On the Commencement day

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

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

Brit…
(Written on 18 February)

Challenge or Vanity

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

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

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

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

Brit…

Messy

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

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

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

Brit…

Le Temps Avec Ma Solitude

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

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

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

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

Brit….

Saying Good-by to the Vanishing-away

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brit…

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

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

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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

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

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.

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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?!

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…