In Time: Dreams and Reality

Since Then

2011-10-17T18:27:00.007+09:00

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

2011-10-16T23:00:00.006+09:00

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

2011-09-19T14:07:00.003+09:00

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

2011-08-17T16:18:00.000+09:00

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

2011-08-13T22:43:00.008+09:00

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

2011-07-29T06:40:00.010+09:00

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

2011-07-10T18:08:00.005+09:00

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.

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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

2011-07-02T21:25:00.001+09:00

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

2011-06-07T20:15:00.007+09:00

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

2011-04-25T15:27:00.001+09:00

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

2011-03-31T20:48:00.012+09:00

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

2011-03-31T20:27:00.018+09:00

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

2011-03-28T23:07:00.008+09:00

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

2011-03-02T20:44:00.002+09:00

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

2011-02-20T17:58:00.002+09:00

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

2011-01-25T17:58:00.005+09:00

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

2011-01-14T20:33:00.006+09:00

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

2011-01-11T13:11:00.001+09:00

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

2011-01-06T21:16:00.007+09:00

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.

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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

2011-01-05T19:14:00.005+09:00

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?

2011-01-03T18:58:00.005+09:00

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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

Easy relationship

2010-12-14T17:42:00.009+09:00

Michael insists, “Relationships should be easy. If it's not, you're doing it wrong.” Maybe he is right—but partly true and partly untrue depending on situations, I think. Anyway, according to his logic, I'm doing it wrong all the time because my relationships are usually—almost always— not easy. I don’t like the word “easy” in this case except when “easy” means comfortable—especially in man-woman relationship, “easy” often means light and temporal like just a physical enjoying.

Michael’s words seem so much American. I suddenly realise that he is a real American, no more, no less, like my P is. Probably there is a certain unstoppable gap among us—between them and me, which is remarkable difference in thought and emotion. It may be why I’m frequently hurt. Mightn’t the American emotion fit me? I’m saying this in spite of the fallacy of generalisation. All Americans are not that, yet mostly perhaps.

I think a serious/sincere relationship at least cannot be easy unless the word means comfortable. Now and then, and just now, so many “I”s, bustling inside me, torment with one another.

Do I have to break my fantasy which might be just an illusion or self-delusion and from which I’m making a fairy-tale? The knight of the fairy-tale constantly encourages my amnesia, but my self-consciousness often interferes in. I can’t help it. I don’t know what to do then. In fact, it is not important which one is stronger, in both I’m already lost. I would not delve anything from this fairy-tale land—probably. Even if so, I cannot give it away, I can’t. I’ve thought that love is blind and usually foolish. In that sense, I am not in love because I can see all things I can’t understand, though often emotionally foolish I am. I don't like to come into his basket despite those all. I don’t embrace them. Dreaming of romanticism becomes more and more exhausting thing as adding years.

Brit…

(Paradoxically, sometimes I also maybe want easy relationships, though. . . . I'm not good at relationships and they are always difficult for me.)

Rain, Snow, Love, and Chance

2010-12-13T15:17:00.009+09:00

It’s raining all day like a summer day. It must snow at this time of the season, but we often have rain in the far south-eastern part of Korea. If I lived in the northern part of the country, I could see snow more frequently!

My hometown was a snow land in the winter even though it didn’t resemble Yoko’s snow country (in Snow Country by Kawabata Yasunari) or Lara’s snow plains (in Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak). In my youth, I would think of Yoko whenever it snowed windy. Like her I used to have sung in bathroom (the habit is still going on now) and I would replace myself into her in my bathroom. When morning came after heavily snowy night, I would go out for first treading on the snow piles in the playground of my school. At then, I would think of Lara, her pathological appearance of desperate love. Yes, I was a precocious child. There lies so much memory with snow in my mind. Today, I was rather provoked to long for snow by the rain.

Love . . . the cruellest name which elevates us up to Heaven and simultaneously drags us down to Hell. I’m afraid of falling in love as much as I’m afraid of losing it.

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

At short outing in the morning, I came across professor K. (our vice-Dean) around the front gate of our campus. What a coincidence! I was thinking of him then, because we are to meet together on Thursday with the New-letter business for our college. I saw the sparkling light in his eyes and he might see mine. We stopped and talked a while as if we were old lovers. :)

Professor K. used to have been a good hand for me and my editing work on the news-letter would be tough without his help. He is humorous—witty man and always works well with his literary competence (he majors in German literature). Very tall he is. Now and then his slim height overwhelms me, a short woman. Maybe he is the tallest professor in the College of Humanities of P.N.U. Most of professors in our university—especially in our college— are not tall. So his tallness would be special merit or attractiveness. Suddenly I found a few grey hairs on him and they are adding him with romantic vision.

Brit…

I don’t care?!

2010-12-10T21:39:00.002+09:00

Do you think I really didn’t care about it? Well. . . What can I say? I did or didn’t? Ridiculous it is! That’s absolutely not that, you know. Don’t you know the ironic? That was not some metaphor you couldn’t understand. It’s just a sarcastic irony.

Yes, waiting is not my nature. Is there anyone who has waiting-nature? One just waits when there’s no alternative. From my youth I used to wait for no man except in particular cases, because it would often give miserable feeling in most cases. I didn’t wait for any man before it was requested and there’s no man who dared to make me do it without my consent. It meant good-by for me.

Do you know how much time I've wasted on vain waiting in my life? I would wait for someone/something I mustn't wait or couldn’t be waited for. I cannot repeat those follies, I must not. Nevertheless, I’ve waited for you all the summer. That’s not all. I spent the whole autumn compromising the miserable with the bluff. I had to stand the hurting cruelty of the situation, which consumed my soul. What on earth can you imagine? What on earth do I have to do more?

Brit…

The Knight of Shadow

2010-12-09T16:02:00.003+09:00

His “Her majesty” is frequently disturbed between self-consciousness and amnesia. The self-consciousness, harshly cold and merciless on her state, tries to keep her world in order by the convention, but the delusive amnesia shadowed and protected by her knight often wins and rules her world. Very short order and much longer illusionary chaos! Keeping balance between the two is far away from her world. It seems like another planet’s efficiency anyway.

In the heart of the chaos then, she felt that something went wrong. She thought that there had been a certain misperception or misunderstanding. Or, insensible mistakes might have lied there. She was scared and trembled. The problem was that she absolutely didn’t catch the situation, knowing nothing. The only comfort was that, however, whatever it was, it’s not between them or didn’t do with them. Yet all the stressful pressed her down and she felt like standing alone in the wilderness at the moment.

A guard, whose bosom wide, was the knight of shadow. Though nothing known or explained, all the concerned melted away within the shadow of the knight and it wasn’t her problem anymore in his arms, which always give her tender and warm easiness.

Brit…
(Written on 8 Dec. 2010)

Now I'm pondering . . . whether I would go on story-telling or stop it. I'm stumbling on this fairy-tale.

Along the riverside

2010-12-06T22:56:00.016+09:00

She walked and walked and walked . . . thinking deep, as if the road was endless. She didn’t know where to stop and return.

Maybe she was lonely, regarding to her unnecessary night prattle. Sometimes she does, when feeling indescribably lonely. Prattling is a way for hiding her negative feeling from herself and others. It is like a strategy to struggle against some helplessness that even she herself often cannot catch the reason why she feels lonely at the moment.

Of course, he mightn’t know, never he, that she eagerly wanted him to hold her then. She said nothing as always, though, just smiling and pretending natural. Men usually don’t know anything about women. Men just delude themselves about their ladies without sensing their unsaid bottomless sorrow. Her knight . . . so does he.

Wish he knew her wavering, or someday he would lose her.

Brit…

The Game

2010-12-04T19:20:00.003+09:00

I’m afraid that I cannot go on this game. I’ve held on to it for a long time as if it’s my final destination. It has consumed much of me and now I feel fainted, that is, a kind of nausea about me and this world. I cannot separate myself from it—the game. I cannot distinguish mine from others’ in it and vice versa. Moreover, I myself have been probably lost already. Like straying a labyrinth, indiscernible shadows frequently haunt in my way, and I’m overwhelmed by fear of loss. Where am I? I wonder whether this is I or that is I. At some time I seem to be neither this nor that. Have I here ever been me?

All the pastiche of the world makes us blurred into one another. Make-believe or fake displaces the real that I doubt its existence, nevertheless, pursue. I’m disappearing more and more and the distorted something in me has revealed many beings I don’t know, which soon branches out. Every time in my life I’ve searched for me myself performing perfect strangers and somehow I’ve been barely getting along. Then my space of the stage gets narrower and I think I’d have to down. I’m scared and I don’t think the time has come. I even don’t want to think about it. The time is not mine, however. It is I, not the time, to be subjected.

Brit…

Crossing

2010-12-01T19:06:00.010+09:00

1. Fake Reality or Inaccessible Fantasy

Now and then in front of P, I feel like talking to the wall. He gives no answer and no temper, absolutely no reaction to my grumbling—often sarcastic. He would be angry or depressed, because I would purposely do such things—to provoke his temper, but he totally controls it all the time. It is always I who first get sulky. Soon I become exhausted with so many thoughts which torture my mind. I might be a helpless idiot or dummy, really I am a fool. At then, I remind of Echo, one of tragic figures in Greek mythology, who never get a reply except her own voice. The poor Echo, I feel like her. Can’t the reality be grabbed by me, which lies between P and me? Maybe he is not my reality and I delude myself he is. Perhaps he is a man whom my imagination created. I think I’ll have to say good-bye to him. I can’t/mustn’t love him.

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

2. Diversion: A part of real life today

Hun phoned me after about three months. He said he wanted to buy me decent lunch, but I didn't want expensive one. We had seafood spaghetti and vegetable salad, talking incessantly. The topic was mostly about me, my dissertation and my tough days, and also about music and literature. I often become talkative when I talk about my favourites. Thankfully Hun usually likes listening to me and even he encourages my talkativeness.

After lunch we’ve been to Karaoke because I’d eagerly like to sing. I thought that singing could reduce my increased stress. I urged him to come together and he was willing to do. For more than three hours I’ve sung, calling out my old repertoires. Hun, with smile on his face, patiently listened to my singing—he sang only three songs. Walking our beautiful campus together in the evening was a bonus. Thank him so much! He assumed the very company at the very moment I needed one. Finally I gave my today away to diversion and robbed a day from him.

Brit…

Distraction, the Chronic

2010-11-29T17:19:00.004+09:00

I’m troubled with indescribable distraction now. Been at work for more than eight hours, nevertheless, I’ve done nothing. I could not concentrate on my work at all. If you ask what makes me so, I cannot tell. Maybe I know it, maybe don’t. Now and then, distraction from various reasons interrupts my work and it has been usually psychological kind. If not the kind, I would deal with it somehow. The heartless foe of my mind, though, I cannot help. These days, distraction seems to become a chronic symptom upon my mind and it drives me feel like insane. Save. . .

Brit…
(Don't stick to anything, just let it be and flow!)

The Pathetic of November

2010-11-26T17:55:00.002+09:00

Getting cold it is! We are stepping on winter days indeed. This morning I wore my new long boots with leggings in it and the GO-CCE brand boots were very comfortable. I think the boots was good choice, and I like it.

Cold wind slapped on my skin, but the smell of early winter air touched my feeling. I like the smell of November with its frequent darkness, its dreary winds, and the rolling fallen leaves on the ground. I suddenly realise that November, my dearest month which often reminds me of Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff, is about to leave. Though it provokes some grievous pathology in me now and then, I dearly love the season of November. To my sorry, I could not be fully immersed in this pathetic season, however. My current life doesn’t let me deep inside it and I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.

Time is constantly passing as ever, adding years on me. It makes me sad that I’m no longer someone’s romantic object, though I always dream of it. Of course, I know it would be a fantasy (even a delusion?) or emotional cupidity to think romanticism at my age, but I cannot easily give of my dream (even if it’s just an illusion) to the years till I die. I would be still dreaming when I become a grandmother. Is it really absurd that I want to be myself as a certain romantic being? Is it impossible for P to look at me such a way? If I want it, am I greedy? Sometimes P and I are talking at cross-purposes, that is, I talk of chalk and P talks of cheese. It makes me sadder.

Brit…

In Relation to My Dissertation

2010-11-22T21:31:00.006+09:00

I didn't tremble before the judges at the examination and my heart didn't drum at all. Just been sceptical, for a moment I thought I wanted to stop here.

I know my voice is very distinct/resolute and eloquent as they say. 'The strong subjective I' is my merit as well as my defect and I recognise it. My writing is sometimes so stubborn that I cannot accept any modification against my will. Maybe it's a kind of undeniable bigotry and knowing it is that makes me concede others’ advices/comments at times.

My writing style is always much different from the conventional which used to be demanded by our academic atmosphere. In many cases, I tread on the line between the required and the rejected. Now and then it becomes a sly strategy by me. The conventional or the stereotyped is absolutely not my style, but I've enough compromised with the convention till now, I think. ‘The more’ is really hard for me, almost impossible. I cannot change my attitude anymore, rather properly speaking, I don't want to.

(Written on 18 November, 2010)
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I think I confront with deadlock. I tried to modify my dissertation as a whole according to the judges' comments and all day long I've been digging into it, but I couldn't make head or tail of it. I even didn’t know where I start. My own structure seemed to be so firm that anything could not interrupt in it. I myself could not break any corner of it and I really wanted to stop here. From in the afternoon I started to cry. I couldn’t control my tears. Sobbed my eyes out, they became bloody tumid and inflamed. I think my pride is too tenacious to concede easily.

(Written on 19 November, 2010)
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Not only my eyes but also my face was swollen due to long sobbing and I could not go out for a couple of days.

Away from work, I needed time to think if I can compromise with the conventional writing. How can I do it, the thing I don’t want to do? Anyway, I have to make something out in three weeks, which something harmonise judges' demands with mine. Or, I'd give up, even though it would be terrible sorry for me. I don't want to let myself—my writing, my shadow in it and my style fade away, even if it's wrong.

(Written on 21 November, 2010)
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Now I’m trying again.

Brit…

The First Exam on my Diss.

2010-11-18T12:48:00.005+09:00

In the afternoon—some moments later, I’ll have my dissertation examined by five judges. It is the first of the processing, the scheduled three times’ examinations. I've prepared much and done my best in writing it and so have confidence in me and my work. Nevertheless, I’m slyly strained because I know all the judges usually try to find probable fault or defect somehow, whatever it appears. My judging professors consist of one woman from the department of English Education and four men including my supervisor—our college’s Dean. Two of them are separately from other universities, one of whom is from Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. I don't know much about the two guest judges and maybe that’s one of the reasons which make me feel particular nervousness.

This morning I played the child to P in a mail, making a fuss about my emotional state. Perhaps he chuckled at my exaggeration, but I needed nerves-soothing even though with flattery. It seemed to me that some sweet talk from P could help me relax. Of course, I could/can deal with it myself without a soother and definitely P would know it, too. I want him pat me on the back tenderly with smiling greenish eyes, though. I know it’s totally impossible thing now! Today he would not come here till evening, and I would go out for dinner with the judges after the examination.

Brit. . .

Consuming Emotion

2010-11-16T14:04:00.003+09:00

(Written on 14 Nov. in the early afternoon)

I’m trying to elevate my mood but not easy as always, especially for today. Meddling in Michael’s work, the more I struggle to be jolly, the wider vacuum I feel in my heart as ever. My emotion has consumed too much and I wonder how much it remains. Uncountable error set my life on fire into ashes and now I’m too tired to defend myself any longer.

What can I say and what shall I do? Where do I have to draw a line between all the two—between life/dream or reality/fantasy, or us? Once I thought I did somewhere, soon it blurred. I repeatedly draw it following after blurring. I’m constantly doing the useless thing. How far can my dream—maybe fantasy or imagination penetrate into my reality? Even can it be done? Though getting older, still I often stick to impossibility, which is any kind of. Perhaps more and more I become insane.

I think I’ll have to efface all of my history, particularly about relationships. It seems that I didn’t remove any of them yet. The eraser in my head is always working wrong on confusing its stuffs, must-be-erased and must-not-be-erased. It pushes me at a loss perplexed between remembering and forgetting.

Brit…

Pushkin's Nonsense

2010-11-13T11:42:00.001+09:00

I’ve struggled with slyly wicked evils of life all the year round. This year has particularly demanded my deadly fighting. I’ve been repeatedly disappointed with so many things/situation of mine as well as of others. Whenever I confronted with such a deadlock, I had to deal with all by myself and for myself. I know the human is originally alone but, nevertheless, I used to expect someone for sharing my emotion, not my burden but just emotion. I shouldn’t have assumed such an attitude, but was it so wrong? I doubt I have to still stand upon the Pushkin’s nonsense.

What though life conspire to cheat you,
Do not sorrow or complain.
Lie still on the day of pain,
And the day of joy will greet you.

Hearts live in the coming day.
There’s an end to passing sorrow.
Suddenly all flies away,
And delight returns tomorrow.

Brit…

Exhaustion

2010-11-05T16:21:00.014+09:00

It suddenly came up her mind that it was not the matter of “difficulty”. It just means "beyond concern", that is, "didn’t want to do". She shouldn’t have asked that way. ('not-liked', 'not-cared about', I absolutely do not like it. That's not my way.)

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

Yesterday’s seminar was good. I did my work well. Prepared much and ready to be criticised, but there’s no criticisms, instead, encouragement and some comments. I’ll go further on my way. The first examination day is 18th November.

Today, I came to office and feel some exhausted. I should have rest, but I had lunch appointment. Wrote to Wallace in the morning and have suffered from sickness caused by headache.

Now I’m watching Grand Prix figure-skating competition in China on the internet. Beautiful ice-dancing performances and Vasily’s commentary [from Russian N-TV] with his uniquely cynical voice ease my mind. I wish Tomáš Verner do his best in Men-singles competition. Tomáš is the only one I’m both of whose fan and whose friend. It’ll start at 18:25 in Beijing time after Ladies-singles competition. It’s hard for me to watch carefully Tomáš’s competition and I have to hold my breath with storm-like heartbeats because I like him so much.

Brit…

Diverted day

2010-10-26T17:19:00.002+09:00

1. Lovely Maria dropped by for lunch. This morning, I was about to skip my lunch with some snacks, but willing to go out with Maria since I’ve wanted to buy her lunch. Maria looked more composed and confident than before. I love it. I want her to feel comfortable in this foreign country. May happy memory only be in her heart! She looks younger than her age (twenty-years-younger-than-I), and I think it is due to her delicacy and sincerity. I like her and I’m happy to have known her.

2. Tomáš wrote back to me, though I didn’t expect it. He gave me friendly reaction. It’s fantastic indeed. I’ve ever posted some dear comments about him on my blog since I liked his skating and was impressed with his personality. Really he is the boy I’ve recognised, he didn’t make me disappointed. Even if he wouldn’t request me, I would still love his skating, but he made more, being might-be-himself.

3. Is there any meaning in the questions unanswered? I don’t know (maybe I don’t want to know). It might depend on persons or situations. Sticking to them itself is ridiculous (looks insane). Forgetting is the first solution at any case, I know. Nevertheless, I am often unduly depressed. Absurd I am! The problem is that I myself don’t know my mind.

Brit…

Doubt or Misunderstanding

2010-10-18T18:50:00.014+09:00

Is it a difficult question to answer? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

Every question has its reason and every answer does. The reasons between question and answer may not match or concern with each other, but you can express any of your own. Being accepted or rejected is the second matter. The important thing is that there should be a reaction in the form of answering as far as it is waited for, even though the answer doesn’t seem to be desirable--or it would be a disappointing one. Every question expects to be answered. If you are avoiding it, you might be a coward.

Sometimes ‘not to react’ is likely to be a solution to escape from embarrassing/troubled situation, but simultaneously--and definitely, the ignoring would hurt someone whom it may concern. Silence begets numerous misunderstanding, as eloquent excuse considerably does doubt. Doubt is usually simple, while misunderstanding is often complicated. They have similar effect, though, making situation worse. Do you know that? Doubt or misunderstanding can be easily taken off, but we need to make us palpable for that. Once internalised in one’s mind, doubt or misunderstanding roots and grows down there inside and transforms the original nature from which it derived, and you’ll find an absolute stranger in it. The stranger would be an irresistible agony through your life. I know what it is like.

Ambiguity follows you in nine cases out of ten even when you try to be palpable all the time, and so you don’t have to be purposely ambiguous.

Brit…

Standing in need of

2010-10-03T20:36:00.008+09:00

There is no friend in need. I think I’ve lived wrong.

I don’t want to be an alternative or a second choice at any case. If I am, I’ll be disconnected. The second choice is not my nature. If I am the second choice of someone, I don't need anyone as true friend or lover (especially as for lover). That was why I left him long time ago. I thought I was offended and hurt my pride with all his excuses. I could not stand the situation in which I thought I didn’t deserve. No matter whether it was true or not, the most important thing was that I felt so. I’ve always wanted sincerity and consistency. Even if the virtues would not be fulfilled, there would have to be perseverance in efforts for them. Recognised or not, he frustrated my trust and I could not accept it. I am/have been usually tolerant and considerate for others—their mistakes or their feelings, but I, too, have limits. When something or someone goes beyond my limits, I cannot but renounce the link with. . .

Brit…

P.S)

I just needed a friend in need. That’s all. You’re not there whenever I really needed you. I thought we’ve shared a kind of connection. Now I find that it’s totally my misunderstanding. I’ve committed the fallacy of interpretation.

An Anticipated Thing

2010-09-28T15:06:00.003+09:00

Though anticipated, it’s very tough to deal with in my mind. I’ve often trapped myself and all the mistakes were that I could have not-committed, but I didn’t, so I deserve it. 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.

Brit…

Children, do not marry if you don't earnestly love one and never have a child!

Dave Wong(王傑): 孤星

2010-08-11T21:56:00.017+09:00

Dave Wang (王傑)

Dave Wang(or Wong, 王傑, Wang Chieh)’s 孤星 (aka. 人在風雨中)

There’s some indescribable bitterness in Dave’s voice. Its pathetic romanticism involves silent but passionate violence of emotion. I’ve liked him for a long time. I liked his awkward and humble features, too. He had unique attractiveness. We are of same age and Tony Leung(梁朝偉, Leung Chiu-Wai), too. Now Dave and Tony are changed and so am I, but still my favourites.

Brit...

P.S) I've shared Dave's "今生無悔" on my Facebook.

(It's my most favourite song of his.)

Dilemma

2010-08-09T22:01:00.004+09:00

These days I’ve been overpowered by total confusion. Being harassed with the anxiety of consequences, I’m caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Regardless to say, I myself called for it, and so deserve it. No one would be blamed but me. Sometimes I deplorably forget my pride about work and to people as if being possessed by terrible amnesia. Maybe the worsening situation inflates my psychological degeneration.

I thought I gave up all things which I desired but could not take. Naturally they must have been abandoned, but at some moments I find myself again within the rubbish as before. Their horrible stink contaminates my soul and consequently deteriorates my psyche, so that I feel wretched more and more. There’s no capacity in me to deal with the wretchedness. Continually staggering, I’m getting bogged down in an abyss of despair. Miserable I am! What am I supposed to do?

The sun rises again but not the same one as yesterday. I completely lost yesterday’s light and today’s rising sun has wider shadow overwhelming my brightness. I feel I’m getting darkened and becoming blind day after day. There's no start and no end. Even if any, it cannot be perceived. Everything goes into nothingness, even though I hope to stick to something or somethingness.

Brit…

July's Diary

2010-08-07T16:44:00.005+09:00

She told him, “Never miss me and totally forget about me when you’re there, and I’ll do.” On her saying of forgetting about him, he added, “but not completely,” so she went on, “you can wake me up when you’re back.” He smiled instead of answering.

Of course, it’s just absolute bluff. She thought she would miss him, his gazing and his touching, his smiling green eyes and his arms around her. Her inside wants the opposites, his deadly longing for her, his missing her smile, her smell, her feel and touch, and her voice with hesitant words. Maybe he would do or not. He might notice her paradoxical irony because he is not a boy but a man. The time they’re totally out of touch would help to reduce their flames.

The fact that he is no more near makes her easy and simultaneously empty. He may be in the air.

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

Even though she clearly knows his absence, she doesn’t pass his door without halting. There glitter two green lights noting that he is not in. She realises that it’s hard to stand his absence. Already she misses him. Who on earth is he? He is the man, who says she’s hot and sexy (even at her age), whose eyes are glowing on her presence, whose hands want to feel whole her body, and who eagerly desires to come inside her. She tried to get away all thoughts about him but she couldn’t. Before he is back, she has to be composed somehow. She must get out of him as soon as possible, but her body constantly wants his touch.

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

She’s been busy all day long. His absence reminds her of being alone now and then, but manageable. She has been harassed with tasks both official and personal. Deadlines are on the way. She knows that he wouldn’t think of her at all, so she has to do the same, really, totally forget about him for the time being. She must stop writing the diary to do so, though. Writing and thinking of him is the same thing for her now. She’ll have to find an alternative object, and if she would write about him on, she‘ll never take him away. He, who is not around, is nothing to her.

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Absurd! For so many years--almost for ten years, she has lived without it. It’s an old story, in fact older than the last ten years, hardly necessary to feel something new in her. Endured well, then why can’t she do suddenly? It’s driving her up the wall. He woke up her sleeping instinct, kindled a long-dried charcoal, and made her inflamed.

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

She thinks she would not release him. He is a special and unique person to her, in that she can talk with him openly or straightforwardly about instinctive matters, even the basic instinct without reserve. She thinks that she [can] reveal the bold fact inside her in all its nakedness to him. Probably she would be so to him as well, at least, they are such persons for each other. The most important thing is that they do all this naturally. By not-bound with each other, they can enjoy freedom.

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

What does make her stick to him? ‘Stick’ is a proper word? Probably it isn’t. Maybe she wants to be immersed in him with some reasons, though the reasons she wouldn’t like to specify. She seems to want not to be perceived them, even by her own self. It seems for her the ninth year of every decade has its fatal points. The ninth for her in Korean way has been the lasts of decades. In 2000, she confronted with deadly inner conflict. It was a kind of turning point as well as a kind of fallen moments in life (I cannot explain what meaning is in the word “fallen”). Anyway it was so. Her last decade indeed felts momentary and there was her General in the moment. Is now another chance to turn or to be fallen? She doesn’t want to make same mistakes, but her situation resembles the past. She is waiting for. . .

July, 2010
Brit…

Upset

2010-08-04T19:45:00.003+09:00

I’m totally upset. No mood for work though being chased by time. All things with which I’ve confronted this year betrayed my expectation―appraisal & achievement in work, potentiality for job, invested money, and people. Even the depression of last summer repeated with the same cause. I’m just blown up, being crushed flat. I feel like falling and eagerly need a consolation, but I don’t want to talk about them. I realised that I have no friend in need and therefore I’ve lived wrong. Nobody was beside me when I acutely needed one. Friends in the distance are no friends at all.

I need no one, I just need crying.

Brit…

Checkmate!

2010-08-03T17:24:00.012+09:00

1. He doesn't call her name (heartily and dearly).
2. He doesn't want to kiss her lips (the French kiss).
3. He doesn't give her his private number.

Checkmate!
I can definitely advise her that he doesn't love/care for her.
And, to her sorry, that even he is not interested in her.

Brit...

The shadow of his back

2010-06-27T10:17:00.001+09:00

** Yesterday’s note **

Heavy raining went on throughout the afternoon. Still I’ve been deadly blue. I know I must forget about it. Forget about It! Watching raining through the window, I hoped the shower swept my gloom away, and I felt odd catharsis, rather I tried to do so. I needed some consolation, whatever kind it was. But it’s sad that nothing can work for it except. . .

In the evening, I happened to catch sight of his back over the window. He seemed to go out for supper or home, who comparatively tall, stood in a halting way. The sight gave me a twist in my heart. I cannot exactly describe my mind of the moment. It was as if struck by something. I almost made a noisy for him.

His reserve always makes me embarrassed and I don’t feel comfortable about too much moderation that he shows. That time, however, my heart was filled with indescribable emotion. I thought I found some weakness in him, which was so fragile that he might not want to reveal to others. I saw the shadow of his back, impenetrable solitude.

Brit…

(On 26 June, 2010)

Distraction

2010-06-25T17:18:00.002+09:00

Joseph Kaiser’s Lensky Aria “Kuda kuda…” makes me move to tears. Sometimes it does, and this time, Kaiser’s voice stabs my heart like a sharpened blade. Why? Maybe I know or maybe not. I recalled some of my friends, though I don’t like to put out their names. I’m in the mood of nothing. Absolutely for nothing!

Dimitri. . . I thought I knew him so well, but now I don’t have any confidence in it. Perhaps I don’t have known him at all. I regarded him as the person who would receive my note left behind after my death. I used to write to him whenever the death came up my mind, though I’ve never sent it. He deserved to it because he was the most intelligent and warmest one of my friends. He tolerated everything from me, he really did. I cannot imagine another. The very act of writing supported me to overcome deadly thoughts, so I could survive. From some time ago, I could have lived for myself and became not to write the dead note anymore. Dimitri has remained as ever been beside me, though. But no more he does.

I’m all of confusion. Kaiser’s Lensky makes me cry. It seems not Lensky but me who would die soon.

Brit…

Graeme's Urban Imagination

2010-06-22T21:08:00.007+09:00

Professor Graeme Gilloch’s seminar-series came to the end today. Six weeks’ journey seemed to be long at first, but now I feet it as a moment. Graeme has been an ardent and sincere lecturer throughout the seminars, though we (Korean attendees) did not actively participate in discussion. It might be hard for him to lead those silent participators. Nevertheless, he seemed to enjoy his work and I was impressed with it. Actually, I enjoyed his seminars, too. It was a great experience that I could come together with him.

Today, we talked about Michel Augé’s text on Casablanca. The English translation of Augé’s is considerably good and the text is rhythmical and poetic, in which Augé is almost revitalised. It seems to me that Graeme, who is a Bejamin specialist, indeed likes Augé. Casablanca made me recall several things. I saw the movie long time ago, and I have its DVD in my selves. The movie is not one of my most favourites, but doubtlessly a good movie. Humphrey Bogart makes an American man contemplative and intriguing. The solitude which he exposes has some uniqueness. It is deadly attractive, though I don’t like the American as a whole. Casablanca, the Moroccan city, is living and will live forever mythologically in the movie.

After the seminar, we (Graeme and attendees) went to a café (Angel-in-Us) and Graeme gave us drinks and cakes. We’ve freely talked with one another without reserve for about two hours. I could see Graeme’s passion on his work once again and I liked it. In some parts, we have some common interest and zeal. I am happy to make friends with such an enthusiast. He’ll go back to Lancaster next week. As we departed, he said to me, “Carry on emailing me, Brit.” Of course, I’ll do because I want to keep contact with him. He is a good friend as well as an earnest replier.

Brit…

Nostalgia

2010-06-09T21:03:00.006+09:00

London, my old beloved and my dream!

Yesterday, as I listened to Graeme (I’m happy I can call him with his first name), I was mapping my constellation. Graeme’s is different from mine, though it is also in London. Mine is around western and southern districts, while his eastern and northern. I remember the summer of 2008 in London. It was the happiest moment in my life when I was there. I could have been to Paris or any other city of Europe, but ignored others. They would be my second option. Only London (including short visit to Margate and Oxford) was my longing option, then.

Two weeks were too short for all over London. I recall Hounslow, Hammersmith, Clapham Common, Bermonsey, and so on. I miss H91 bus and its announcing voice of guidance, which the bus oscillating between Hounslow West and Hammersmith. I also miss Osterley underground station in the twilight. London makes me feel home with just two weeks, yet in fact, I’ve felt home in England since my childhood, and I’ve dearly loved London and several English provinces, so I think I might be a Londoner/Englander before life. Perhaps I was brainwashed by English writers from early childhood. What an education!

It doesn’t mean that I don’t like French, German or Russian writers. I was equally fascinated with the Russian and German writing, yet the Latin was not that much. I’ve read Flaubert’s, Balzac’s, Dumas’s and others’, but I’ve never been in love with them. I don’t know why, maybe it depends on my taste or disposition [or because of some indescribable feeling]. Sagan’s modern works were popular in a time in Korea and they were interesting, but I hardly sympathised with the French feeling. It’d have been due to that I was too young then or the translations didn’t revitalise them. Anyway, my experience of them was of decades ago, and now I wonder how they would appeal to me if I re-read them as an adult.

Now I’m looking at the map of Paris’s Metro & Bus which Graeme gave me (Kindly of him!). The net of close texture of the map provokes something roving inside me. Suddenly I want to see Paris, all of it, the Seine, the Louvre, the Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomph, Montmartre, etc. I imagine Ravic and Joan drinking Calvados in a pub. Dimitri said to me that Calvados was not a delicious drink, not of quality, but Remarque made the name aurally romantic. For me, Paris is not more intriguing than London, so I don’t regret that I didn’t spare time for her in 2008. I hope I can take a roam over the Europe someday, however. Before that, I’d like to journey whole Britain including Wales and Scotland.

Brit…

Been to Jerry's

2010-05-23T23:44:00.002+09:00

I’d returned from my brother’s house in Gimpo yesterday. ‘Up and back’ of two days took 13 hours by car. Sunny, my sister, drove the car and my father was sitting in the back seat. I was totally exhausted, and Sunny and Dad might be more tired than I. The driver and the back-seated! I slept till late in the morning today. The sad thing is that years cannot lie and nothing cheats years. I’m not young anymore, though I always assert that years are just less than numbers. Nevertheless, it cannot take dreams away from me. I’ll dream like I’ve done till now. God bless me!

My brother-Jerry’s pastoral house was fabulous. It was two storeys white building with five rooms, two bathrooms, one large living room, one dining, and beautiful green garden. The house was considerable big for his family and he looked so comfortable and happy there with Gyeong-A (my sister-in-law) and Hae-An (my niece). I’m not a good elder sister but I constantly love them. Thank God we’re family! Their decision of choosing a pastoral house was preferable to maintaining their apartment in a city. The apartment in the city was more expensive but smaller and stuffy. By selling it, they got spaciousness and surplus values. I’m proud that Jerry and Gyeong-A are definitely good teachers with their excellent sense of values. It would be no problem if all teachers in Korea are like them!

At first, I was about to visit Seoul as well, dropping by Insa-dong and National Central Museum or Seoul Arts Centre. Insa-dong is my regular visiting place in Seoul. I didn’t go anywhere, however, since Sunny wanted to get back early for home and father and I were not well. We started for Busan early in the morning yesterday after staying only one night at Jerry’s. It was gloomy in the morning and gradually rainy as we’re southward bound. In Busan it rained heavily from the morning, they said.

The rain kept till today like there’s a big hole in the sky, but I loved it. The drum-beat sound of the raindrops gives me a certain feeling of release and the rhythm of the falling rain feels me excitement. Rain is moody at some time or absolutely reverse now and then, and this time I particularly feel free and happy with it. I cannot tell why, though. Now it stops and the night air smells so fresh.

Brit…

Asthma

2010-05-20T22:50:00.001+09:00

These days I have struggled against my old complaint asthma, which finally returned after long-sustained cough. I could hardly breathe and my voice has been horse for about a month (It seemed not mine!). I could barely utter a voice due to hacking dry cough. Bad condition lasted on me several weeks, but a few days ago, suddenly became better. It was helped by the wet days as well as my doctor’s prescription (I really like my doctor, Dr. Kim), I think. Lovable English weather has put down yellow sand in the air.

Though I cannot sing because my singing voice is not stable yet, my talking is not so irritated. Finally, I can speak freely after the lapse of a month. I’m happy for that. Asthma, known to only those who know!

Brit…

Prof. Gilloch’s seminar

2010-05-12T11:23:00.003+09:00

Yesterday, attended a seminar hosted by Professor Graeme Gilloch from Lancaster University. His seminars will be held six times every Tuesday from yesterday (except 25 May). The subject of the seminars can be defined in a word, “Urban”. The first one is titled “The Return of the Flaneur” (v., the second is “Seductive Strangers”; the third, Urban Rhythms; the fourth, Orpheus in Paris Ⅰ: Maps and Memories; the fifth, Orpheus in Paris Ⅱ: Images and Others; the sixth, ‘You must remember this . . .’).

The text of yesterday was Michel de Certeau’s one chapter, ‘Walking in the City’, from his work, The Practice of Everyday Life. I’ve ever read Certeau’s The Writing of History, and it was an excellent work. I could know Certeau was deft in writing (his thinking as well) though the text I read was a translation, so he became one of my favourite French thinkers including Michel Foucault. Both of them are based on History.

Professor Gilloch’s British accent was familiar to me, and I felt comfortable on listening to him. Besides, he purposely spoke slowly and clearly for auditors, all of whom were Koreans, so I understood every word of him. In fact, my taste in English has inclined toward British not American since childhood, and I often listen to BBC radio through the internet, not watching CNN, yet cannot wholly understand what the radio says, but just listen.

Professor Gilloch showed us Michel de Certeau’s photo with several theorists’. About Foucault, Benjamin and others, I’ve ever seen their photos, but never Certeau’s, which it was the first time I saw Certeau’s appearance. He is good-looking as Foucault. Foucault’s handsomeness as well as his remarkable works has captured my mind since I first read Foucault. Certeau is definitely different from Foucault in and out, but has attractiveness of his own. Certeau’s side face from the photo reminded me of Jeremy Irons, a little bit.

Yesterday’s subject “Walking in the city” made me imagine listening to one of my favourite song “Walking in the air”, which singing I prefer Aled Jones’s voice to anyone. I was further led to imagine various things such as Dickensian London, Mrs. Gaskell’s Victorian Manchester, Joyce’s Dublin, and so on. And I recalled Conrad’s “damp” and “fluorescent’ night of London in his The Secret Agent. My imagination doesn’t mean that I diverted myself listening to Prof. Gilloch, and I just recalled urban images represented in novels. Therefore, ‘two hours’ was not long to me.

Brit…

Art of refusal: Michael's advice

2010-05-10T20:46:00.003+09:00

How can I decline someone (sometimes, something) with good intentions without hurting his/her pride and feeling when I'm not in the mood to accept? Sometimes I become irresolute when a decision is need. I know being refused is a heart-breaking thing, and it naturally hurts one’s feeling. Everyone resumes in their own ways of reacting to rejection, and the effect of being refused varies on each of them. Of course, it depends on situations and personalities, someone easily forget, and someone doesn’t.

I’m not a kind of person who easily requests anything at all, in fact, I rarely request (sometimes, offer) something to others, whatever it is, even if s/he is my friend. It’s because I’m prone to be easily hurt. If I feel requesting easy, I would not mind its consequences, but I cannot. Since I hate/fear to be hurt my pride or feeling, I’m reluctant to present my hands to others before they do. Therefore, I don’t want others’ heart to be hurt as well.

Michael gave advice for me. He said, “If they have enough pride to ask, they should have enough pride to handle whichever answer they're given. You don't have to feel responsible for their feelings. If you were responsible for their feelings, you would have stopped them before they asked in the first place.” He added, “People just don't confront each other and don't like to say ‘no’ when they really want to. I understand why it's difficult, but I would never want to agree to something I oppose. It's important to be true to yourself first and foremost.”

He’s right and the most important thing is that I must be true to myself. I am as I am and I should do as I do.

Brit…

A friend

2010-05-05T22:12:00.000+09:00

I think I was frivolous with being stirred up by indescribable feeling. Flippant in old sense and flighty, I disdain, yet I was. I can’t tell why. Often forgetting myself, I miss the very moment to walk the line. I cannot define that I didn’t behaviour properly, but “too much is as bad as too little” (過猶不及). The matter is that I feel I talked too much, just trivial things of mine. People usually don’t want to hear about insignificant others. My own story is nothing to them.

I just got a web-friend yesterday. He is not only my generation but also on a par with me as far as I concern. At least, more than one point of view let us come to a mutual understanding, I think. I know people are naturally different after all, even though they share opinion and interest, and I don’t expect sameness. No one totally matches, and sometimes even I myself discord with me. So many selves in me!

To talk of the new friend, I barely know about him, yet I don’t think his capacity would be as much as Dimitri’s. Dimitri lives on absolutely another horizon, the only one who can chat with me about music, cinema, fine arts, literature, etc, though his literature is mostly Korean, while mine is Western. Our understanding communicates, perspectives levels, and romanticism matches. Thank God I’m always his Violetta! I’ve never met a man like him, but never thought him as a man. He has been good to me all the time, above all, his tolerance and embracement for me compare with none, but just a [male] friend not a boy friend to me. I cannot decide his feeling for me, whereas mine is definite. I miss him, but I won’t. . .

A web-friend is just a web-friend, no more, no less. Nevertheless, he reminds me of Dimitri because we are all of same age and he seems to be a communicable person after a long vacuum. Maybe so, I couldn’t exercise moderation. Hope I wasn’t light.

Brit…

Still not well

2010-05-04T21:37:00.002+09:00

After unusual illness in April, I felt better for a moment. Last week I went to school on Wednesday and Thursday. Damn intervallic dry cough remained however, and it didn’t go down. Sometimes a hacking cough held my breath and words. Then the cough has become more and more frequent since weekend and became so severe that I even vomited during coughing, so I couldn‘t go to school again.

My professor/supervisor phoned me this morning, saying he called up at his office. Nowadays I usually study at his office and he calls me up at his office whenever he has something to tell me. After appointed to the Dean of the College of Humanities, he moved to Dean’s office, so his personal/professorial office is vacant for two years. Then he let me, whom his assistant, use his personal office as my own. His office is full of books that I have to (and want to) read for my doctorial thesis. I know I’m endowed with some privilege, because he is not a man who easily shares privacy with others. I am the first person/assistant whom he gave the security key of his office and I deeply appreciate his thoughtful consideration to help me on studying.

Now I can hardly talk since a hacking cough beats me every time I utter a voice. My voice sank down and I feel my throat swollen. I begin to worry about losing my voice. I think I must see the doctor again.

Brit…

Sang a Song

2010-04-25T16:52:00.002+09:00

I’ve been deadly ill with flu for three days and nights. Fever, sick and all my body ached. Much worried about that I could not sing at Professor Chung’s retirement reception, which he eagerly wanted me to. I almost recovered by Saturday afternoon, but cough remained and became husky. Anyhow I could sing for him, though it did not meet my satisfaction. In good condition, I could show much more, give more impression to the audience.

I sang “You light up my life”, Debby Boone’s old song without accompaniment. In fact, “You light up my life” is a song that I shared for my professor Bae. I wanted to sing the song for him, because he has really backed me up. His retirement leaves ten years more, however, at then I’ll count on my sixties. Perhaps I’ll have no chance to sing for him. Ridiculous it’ll be if a woman of almost sixties would sing such a song for a man?!

Yesterday I thought it was my last chance for such singing, so sang the song. I think it’s a reasonable song at teachers’ retirement reception, since teachers guide students like a lighthouse and professors are teachers. Professor Chung is also my guide though not my thesis supervisor. I appreciate him for his concern and affection. I know he cares for me. Thank God I’m beloved.

Brit…

PS.)

A song of reserved for the reception! What a super woman I was! It was a very short interval of amazing revitalisation, nobody knew I was ill, but soonest I fell down on bed after that. Going on lying in sickbed with Ringer’s solution till today, I’m almost recovering now and tomorrow may go to school again. (Added on 27 April)

Exhausted Day

2010-04-13T22:15:00.002+09:00

I took nosebleed for snivelling.

Everything which irritates me depends on my management. It’s all up to me, and no one can replace me. Frequently I feel some emotional oscillation between uplift and downcast. When suffering from swinging unstableness of mind, I wonder if I’m a manic-depressive psychosis.

Life often seems to go beyond my will and expectation. It is so arbitrary that it may look sporting over me. The life-devil, the dark and negative face of life, uses depression as one of its playing tools, which the tools are its arms to fight against me. Depression produces all the unexpected or haphazard illness. I know all that, nevertheless, can’t help it now and then. I cannot be knelt down to it, however. Even though it is deadly hard to overcome it, I can’t lose. Avec ma solitude, I’ll stand tall.

Wilful it is, yet I must be happy. When feeling like crying, I’ll cry loudly under my pillow, and then regain smile.

Brit…

English Conversation

2010-04-04T00:27:00.000+09:00

English conversation is always my hot potato. It claims immediate reactions, so doesn’t allow time for me to think over proper words and expression fitting to situations. I need time to hit upon answers, to select fit words, and to shape passable sentences, however. Thus I often miss right moments to speak and make steps-delayed articulations.

Having lunch with Wallace yesterday, I felt like being a dummy. I got much to tell him, but didn’t cover my thought with words. Clumsiness at speaking foreign language always snatches words away from my lips and disturbs me in keeping up with my mind. My speaking [in English] was steps-delayed as ever, and most words which I intended to were at a standstill on the tip of my tongue. Wallace used to complete my unspoken words or correct my wrong-structured sentences, in doing so, he usually makes me comfortable, but I become distracted now and then. Of course, he knows I’m sensitive regarding this issue.

I wish conversing can be comfortable like writing. Even in Korean, sometimes I feel easy at writing more than at speaking. ‘Face to face’ or eye contact makes my head stiff, I think, so I frequently feel awkward. Some indescribable anxiety would block my way, and I, and my eyes, get lost. English makes it worse at any time. How and when I can naturally converse in English?

Brit…

Fatigue

2010-03-22T17:02:00.005+09:00

I’m suffering from fatigue. Whole my body aches. Sorry to say fatigue, I don’t deserve it. Anyway, what’s the cause of it? Definitely not from hard work, because I didn’t have any hard work! Then, what about ill food, the sushi of yesterday, or a touch of cold, or breathlessly thick yellow-sand of the weekend, or some kind of fretting/anxiety? Did comprehensive exams make me exhausted? Nothing can totally claim it, and my damn chronic headache, too! (The headache has tortured me since my teens, which sometimes had periods of respite, though. When I was eighteen, I absolutely sympathised Nietzsche with his pain, who had suffered from terrible headache. ;D)

The only thing I can tell is that I’m always anguished with various mental/psychological reasons. The pressure of dissertation—several theses, as well-- heavily falls down upon me, and my physical condition, which is weakening day by day, doubtlessly gains a cause, and besides, my emotional unstableness often makes everything tougher. The uncertain future of this getting-older female student, who has no good connection, adds gloomy vision. What for is her struggling? I didn’t re-begin study for specified purposes, but desires have grown as studying more.

I need to be poised and strong mentally as well as physically, and I should not want so much, but it’s not easy to control. Like manic-depressive psychopath, my mind and body is repeatedly vacillating between ups and downs. Once lively and then groggy, and again! Maybe I miss someone to talk with, like Dimitri. I haven’t got in touch with him for nearly a year.

Brit…

The Comprehensive Exams

2010-03-20T22:02:00.003+09:00

Today, I took comprehensive exams for finishing my doctorial course, that is, a kind of graduate exams. If we don’t pass the exams, we’re not allowed to present our dissertations. Among seminars we’ve taken in the course, we doctorial graduates choose 4 to be tested. My choice included in a Study of Contemporary British Writers, a Study of Contemporary American Fiction Ⅰ, English Poems in the Sixteenth-century, and a Study of Contemporary American Drama. For last three weeks I’ve been engaged in preparing the exams, and finally they’ve gone. A little nervous, but I’ve managed well as a whole, and I think I’m going to pass them successfully. From now on I can concentrate on my dissertation, sometimes helping my professor in his work when he needs my hand. My professor, who always backs me up, proposed me to edit The Humanities Quarterly, which is one of his projects as the Dean of Humanities College. I’m willing to help him.

Brit…

Notes about Figure-skating

2010-02-28T22:00:00.006+09:00

Notes about Figure skating Competitions of the Winter Olympics in 2010

I was very apprehensive about over-scores in recent figure skating competitions, and the strong political tendency in this area. Sometimes judgement used to be not recognizable at all, even disgusting. This time, however, the results were roughly understandable, at least within podium skaters, though there’s a little unreasonableness in some cases. Judgement and results at most competitions--Pairs, Ice-dancing, and Men’s/Ladies’ Singles, were plausible/acceptable, working good.

It’s marvellous that my anticipation/expectation was realised. I’m glad that Shen Xue & Zhao Hongbo at Pair skating, Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir at Ice-dancing, our Yu-Na at Ladies’ single separately won their gold medal as I wished. Evan Lysacek’s victory at Men’s single, though I’ve liked the skater for years, was a little bit surprise, but he just deserved to be the champ. He showed clean and impressive performance, adding some charismatic touch with his tallness. I think all the champions at figure skating competitions of 2010 Olympics were absolutely right persons.

My other favourite pair Aliona Savchenko & Robin Szolkowy earned the bronze medal, but it was uncontroversial. While they made mistakes, Pang Qing & Tong Jian performed clean and nice free programme. Above all, Ice-dancing medallists all showed fantastic performances. The original dance of Charlie White & Meryl Davis were so lovely, and they showed their best. Scott & Tessa were a little more fascinating. They always make spectators happy. What a sweet couple they are! Oksana Domnina & Maxim Shabalin were also captivating, but their performance needed something more to win the gold or silver medal, though I’ve adored this veteran Ice-dancing couple for a long time.

At Men’s single, frankly speaking, I wanted Stephane Lambiel, the absolutely artistic skater, to stand the top, for I’ve loved his skating for years. Though he made some mistakes, he gave us the most beautiful performance. Takahashi Daisuke fell down at quadruple jump, but played good. My heart inclined to Stephane, however. During Stephane’s two seasons’ retirement my most favourite male skater has been Tomas Verner, but to my sorry, he did not exert his own genius at all. Tomas and Jeremy Abbott collapsed too early at both short and long programmes. If Tomas, Jeremy, and Stephane would play their full capacity clean and perfectly, they might be on the podium. I think their programmes were better than others’.

Figure skating is a sport, but it is not a sport only, that is, it is an artistic sport, not a jump competition. In this sense, Zhenya’s performance lacked choreographic virtue and dynamic steps and has no flowing transition. Even most of his jumps are shaky. Evgeni Plushenko was one of my favourites, and he was excellent in Torino, but not this time. The sad thing is that I was disappointed at Zhenya, not with not-previous-like performance, but with his reaction after the competition. The attitude he showed us was not pride but arrogance. He must have celebrated the new champ without complaining. In fact, he did not skated well enough to deserve to complain about the result. I was sorry that he might be not the very person I thought I knew. I think Zhenya was not only defeated by Evan in the competition, but also fell inferior to Stephane in personality.

Ladies’ single competitions were much better than Men’s. What could we need more? Most of the potentialities showed their best, and Joanne Rochette made emotional/tearful moment because of her deceased mother who died of heart attack two days ago before the short programme. Our Yu-Na was absolutely, breathlessly, enchantingly and dominatingly superb. How can I express the phenomenal performances of Yu-Na? Nobody could/can do it better. She’ll be a legend. I am glad that Yu-Na could be a happy skater. Long live the Queen!

Brit...

An Affair

2010-02-09T21:02:00.002+09:00

On writing to Terri, I recalled a long-time-ago-event between JE and me. Terri is suffering from some emotional despair, which part is similar to my oldies. I told her it’s desirable to forget bad things as soon as possible, but I didn’t have overcome mine for a long time. Whenever I confronted with JE in my campus years, I assumed natural countenance, yet my heart was in a terrible whirl. Even now, I remember the feeling of being betrayed or abused in those days.

I loved YC. He was/is the first and only one whom I’ve loved among those who have lived in my reality. I’ve never loved a man such purely, earnestly, and poignantly like I loved him. He possessed the half of my campus years. With him, the woman in me woke up and the innocence passed away. When JE seduced him, if I had not confessed my emotion for him to her before that, my feeling of betrayed would not have been so great. She was one of my best friends and already had a boy friend then. I was felt my emotion been totally abused by her.

JE married sooner than I, and her husband was another man, not her boy friend of then as well as YC. My YC has left for good, and we’ve never met since those years. So to speak, I was ridiculed by JE, so I could not have cleared bitter sediment in mind caused by her for a long time. The beater can easily forget, the beaten cannot. JE, who was from rich family and married to a rich man, has lived affluent life, but I don’t. She would/could never imagine my life and never understand my mind.

Now I don’t hate her, and don’t have any bad feeling on her. She has been no more my friend, for I have erased her from my friends’ list. I, however, could not send YC away from my heart, he remained in the corner of my inside and has lived there, even though I don’t love him now.

Brit…

Dissertation at the beginning

2010-02-09T18:19:00.005+09:00

Time flies so fast that it’s like meeting another day in every blink of eyes!

My diss. work is at a standstill, since continual reading requires incessantly new reading, it looks like running on the spot. ‘Where’ and ‘how’ can I formulate something in my mind and reveal them? So distressed, I used to be dropped down to despair now and then. furthermore, my physical condition, its limits—weakened physical strength which I’m sensing often disturb me mentally and physically, that is, weakening-sighted [more and more], chronic backache and chronic problem in my nervous system, several symptoms due to stress, and so on. I absolutely need some reasonably designed exercise and have to spare time for it, but even it’s not easy.

I must not die writing my dissertation as Prof. Kang joked. I don’t think the burden is that much, and I‘m just psychologically oppressed, so in some senses he is right, I must have in mind what is first and what next. I think that years is not more than numbers, but sometimes it—being old makes me down. I cannot devote myself in studying with similar amount of time like my young colleagues. For example, sitting up [at night] is nothing for me in my earlier years, but now I cannot do that. Anyway, there’s long way to go for achieving my Ph. D. and I must have patience. I have to struggle against my emotion which sometimes haunts my mind like manic-depressive psychosis, too.

Brit…

Lensky's Aria sung by Joseph Kaiser

2010-01-30T12:04:00.002+09:00

I found a striking new face of tenor on the web, whose name is Joseph Kaiser, Canadian, whose voice clear and flowingly lyrical which is absolutely on the very line of my favourites, among whom are Tito Schipa, Giuseppe di Stefano, Nicolai Gedda, Fritz Wunderlich, Peter Schreier, Jose Carrearas, and Ian Bostridge.

Besides, along with the beautiful voice, let alone good-looking, his figure of 6’4” tall is overwhelming. I’ve never met a tenor like him. He reminds me of Placido Domingo or my Stefano of their younger years, though his appearance does not resemble them. Joseph Kaiser made Lensky and his aria very special, whose character in Eugene Onegin has not been so attractive for me before. Captivated with Kaiser’s singing Lensky, I’ve searched for all of Lensky’s aria (“Kuda Kuda, vi Udalilis…”) on the YouTube and listened to most of them. They are Stefano’s, Gedda’s, Wunderlich’s, Domingo’s, Jan Peerce’s, Rolando Villazon’s, Jussi Bjorling’s, Manuel Escorcio’s, and so on. Each of them was definitely intriguing. I don’t have realised till now how fascinating Lensky’s aria was like this. It is not less than Nemorino’s, Orfeo’s, Rodolf’s, and Cavaradossi’s.

I was lucky to have run across Joseph, in a sense both accidently and mistakenly. Initially I wanted to search for a man named Joseph Kaizer from the web, who played “Hora Staccato” nicely with cello. I, then, wrongly typed z to s, and consequently confronted with a tenor whose name Joseph Kaiser. What a fantastic mistake! I must have been destined to know him. ;-) Ridiculous is it? Maybe…, but the “destined” is right formulation because I passionately love [classical] music. Anyway, it is the first time for me to have been knocked out by a tenor at one blow. Do I become too generous for listening to music? Is my longing hours for Music so long, my immortal lover whom I’ve neglected for these years?

You know, my first foreign pen-pal of decades ago was a boy named Joseph, yet he was a HongKongnian, and one of the permanent companions of my literary life is Joseph Conrad, the Polish-born British writer. Now I begin to think that Joseph is a special name for me. In addition, I also found a young Russian tenor named Alexey Kudrya, whose voice has tremendous musical potentiality of my favourite. These days, I have been so happy with their voices.

Brit…

Depressed

2009-12-05T10:52:00.005+09:00

Clouds always follow the sunshine, they say, yet it is the second of the worst in this year. Maybe it is more than the first, regarding that my mind has been ever trained to such circumstances. So depressed! I had to take one month and a half to get through the first worst. Whole through the summer I struggled with my depression, you know. How much time would this one take for me to hold back coolness?!

Since yesterday I’ve tried to think of my favourites, but it doesn't help at all. I feel like being moved to tears from time to time. I have no time to waste in dejection, however. I must ignore all the negative feelings to meet my work dead-lined. Let the matter rest for the time being. Let’s call to mind just what November gave me, nice friends and an old friend.

Still I’m sad. . . No one to bare my heart.

Brit...

Serious or Earnest

2009-12-01T21:30:00.002+09:00

She said to me, “You’re too serious. These days, no one lives such seriously.” Well, it may be right and maybe wrong. I’m serious when I think it needed, not always. I just try to be earnest in everything and to everyone rather than serious. I know, however, I cannot be such earnest as I am to be, because I’m selfish. To say again, I’m too selfish to be earnest, therefore I want to be.

Brit…

November

2009-11-26T23:52:00.006+09:00

Nothing left in/from November, they say, but I didn’t think so. I’ve believed November’s nothing has been something the fullest. Why? I cannot tell exactly, because articulation requires artificiality. I just can say I perceived the nothing as by-product of overflowing. Yes, overflowing… that’s it! The over-flown fullness is the nothing of November, and it is not just exhaustion, or rather, pro-germination. I’ve loved November all through my life. Disguising barrenness, it embraces everything in the name of nothing, November. Time is snatching away my November, but I still love it.

Brit…

My new Friend

2009-11-25T13:27:00.003+09:00

V. S.

There is something in his voice, a certain irresistible charisma. I could feel it from the start. Somewhat languid and low, it sounds cynical even when he expresses affection. I love it. I, then, didn’t imagine he was so young, much younger than I am and than I expected. He must have been much older than the forties to meet my guess. I don’t mean that his voice sounds old, yet it has some dignity enough to make me guess him to be much older than himself. Oh, if I were younger with ten years and more, I might love him as a man! Ha, I know how ridiculous I am, if fall in love with voice tone. I had too much reading and imagining. ))) In fact you know, I have so many lovers, some of whom are around my age, such as Sean Bean, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ian Bostridge, Mikhail Pletnev, Andrew the Duke of York, and so on. I think I always fall in love with my imagination, even though I’m getting older and older. That’s it!! I can’t help it, because it has been my disposition since childhood, you know. As the girl, so the woman, and I add more, so the nanny. You don’t have to worry about me, though, I won’t go over the line. ;)

Anyway, I'll remember 22th of November. I've loved November all the way.

Brit…

A short Review of Sam Shepard's FfL

2009-11-10T15:34:00.004+09:00

Victimization or been Victimized?:

Love Scratched and Erased in Fool for Love

What is the meaning of love? The dictionary says it means “a very strong feeling of affection towards someone who you are romantically or sexually attracted to.” In this sense, the feeling between Eddie and May is a faultless love, even though they are obsessively attached to each other. They can/must not share such a desirable love, though, because they are siblings. However deep the love is, we see a ridiculed love of brother-sister incest, though they are just half-blooded. Convention or morality defines the love as irrational and sinful, which leads us to sense the absurdity of it, simultaneously victimizes it. I say “victimize” here, but cannot say it is right formulation.

Eddie says to Martin, “The reason you’re taking her out to the movie is because you just want to be with her” (78). Love claims to be with, and just starts at that moment. May and Eddie would “never stop being in love” (86) from the beginning, and they not only “couldn’t take a breath without thinking of each other,” but also “got sick at night” when they were apart (91). Eddie tried to love another and May did so, but it’s just like running their heads against the wall. Their love is like a curse to their father, the Old Man, who lived a double life. It might be also a revenge on the deeds of the father and their mothers. The mothers, one of whom might smell but tolerate her spouse’s adultery, the other stuck to a married man, both were finally causers and victims of family tragedy. Eddie's mother blew her brains out with his father’s gun. The father’s duplicity and selfishness begot his children’s destructive love, and the mothers’ adherent loves brought the ruin of their own as well as the children’s misery of heart. Consequently, the parents and the children victimized each other.

The scenes are performed in a cheap motel on the edge of a desert―the Mojave Desert―. The desert, which implies infertile dryness, initially determines the love’s fatality. The love results in the void itself, and seems like the imaginary picture at which the Old Man keeps staring. In the early part of the play, May tells Eddie “You’re either gonna erase me or have me erased” (48). Eddie is like a disease to May (59) to be erased, and May to Eddie. They know their perceptible love is destined to vanish into nothingness. It is away from the sight of the audience as well. Paradoxically speaking, the nothingness in this case can/might be something indescribable, but it should be formless anyway, as if it’s in a dream. This kind of paradoxical sophistication would serve as appeasement between the characters and the audience, who have many things to say but hard to articulate them. One cannot but let it be.

There is no absolute victim in the play. By victimizing one another, they all become injurers not victims, who accept being inflicted. Loves of the play deserve to be erased within the context of the text, because they―the children as well as the parents― separately loved in each own way, that is some addicted selfish way, scratching and devastating themselves. The love of the children―Eddie and May― lies in the heart of emotional ruins. Love has no victim but itself. We humans victimize feelings in the name of love, so love is done by its name.

Brit...

(Written on 9 November, Handed out on 10 November)

A short Review of B. Henley's CoH

2009-11-10T15:27:00.004+09:00

A review of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart:

Patriarchal and Racial Absurdity

(aka. Understandable Absurdity and Unacceptable Absurdity)

Before proceeding, I want to pay reverence to the work of an attractive playwright, Beth Henley. Of all the American dramas I’ve read till now for this semester, this one of Beth Henley’s was most comfortable for me to read at one glance. As compared to other dramas I read earlier, CoH has more moderate and easier dialogues with which protagonists communicated. I, as a woman, could share some emotional depth with those three sisters. Of course, the sisters are in different situations and their attitudes run cross to each other in some cases, so I feel empathy with them separately. This play has many things to be discussed, but this time I’ll choose just two parts about patriarchal and racial absurdity because I am to develop discussion in only a page.

Lenny as the eldest girl retains certain modulation of attitude toward the conventionally patriarchal order to which she has been accustomed. Her recognition of Old Granddaddy’s devotion to the girls (264) shows it well. We, however, become to know that all of three sisters were victims of patriarchal ideals in a sense. Lenny, due to her deformed ovary, was psychically branded as an unproductive woman, so has been regarded to make useless wife. Meg, who seems to be impertinent and liberal, was also a victim of [grand] paternal expectation as seen from Act Three. There she says “he’s just gonna have to take me like I am” and “finally I get my wits about me, and he conks out” (278, 279). Babe, let alone commenting about her macho/bad husband, was victimized by patriarchal convention, which has bound women with typical classification and stereotyped wisdom. Old Granddaddy “remarked how Babe was gonna skyrocket right to the heights of Hazlehurst society and how [bold/wild] Zackery was just the right man for her whether she knew it now or not” (240-41). Even Old Granddaddy, represented a good patriarch, dominated his granddaughters’ lives and served as causes of their miseries. There seems to be no need to take Zackery or the girls’ bastard father into discussion because we already saw authoritative patriarch, good or bad, exerted harmful influence upon women.

I declare the most serious defect of this drama is the dealing with the relationship between Babe and Willie Jay. Babe is twenty-four and the black boy Willie is fifteen. Consequently Babe had sex with a Juvenile and their intercourse is plainly illegal. Babe’s excuse of loneliness or her after-protection for Willie against Zackery and Hazlehurst society cannot compensate for her deed. Nevertheless, the play justifies Babe’s situation and makes readers sympathise with her. Its absurdity becomes clear when we consider other similar situations. Let us think of other three cases of intercourses: between adult black man and young white girl; between adult white man and young black girl; between adult black woman and white young boy. What do you think of those? I might not have to discuss further, and probably some definite answers can be supposed. In the strict sense, the defect I proposed would not be imputed to Henley, but to the social.

Family relation, that is, the confirmation of the strong ties among sisters, and self-awakening/self-realization of them as independent and positive/active women are partial virtues of the play. Simultaneously we cannot ignore the uneasiness that the play gives us, though.

Brit...

(Written on 31st October, Handed out on 3rd November)

Deadlock

2009-10-15T15:32:00.005+09:00

What sort of ridicule is this? Really, I’m not interested in it. I think I am absolutely misunderstood. I am not the sort of a woman, which he might think of me, definitely. I don’t like such a game, the emotional game, because I’m very weak at such folly and not witted about it at all.

Nevertheless, am I being swallowed up into the whirlwind of a certain emotional collision in spite of myself? What an absurd creature I am! Too frail to stand tall for myself!

I’ve been proud of myself and have necessary confidence in me, and have been valued and loved by others. Now I, however, feel trapped within my own standards and other’s expectation. The aging and consequently lack of physical strength—that is, degenerating— are taking my ability away, and I realise my confidence is all but just an illusion. Now I fear of everything.

Brit...

Eager to Rest

2009-10-14T22:43:00.001+09:00

Eager to rest for my eyes, for my head, and for my heart! I’m totally exhausted, especially my mind. I feel like crawling through long dark tunnel. Overwhelmed a certain gloom, I’m losing confidence in me. Is it melancholia? Well, it’s not such simple. This mess-up of mind is due to some complex disturbance. Maybe I know a little, or don’t.

Brit…

Words

2009-10-11T21:20:00.003+09:00

I just don't understand why people are not responsible for their words. As for me, every spoken word of mine or to me is a kind of yoke. I'm bound with not only my utterance but also other's to me, so I don't speak any word easily and don't treat any word to me as worthless. For me words are important as much as the utterer of them, hence I hope my words can be valued as my self, too. Once I voice something, it always chases me up until fulfilled, therefore I cannot feel free from my words at any case. Of course, I know every spoken word cannot be fulfilled without exception, and I also do not keep every word I speak, but at least, I try to do it. Words as well as writings from me are the very reflection of my heart, that is, my soul. If I am not faithful to them―I mean the words and writings―, it means that I lose my soul. Without soul, how can I live on?

Brit...

My [New] Laptop

2009-10-07T12:29:00.007+09:00

For my papers/articles as well as preparing my doctorial dissertation, two days ago I’ve bought a laptop, that is, a net-book not a notebook. Notebook computers are usually too heavy for me to carry with, so the lightness was the first option for the purchase. To write something I had to get home from school, the flow/rhythm of my thought was often deterred, and it irritated me. From now on I write and comment anything at anytime when something comes across my mind in the study room [in the campus]. Hooray! If I own it a little earlier, I could finish the paper which I am engaged in now. “The sooner, the better” was a necessary cliche for me, I think. I'm in our Campus Study room now, you know! :)

Brit...

My Whimsicality

2009-09-25T23:00:00.004+09:00

My whimsicality might be exerted again. I can’t help it, you know. I cannot help myself! This or that, this way or that way… jammed by all indeterminacies and uncertainty, I’m lost.

Though he knows I am, he loves me. I know that. He said he loved me, but I would know that even though he didn’t say that. As for the line between us, he said that I’d never be able to draw the line, so he had to do it. That’s why our connection has been lasted for such long years. All has been due to him, not to me. If he were not so patient, we could not be friend. His perseverance, tolerance, and embracement have kept me in the middle of the road, even if it is, at least, on the surface. Anyway, since we met, he has performed as my guard against the harshly tempting world. Yes, I know the world is not the matter, the evil is in my mind, and I myself have made the deadlock of mine. I always tease him to clear the obstacles away, which have been made by me.

Brit…

Bloody Eye hindered...

2009-09-23T06:31:00.006+09:00

The day before yesterday, I was about to see my tempting dentist because the resin between incisors was fallen off. Up feeling to meet him because I like him. He is a good dentist and has trustful nature. Gentle and warm, of course! We’ve not met for a long time, so my teeth need to be examined, let alone the problematic resin. I am heard that every time my children visit him he asks them about me. My daughter used to joke me, “Mom, the doctor was uttering only you during doing my teeth. He likes you so much.” She can say that because he is usually wordless to all patients, so looks blunt. I’m his senior alumna, and actually we’re all alumnae or alumni, because he and all of my family attended Pusan National University. Anyway, the most important thing is that he was the first dentist who made me comfortable during dental performing.

On preparing for him in the afternoon, however, on the mirror I found that the vein of my right eye burst and half of it full of blood. It looked dreadful like the eye on the horror movie scene. I would have such eyes when tired, but this time much more severe. I gave up meeting the dentist Mr. Kim, instead, had to see another Mr. Kim, the oculist—my regular eye doctor—. The oculist said it was from tiredness, I needed full sleep, and it would take time to clear the blood stain away. I have sleeping problem—a certain kind of partial insomnia—, you know, and many books to read. What a yoke!

Yesterday is a harsh day with one eye patched through the day. I could not help patching over the bloody eye because it looked so horrible. Couldn’t see things in a right perspective, and everything looked obscure with one eye blinded! Suffering headache and nausea all day long, utterly exhausted in the evening! I decided to wear dark sunglasses till my regular eyes turn back. I ordered new sunglasses adjusting to my eyes. It costs.

Brit…

Time, Condition, Night-talks

2009-09-20T20:03:00.005+09:00

Time dizzily flies fast, which I feel all like a moment, but ‘yesterday’ seems like a long time ago. How odd! It is an irony, isn’t it? I just feel like hovering about eternity, the swift and momentary eternity. As going, might be the doomsday suddenly before me? Who knows the future? I’m afraid of the future. Can everyday-struggles call the better and happier future? Well, I don’t know.

Since this semester began, my physical condition has been down below. Strength seems to be getting weaker. Besides, I could not sleep well even though every night I almost lost consciousness from early in the evening. It is not insomnia, but between 70% asleep and 30% awake all through the night, I think. I don’t sleep like a log and often wake at midnight or after. Moreover, my chronic pains from disorder of nervous system are sometimes too severe, so hard to stand it. Since I usually smile even when feel blue or aches, however, nobody knows what is behind my smile.

When sitting up at night, I write e-mails now and then. I know my words of the night easily become baloney, which means the words are better not uttering, because I usually speak too bare in spite of myself at night. Too bare to keep myself armed with cold reason or necessary hypocrisy. Nights let me enjoy the time to contemplate myself and others, further on many things for which I couldn’t spare spaces in my mind, but sometimes make me unnecessarily veracious. My words from the unique feeling of the night hurt myself as well.

At night, writing or speaking alone is not bad, but talking to others may be dangerous. In writing to others I tried to keep the middle of the road, but unstable night-talks would destroy my vital vanity which has defended my pride, because nights robbed me of self-control of self-restraint. I often regret my night-talks, nevertheless, would make them again. Why? Do I feel lonely?

Brit…

Playing with Probability

2009-09-04T00:17:00.007+09:00

Longing for P-

Crossing my mind,
Crossing on the road,
Crossing the played,
Missing, not bad.

I wished to see him, but we always crossed on the way. It's my fault because I know his schedule. In other words, I wish to see him knowing he is not there. Crossing is a play of my mind expecting for 'probability'.

Brit...

The First Native Speaking Teacher of Mine

2009-08-29T22:00:00.003+09:00

Four weeks’ conversation class was over yesterday. Time flied away so fast and our class had last meeting at a coffee shop with free talking. We had to say goodbye as soon as the awkward feeling among us had been removed. Both students and teacher were really sorry for farewell.

At first I terribly hesitated about attending the class because I was a graduate student of English department. I thought it was shameful as an English-majoring student for me to be a belated practiser of English conversation with other young students, even though I majored in literature not in language. It had been long hesitation for years. The fact is that I had no courage to confront with the reality as a stammering speaker of English. In fact I would have taken verbal English classes much earlier. I finally realised that avoiding practise was more shameful than being a delayed practiser and such shilly-shally attitude was merely my conceited pride or vanity. Then I decided to challenge and took my first conversation class in my life.

I really enjoyed the class and appreciated my instructor Mr. Hylton for his educational devotion. Mr. Hylton is a decent older American from LA, who is a teacher naturally and literally. I didn’t imagine I would meet such a good man. How lucky I am to have met him as my first native speaking teacher! I don’t deny that his first name, which reminded me of Scottish historical hero, influenced my first choice of his class. It proved to be an excellent choice in the end. I like him and he is the one whom I don’t want to say goodbye.

Brit…

Given-Words-Story-Making 3

2009-08-27T16:40:00.002+09:00

(Making a story with the given words)

make a revision of
give assistance to
have a preference for
have doubts about
give encouragement to
take into consideration
make a determination
be a reflection of
raise an objection about
give an authorization for / to
need to terminate
to transmit
to make a modification
to make an inquiry

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

“Conversation between Two Friends”

Hey, Jamie, I got a job at an academy in Korea. I will teach English for Korean students there. It is the first time for me to educate someone, you know. I’m so nervous that I have doubts about my competence for such a work. Nevertheless I made a determination of taking this opportunity. No challenge, no gain! You have experience to have taught in Korea, and I expect you something to advise me. Please don’t hesitate to give assistance to me!

Oh, it’s nice to hear that. Korea really deserves to be visited. By the way, you have a preference for China to Korea, don’t you?

Yes, I do, but my heart tells me “Proper opportunity is not always coming. It is easy to go China from Korea. This will serve as a stepping-stone for my future success in Asia.” I could not raise an objection about that.

I agree. There are numerous academies in Korea. It is a reflection of their enthusiasm about education. Koreans! In Korea, teachers were respected, and would be given an authorization for decision-making on the studying course of students in the past. Nowadays, teachers’ position is changing, so they are required to be good supporters, but my Korean friend said that their educational tradition itself was not changed much. It is really different from ours. While some of traditions are necessarily preserved to transmit to the descendant, some of them become conventional and not easily discarded. Every generation has its surplus convention which sometimes needs to be terminated. Koreans have unique educational tradition.

I thought students were just students and they were similar everywhere. Am I simple? Do I have to make a modification on my opinion?

For instance, Korean students are usually shilly-shally to make an inquiry. Many of them are shy for lack of confidence. In some cases they think that making inquiries are bold behaviour, and I guess such attitude is one of the remains of Confucian tradition. You had better take their culture into consideration. Whenever you make a revision of a student’s task, you constantly need to give encouragement to him/her.

Oh, I see. Thanks for comments! Anyway I’ll try to be a good teacher to the best of my ability.

Brit… (24th August, 2009)

Writing as a Reader

2009-08-27T16:37:00.002+09:00

Writing as a Reader on the Given Column
(The given column is by John Huer in The Korea Times, Saturday/Sunday, August 8-9, 2009.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Huer,

I read your column, “What Are the Ten Greatest Evils of Our Time?” Regarding the two evils you commented—2 and 4, i.e. Entertainment and Freedom—, let me articulate my impression.

Some issues you proposed evoke ambivalent perspectives both agreeable and sceptical. I wonder if it is because of your stance which sometimes seems radical, and sometimes conservative. It seems to me that a general issue you have discussed is prone to be specified, or narrowed into materiality/phenomenality. For example, the ‘Entertainment’ you remarked seems related only to TV shows operated by remote control. I’m afraid you specified one type of entertainment, in a sense typical one way. Apart from TV shows, there are many sorts of entertainment in the world, such as spectator sports.

I’ll restrict myself within your boundary. I generally agree that entertainment makes people stupid and slavish with juggling. It drives its audience to be thoughtlessly snobbish imitators. In a certain point of view, the dominant power often promotes entertainment over the dominated, because they don’t want their power to be challenged. Thoughtless people are easily cheated and controlled by despotic government. We could find one example in the 5th government in Korea, one of the viciously dictatorial governments, which had extraordinarily encouraged sports and media entertainments. They hated to be criticised as mass-murdering-citizen military government, but it was true, they took the power through the 5.18 Kwangju Massacre. Was it not so?

I’m sorry to say this that I think the freedom section in your column is somewhat confused. For instance, I hold, in a strict sense, the Americans in 1776 had fought for liberty, not for freedom. Their referring to it as liberty is definitely right, I think. Liberty and freedom are similar, but delicately different from each other, as we know. While liberty is closer to autonomy or independence, freedom more inclined to individuality and at times physicality—so to speak, one is able to act freely according to his/her own will—, even though the two often relate to the same meaning. I argue that the Americans gained liberty from the British, but plundered freedom and liberty from the aborigine simultaneously. That’s another story. Anyway, my understanding, the freedom you meant is approaching to self-indulgence or arbitrariness. If so, I agree it is quite evil.

From a point of view, we can say that the evils you selected are also the virtues as far as well-practised or controlled. When initiated in human history, they were all the highest values. Of course, it is difficult to maintain the middle-of-the-road, and moderation is the prime question in all spheres of society, from politics to individual lives.

Please excuse me if I appear rude! Maybe I didn’t fully understand your argument. I must say that I enjoyed reading your column. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Britannia (19th August, 2009)

Given-Words-Story-Making 2

2009-08-22T16:57:00.006+09:00

(Making a Story with the Given Words)

hypocrite / hypocritical,
anxious / anxiety,
revenge / revengeful,
dread / dreadful,
blunder,
fragile,
reject / rejected,
catastrophe,
recuperate,
assert / assertive,
sceptical,
modest / modesty,
impulse / impulsive,
commitment / committed,
frugal / stingy,
sophisticated / sophistication
---------------------------------------

“Moderate Sophistication of Jason Hatcher’s Story”

Jason Hatcher is a well–educated young man of rich family. He is modest and sophisticated. His family’s richness is hereditary in a certain sense, but it is his father’s frugality to have kept the wealth unimpaired. Naturally, father Hatcher did not spend money lavishly on his son, even though he loved his son very much. Mr. Hatcher thought that money was the last means to show his commitment to his son, and wanted Jason to know exactly how and on what to use money.

Raising a child in one’s own way does not always meet his/her expectations. Parents’ anxiety about their children occasionally drives themselves to discipline the children dreadfully for their misbehaviour. It would be one of the causes for which the parents’ love is often misunderstood by their children. The Hatchers could not be an exception. In early years, Jason was sceptical about his father’s attitude. Even Mr. Hatcher’s carefulness looked fragile in his son’s eyes.

When he was an adolescent, Jason was full-blooded and sometimes impulsive. At school, the boy was popular among the girls of his age and also a leader of the boys, because he was smart, handsome, and active. As the leader of his aged group, Jason seemed that he could go through fire and water for his group’s sake.

One day, a friend of Jason had been battered by naughty boys of a neighbouring school without any cause. Jason and his guys were furious, and their revengeful indignation spread to fighting in groups. The boys of the two schools were confronted with each other at a snack bar, so quarrels exploded into hand-to-hand struggles. Many boys were hurt and lots of implements of the bar were damaged. The fight was ended by the police. As for the bar manager, it was like a small catastrophe.

Leader Jason was helplessly imputed to the prime mover, so the policeman sneered at Jason, “You committed a terrible blunder!” Jason’s father was called by the police as well as by the school. Mr. Hatcher rejected to appeal for forgiving management for his son, however. He said to Jason, “You are responsible for your behaviour, and deserved punishment. Reflect yourself for a few days and do proper things to be needed. I cannot help you because I love you.” Thus Jason had to stay in the police cell three days more than other boys, after that, had to work at the bar--the fighting place-- after school, without pay or time limit, as a kind of payback.

The more Jason thought of the father’s reaction, the more he became distressed. The angry son spoke to his father in an assertive tone, “Dad, your love is hypocritical. The fact is that you are too stingy to be generous with your own son. You’re just a hypocrite. I don’t want to hear you anymore. I’ll become richer than you, and revenge your meanness.

As penitence of the commitment, Jason sincerely served at the bar. He learned the value of responsibility, prudence, modesty, perseverance, and labour, but it was not easy to recuperate the affection for his cold-hearted father. Six months later, the bar manager called Jason and told him, “You have worked so hard till now. I assert you are a good boy. Now you don’t have to serve here anymore.” Then he paid Jason for six months’ work. In the end Jason found that his father already compensated the bar for the loss and arranged all this experience for him, his loving child. Jason realized that his father’s love was so deep that he could not imagine its depth.

Now Jason is grown up, frugal but generous like his father, and makes a wholesome gentleman.

Brit… (13th August, 2009)

Story-Making with a Question

2009-08-20T00:29:00.003+09:00

Making a Story with the Given Question: 18 August

Question: Last Saturday I saw you were eating dinner at the Paradise Hotel with a handsome man, and he looked like a celebrity, a movie star. Is that right? Give me details!

Explaining Answer:

Oh, have you seen us that night? You were at The Paradise Hotel, too? So small world that I cannot do bad things! It is natural people mistook him as another man. He really resembled someone. When I first met him, I was shocked that I felt my blood go to the feet. I thought my favourite Sean Bean stood before me. I think you know Sean Bean, the British actor who played Boromir in The Lord of Rings. I’ve liked him since early ‘90s when he performed Oliver Mellors in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Mellors is one of my loving characters in novels. Sean Bean also played Count Vronsky in Anna Karenina, and then I was utterly knockd out by him. In fact I didn’t like Vronsky reading Tolstoy’s novel, but Sean’s Vronsky was absolutely special. I love even bad guys in movies as far as Sean Bean plays them.

Anyway the Saturday’s man was definitely not Sean Bean, as you know. He said to me that many people used to mistake him as Sean, sometimes he enjoyed that, but he usually did not like the confusion much. He is actually my cousin’s brother-in-law and his name is Nicholas Owen. My cousin sister married to an American called Andrew Owen, and lives in Colorado. Nicholas is her husband’s older brother. I have never met Andrew, but regarding the brother, he must be handsome, too.

A month ago my cousin phoned me her brother-in-law would visit in Korea on business, and asked me to spare one day for his company. She said that after his business was done he wanted to break a day off for looking around Busan along the coast. That’s why last Saturday I took him to Taejongdae and Jagalchi-market, and drove for him to Haeundae via Gwanganli. We enjoyed being at exciting beaches that day, and almost exhausted in that evening.

In the restaurant, Nick and I talked much with each other. We found that we greatly shared common disposition. We both liked sea and sea food, both were fine swimmers, and both loved books and music. He knew well about literature and philosophy. Oh, I was deeply impressed with him. I’ve never met a man like him. What can I say, he was the very type of man whom I’d like to fall in love with. Ha~! Of course that’s impossible because I’m a married woman, you know. Don’t worry about me! We became good friends anyhow. The important thing was not that he was gorgeous, but that we could understand each other completely. It was wonderful to know him. I must thank my cousin.

That night he was my guest anyway, so I was about to pay for dinner since, but he already paid for it in my ignorance. By the way, did we make a fair match?

Brit... (18th August, 2009)

The Art of Eating Spaghetti

2009-08-19T23:54:00.019+09:00

Writing Assignment 1 on 11th August:
About the Art of Eating Spaghetti (or Noodles)

“Story 1”

To eat spaghetti or noodles, people use chopsticks or forks. Chopsticks have been traditionally used in Asian countries such as Korea, China, and Japan. The chopsticks culture is generalised in those countries, and children usually begin to practise using chopsticks in early childhood. It has been routinely one of their home disciplines, a kind of surviving skill. It is generally believed that moving hands—especially fingers— freely is related with cerebral function. They say using chopsticks helps children to develop their coordinating faculties, so it is better using chopsticks than using forks. It would not be easy for little children to adapt themselves to chopsticks, but most of them eventually become well-trained.

These days many children as well as some adults feel uncomfortable eating spaghetti with chopsticks, however. This phenomenon has spread since Asians enjoyed Western food. In Korea, one would use chopsticks for noodles, and forks for spaghetti. Either using chopsticks or forks, to eat spaghetti or noodles, one has to observe the rules of etiquette. When one eats noodles, one must be careful not to slurp, and not to splatter sauce by letting noodles whirl around when sucking it into one’s mouth.

“Story 2”

Little Joe came to a restaurant with his family. It was a respectable Italian restaurant. He wanted pizza, but Mum and Dad ordered spaghetti. Little Joe had never eaten spaghetti till then, and thought, “What am I to do?” He looked at his sister apprehensively. Sarah, Joe’s older sister, liked spaghetti, but seemed to catch her brother’s concern, and whispered, “You’re getting to learn how to eat spaghetti. It is really tasty.”

The Italian server who was of commanding presence, smiled and winked at Joe, and said, “Please enjoy yourself with our special deliciousness, handsome little gentleman!” Little Joe blushed and tried to be imposing. He wanted to show himself as a true gentleman, and nodded, saying, “Thank you!”

Dad lifted his spaghetti up with the fork and sucked it into his mouth without noise. Little Joe admired him “Wow!” Mum exchanged a smile with Sarah, and said to Joe, “Look at your sister and do what she does!” Sarah forked her spaghetti and coiled it up and took it in her mouth. Little Joe did the same thing after his sister, but he often made the coiling big, so Joe’s mouth became covered with spaghetti sauce. Moreover, Little Joe could not manage the sipping sound effectively. Being a gentleman was not easy for Little Joe, especially when eating spaghetti.

Brit... (11th August, 2009)

Given-Words-Story-Making

2009-08-19T23:23:00.013+09:00

(Making a Story with the Given Words)

aggravate,

descendant,

diligent / diligency,

gourmei,

lenient / leniency,

merchandise,

monotonous / monotony / monotonously,

personal,

personnel,

procrastinate,

punctual,

tranquil / tranquility,

tedious,

trivia,

sophomore,

subtle

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

"A Personal Story"

I’ll tell you a personal story. I’m afraid it’s not proper to be open in front of academic personnel.

I don’t like monotonous works. They are definitely tedious and boring which usually need no thinking. Sometimes I feel my life goes on monotonously, with full of trivia, whenever which, I’d like to break its monotony. I don’t know what to do in many cases, however. Perhaps it’s because I’m considerably passive and timid. Now I realize life is not a gourmet’s item and it has a voracious appetite of time. I know procrastinating with languor/lethargy does not help me. Nevertheless I don’t want to be subversive or break the law.

I have a few cousin-brothers. One of them I liked most is two-years older than I. He was truly masculine and a type as punctual as a clock. Unfortunately he was implicated in a gangster business which is absolutely far from tranquility. It’s a kind of merchandising, but it seemed shady. He seemed to have been involved in that business since he was a university sophomore. It began from a part-time job.

My uncle, who’d been proud of being a descendant of noble blood, was very disappointed with his son. He was lenient and kind with children on the one hand, but a subtle and fragile man on the other. He wanted all his children to lead diligent and sincere lives, so he could hardly forgive his son even with leniency.

The relation between the father and son had been aggravated more and more. Naturally the situation worsened and their lives ruined. The heart-broken father committed suicide in the end, and the remorseful son chose a life of tranquil celibacy. He became a Buddhist monk.

Brit... (3rd August, 2009)

What can I. . .?

2009-08-16T19:56:00.008+09:00

Said to Gen., “It’s no use saying such a thing now. Too late. Nothing can be retrieved. No need to excuse or explain. That’s alright as it is. If you earnestly loved. . . please just let it be.” Am I hypocritical? Is it really OK? Is there no bitter feeling? Is there truly no reluctance to give up?

Needless to say, there has been regret. (He would do.) Couldn’t help despairing. (Might he do.) It was a Hell in a sense, almost death. (Said he did.) Must have been beyond the death, you know. Through all odds, I’m here now. Cannot go back, cannot repeat, and cannot be down below, deep in a hole or void.

Had we really loved? Did I? Did he? Whatever is said, it is absolutely yesterday. The more we try to take it back, the more we’ll be miserable. (Definitely it’ll be.) I Don’t want to humiliate myself anymore, you know. Now it’s none of my business. Not to put it on me! I can’t help it, can’t manage it, can’t stand it. Want to keep the last thing I have, pride or self-respect. I don’t mind being said selfish. Yes, totally selfish, rather cruel, I know. I’ll just be in my way.

Bye Gen.!

Brit...

Slump or Grogginess

2009-08-07T16:33:00.005+09:00

I’ve pondered over the cause of my emotional slump. The slump has been quite long since I began to fall into. It’s like a certain kind of psychological lethargy, definitely the cause was not simple, it’s complicated enough not to pick one or two thing as explanation. I’ve veiled it under the designed gaiety, however. That has worked somehow.

I ruminated myself again and again and hypnotised myself continually repeating “Don’t lose yourself, you can do it, try to live every best day, if you do with all your heart, nothing can make you down.” It didn’t help me so well, but I have only just managed my psychic grogginess now.

In fact I cannot stick to this gloominess anymore. Summer is passing (even though this year we are losing most of the season here in Busan) and autumn semester is coming. The new semester will be tough one to me. I’ll attend two seminars on drama, one of which is Theory of Modern British Drama—from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde—, and the other is Studies in Contemporary American Drama. I’ll have to read at least 21 works of 19 dramatists, present two term-papers and six short papers, and give two-and-more oral presentations. Drama is not my major, but there is no novel seminar I’ve missed in the curriculum of the semester. I think plunging myself into dramas will be good experience to me. Anyway I have to begin reading dramas sooner or later.

Furthermore, doing the things mentioned above, I have to make some preparations for my dissertation, the doctorial thesis. God bless me!

Brit…

Reading Graham Swift

2009-08-07T16:24:00.000+09:00

Last week I just read all the writings of Graham Swift under the slump. It is due to constantly self-nagging, “If you do nothing with forgetting yourself, it is like giving up the life. Do anything!” I had already read five works of Swift—Last Orders, Waterland, The Sweet-Shop Owner, Shuttlecock, and Ever After— before this year. This time I have taken the other five works, which are Out of This World, The Light of day, Tomorrow, Learning To Swim and Other Stories—selections of short stories—, and Making an Elephant, most recently Swift’s autobiographical writing. All of Swift’s books are doubtlessly attractive, yet I love most this essayistic Making an Elephant. On reading the book I realised why I couldn’t help falling in love with Graham. I found he shared so much thought/perspective and emotion with me. That’s why I understood him with no difficulty. Saying understanding is not enough, it’s a sort of uniting, absolute accordance with him. I love him ever more.

Brit…

Manito

2009-07-17T00:56:00.006+09:00

I think of Graham Swift on reading his books. Each protagonist, who is absolutely his fragment, separately tells me his/her gnawing in author’s own voice with different tones. Sometimes it seems comfortable to understand them, their inside, i.e. pieces of the writer’s mind. It seems easy now and then. But understandable I hold that, it might be an illusion or a fantasy. Perhaps I am not able to pierce him faithfully, but only deceived by my childlike perception. Childish or childlike, I appreciate him of making me so. In fact, arriving at my age, it is not easy to be truly innocent. It’s almost impossible, I know. Nevertheless, a certain naïve feeling—I cannot articulate it— comes over me and so I can dream remote dreams already forgotten. Something has been pulling out from my unconscious oblivion. Something from the rooted amnesia, whatever it was, is, and will be, I am possessed by it in the shadow of the dream. Absolutely snatched myself away! Even though dangerous, I seriously don’t want to take my mind back.

As for Graham, I love all of his writings. He deeply delves into the inside of human being, especially of a man. I can feel he doesn't lie. I cannot but love this English man. He is “[Englischer]menschliches, Allzu[Englischer]menschliches!” :) I often regard him as real. Of course he is alive and a real man, but not in my world here. I say real, with which mean that he’s my man in my real life. You think it’s ridiculous or I’m out of my mind. Yes, I’m out for him. I want to be out of my mind and step into his if I can share my time with him, whose bottom of inside I am eager to deeply dig into. I’m afraid I would scratch him with my dull spade, but even so I’ll go on. Someday I’d meet him, I want to, even though there can be no coming-and-going free-talking because of my poor English skill. It’d be no matter if I utter nothing. The words inside can overwhelm the words outside. He’ll able to know it definitely as I can.

Brit…

At the death-bed of democracy in South Korea

2009-07-09T21:33:00.018+09:00

Since yesterday the police/University staff line has barricaded all gates of our university with policemen/staffs and police/school buses to block the memorial concert for our late-ex-President Roh. It is about to be held at our university tomorrow, Roh's 49th day of memorial. But it seems not to be possible. They tried to blockade the performance absolutely and initially, so to speak “원천봉쇄”. Jesus!

I’m very ashamed of our university-president’s decision, which doesn’t permit the memorial concert in the campus with irrational reasons. The president Kim In-se of PNU, whose attitude resembles that of 2MB’s gangster government, is definitely obsequious toward that government. The 2MB ‘band’ always reacts obstinately violent and persistently stupid toward people of different opinions from them. They regard themselves as omnipotent. They don’t know what the communication is, who the lords of the country are, how to manage the state, and even what the democracy is.

President Kim’s reaction to the students’ movement is just like that of 2MB government. I already knew that he had no philosophical mind, but I didn’t imagine his brainless cowardice as low as this level. Desperate condition for students not to express their passion freely! It reminds me of the period of 3rd-5th Republic. It seems to be the ghostlike revival of the grey campus of our generation and seniors, who had fought and shed blood for the liberal democracy of our country. I cannot but lament all day long for the death of democracy watching the campus. I'm so upset and furious with our reality.

God save our country and people! Damn the devilish ‘low capitalist’ government!

Brit…

Note)
2MB refers to the President 'Lee Myung-bak' of South Korea. Because his family name 'Lee' is homonymous with number 2 in Korean. And 2MB also refers to two mega-bites, a computer terminology. Many Koreans use the term to satirise the President’s stupidity, which means his brain—i.e. cerebral capacity is just as much as 2 mega-bites only. I think it is more than deserves, it is absolutely down under even at maximum.

PS)
It seems to hold out a little hope of the concert. Later news from the Student Council reported the equipment for the music performance was carried into the campus after the hostile opposition between students/citizens and the police/U.staff. (Added on 9 july at 23:05)

PS.2)
In the end, they carried it through. The concert was finally held last night in spite of all odds and a great success yet though the police line guarded the main gate of the university. Long live the Democracy! Long Live Passion! Long Live Justice! (Added on 11 July at 11:48)

New accounts on the Internet

2009-07-07T00:16:00.006+09:00

Recently I created new accounts on three Internet sites. They are Twitter, Facebook, and here Blogger.com. I decided to manage these homepages in English. Twitter and Facebook, which I joined due to the British Museum, may function as the gate for the world. I am globalizing myself. :)

It would be fantastic someday I come across my old pen-pals such as Jill, Bernd, Terri, Joseph and others. Jill is a British, Bernd a German, Terri an American, Joseph a Chinese of Hong Kong and the others South-African and Japanese. I daren’t expect anything about reunion, but especially with Jill, I really want to meet her, I miss her. Her full name is Gillian Barry, but she didn’t like it and wanted me to call her Jill. And she called me Keuty. She and I had been close friends for almost ten years. Her family once lived in Singapore, and then lived in West Midlands. Her brother, whose name is Stuart, who was already over 6 feet 2 inches tall, but still growing that time, Jill said.

This blog ‘In Time’ is my English homepage as you see. I manage it with trivia in life and light thoughts. Consequently everything I write may be my thoughts under the circumstances. I’ve already operated two Korean blogs on Naver and Egloos since 2003. Both are like the mirror image of each other with almost same contents. If you read one, don't need to visit the other. They are full of deeper thoughts as my own, suitable to my nick ‘SaengGakJaengEe(i.e. the Thoughtful)’, which nick a friend of mine chose for me. But this ‘In Time’ is totally different from the existing two blogs. This is literally for trivia because my English skill is not so good that I cannot handle deeper feelings or thoughts in English.

Brit…

Popped-Corn/Corn-Peong

2009-07-04T23:54:00.006+09:00

Ate up a huge pack of [korean] popped-corn—not popcorn— by myself. The Korean popped corn is called 뻥튀기(Peongtwigi), which is popped without butter or oil. In short, it is absolutely oil-free except intrinsic corn oil in itself. I had eaten too much corn-peong unconsciously with reading all day long, and finally the pack revealed its bottom. Wondering what amount did I eat? Well, the size of the pack is equivalent to a 10-litered bucket (or more?). What a greed! Full of corns and lack of digestibility, my stomach is now in battle. Besides, the dried food like peong requires much water, and I’ll have to drink more water, I think. Wonder if I can fall into sleep easily, though now I am bloody sleepy. Tomorrow morning I may be swollen, especially face, hands and feet.:(

Brit...

A Seminar about the “Localization”

2009-07-03T22:27:00.007+09:00

Attended the “Localization” seminar—i.e. a special lecture— presented by Mr. Jaehoon Noh. He is the president of TRADOS, which is a matchless [Computer/Internet] Localization Industry in Korea. The lecture, which was managed by the BK enterprise of our department, was mainly about the commercial translation. The TRADOS is said to be the unique company in the field. I am not interested in the commercial translation because it is too mechanical, but its technology seems fantastic. Along with the internet, various computer technologies including communication skills among languages have been rapidly developed, spread and popularized. Their progressive speed makes me—one of the Analogue Generation— dizzy. I have used computers over 10 years, yet I don’t escape from the level as computer illiterate.

I think that the excessive automation threatens the innocent humanism. Perhaps it is some naïve attitude, but I’m afraid that people may be driven to become automata. “Gain one, lose the other.” That’s life. Both the fortune and the misfortune are like the other side of a coin. Convenient emails take away people’s patience, you know. So does a mobile phone! We are all becoming the slaves of convenience and comfortableness. Am I oversensitive?

I didn’t join the dinner after the seminar. Not in the mood to! Not because of the seminar, but due to a certain kind of psychic reason, though I cannot explain with words. In fact, it’s not ‘can’t’, but ‘don’t want to’. The problem is on me.:( Anyway I feel sorry to Professor Lee, because the dinner was also a farewell party for him. He’ll have a sabbatical year and leave for the USA next week. He has been good to me.

Brit…

Alea iacta est.

2009-07-02T18:10:00.016+09:00

I handed in a paper about Byron to a literary society. The dead line is 10 July, but I cannot stick it on any more because the more I look, the messier it reveals to me. My head is almost exploding. And I have many other things to do. I must read over 28 volumes of books this summer, 13 volumes of which are written in English. English always makes me hard variously, let alone speaking/listening.

The paper had been previously submitted last winter. I was absolutely smashed then. One of three judging panel harshly criticised the paper, saying that my argument was too inconsistent to be published. Besides, my paper—also the abstract in English— was considerably long, and so s/he said that there’s no need to be such long. Unlike the rest, his/her every criticism was so severe to me as if got a personal feeling of antipathy for me that I could not avoid being hurt by his/her expressions. Has personal feeling for me? Of course it can't be! :)

In fact I presented three papers to three separate literary societies in the first half of this year, two of which except the retreated have been published this spring. Frankly speaking, the panel was merciless to me, but I deserved to be. The retreated paper was not good also in my own judgement. My impatience drove me to hurry in making results. I had to elaborate my point of argument more precisely, but I didn’t do that. Furthermore Byron—i.e. poetry— is not my major!! Mine is British [modern] fiction, especially Joseph Conrad and Graham Swift. :)

After the spring semester I revised the handed-back paper in my own way with consulting the panel’s advice. I don’t know I did my best revising it, but at least I tried to. I asked Paul to examine the [English] abstract if it made sense in English. He said that it was well written and was an interesting read even though he didn't know anything about Byron. ‘Byron’ is not his forte, too. Anyway I thank God for having Paul as my friend.

I had thought over and over that I would re-present it to the same society, and I decided to do so. Just now I clicked on my email to them with the paper-file attached. The dice is cast. There's nothing more I can do. The only thing I can do with the paper is to wait for their reply during the summer.

Brit…

Exhausted forenoon

2009-07-01T16:46:00.005+09:00

Today I dropped in the PNU General Hospital twice. My doctor is now abroad for an international medical conference. The delegate doctor made some errors on my regular prescription by miscalculating dates. On finding out the mistakes, I had to change direction on the way home in the tube. I spent whole forenoon on the road and on the hospital lobby. It didn’t cause my anger, but I’m exhausted myself repeatedly coming and going. Moreover, on the tube an unrestrained doggy irritated me, which someone took in the train. What a senseless person to take an animal on the public transportation and unleash it! Besides me, many people were annoyed by it. What is worse, I have an allergy for a certain kind of hairs. The allergy becomes worse in some cases, especially when I’m not in good condition. I was almost breathless.

Brit...

Anyway just opened...

2009-07-01T06:54:00.018+09:00

But I don't know how to start. It seems to be a natural need for studying on the international web-managing. I'm busy these days, however. In fact I have no time to play with internet. I must be busy further on, at least over 2 years. And what on earth have I made this for? Ridiculous! Wish this will be not a hot potato to me!

Brit...