if you’re like the people in those histories. The kind of person who could fall prey to petty schemes and deceitful promises. “Guys, come on now! He’s spreading false prophecies! I’m trying to protect you—clearly,” Poseidon said as he sent two giant serpents to strangle poor Laocoon, who had just warned the Trojans that the horse was a trick. “Thanks,” they all replied. What fools. Thanking the god for enabling their impending doom. Me? I’m nothing like them. “Thanks,” I said to the woman at the ticket booth. To her left and right sat two more employees, each with the same slicked black hair and pressed, collared uniforms. The three fates making an appearance this early on in my weekend adventure wasn’t surprising; the destiny of a legend was something anybody would want a part in. I pretended not to recognize them, but my blood was boiling in anticipation. What prophecy of greatness did they have in store for me this time? “The mud is great for your skin,” they said. All three women seemed to speak with one voice. Their eyes glinted through the plexiglass partition, but looked past me as I nodded and left with my friend. My friend, who desperately needed the weekend of rest and relaxation that this festival promised. My friend, who, when I presented the idea to her just yesterday, seemed hesitant that we could succeed on such short notice. “Last time we didn’t make a plan, it turned out fine right?” “Please, look who you’re talking to. It will be great!” We entered the festival, a huge stadium bordered by a fence with only one gate. At the beach behind us, hundreds of oblivious visitors were swimming and laughing in the ocean as their cellphones, shoes and wallets were slowly being washed away by the creeping shoreline. We soon found the mud arena and took turns pouring a thick concoction of earth and sea water on each other’s heads. This is what we came here for; I could feel my skin being nourished and rejuvenated. Not a moment after we had returned the ladle to its home in the barrel, we were grabbed by hands belonging to faces we could not see and thrown into a ring of strangers calf-deep in a diluted bath of the healing mud we had just indulged in. A man at the front of the ring blew a whistle, and all hell broke loose. Strange, I thought as my companion and I huddled together for protection. I came to relax like a king, but I’m made to fight like a Spartan? The other revelers at this bacchanal, with faces made anonymous and inhuman by the gray sloppy clay that covered us all, violently slung mud into our eyes, mouth, ears and somehow even in places where the sun rarely shines—though I supposed the mud was good for me in those places too, like they say. In the few moments I could spare to think during the assault, I began to wonder why—why would this turn of events be happening to me of all people? I had done nothing wrong. I had made no mistakes. I never do! And that’s when it hit me—the thought, along with a well aimed chunk of mud. I must be too perfect. They say every hero has a fatal flaw, and mine was that I had none! I was climbing too close to divinity myself and the gods were threatened. This was their punishment. A group of men launched a surprise attack and a shower of mud exploded across my face. Did they know what they were doing? Did they know that this assault was not of their own free will, but simply the hand of my heavenly atonement? Yes, I was having a miserable time. But a hero of my strength, stamina, beauty, cunning and renown (just to name a few) would never be felled by a little teasing from jealous gods who were too cowardly to face me themselves. I lifted my gaze and whispered through the mud in my mouth. “I’ll come out on top. Just you watch.” Crouching shoulder to shoulder with my friend, who was struggling to keep one eye open as witness to our judgment, I decided that I would take their preordained punishment with a smile. My body would be healed and I would feel relaxed—if only to spite them. As the festival dragged on, my voice grew hoarse with shouts of “Yay! I love mud! I can’t believe how awesome this festival is!” We tried to leave, but we couldn’t seem to make it to the exit gate, always getting mixed up and turned around in the hoards of muddy strangers who smiled and cheered as if this weren’t the first circle of hell itself. I had a thought then, that maybe they were not the executioners as I had previously believed, but the damned themselves, overcompensating just like us with a plastered-on smile and repeating hoorah. I wondered what the sorry lot had done to get here, for they could not have been the envy of the gods as we were. In the end—after hours of wrestling our way through ring after ring of muddy hell—we made it out alive. But it seemed our punishment was not yet complete. No, that would have been too quick, too dull for our celestial audience. The sun set as we hailed a taxi, trying to cover up our damp and dirty skin—unacceptable for sitting in someone else’s car—with our damper and dirtier clothes. “Can you take us to the Saerom 24-hour Jjimjilbang?” Sweating and bathing at a sauna is great for your health, they say. We hoped it would offer us some
Series from the Hwasil, a Room of Flowers and Magic
By Julia Wargo, a second year ETA in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do I Darker, lighter, darker. These are the only words I hear for hours at a time, and I repeat them over and over again to myself. There’s something deeply meditative about that repetition, and about ink wash painting. Ink: solid midnight, ground out of a stick and applied to white hanji paper. Washing: the process of purification. Together, painting purifies me from beginning to end. When I arrive in the studio, I grind the inkstick until my arm is sore, and I am regretting adding too much water to the mixture. Concentrating on making the most concentrated black, one that doesn’t lighten if I leave it out to dry. Then, when the ink is ready, a pool of darkness waiting to be dipped into, my teacher picks up a brush and paints an example. There are no words in this place but those he repeats: darker here and lighter there. Understand? There are no definites, only a maybe. It is turned by necessity into a hesitant, “Yes.” I try to imitate the painting, and in the end when I am done and holding the brush under the faucet, seeing streaks in the water, that unsaid maybe echoes in my mind. II Sometimes I catch myself thinking about more uncertainties. About how 화 (hwa) can mean painting (畵) and sometimes fire (火) and sometimes flower (花). Hwasil literally translates to painting studio, but sometimes I think of this place as a flower studio. There are papers with flowers on them plastered on the walls and on the floor, where I have to step gingerly to avoid them. The only free space is the ceiling, and if flower paintings were to appear there too, I wouldn’t be overly surprised. On rare occasions, other paintings materialize. Sometimes there are neat rows of Chinese characters, or a tiger or dragon. But for the most part, I am learning more words for flowers than I ever knew before in English. The first four types of painting I’ve learned are orchids, bamboo, chrysanthemums and plum blossoms. After you’ve learned them once, you should repeat them over and over, perfecting and adding more strokes, more additions, improving. It’s a progression perfected over centuries, and sometimes I can feel those years echoing deeply when I am attempting to paint. Legacies I can’t live up to, that don’t quite belong to me, but that require respect. I am drawn to other subjects too. The lotus, stretching high out of the pond. The trumpet vine, orange and reaching low, overhanging a wall. Persimmons, plump and ripe. Goldfish in the pond, with slight ripples around them fashioned from the barest hint of ink and water. The sheer variety is overwhelming. To focus on the strength of boulders? Or the delicacy of a vase? When I leave the room, flowers are blooming in my mind and fish swimming through the air around me. The world comes alive and electric to the touch. I carry the painting and the fire and the flower inside me. III Nothing can convince me that this place isn’t some sort of liminal space where anything can happen. It’s a place where there are multitudes of blossoms and multitudes of stories. Many of them spring straight from my teacher’s mind, and his sense of humor sometimes differs from my own. One day, I am painting a bird, and my teacher gestures for me to hold out my hand. When I look inside my palm, there is a detached bird’s leg. With feathers still attached. A mild sense of horror surfaces, which I try to suppress. He’s looking for a reaction and the chance to laugh at my squeamishness. Instead, I just say, “cool,” and chuckle. Is it just a model for drawing a bird? Or something else? The possibilities are endless. The next week, it’s alcohol made from bee larvae on offer, his amused smile just daring me to try it. I can’t quite bring myself to, the murky brown color reminding me a bit too much of river water. Next, his humor lands on frogs as its object of interest. The first image he paints is of two frogs, dancing. It’s left to me to question why. The next image he draws is the same, but a snake appears. I expect danger, not what follows. The snake pours a cup of alcohol for the frogs. And the frogs happily drink themselves into a daze under the gaze of the full moon, painted in a shade between blue and purple and clear water. I ask: why? Why are there frogs, why is there a snake, why is there alcohol, and how did you conjure this from nothing, from a blank page? I don’t get an answer, just a grin and yet another story to live on in my mind. IV There are frequent breaks when my teacher vanishes for indeterminate periods of time to smoke, and the studio suddenly feels more like an average room. Four walls, a roof, air that is too hot in the summer and cold enough to see your own breath in the winter. Sometimes the breaks take five minutes, sometimes I suspect he’s wandered off for a meal or a walk or to the mountain to look for wild ginseng. I am left looking at my brush and paper. This time, when he comes back to the hwasil, he motions for me to follow. We’re on the third floor, and he goes up the stairs. What is beyond this room? What is left but rooftop? Does the magic extend beyond the boundaries of the door and windows? It’s past sunset, and my eyes don’t adjust immediately. I stumble a bit over uneven floorboards. He points at the sky, towards the mountain, and I see a flashing light. Amidst the disorientation, I feel my first burst of certainty in a long while. The magic in the hwasil was carried here to this rooftop and to me by the thread of my teacher’s path upstairs. To this place where there is only darkness punctuated by