Since Then

An Anticipated Thing

Though anticipated, it’s very tough to deal with in my mind. I’ve often trapped myself and all the mistakes used to be that I could’ve avoided, but I didn’t, so I deserve all this agony. Nevertheless, I need consolation impudently. I always want a shoulder to cry on. For me, this wretched world is too big to handle. Living in this world is so often beyond my capacity. (Written on 28 September, 2010)

I don’t remember exactly what made me write that. It must have been some harsh situation to me. I only conjecture that it was around that time when I recalled him. That night I wrote to Y in U.S.A, but I received nothing from him, though I eagerly desired for some friend-like words. I did want to keep any tricky situation away, and I just needed a tolerantly unconditional/unlimited embracer who was willing to protect all my absurdity at all times. Definitely Y was not the one and P, either. There’s only one in the world, I knew, whose concern for me being cherished all the time and react to me at any time, at any place. He’s the one, I knew, who has constantly loved me from the first time we’ve met. I couldn’t reject him anymore, but get back to hide in him.

It has passed another year.

Brit…

La Traviata

La Traviata/The Fallen Woman/The Woman Who Goes Astray

I don’t like it. I don’t mean that I don’t like Verdi’s opera. I just don’t like its naming, La Traviata. I don’t like the categorisation which drops Violetta (Marguerite Gautier in the novel) into one of fallen women. I’ve liked and pitied Marguerite since I first met her from Dumas’s novel in my teens. I think, however, she is absolutely different from me in every aspect. The only thing I share with Marguerite Gautier is too slim waist. Now mine is 21 inches though I’m an elder woman who has born two [grown up] children many years ago. If I tighten my waist with ‘corset or whatever’ as Scarlet O’Hara did, it would be much slimmer. I’ve never done that, though. I don’t like corsets.

The opera/novel was translated “춘희(椿姬)” in East Asia, which definitely Japanese did. The name “춘희(椿姬)” means ‘the girl of camellia’ which might’ve been brought from the title of its original story of Alexandre Dumas (fis), “The Lady of the Camellias” (French: La Dame aux camélias). I think it was childish/crude translation and I don’t like it, either.

My Korean name is 춘희(春熙), which has the same Korean letters with the opera’s translated title, even though the Chinese letters (春熙, mine) are different from the name’s (椿姬, the girl of camellia). The meaning of my name (春熙) is “spring brightens” or “bright spring”. Nevertheless, my nick name in younger years used to be “LaTraviata” or “Violetta”(the heroine) due to its same Korean letters with the work’s title.

Today I recall “Violetta and Alfredo” (or, “Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval”), especially their desperate love which led to the end of the heroine’s tragic death. The young man’s pure love didn’t embrace (more properly, maybe, protect) the woman’s true love. He couldn’t remove her stigma of the fallen woman. It reminded me of several tragic loves such as Anna Karenina’s. In fact, Anna is more like me than Marguerite Gautier/Violetta.

My most favourite aria of Violetta’s is "E Strano!...Ah, fors'è lui"...Sempre libera" (Strangely…Ah, perhaps he’s the one…Always free), which requires high technique of coloratura. Now I’m listening to it through June Anderson’s voice, yet June is not my favourite Violetta.

Brit…

Struggle against the Meaningless

These days I'm struggling against the meaningless. Not searching for meaning, but making out meaning. In fact, it's nothing new for me to do it, since I've fought for meaning in my life all the time. All the meanings I’ve made have incessantly slipped away from me, though. Whenever I try to lock the meaning within my store, it gradually disappears as if melted or evaporated in the air. I’ve put my-made-meaning on every meaningless on which I thought it’s needed, nonetheless, there always left nothing. I think I'll have to do the same thing forever and ever, even though it sometimes gets tougher than usual and overwhelms me. Now my days are full of meaningless and I must give them some meaning, any meaning.

If I wouldn’t put the meaning on the meaningless, the Death will do it. Before the Death, all of us are going to hang out a white flag. Only death can put the real meaning on the meaningless, so we’re about to embrace the meaning that the death throws. We cannot not only conquer or defeat the death but also stand against it. If so, do we want to disturb its way and deter the process, then? Even if there’s hope or expectation to discourage the destination in my mind, it doesn’t reveal on the surface. Mine has just been in the realm of the subconscious, recognising as it can be. Even when I’m eager to die, I want to make out the meaning prior to the death. Perhaps do I expect the quasi-meaning I make before death could help me to be pompous in front of death?

Brit…

On and on

Can't let go, yet holding harm
Starts from that she really loves him,
Keep preparing farewell for.
Though it hurts him,
Can't let his toil die of loving her.

Brit...

Dream

Let her dream and stay beside her. Please be willing to play different roles in her dream at her whims. Maybe it’d be also your dream. The two are alike in absurdity. Their illusions seem to resemble with each other. She doesn’t know how to deal with the situation, yet or rather, she wants to do nothing.

Brit…(Written on 14 July)

Mixed up

Meeting's carried,
Mind's complicated,
Mood's contradicted,
Matter's coiled . . .

Moving forward [is it or not],
Mixed up, though.

Brit...

PS)
Self-rationalisation and self-persuasion seem to be like filling a bottomless vessel.

Q&A, and Q

Am I doing wrong? Apparently yes.
Am I going to hurt someone[s]? Probably yes.
Am I selfish? Doubtlessly Yes.
Do I have to stop it? Considerably yes.
Is there more yeses? Supposedly yes.

------------------------

Against all yeses, do you think it’s your destination?
Facing with all facts, can you stick to your own truth?
Despite all odds, are you willing to take stigmas outside?

Brit...

(To the world, ps.)
Whether appearing good or bad at the moment, it's me. I am as I was, though I seem to be different from before or changed or away from your expectation.

A Covered Thing for Years

She finally told him that. At the instance when it was popped out from her lips unwittingly, she felt embarrassed to herself. Is it better not to tell the truth, which she’s kept for years to herself? Absolutely yes! She’s had a mind to tell him the thing someday, but it has to be done after passing about twenty years & more. She spoke it too early, that is, it was not the right time to tell the truth. What for on earth did she unveil it? It would definitely hurt his heart as much as it broke her heart nine years ago. Did she want him to be in agony, the similar agony to hers, which had driven her to deadly despair for last ten years? Did she want to retaliate on him for something desperate in her mind? Probably no! Now she knows that he’s constantly loved her so much and loves her maybe much more than ten years ago. She’d be going to regret . . . better not tell him now.

Brit…
(Written on 21 June)

First Semester's Ending

This semester ends soon.

All my classes in this semester are over. I already ended two classes of Practical English (Comprehensive Reading) and a Basic English (Basic Grammar) class last Friday. Today the remaining PE class and the History of British Literature class have gotten out of my hands. Feeling empty inside, I was subsiding into the chair after the final class. I felt like fading away, and it’s just like something full inside me has been swept away.

This morning I was strangely upbeat as if being injected stimulant. I wondered why, because nothing had provoked or encouraged me. P said it might be due to the nice weather or becoming-to-end semester, but I didn’t think so. Today’s weather was really beautiful, a little bit hot, and besides, I’ve always loved my classes, yet there was something different which made me cheered up, though I couldn’t specify. Having been intoxicated with such mood, I vigorously gave my classes all over.

Anyway it’s gone now. The bubbles suddenly burst down with the ending of my final class. I said good-by to hundreds of bright eyes for the time being, since my seasonal classes will begin two weeks later. In the afternoon, then, I’ve been groggy more than for five hours with heavy eyelids. I have to shake myself off this submergence, though. There remains so much official work in front of me, such as examining of papers, giving of tests, marking and grading for my 240 students.

Brit…

A Fairy-tale

A Sad Fairy-tale of a Boy who loved a Butterfly

Once upon a time there was a boy who dearly loved a butterfly. They were enchanted with each other at first sight, forgot what/who and where they were, and desired the forbidden in and out of themselves. The butterfly longed to be with him though it mustn’t have done that. Their love couldn’t last, though. The boy thought the butterfly would belong to him forever but didn't know how delicate she was. He must’ve been attentive to his butterfly all the time, but gradually became negligent of his sincerity, and didn’t perceive her wings were hurt bit by bit. The butterfly couldn't stand it anymore, so she didn't stay around and flied away from him, fluttering her broken wings though the hurt would take a long time to heal. When she disappeared, the boy realised that he lost his dearest one. With despair he has searched for her with undiminished affection and wandered about in dreams of taking her back. Finally he found his dearest and cried out never-ending love for her. The butterfly, however, once she's gone, would never come back, for now she wants to belong to none. She’s free and could fly to anywhere in the air.

Brit…

Stalemate

The verbal articulation of mind is difficult indeed. The speaking words once uttered helplessly get entangled as mind gets messy and perplexed. Words can hardly make oneself understood properly. Then we write letters but they aren’t perfect, either. Michael once talked about easing of relationship and I stubbornly refuted the attitude though apparently knew what he meant. I might have just shifted some emotional burden of mine on to Michael by contradicting him. Or maybe I found someone I knew in Michael, even though the two were absolutely strangers and different from each other. I was not angry with Michael but with the other.

Their thoughts about the relationship conflict with each other. One is totally different from the other, but both are emotionally responsible for each other. It is not important that who first provoked and started the war. Definitely they started at the same time. Now the problem is that they cannot stop the battles and often embarrassingly hurt each other on their own whims. Nevertheless, they don’t want to lose each other and that is more serious problem. Maybe one has thought that the other could be changed (deluding themselves in many respects). Seemingly they don’t want to face the situation as it is. Even if they finally face it, though, and it’s probably hard to make themselves be rationalised. We can say that they love each other, as far as we recognise that love has two contrary faces. They mightn’t know how to deal with each other in their minds. At least there is something they don’t perceive, let alone absurdity and arrogant pride. They cannot be everyone in their minds.

Everything would go on as ever with nothing changed. The war game would be going on, too. Someday they would consume all the feeling and become tired. Then the exhausted souls will put their arms down and regret lost time with which they could share for many things together. On that day, the two broken hearts would cry for the precious illusions that they had to make realised in their lives. Therefore, they would have to dream further.

Brit…

(30 March 2011)

Fragments of Memoranda in months

1. A friend is only a friend, cannot be more or less. (Then just more than that: 27 Oct. 2010)

2. If there’s a guy who makes me totally forget about my age, that is, who makes me feel like just a girl, I think I cannot but love him. (For me really younger than anyone else: 11 Nov. 2010)

3. Sometimes she asks herself if she’s a woman, indeed. Well, she’s seemingly a lady, but I cannot tell about “a woman,” though she provokes someone at times. (Whenever perceiving her, he’s struck and becomes honest as he is: 14 Nov. 2010)

4. My inside frequently rebels me, so more these days that I’m overwhelmed at every moment. What am I supposed to do? (Let it be or flow: 24 Nov. 2010)

5. Virtue disguised morals is often much more hypocrite than vice itself. It isn’t honest at all at times. (So, can it be a excuse? 24 Nov. 2010)

6. Love never demands pay, and it won't as ever. (It’s O.K: 3 Dec. 2010)

7. About the procedure of their relationship, there are separately two ways, at worst two ways and at best two ways. At worst, she falls in love with him, or she breaks her fantasy and stops making the fairy-tale. At best, she makes an affair with him, or she wakes herself up from self-delusion and recovers self-consciousness. He constantly encourages her amnesia, but often her self-consciousness interrupts in, which where her identity is embedded in and engraved on. I think she won’t make an affair with him, because love is blind and foolish but an affair has eyes. Definitely it’s hard for her to accept him embracing all the things she cannot understand about him. Not only he is in the realm of a haze for her, but also she doesn’t like to be in the same basket bustling with his girls. The roué's girls! (I’m blind / Pardon? / No, nothing: 12 Dec. 2010)

8. I think he can’t give her what she wants. I know it so well because he even doesn't know about what she wants. She knows about what he wants, though, she doesn't give it to him. In that sense, he is a fool and she an evil, but in reverse, in different sense, she is a fool and he an evil. The poor girl is dreaming of something romantic whatever it contains. (I don’t agree yet I know: 12 Dec. 2010)

9. I advised her to spare a little distance from him because he was so cruel. Without loving her (as far as I think), he woke up her deep and long sleeping instinct and fired on it for her desire to flame up. The poor girl doesn't know how to control it and how to take her composure back as before. She is helpless at times. She wants to hate him, but can't do that. Rather, she likes him and doesn’t want to lose him. She needs him as much as he does her. He is the knight in her fairy tale as well as the fierce demon of inevitable reality. Then she must harmonise the fairy-tale with the reality and keep up with her purity simultaneously compromising her instinctive vulgarity. (I understand: 15 Dec. 2010)

10. Is saying longer sentences such hard? It makes you look blunt as if being angry with me. I want my man to be tender of my feelings. (Ok, promised: 12 Jan, 2011)

11. Generously granting for the knight’s storage! Take one whenever she asks something! Not bad would be sharing with her! (Actually good it is: 18 Jan, 2011)

Did I need to write them down? Well, I don’t know, but for a catharsis.

Brit…

The End of a Story

It’s been nothing, nothing but pastime. So it’s not me, absolutely not my style. I didn’t start anything for it though I was thought to have done something. Rather I’m the one who was led to this ridiculous position. I know it’s cowardly to shift any emotional responsibility on to the other, though. Maybe we both started at the same time. Indeed we did. If I’m obstinately imputed to, however, then I’ll quit from now.

I’m not accustomed to be nothing because I’ve been something in particular or someone special all the time. Excellent student for teachers or professors, uniquely precious love for lovers, proud girl for parents, adorably loved mom for children, respectably idolised one for certain persons, it’s been me. There can be some negative reactions, of course, but in most cases it’s true. I don’t have to make myself miserable. No one can make me so. Nevertheless, I myself have been making me frivolous. All’s been on me.

Nothing has changed. I’ve been changed, in other words, awakened. I cannot make myself disappointed any longer. The time has come and now is the time to stop the game. Too tired to continue . . . it'll hurt me.

Brit…

At the beginning

Been exhausted, though it’s just start!

‘Messy’ and ‘flurried’ are probably two adjectives which can describe my first day. It doesn’t mean that I did so much work, that is, I was physically busy. Rather, it was closer to emotionally stirring or mentally bustling. I’m totally groggy feeling deserted.

When P said “Good luck” to me just as we came across this morning, I felt the word “Good luck” exploded and hatched on all sides and then swayed in the air like dancing goblins. Did P abandon me with the word and have left, and so did my feeling wander about? Nonsense! The word seemed to call an irony, though it was definitely a kind of blessing. Absolutely P wouldn’t know my mind, even couldn’t imagine it.

Did I have a tough day and was it bloody hard for me? No, I cannot say so, because I have little things to have been done. So . . . so was my day. My exhaustion is from some drifting that I can’t make head or tail of my state. Maybe I’m weak in all aspects. That’s perhaps why I’m deadly feeling lonely now.

Brit…

On the Commencement day

Today on my commencement, I suddenly recalled a phrase of Steve Jobs’s speech at Stanford’s commencement in 2005, one of which is the story about connecting the dots. I realise that all the dots I’ve trodden have been connected till now. I also know they are still being connected now and I believe they will be also connected somehow in the future. All the things, all the people, and all the happenings that I’ve ever come across in my life were/are some necessaries and they have led me to come into this figure connecting my dots.

I have to thank everyone, even though who ever depressed me in past moments. Actually it’s me not others, who put the dots in my life and connected them. All others just happened to be in my way, like I’ve been in another’s way. I don’t need to hate anyone and don’t have to regret anything. Everything has been on me. I loved, desired, and tried, sometimes struggling to survive against harsh reality. That’s all I did and I’ll do so on, that’s it. Then I’ll sincerely and passionately have to tread upcoming every dot on my way as ever.

Brit…
(Written on 18 February)

Challenge or Vanity

I wonder if I can successfully step into another phase of my life. I’ve lived deadly cruel years and I spent the ‘spring and summer’ of my life wretchedly (in a sense, worthlessly). I’m not young any longer and now being in the autumn of my life, the upcoming years wouldn’t be much tougher than the previous ones, yet they are approaching me with such different looks as strangers’.

Frankly speaking, I’m scared. I would be faced with some fatal challenging of reality and I’ll have to overcome many obstacles. As for the obstacles, they could be my not-younger-age or my not-good-health or my not-having-background or my sceptical capabilities or my often-depressive mood, the chronic symptom of ever-pessimism. Thus I’m afraid of myself most of all, that is, my pride, my obstinacy, my self-pity, my greed, my despair, and all my negativities, let alone my fantasy about love.

My present achievements (in studying and working) have considerably depended upon good opportunities. In that sense, I was lucky. I’ve met chances and people that helped me for these a few years since I re-began studying. I’ve been also loved by many as much as I’ve loved them (sincerely I’ve loved them). For those kinds of love, I think I’ve fully performed. I’ve loved everyone/everything with all my heart that I wanted to love. I’ve always tried to be earnest in them.

About male-female or erotic love, however, I’ve sometimes wanted something beyond and still I would helplessly do, though I don’t want to have my life meddled by anyone as well as I don’t want to intrude myself on his life. I’m definitely not good at such kind of love and I’ve clumsily, even childishly, dealt with it all the time. I only used to hurt myself and others and I must not have loved anyone. Earthly love had gnawed my innocence away, so that it spoiled me and I’ve become the one whom I myself cannot understand. Once and away I have to hate the person like me. Nevertheless, I desire the prohibited.

Brit…

Messy

1. Most of ‘ups and downs’ that I emotionally feel these days are coming from relationships. . . Where on earth is my life going? What on earth is it? I think I live on my way, but everyday life of mine doesn’t seem to be.

2. We cannot retrieve the past. The past is just the past and there is only the present. If one re-claims the past, all the attempts would come up in vain. I’ve tried so hard to escape from the past, and I think I’m recovered now. I don’t want to go back to that time. Is this happening of the present, then? Is another present beginning? No way! I hope P can help me to manage this deadlock.

3. Sometimes being loved is desperately a sad thing, especially when we don’t want it at the moment. Loving is also hardships for nothing at the very moment. So are we trying to avoid being in love with someone? I want to be loved, but I don’t want to be in love. What paradox is it?

Brit…

Le Temps Avec Ma Solitude

Sometimes I’d be the only one on the third floor of this building at night. Professor K and professor J usually stay late at night in their offices, though we don’t come across with one another. When all the professors in this area are out, however, I remain in the silence and enjoy the absolute freedom of quietness, or awfully feel lonely. That’d be the moments when I don’t have perceived the lapse of time.

Whenever the loneliness gets infiltrated in me, I’d think of P or others. I’d wish he . . . I desperately need a certain confirmation but it seems beyond my reach. I feel hopeless as it slips from my expectation or intention. I cannot go forward though I want to be proofread by P. What is worse, in front of him I’m getting dumber and more indecisive, irresistibly the blank, forgetting all the words I can tell . . . even not knowing what to do.

Last night I saw a man whose back looks like P. I almost called him, but didn't, because I thought he couldn't be my P. It was around 9 p.m. and P wouldn't have been there at the hour. I walked fast, though, to pass ahead him, and to make it clear that he was not mine. Indeed, much younger and more handsome boy than P, with remarkably higher-nosed. Attractive young guy, but not my man! I couldn’t help chuckling in spite of myself for a time.

Cold was last night (so is now)! My eyes were full of tears now and then, not crying but because of chilling, the coldest void of the desperate. At the moment I eagerly wanted him there.

Brit….

Saying Good-by to the Vanishing-away

Last year (2010) was particularly tough for me to have got through. I had to stick constantly to my dissertation work which had been going on for years. I spent most of my time—from morning till night including holidays—in the office. My mundane/domestic life, moreover, made me helpless. My expectations for many things had no rooms for their own. I would have been disappointed with my family and friends and I was often hovering between trials and errors and committed some blind faults definitely. I oscillated between Heaven and Hell several times. Though I’ve been regarded excellent in my work/study almost all the time, I often fell in despair. In fact, the good judgement on me was just about the surface, my shell. It was not that for me and I was not that.

I’ve been struggling with some dreadful shadow pretending me and now the same. Whenever the inner void with its mouth agape scares me to be absorbed, I would run away from it, to wander among people, searching for a shelter or stumbling to hide. It is deadly hard for me to stand alone unlike I seem to be and every moment I need someone. Last year my dearest friends seemed to forget about me and I didn’t want to call them for help, because I knew they couldn’t help me actually. All has been on me, just my problem which I myself should deal with. Just one right beside me at the moment can give a hand to me now and then.

Anyway I passed the final examination with my dissertation in December and I shall get Ph. D on Literature (of course, on British fiction) in coming February. The time is vanishing away into the past. Doubtlessly I know it’s not the end, but another start. I don’t know what would come up before me, though I’ll go on as ever.

------------------------------------------------

Even if there's not him, she could make through her life anyhow. But it would’ve been much tougher and drier-as-dust. Though he doesn't give her replies in all cases she needs them, he makes her days emotionally wet and has her feel alive. He saves her years from the typical. She is often impulsive and irrational, while he is always rationally careful and even seemingly calculated. Sometimes she feels bitter at that, but she knows he is warm inside, he cares for her, and he holds her in respect all the time. She thanks him for having been beside her in spite of all, for embracing her arbitrariness as ever, and for assuming her independent knight. That’s why she cannot hate him.

Though her majesty can make standing-tall-all-alone, she still needs her knight. She always misses him even when he is in. I often tell her that she mustn’t do. Like for me, however, for her it was not easy to behaviour like an adult, and so it would be now and ever.

Brit…

A Weird Day

What a weird day yesterday (4 Jan.) was, though fantastic! Many things came up all at once. Such a day has never been and would never come, I think.

After morning class I had lunch with Ms Hwang, my colleague as well as wife of Prof. Im.

On the way to office, I came across our Dean who was coming back from lunch with two female staffs. The Dean is my supervisor and ever-supporter. I’m using his personal office as if it’s mine because he currently works at Dean’s. His personal office is a treasury of books on our field.

P said he had missed . . . he wanted . . . he would expect . . .

Prof. K of our Chief dropped by my office. He had arranged a work for me and thankfully he wanted to know how well got on my work. I like him so much, but his usual reserve has kept some distance between us.

Gen. phoned me in the evening and at the time I didn’t reject it.

At night HK phoned me after long silence. I don’t remember the last time when I listened to his voice. . . . He spoke of something ever-lasting in his mind. I know he has constantly loved me as a friend (maybe more than that) all the time for 10-more years. He is the only one who has emotionally never changed.

Prof. P sent messages to me. He is one of the Acting Consciences of the time in Korea and I like and respect him.

Brit…

Is 'A Time for Us' about to Begin or End?

My new semester already began. Regularly it begins in March, but I’m charged with one of the special programmes for [would-be] freshmen of our university during the winter vacation. I’d be busy as ever with lecturing, proofreading (of my diss.), and preparing for [regular] spring semester whole through the winter. My editing work of Newsletter of College of Humanities also goes on this year round.

-------------------------------------------------------

Busy life is good, but I’m afraid I’d forget myself now and then. I always need reflexions of my days and my soul. You know, one of my nicknames was “the Addicted to Thinking (생각쟁이)”. Boss Hwang (MS’s nickname) used to call me with the nickname. In fact, without thinking, my existence wouldn’t be as much as just I look surface and the real ‘I’ would disappear. My romanticism, which I cannot give up, would be forgotten, too. Maybe it’s good to forget the romanticism, because I’m too old for dreaming of it.

--------------------------------------------------------

P sometimes hurts me with breaking illusions that he often provokes first. In my current days, it is him who both gives to and takes away from me an illusion, which I often delude myself as a romantic dream. I cannot love him and I want to hate him. Then I would break my fantasy and stop making the fairy-tale at the worst, or I would wake up from my self-delusion and recover my self-consciousness at the best.

----------------------------------------------------------

One cruelly wakes up another’s deep and long sleeping instinct and fired on it for another’s desires to flame up. Then they became unknown how to control it, that is, they don’t know how to take their control back as before. Maybe one knows, but another doesn’t. They can't help themselves at times because they fall for and need each other all the time. Sometimes they are Guinevere and Lancelot from the legendary fairy-tale, the hopeless couple. They cannot give each other what they want, however. Perhaps they even don't know about it—what they want— exactly. Both of them are desperate fools and evils. Intended sparing a little distance from each other saddens their egos anyway.

Brit…