Episode 16:Pain
Pain. A horrible moniker of an indivisible human suffering. When does it come from, where is it made, and why does it come to us?
I know it. I've suffered pain of a variety of categories. I had suffered an extreme degree of abdominal pain as a kid. I'd actually grabbed stomach and rolled over on the room floor, screaming and panting. Then grandma had picked out a panacea for that kind of emergency: a small chunk of black matter.
Grandma had pieced eye mucus amount, that is, a very small amount off it, and put it on a spoon, mixed with water, and made me sip it. Then it disappeared. That was a real magic. Grandma was a magician cum doctor.
I've now pain on both knee arthritis casually and geographically. Waist pain on annual or biennial basis and more often than not chest pain also. I've long taken ingeolmee so that I can release or protect from abdominal pain.
I suffer chest pain from time to time, over losses of this sort or that. My heart aches everytime when I think of mother of 94, who has been taken care of my brother. I should have dropped by often and with my family. I am so powerless about that. My first sister, who had "gone to the mountain hills", deigns to come down from time to time for her worldly mother in her waning years, which I appreciate that.
Pain is a lonesome experience. When I was having this pain or that grabbing head or stomach all night, the other room mate of mine was having a sweet sleep. When my dad was wriggling over with the pain of an stomach endoscope or something, docs and nurses were sharing chats about summer vacations, giggling on and on.
We're not supposed or suggested to replicate the experiences of the others, so much so that Jesus' crucifixion, which had been designed to bear the burden of the worldly people's sins, is judged to have been very unique. Yet, all the worldly confusion and conflicts attest to the difficulty and impossibility of the sacrifice for the others' pain: Pain is a lonesome experience.
Hundreds of thousands of the troops of the United Nations Armed Forces, who fought, and several tens of thousands of the troops who were killed here in South Korea, demonstrated in a fatal way a rare exemption to the principle of the lonesome pain. They pained themselves for us South Koreans. We appreciate that.
----------------------------
This alternative medicine or that was tried. Some effective-claiming medicine, mainly for the pain relief, was airborne from Tokyo. His patience worn out. Father was having a hard time even sipping drops of water. The strong man of a stout build shrank to the skeleton of a man of a mere 49 kilo grams. Father wanted to "depart."
Mother raised her hand and suggested in a very appealing way to his husband he "delay his departure" for some months. It was a cold winter so he was supposed to do that in a warmer season, that is, next spring or something.
On the morning of the 15th of March by a lunar calendar, father said as if talking to himself, "I am going today." He climbed up his bed and stretched his body in full recline. My Buddhist nun sister, who had been staying for several days for the occasion, was standing at his death bed, and started banging a moktak, a hollow wooden vase sounder and chanting some mantra for the departing soul.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
अ Novel
Episode 15: The Path to Guinsa Temple
I am concerned quite a bit about Cha Hee. Wife more often than not talks about depression these days. She pleads migraine headaches from time to time. I understand her illness, so I am sad.
Though her illness seems not so serious at this stage, I know the history of it is quite long and rooted deep inside. I have been quite the culprit to her disease, so I am sad.
She has been too toilsome for quite a long period of time by herself because of my long-protracted unemployment of two decades. Wife has run the house for herself, making ends meet and funding all the school bills of our three sons from elementary school to college.
I have been indebted to her to a great deal, so I am looking forward to the day that I would be able to reimburse some part of all her troubles. My alarmist worry is that she might one day be going through the MRI examination and lying on the hospital couch, so I am so sad.
The main origin of her recent concern which has caused her headaches and insomnia is that our first son at the age of 39 is still staying single. He is refusing to converse with us. He might be scared of the reservoir of his mindset made bare dry by the in-depth search by his dad.
He has gone out to a matchmaking date or two by his mother's insistence, but he has almost always returned home with sullen faces and awkward smiles. He has kept keeping silent about any encounter. I am just guessing, so I am sad.
The difficulty of match arrangement between men and women, particularly in my son's case, is that he has tended to rebuff the advance of his date who has showed any affection, whereas he has tended to be attracted to the partner who has openly rebuffed him. Put the top notch, particularly in men's case, a little further down, or you won't meet your match.
The young men of South Korea have been having a real hard time with difficult young women who're being difficult with the folks of the counter sex. The plights of the male populace are abound in matchmaking dates. The national footage is that the young female populace has actually been harassing the male populace with their arms and legs crossed, measuring the male species.
Men and women, particularly young men and women in their prime years for marriage, are supposed to respect one another. But the psychological and cultural realities are that the young male folks are scared of the female and the young female folks are poised to frighten off the male human species.
The picture is poignantly dramatized in serialized TV soap operas in which the young male characters more often than not are spanked across the face by the female characters for this infraction or that. The young populace who have reached marriage age are trained in whichever way they will modify their amorous behaviors.
Why are the young male populace scared of the populace of the counter sex? Because they have been so trained. Why are the young female populace hostile to and derisive of the young male populace of the nation? Because they have been so trained to do so.
Let me, along with the many others who could agree with me, posit a theory here that there have existed huge intellectual troops, whether they be organized or not, which have been trained to oppose, manipulate, or incapacitate the male populace.
It's irrational of course to posit such a theory. But I think it's not so irrational if you could put the deep-rooted gender undercurrent they have harbored into consideration that the women populace have through tens of centuries been terrorized, sacrificed, abused, persecuted, and victimized.
You might ask a question of me if I could enumerate a culpable citizen or two and an organization or two which has forced young people to abhor and evade each other? Yes, I can. The two-term leftist-leaning governments of ten years have masterminded the conspiracy which had been designed to woo the women populace of the nation in order to get their votes.
Once a gender-biased sign had been signalled, the NGOs which were designed to handle women's affairs sprouted. The Ministry of Women's Affairs was established, and the creative writing works flowed out, philosophizing on the women's liberation and their independence.
The worst part of all that extravaganza of women's lib and indi has been manipulation and distortion of social phenomena of some sort, and reverse discrimination against people of the counter sex. The thing is that the centuries-old pent-up hostilities and grudges against the “male-dominated establishment” have taken on the attributes of revenge against the male populace of the current generation, which is surely unfair.
Though there have been no public occasion for the Pan-national Women's Conference or something, it seems that a sort of solidarity among the women populace has been created. Woman writers have published novels and essays propounding on the freedom of divorce. Divorce has turned out a decoration of an independent woman.
Whereas the women's activists have tended to be united against the male populace and make an easy consensus, the male populace have tended to be divisive, with the opportunistic troops having tended to side with the population of the opposite sex.
Divorce having been a contemporary national trend, and subsequently "the improvised women" status having occupied the bulk of the major cultural and media establishment, the female population of the younger generation has set up an environs fit for the fresh criteria and readied to adapt to it.
The "luxurious life of the single woman" having been "publicly" lauded, the single female celebrities have become the object of respect rather than the butt of public ridicule. It had been a comic situation that a woman celebrity, rumored to assuredly take the next national helm, National Assembly Woman Ms. Park somebody, who has been also a single woman, was publicly worried about the national low rate of new child birth. So ironic, so ludicrous.
How about the assertion by the same politico that the so-called polarization of social income levels is worsening ever? Don't you think that she is out of her mind? Don't you think that before making such ludicrous and populistic-oriented remarks she'll have to move to "Gangbuk" (pronounced gahng book) by liquidating and donating her luxury mansion at Samseong-dong, Gangnam to a philanthropic foundation?
I think one of those, who are eligible to claim that the government should take a certain urgent measure to stem the low rate of child birth, is not the politico who is living off the status of the luxurious single life but Mrs. Kim somebody, a comedienne who is planning to have a fourth child. Don't you think so?
I also think that one of those, who are eligible to strongly suggest that the government is responsible for the worsening income polarization, is not the politico who has owned a luxury mansion, who has deposited several hundred thousands of dollars in banks, has earned fat envelopes of paychecks, and who has enjoyed all the gamut of perquisites ranging from free train rides to immunity from arrests during the convocation.
Why doesn't she donate a considerable sum of her assets before making hollow assertions or hinting at the government's responsibility only or the rich people's only? Why doesn't she sacrifice herself? Why doesn't she make any efforts to bridge the gap of income polarization by donating her wealth? Is she aware of what the hell she is talking about?
In short, an anti-social situation, the low birth rate and widening polarization whatsoever, to the consternation of those sayers, is being worsened by the assertions or behaviors of the cantankerous claimants who haven't been qualified to do so. To reiterate, the alarmist worry of the lower birth rate and ever worsening polarization by the unqualified people doesn't ameliorate the situation. The qualified will have to come forward.
Almost all the members of the social community aren't cognizant of an evil yet concealed force at work, the very mechanism which affects the mentality of the young populace of the nation. What the groups of evil are committed to do is dispel the notion of marriage from the young aspirants. They are really bad, aren't they?
Watch the TV "soap operas" of South Korea, and there on the scenes you will see all the evils of society, imagined or real, and inventive or real, unfurled: Mothers or mothers-in-law scowl; Daughters-in-law whimper; Fathers or fathers-in-law cheat on their wives; Husbands or husbands-to-be panic; Siblings shout at each other.
The bulk of the social responsibility, I think, lies in the soap opera writers, who have been mostly women, for the ill-advised phenomena of the aversion to marriage, and, if and when married, the escape from parenthood. In short, it is safe to say that the playwrights of the TV dramas are unwinding their gender-wrought stress through the shouts and violence of the characters, which is surely irresponsible.
I had been scared of women and of all that I might have caused, and run from some of them, yet I was able to tie the knot with Cha Hee through the good offices of her and her devotion. Fortunately enough, there had been no stressful, evil-minded, ideologically organized, and vengeance-seeking women writers who had been manipulating and distorting their way into the women-dominated feministic society at that time.
My son might be scared of women, too. It is more like my cowardice and timidity might have been genetically transmitted to my son, which is so unfortunate. Thinking back, my cowardice and timidity might have originated from my dad, who had been crawling with his hands and feet in the labyrinthine pits of a coal mine at a beach town of Nagasaki, Japan, as a coal miner from the ruined country of the Chosun Kingdom.
--------------------------
I have to meet the origin and root of my physique and psyche this morning. The origin disappeared from sight and from earth in 1993, and the itinerary and travelogue of the path to Guinsa Temple and prayers there have been recorded in detail in my ebook entitled A Civilized Report (www.textore.com)
As I had stated somewhere above, I won't transcribe but I'll reroute them, so I have no idea now what new route I'll develop or what shortcut I'll take, or whether I'll make a detour or not. Yet, I am sure it'll be a tortuous route, which will be a very torturesome experience for me.
I wonder whether the boughs of a tree are aware of the pang or sickness of the mother tree root or father tree trunk. Probably not. See beautiful flowers blooming onto a sick tree trunk.
No, the boughs could have known. No, they should have known. Why not? Inattention bordering on disregard would have been ascribable to the fatal disease of the tree trunk.
The sons and daughters are supposed to make regular calls and visits to their parents, inquire after them, touching them, taking stock of their complexions, and asking physical inconveniences of them. By those delicate courtesies, the boughs could detect the disease of their parental trunk beforehand.
I had been a bad bough, and still am. So shameful of that, Regret that. I think I should be punished for that. I should have detected my father's stomach cancer earlier. Too late when the doctor of Hanyang University Hospital of Seoul diagnosed it as stomach cancer. And that it was terminal: malignant tumors had spread all over.
--------------------
By the by, my father and father-in-law died of stomach cancer, so I used to say to my wife "we" could be highly susceptible to the disease. To stem the onset of the malignant tumor, I have made it a rule for myself for the ten more years, to eat ingeolmee everyday. And I strongly recommend "my prescription" to my wife, but she is not so much convinced herself.
The ingeolmee is a kind of traditional Korean cake made of sticky rice. The pieces of it can have a variety of forms and sizes, of course, but are generally small-sized, cute, and convenient to pick and eat it.
It of course tastes good. I strongly believe that the sticky conglomeration of it helps digestion, prevents stomach ulcer, and keeps it from developing into malignant stage. The citizens of the United States and other countries are recommended to visit the local " Korean Ddokjip", the cake house.
I can't forget the horrorful scene in which my dad had his stomach scanned by a "naesikyeong" (gastro- endoscope) lying on a filthy couch of Hanyang powerlessly. People, of whom several guys were garbed in hospital gown and also several gals were garbed in nurse or casual clothes, were actually at a loss how to operate the horrorful "hose" and how to run the computer. With ease, comfort, and effect.
The worse part of the weird scene was that the hospital folks were "handling" my dad carelessly and improperly, giggling and chatting about their holiday vacations, while my dad was actually wriggling in pain. Thinking back, I'm in a mood I can't forgive the reckless folks.
I envision the horrible monitor screen on which the mass of dark cluster was clinging to my dad's intestine. I still am now in a mood to ask a serious question of them why there had been there? Of all the wide expanse of the whole world?
The ugly clusters couldn't have been genesized by the only way but by many ways and by many causes. The coal dust, which he had breathed in a little bit too much, The deep concern over the first son's joblessness for so many years must have caused the cluster to form the ulcerative tumor. On top of that, the toxic chemicals, which he had sprayed on the apples at the orchard, must have made the tumors into a congealed mass.
--------------------
Yesterday I had a very hard time having been to TG Sambo service station to fix an internet phone. My two legs were always the problem. No, my upper body was. Fact is my two legs were too toilsome because of my heavy upper body.
I had to take a bus, get it off at Daechi, and go subway. Each shift of the public transportation system posed me a little trouble. A little too hard for me. My bodies were at odds with each other, legs and upper body.
Climbing the stairs of the subway was a little easier than climbing them down. My heavy upper body pressed my legs so hard they shrieked. I had to go down limping awkwardly one after the other. Upper scoffing at down under, and down under cursing at upper.
Overeating is to blame for all those physical disasters. Voracity, or an excessive desire for food, is a shameful word. Yet, I cannot desist from it. Before going to the dining table, I assure myself I'll not overeat this time. But once seated, I can't put the spoon and chopsticks down until the dining table is cleared of food.
-------------------
Looking back, when I had traveled to Danyang on a late autumn day of 1993 for a week's stay at Guinsa Temple for a prayer for my sick father, filial piety might not have been my companion but exotic appetite might have been. The evident proof was my immediate and unhesitant entrance to a roadside restaurant at Danyang Bus Terminal.
What I remember now is that the lunch I had eaten at the roadside restaurant was good, the landscape seen from the taxi which had been snaking along the autumn river was so serene, and that I was "tortured" by the cab driver all the way to Guinsa Temple.
As soon as I got into the taxi, the driver didn't ask me "where to?" He said as a matter of factly "You are going to Guinsa, aren't you?" As I said "yes" he nodded as if to say to himself "I knew it!" Then he slid a cassette tape into the player and played it.
It was pumoeunjunkyeong, the mantra for the importance of filial piety. A middle-aged sounding woman was reciting the teachings of the canon which is reported for Sakyamuni Buddha to have lectured to his disciples about the sacrifices, toils, and pains the worldly parents would have to go through.
"Even if you were to go climbing Mount Sumi ten thousand times with your parents on your back, that'll not do..." the taped cassette droned on. I was shedding tears. The cab driver was stealing the stares as if he had the right to do so through the rear glass.
It was a real torture. Tears didn't stop, streaming down profusely. All the phantasmagoric sins which would have pained dad and mom loomed large during the torturous recitation. Dad, I am so sorry!
It might be a portion of the world's truth that the deep sea is "invisible" from the sight of the worldly people. Guinsa Temple was. The huge religious complex had been hidden from the visitor's view by the beleaguered hill range.
Standing before the office hall of the accommodation registration situated at the entrance of the Buddhist temple complex, I could see from my right shoulder a silhouette of the temple buildings and remote borderline. It was awesomely gigantic.
The registration for a week's prayer for parental health done at the office, I was guided to a prayer's room on the fifth floor. The guide said the room was designed to house 5o prayers, but it looked to be spacious enough to house 100 or more prayers.
What I had been impressed the most was hundreds of big urns, which had been containing home-made soy bean paste, standing on the elevated clearing along the long steep uphill leading to the dining hall of the temple. The dining hall manager said they used to serve about 500 visitors, but at some peak days of the peak season, they would serve thousands of diners at each meal time.
The public announcement, which had been made through speaker systems in the temple precinct, was also very impressive. The loudspeakers were broadcasting a very instructive and dogmatic warning to the effect that we the visitors are not supposed "to get connected," using several minutes before breakfast.
"Don't get connected," the loudspeakers boomed. "Get connected, and you'll pine over those who have happened to be separated. Get connected, and you'll curse those with whom you have happened to get mingled."
They had a point in stating the axiom, but I thought at that time and also think now the broadcast slogan had a flaw in itself because the prayers were there to "get connected" with them. Thing is they were making connections, or relationships of sort. The general context might be that people are supposed to be faithful to the "normal" connections but that they are supposed to shirk the "abnormal and immoral" connections.
The roomers, or the prayer mates in the prayer hall, numbered at a glance thirty some or more. They were sparsely seated, with their jackets or other upper clothes taken off and in carefree fashion. Yet, they were not supposed to lean or lie on the floor, particularly during the prayer at night till midnight.
The prayer session was held by a guide priest at first. He introduced himself and Guansseumbossal, or Avalakitesvara at the same time. The mode of the prayer was free: You can pray in "verbal" or muted fashion, but you are suggested to evoke Guansseumbossal, the goddess of illimitable mercy.
Drowsiness is an anathema to prayer as it has been known to be the one to many a realm of human activities. Many others, me in particular, succumbed to slumber before midnight so much so that the prayer session more often than not turned into the slumber session.
You could experiment it with yourself: Your verbal evocation of a specific supreme being in the course of your prayer will bring you unexpected consequences. The enthusiastic chanting of the goddess with rhythmic cadence for my dad's health had led me through an offhanded encounter to the confession of wrong-doings against him.
-----------------------------------
My Confession: I Was Wrong!
From the moment I had known you dad, your back was my seat. Dad had run all the way to the clinic of the village, carrying me on your back, which was always warm and cozy.
Looking back, I presume I had been, till five or six years old, wrapped and carried on your back. It was not because I had been so fragile a child but because we the family had had to move so often to a remote rustic place on a rough road.
From the boyhood years on, grandma had taken care of me noticeably adoringly, with you dad unseen from far away. Grandma had tendered me dearly, I appreciate that, which doesn't mean that you'd loved me less than grandma.
Dad, you'd supported a big family of us--your grandma, your mom, your wife, our three sons and two daughters--giving us good foods, warm clothes, also warm rooms, and decent schools we had gone to. Through your hard work using your strong arms and feet.
Dad, you were strong like rocks and you were stout like old pines. You ploughed the fields and gave us good rice, you cut off woods to warm the room floors, and you hunted mount beasts and made us eat good meat.
Yes, dad, you were the stone-age man, or the bronze-age man. I vividly remember that there had been a variety of spears on the attic of the barn of ours at Sun Valley. I had watched you ignite the fire with a flint. You were flint father and I was your flint son.
You were such a proud general to me. You were taken to Kilan Police Chapter of Andong Police Station so often and took beatings. You took the beatings in stride. They suspected you of protecting and collaborating with the Reds. Fact is we hadn't seen the Reds or the partisans at that time.
Dad, you shirked avarice for all your life. You stressed "constant life" to your offspring. You never envied the others their interests. You were never jealous of the others' wealth, only ploughing the fields.
Dad, I've never known a hard worker like you. You didn't know to say to your sons and to the other folks, "Let's take a break." You were tireless, which might have tired people out.
Dad, you'd never gone to school of any academic tier, but you never complained about that. You were so handy. Your handiwork was the best. You were so originative as to build your own decent wooden house with your own lumber materials, ideas, measurements and muscle power. You'd never been trained to be a carpenter.
Dad, your perfection and tirelessness might have tired me out. I remember I shirked you, disliked you, was afraid of you, scared of you, and hated you to no end, for which I am shameful of myself, and hate myself. I can't forgive myself for all that.
Dad, your pursuit of perfection was endless and limitless. I saw you erect the house at a stretch, for which I envied you your capability as a household owner and an untrained carpenter. I had been so clumsy a son as not to put a nail into the wall. A real shame on me.
Dad, the well you had dug that spring has never been dry for decades. The wooden house you had built with your own lumber materials is still standing fast and steady. I am so proud of your being my father.
Dad, thinking back, I never heard you fart. I surmise that dad, not being gluttonous, had burned out any caloric energy with hard work, whereas I am so gluttonous, so lazy, and leave chewed and gulped stuff unburned inside me as a result.
Dad, you gave us sons and daughters all you could, but you did not take anything in return, for which I reflect and remorse myself. I am so sorry, dad. I had been so ungrateful.
You did not talk to me and us sons and daughters about your pains, sorrows, and your feeling of solitude. I didn't know about your rough life in Japan. I vaguely knew that dad and mom had been roughing up in Japan as the poor subjects of the ruined kingdom, but I didn't know that you'd worked as a coal miner at the Mitsubishi Corporation. I heard about that from the great cousin after you'd passed away, for which I feel so shameful.
---------------------------
I'd lost prayer and the object person for whom I'd offer it for the one last day or two. All that had occurred to my mind was that I pained my father to an extreme degree, and that he loved me dearly. "Forgive me father," I beseeched with tears at dawning hours. "What a noise!" complaints were heard.
At dawn of the last day of prayer, a monk, whose Buddhist name was Yonghwa, hosted a special session for the families of the terminally ill patients. A few moments on which the patient would breathe his or her last breath was the most important. The departed was negotiating a steep uphill, so a silent solemnity would help.
I am concerned quite a bit about Cha Hee. Wife more often than not talks about depression these days. She pleads migraine headaches from time to time. I understand her illness, so I am sad.
Though her illness seems not so serious at this stage, I know the history of it is quite long and rooted deep inside. I have been quite the culprit to her disease, so I am sad.
She has been too toilsome for quite a long period of time by herself because of my long-protracted unemployment of two decades. Wife has run the house for herself, making ends meet and funding all the school bills of our three sons from elementary school to college.
I have been indebted to her to a great deal, so I am looking forward to the day that I would be able to reimburse some part of all her troubles. My alarmist worry is that she might one day be going through the MRI examination and lying on the hospital couch, so I am so sad.
The main origin of her recent concern which has caused her headaches and insomnia is that our first son at the age of 39 is still staying single. He is refusing to converse with us. He might be scared of the reservoir of his mindset made bare dry by the in-depth search by his dad.
He has gone out to a matchmaking date or two by his mother's insistence, but he has almost always returned home with sullen faces and awkward smiles. He has kept keeping silent about any encounter. I am just guessing, so I am sad.
The difficulty of match arrangement between men and women, particularly in my son's case, is that he has tended to rebuff the advance of his date who has showed any affection, whereas he has tended to be attracted to the partner who has openly rebuffed him. Put the top notch, particularly in men's case, a little further down, or you won't meet your match.
The young men of South Korea have been having a real hard time with difficult young women who're being difficult with the folks of the counter sex. The plights of the male populace are abound in matchmaking dates. The national footage is that the young female populace has actually been harassing the male populace with their arms and legs crossed, measuring the male species.
Men and women, particularly young men and women in their prime years for marriage, are supposed to respect one another. But the psychological and cultural realities are that the young male folks are scared of the female and the young female folks are poised to frighten off the male human species.
The picture is poignantly dramatized in serialized TV soap operas in which the young male characters more often than not are spanked across the face by the female characters for this infraction or that. The young populace who have reached marriage age are trained in whichever way they will modify their amorous behaviors.
Why are the young male populace scared of the populace of the counter sex? Because they have been so trained. Why are the young female populace hostile to and derisive of the young male populace of the nation? Because they have been so trained to do so.
Let me, along with the many others who could agree with me, posit a theory here that there have existed huge intellectual troops, whether they be organized or not, which have been trained to oppose, manipulate, or incapacitate the male populace.
It's irrational of course to posit such a theory. But I think it's not so irrational if you could put the deep-rooted gender undercurrent they have harbored into consideration that the women populace have through tens of centuries been terrorized, sacrificed, abused, persecuted, and victimized.
You might ask a question of me if I could enumerate a culpable citizen or two and an organization or two which has forced young people to abhor and evade each other? Yes, I can. The two-term leftist-leaning governments of ten years have masterminded the conspiracy which had been designed to woo the women populace of the nation in order to get their votes.
Once a gender-biased sign had been signalled, the NGOs which were designed to handle women's affairs sprouted. The Ministry of Women's Affairs was established, and the creative writing works flowed out, philosophizing on the women's liberation and their independence.
The worst part of all that extravaganza of women's lib and indi has been manipulation and distortion of social phenomena of some sort, and reverse discrimination against people of the counter sex. The thing is that the centuries-old pent-up hostilities and grudges against the “male-dominated establishment” have taken on the attributes of revenge against the male populace of the current generation, which is surely unfair.
Though there have been no public occasion for the Pan-national Women's Conference or something, it seems that a sort of solidarity among the women populace has been created. Woman writers have published novels and essays propounding on the freedom of divorce. Divorce has turned out a decoration of an independent woman.
Whereas the women's activists have tended to be united against the male populace and make an easy consensus, the male populace have tended to be divisive, with the opportunistic troops having tended to side with the population of the opposite sex.
Divorce having been a contemporary national trend, and subsequently "the improvised women" status having occupied the bulk of the major cultural and media establishment, the female population of the younger generation has set up an environs fit for the fresh criteria and readied to adapt to it.
The "luxurious life of the single woman" having been "publicly" lauded, the single female celebrities have become the object of respect rather than the butt of public ridicule. It had been a comic situation that a woman celebrity, rumored to assuredly take the next national helm, National Assembly Woman Ms. Park somebody, who has been also a single woman, was publicly worried about the national low rate of new child birth. So ironic, so ludicrous.
How about the assertion by the same politico that the so-called polarization of social income levels is worsening ever? Don't you think that she is out of her mind? Don't you think that before making such ludicrous and populistic-oriented remarks she'll have to move to "Gangbuk" (pronounced gahng book) by liquidating and donating her luxury mansion at Samseong-dong, Gangnam to a philanthropic foundation?
I think one of those, who are eligible to claim that the government should take a certain urgent measure to stem the low rate of child birth, is not the politico who is living off the status of the luxurious single life but Mrs. Kim somebody, a comedienne who is planning to have a fourth child. Don't you think so?
I also think that one of those, who are eligible to strongly suggest that the government is responsible for the worsening income polarization, is not the politico who has owned a luxury mansion, who has deposited several hundred thousands of dollars in banks, has earned fat envelopes of paychecks, and who has enjoyed all the gamut of perquisites ranging from free train rides to immunity from arrests during the convocation.
Why doesn't she donate a considerable sum of her assets before making hollow assertions or hinting at the government's responsibility only or the rich people's only? Why doesn't she sacrifice herself? Why doesn't she make any efforts to bridge the gap of income polarization by donating her wealth? Is she aware of what the hell she is talking about?
In short, an anti-social situation, the low birth rate and widening polarization whatsoever, to the consternation of those sayers, is being worsened by the assertions or behaviors of the cantankerous claimants who haven't been qualified to do so. To reiterate, the alarmist worry of the lower birth rate and ever worsening polarization by the unqualified people doesn't ameliorate the situation. The qualified will have to come forward.
Almost all the members of the social community aren't cognizant of an evil yet concealed force at work, the very mechanism which affects the mentality of the young populace of the nation. What the groups of evil are committed to do is dispel the notion of marriage from the young aspirants. They are really bad, aren't they?
Watch the TV "soap operas" of South Korea, and there on the scenes you will see all the evils of society, imagined or real, and inventive or real, unfurled: Mothers or mothers-in-law scowl; Daughters-in-law whimper; Fathers or fathers-in-law cheat on their wives; Husbands or husbands-to-be panic; Siblings shout at each other.
The bulk of the social responsibility, I think, lies in the soap opera writers, who have been mostly women, for the ill-advised phenomena of the aversion to marriage, and, if and when married, the escape from parenthood. In short, it is safe to say that the playwrights of the TV dramas are unwinding their gender-wrought stress through the shouts and violence of the characters, which is surely irresponsible.
I had been scared of women and of all that I might have caused, and run from some of them, yet I was able to tie the knot with Cha Hee through the good offices of her and her devotion. Fortunately enough, there had been no stressful, evil-minded, ideologically organized, and vengeance-seeking women writers who had been manipulating and distorting their way into the women-dominated feministic society at that time.
My son might be scared of women, too. It is more like my cowardice and timidity might have been genetically transmitted to my son, which is so unfortunate. Thinking back, my cowardice and timidity might have originated from my dad, who had been crawling with his hands and feet in the labyrinthine pits of a coal mine at a beach town of Nagasaki, Japan, as a coal miner from the ruined country of the Chosun Kingdom.
--------------------------
I have to meet the origin and root of my physique and psyche this morning. The origin disappeared from sight and from earth in 1993, and the itinerary and travelogue of the path to Guinsa Temple and prayers there have been recorded in detail in my ebook entitled A Civilized Report (www.textore.com)
As I had stated somewhere above, I won't transcribe but I'll reroute them, so I have no idea now what new route I'll develop or what shortcut I'll take, or whether I'll make a detour or not. Yet, I am sure it'll be a tortuous route, which will be a very torturesome experience for me.
I wonder whether the boughs of a tree are aware of the pang or sickness of the mother tree root or father tree trunk. Probably not. See beautiful flowers blooming onto a sick tree trunk.
No, the boughs could have known. No, they should have known. Why not? Inattention bordering on disregard would have been ascribable to the fatal disease of the tree trunk.
The sons and daughters are supposed to make regular calls and visits to their parents, inquire after them, touching them, taking stock of their complexions, and asking physical inconveniences of them. By those delicate courtesies, the boughs could detect the disease of their parental trunk beforehand.
I had been a bad bough, and still am. So shameful of that, Regret that. I think I should be punished for that. I should have detected my father's stomach cancer earlier. Too late when the doctor of Hanyang University Hospital of Seoul diagnosed it as stomach cancer. And that it was terminal: malignant tumors had spread all over.
--------------------
By the by, my father and father-in-law died of stomach cancer, so I used to say to my wife "we" could be highly susceptible to the disease. To stem the onset of the malignant tumor, I have made it a rule for myself for the ten more years, to eat ingeolmee everyday. And I strongly recommend "my prescription" to my wife, but she is not so much convinced herself.
The ingeolmee is a kind of traditional Korean cake made of sticky rice. The pieces of it can have a variety of forms and sizes, of course, but are generally small-sized, cute, and convenient to pick and eat it.
It of course tastes good. I strongly believe that the sticky conglomeration of it helps digestion, prevents stomach ulcer, and keeps it from developing into malignant stage. The citizens of the United States and other countries are recommended to visit the local " Korean Ddokjip", the cake house.
I can't forget the horrorful scene in which my dad had his stomach scanned by a "naesikyeong" (gastro- endoscope) lying on a filthy couch of Hanyang powerlessly. People, of whom several guys were garbed in hospital gown and also several gals were garbed in nurse or casual clothes, were actually at a loss how to operate the horrorful "hose" and how to run the computer. With ease, comfort, and effect.
The worse part of the weird scene was that the hospital folks were "handling" my dad carelessly and improperly, giggling and chatting about their holiday vacations, while my dad was actually wriggling in pain. Thinking back, I'm in a mood I can't forgive the reckless folks.
I envision the horrible monitor screen on which the mass of dark cluster was clinging to my dad's intestine. I still am now in a mood to ask a serious question of them why there had been there? Of all the wide expanse of the whole world?
The ugly clusters couldn't have been genesized by the only way but by many ways and by many causes. The coal dust, which he had breathed in a little bit too much, The deep concern over the first son's joblessness for so many years must have caused the cluster to form the ulcerative tumor. On top of that, the toxic chemicals, which he had sprayed on the apples at the orchard, must have made the tumors into a congealed mass.
--------------------
Yesterday I had a very hard time having been to TG Sambo service station to fix an internet phone. My two legs were always the problem. No, my upper body was. Fact is my two legs were too toilsome because of my heavy upper body.
I had to take a bus, get it off at Daechi, and go subway. Each shift of the public transportation system posed me a little trouble. A little too hard for me. My bodies were at odds with each other, legs and upper body.
Climbing the stairs of the subway was a little easier than climbing them down. My heavy upper body pressed my legs so hard they shrieked. I had to go down limping awkwardly one after the other. Upper scoffing at down under, and down under cursing at upper.
Overeating is to blame for all those physical disasters. Voracity, or an excessive desire for food, is a shameful word. Yet, I cannot desist from it. Before going to the dining table, I assure myself I'll not overeat this time. But once seated, I can't put the spoon and chopsticks down until the dining table is cleared of food.
-------------------
Looking back, when I had traveled to Danyang on a late autumn day of 1993 for a week's stay at Guinsa Temple for a prayer for my sick father, filial piety might not have been my companion but exotic appetite might have been. The evident proof was my immediate and unhesitant entrance to a roadside restaurant at Danyang Bus Terminal.
What I remember now is that the lunch I had eaten at the roadside restaurant was good, the landscape seen from the taxi which had been snaking along the autumn river was so serene, and that I was "tortured" by the cab driver all the way to Guinsa Temple.
As soon as I got into the taxi, the driver didn't ask me "where to?" He said as a matter of factly "You are going to Guinsa, aren't you?" As I said "yes" he nodded as if to say to himself "I knew it!" Then he slid a cassette tape into the player and played it.
It was pumoeunjunkyeong, the mantra for the importance of filial piety. A middle-aged sounding woman was reciting the teachings of the canon which is reported for Sakyamuni Buddha to have lectured to his disciples about the sacrifices, toils, and pains the worldly parents would have to go through.
"Even if you were to go climbing Mount Sumi ten thousand times with your parents on your back, that'll not do..." the taped cassette droned on. I was shedding tears. The cab driver was stealing the stares as if he had the right to do so through the rear glass.
It was a real torture. Tears didn't stop, streaming down profusely. All the phantasmagoric sins which would have pained dad and mom loomed large during the torturous recitation. Dad, I am so sorry!
It might be a portion of the world's truth that the deep sea is "invisible" from the sight of the worldly people. Guinsa Temple was. The huge religious complex had been hidden from the visitor's view by the beleaguered hill range.
Standing before the office hall of the accommodation registration situated at the entrance of the Buddhist temple complex, I could see from my right shoulder a silhouette of the temple buildings and remote borderline. It was awesomely gigantic.
The registration for a week's prayer for parental health done at the office, I was guided to a prayer's room on the fifth floor. The guide said the room was designed to house 5o prayers, but it looked to be spacious enough to house 100 or more prayers.
What I had been impressed the most was hundreds of big urns, which had been containing home-made soy bean paste, standing on the elevated clearing along the long steep uphill leading to the dining hall of the temple. The dining hall manager said they used to serve about 500 visitors, but at some peak days of the peak season, they would serve thousands of diners at each meal time.
The public announcement, which had been made through speaker systems in the temple precinct, was also very impressive. The loudspeakers were broadcasting a very instructive and dogmatic warning to the effect that we the visitors are not supposed "to get connected," using several minutes before breakfast.
"Don't get connected," the loudspeakers boomed. "Get connected, and you'll pine over those who have happened to be separated. Get connected, and you'll curse those with whom you have happened to get mingled."
They had a point in stating the axiom, but I thought at that time and also think now the broadcast slogan had a flaw in itself because the prayers were there to "get connected" with them. Thing is they were making connections, or relationships of sort. The general context might be that people are supposed to be faithful to the "normal" connections but that they are supposed to shirk the "abnormal and immoral" connections.
The roomers, or the prayer mates in the prayer hall, numbered at a glance thirty some or more. They were sparsely seated, with their jackets or other upper clothes taken off and in carefree fashion. Yet, they were not supposed to lean or lie on the floor, particularly during the prayer at night till midnight.
The prayer session was held by a guide priest at first. He introduced himself and Guansseumbossal, or Avalakitesvara at the same time. The mode of the prayer was free: You can pray in "verbal" or muted fashion, but you are suggested to evoke Guansseumbossal, the goddess of illimitable mercy.
Drowsiness is an anathema to prayer as it has been known to be the one to many a realm of human activities. Many others, me in particular, succumbed to slumber before midnight so much so that the prayer session more often than not turned into the slumber session.
You could experiment it with yourself: Your verbal evocation of a specific supreme being in the course of your prayer will bring you unexpected consequences. The enthusiastic chanting of the goddess with rhythmic cadence for my dad's health had led me through an offhanded encounter to the confession of wrong-doings against him.
-----------------------------------
My Confession: I Was Wrong!
From the moment I had known you dad, your back was my seat. Dad had run all the way to the clinic of the village, carrying me on your back, which was always warm and cozy.
Looking back, I presume I had been, till five or six years old, wrapped and carried on your back. It was not because I had been so fragile a child but because we the family had had to move so often to a remote rustic place on a rough road.
From the boyhood years on, grandma had taken care of me noticeably adoringly, with you dad unseen from far away. Grandma had tendered me dearly, I appreciate that, which doesn't mean that you'd loved me less than grandma.
Dad, you'd supported a big family of us--your grandma, your mom, your wife, our three sons and two daughters--giving us good foods, warm clothes, also warm rooms, and decent schools we had gone to. Through your hard work using your strong arms and feet.
Dad, you were strong like rocks and you were stout like old pines. You ploughed the fields and gave us good rice, you cut off woods to warm the room floors, and you hunted mount beasts and made us eat good meat.
Yes, dad, you were the stone-age man, or the bronze-age man. I vividly remember that there had been a variety of spears on the attic of the barn of ours at Sun Valley. I had watched you ignite the fire with a flint. You were flint father and I was your flint son.
You were such a proud general to me. You were taken to Kilan Police Chapter of Andong Police Station so often and took beatings. You took the beatings in stride. They suspected you of protecting and collaborating with the Reds. Fact is we hadn't seen the Reds or the partisans at that time.
Dad, you shirked avarice for all your life. You stressed "constant life" to your offspring. You never envied the others their interests. You were never jealous of the others' wealth, only ploughing the fields.
Dad, I've never known a hard worker like you. You didn't know to say to your sons and to the other folks, "Let's take a break." You were tireless, which might have tired people out.
Dad, you'd never gone to school of any academic tier, but you never complained about that. You were so handy. Your handiwork was the best. You were so originative as to build your own decent wooden house with your own lumber materials, ideas, measurements and muscle power. You'd never been trained to be a carpenter.
Dad, your perfection and tirelessness might have tired me out. I remember I shirked you, disliked you, was afraid of you, scared of you, and hated you to no end, for which I am shameful of myself, and hate myself. I can't forgive myself for all that.
Dad, your pursuit of perfection was endless and limitless. I saw you erect the house at a stretch, for which I envied you your capability as a household owner and an untrained carpenter. I had been so clumsy a son as not to put a nail into the wall. A real shame on me.
Dad, the well you had dug that spring has never been dry for decades. The wooden house you had built with your own lumber materials is still standing fast and steady. I am so proud of your being my father.
Dad, thinking back, I never heard you fart. I surmise that dad, not being gluttonous, had burned out any caloric energy with hard work, whereas I am so gluttonous, so lazy, and leave chewed and gulped stuff unburned inside me as a result.
Dad, you gave us sons and daughters all you could, but you did not take anything in return, for which I reflect and remorse myself. I am so sorry, dad. I had been so ungrateful.
You did not talk to me and us sons and daughters about your pains, sorrows, and your feeling of solitude. I didn't know about your rough life in Japan. I vaguely knew that dad and mom had been roughing up in Japan as the poor subjects of the ruined kingdom, but I didn't know that you'd worked as a coal miner at the Mitsubishi Corporation. I heard about that from the great cousin after you'd passed away, for which I feel so shameful.
---------------------------
I'd lost prayer and the object person for whom I'd offer it for the one last day or two. All that had occurred to my mind was that I pained my father to an extreme degree, and that he loved me dearly. "Forgive me father," I beseeched with tears at dawning hours. "What a noise!" complaints were heard.
At dawn of the last day of prayer, a monk, whose Buddhist name was Yonghwa, hosted a special session for the families of the terminally ill patients. A few moments on which the patient would breathe his or her last breath was the most important. The departed was negotiating a steep uphill, so a silent solemnity would help.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)