Permanence is one of those concepts that has rarely had much meaning to me. Perhaps it is the sceptic in me who has never quite believed in "that is all," that anyone can really "live happily forever after." Some may chalk it up to paranoia or a lack of trust, to the questioning nature of the human mind that only believes what it can see with its eyes and feel with its fingers. I know that everything is temporary; life itself is seeped in transience for those of us who refuse to subscribe to blind belief in…whatever lies ahead. However, sometimes, some moments, I just want to remain frozen, stationary, a statue to prove to future generations of equally confused people, that I was here and that whatever remains of me, either in memory or material possessions, is highly subject to human bias as well as a special sort of dissolution; an entropy that time lays waste on both the mind and the body.
I've been re-reading Dante's Divine Comedy these last few days. My thoughts are highly influenced by whatever words fall beneath my eyes and so, I guess it's safe to say that it's a good thing I've been writing this year, as my thoughts are very temporary and hard to grasp, slippery as they are.
Fascinating as the book is, one of the best aspects, in my opinion, is how the story is layered, and how seamlessly everything seems to pass, as transitory as one moment is from the next. As Virgil's shade guides Alligeri through Limbo (home of the unenlightened but 'good' heathens and un-baptized infants) all the way to the city of Dis (where traitors are condemned) in the seventh circle, they come across many desolate spirits.
The chapter I find most impacting perhaps is the one dealing with the fate of suicides and those who have harmed themselves; These people lose their independence and become part of an organic whole—a tree in the forest that can still feel human pain and think human thoughts; a tree with a soul that can still recall its earthly life, yet neither move nor assert its individuality. It's ironic really, that in death, these souls become growing, 'live' plants that are even able to produce fruit. Perhaps being forced to 'live' (whether they're human or not), is the consequence of their actions as decided by a life-bestowing universe.
The fruit the suicide-trees produce is the food of harpies (foul, shrieking bird-women) who dwell in Hell. The harpies pluck the succulent fruit from off the trees' branches and devour them. This consumption causes the trees great ongoing physical agony which they can never escape, so bountiful are their boughs. The point is, because these people gave themselves up in life and took control of something that wasn't theirs to control, their punishment is to have no resistance in the afterlife, rooted in the earth as they are. This of course, is the worst imaginable sentence for those who, so to speak, seize the reins on their lives and bodies; eternal torment of the soul when the intention was to attain peace and escape.
I can't say I felt entirely well after reading this chapter, yet another series of thoughts on the consumption of life and its relentless suffering. Like most 'moral' things, it just makes me feel extremely guilty and tired.
It scares me sometimes, to think back on some of the things I've done and how I've lived my life up until now. I look at other people randomly, like on the bus or subway, and wonder about them, these people with their lives, so seemingly different from mine, and I wonder if they look at me and are curious too.
One aspect I have been contemplating a lot lately is layers, not just those in Hell (and there are many), but in everything, both physical and psychological.
Last Sunday, we had our portraits done in the park by three different university-aged artists. Sitting in different spots, they all sketched and painted their subject at the same time, illustrating with their own perspectives (which depended on angle, lighting and the artists' respective milieus) the same person. It was awkward, having not only three artists constantly looking up at my face, but a whole crowd of people with cameras, checking out the foreign girl who had to hold still and be taken in, chin up.
For the artist sitting to my left, the side view of my nose and an exaggeratedly long neck proved to be the prominent features of my face. He made my eyes green (the artists were very liberal with their color choices) with long, spidery eye-lashes under slightly bagged, weary-looking eyes.
To the artist sitting to my right, who essentially drew everyone the same way—in a naïve sort of style on black construction paper, I came out looking like a "little people" doll, those old Fisher Price toys with hollow cylindrical bodies, no limbs and round heads with rosy cheeks, semi-triangle for a nose and big, round eyes, three eye-lashes apiece.
The artist in the middle, who got a straight view of my face, as I stared at the top of his head (my focal-point to avoid eye-contact), first sketched my face in a flesh-toned pencil crayon, and then painted in water colors, creating a beautiful layered effect. My hair in this picture is blue, garnished with the purple flower that John had put in my hair, sticking out of the pig-tail bun just enough. My eyes and the shadows around them are done in yellow and green, suggesting both warmth and ice all at once. My mouth, looks like my actual mouth, really; small, with subdued pink, chapped lips. I look very young. It's a beautiful portrait, though I don't think that it's quite what I look like, irregardless of the odd choice of color.
In any case, the experience made me think of how we are viewed by others on a daily basis, and even more, how we view ourselves. Catching the odd reflection of oneself in a subway window and looking momentarily hideous doesn't necessarily mean a person will look that way all day. Equally, trying to hold a perfect expression will only make one's lips quiver and face hurt. Humans, I've come to realize, are highly dynamic in appearance. Capturing life with a camera proves this. It's amazing to me, looking at old pictures of myself, that a few years ago I might have passed for an entirely different person. I wonder if that person is gone only to me, or if somewhere (about the eyes, maybe?) others can make her out.
Do our collected experiences simply add up, layer upon layer, upon our skins? Are we like tableaux raseau (blank slates) on which the years spackle on exhaustion and bitterness and anxiety and wisdom? Are our sins and weakness perceivable to those who know how to both see and look at the same time, those who can pierce the protective-layer-plastic-wrap and get beneath the surface?
My thoughts, as they often do, return to literature, Dorian Grey's portrait, specifically, and how with each atrocity he committed in life, another layer was added to his picture, making it more monstrous to reflect his inner nature. His outer-self, his public face, that is, remained beautiful, unmarred by time or cruelty. I guess it suggests that we can never really know a person, that we can't assume that a person's character and personality are truthful rather than illusionary.
I sometimes feel a lot of weight, like a sort of pressure on my torso, a constricted sort of breathing; an incubus on my chest. At these moments, I am at my worst. I cannot socialize or speak or focus. I want for nothing but to be left alone and to let the pressure collapse my frame until I'm nothing but an imploded pile of dust on my bedroom floor. But, forced to be out in the world as I generally am, I find myself avoiding a lot of eyes, not being able to find my voice, and walking quickly, twisting my body this way and that to avoid contact, a knocked shoulder, a brushed arm. But, it is very hard to remain inconspicuous here.
Yesterday, in the grocery store, a teenage girl who I've never seen before grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go, forcing me to walk with her and her mother down the soft-drink aisle. Finally, her mother noticed my rather alarmed expression and bade her to let me go. Confused, I muttered "bye," and waved slowly to her, walking in the other direction as the girl whined to her mother, who was pulling her along by the arm, about me being "pretty."
I feel as though I am under constant observation here. People are curious; they check out my shopping basket as I shop; their children come up and stare me down, asking me all sorts of questions, waiting for their parents to congratulate them on their English talent. I've been told by many Koreans that I am very attractive, but perhaps I am made somewhat exotic here, as a foreigner in a rather uni-cultural country. In truth, I feel repulsive many days, to the point of embarrassment. I cannot raise my chin for fear it will be noticed, this albatross, if you can call it that, this weight around my neck that flaps dead and flesh-heavy on my chest, 'thump' with each step I take. Looking in the mirror, I am sometimes demoralized, not because I always feel particularly ugly, but because I come off so one-dimensionally, so flat. And all my steps are like a dull clatter on the pavement, blunt objects smacking together; concrete lips.
When people tell me otherwise, insisting that I am wrong, I am slightly amused that they see joy and light when I spend the majority of my time shuffling around like so much dark matter. Perhaps like the artists in Hongik's
I do have my good moments too, of course. But the warm, headiness of Sunday afternoons is impossible to keep with me throughout the week, as I sit in an isolated teacher's room under flickering florescent lighting, listening to my boss slam doors and clump around with that brisk, aggressive walk of his that makes me angry and uptight; the walk so unlike mine, a near silent, plodding, sneaker-clad tip-toe, making every effort to pass unnoticed, weightless. His walk, which I find nearly audacious, is one that that reminds me of certain family members early in the morning, while I tried to get five more minutes of sleep huddled in my quilt, slamming around cupboard doors and not caring if the wooden steps creaked.
I cringe every time the sliding door of his office opens and 'clump, clump, clump,' he approaches to talk to me or give me negative feedback—apparently I wasn't smiling quite enough for a parent while I was typing my redundant progress reports all this week. Not that this has any reflection on my manner as a teacher in the classroom (my students like me and all seem to have lots of fun, not to mention the fact that they've improved a hell of a lot since I've taken over), but whatever…The boss (Won Jahn Nim) also asked me today whether I had any problems with the job or in my personal life (ha!). I told him that I needed a vacation, maybe in June (he said July would be better), and that I didn't see a point in sitting around bored and doing absolutely nothing for four hours (rather than go home) during the exam period when virtually all my middle school students are absent because they're stressed-out, tired, and busy studying. It shouldn't last too much longer, the exam period, that is, but regardless, I still feel very tired and like I need a bit of time to myself, away from the watching eye of Koreans who discuss me in Han-guk when I'm sitting right in the same room. I guess they assume I can't understand them at all (when in fact, I've picked up on quite a few words and have at least a base vocabulary at this point).
I realize that Koreans view me a certain way and that their opinions are probably based mostly on their expectations; what they know about the few North Americans (with that Anglo-Saxon, mostly Caucasian background) they've encountered before, as well as their biases. I don't condemn them for it or anything, but it just frustrates me that I am viewed here, at
But, because I know that few things are ever really permanent, especially people, with all their frailty and psychosis and vacillation, piled layer upon layer upon their already relatively shaky frames (no foundation necessary), I do have some hope that things won't always be so hard, so sad, so consuming and mind-numbing.
Last Saturday, I got a tattoo to remind me of this. The words 'entropy and optimism' slightly below my navel have become the latest layer upon my flesh. While it's true that I am not a "navel-gazer," if things ever do go that way for me and I become meditative, at least I'll have a built-in mantra, or at the very least, some awesome body graffiti with which to occupy my mind.
Right now, it's kind of itchy and scabby, but I'm sure it will look alright. The important thing to me is that it is permanent, a self-induced scar (via the tattoo artist and 150,000 won) which will remain with me no matter how I might shape-shift, shrink or grow. And like the words I am so influenced by in books, perhaps these words too, as I contemplate my body, day after day, will be able to permeate my mind, or at least the outer-most layer. And maybe they'll resonate in a way that is neither skewed nor shadowed, but visible to everyone in exactly the same way, the variable eliminated.
And until I die and my flesh rots, stripping away layer after layer, like some sort of study shot in still life, it will be legible (a temporary sort of permanence, I guess), not only as a reminder of reality and the fate of those unfortunate enough to be a part of it, but as a chronicle of a time in my life when layers and dimensions really mattered to me, when being clear and legible not only to myself, but to those important to me, was seeped in significance.
Every day and every action and every conversation we have culminates to our current lives. With all the decisions and interacting and talking we make and do, it's inevitable that even the sturdiest of status quos is without a foundation. We are in a constant state of flux, reaching our ends and blossoming all at once.
Right now, despite some very bad days, I think life has never been so full. I cannot prevent hours from passing, words from being said, or eyes from closing shut. But, I've come to understand that I can create a sort of layered static-forever in my dreams, in my writing, and in my soul.
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