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DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Ecology of the absurd, South Korea

Dad’s Sea

!Epic Tomorrows

Jeong Min-na’s diary

At times, corpses are washed ashore. Still damp young crabs, and the dried bones of squid. Too white, too small… even if you magnify the traces of life, they crumble into a handful of wind sounds…

The great fish of the vast sea vanish after waging war, while the small fish caught in the net lie crushed beneath. When the net spreads wide, a few large fish pierce through the storm and slip away, while only the young crabs—like tender shoots just breaking through the spring soil—are lifted up.

The bodies of young crabs, discarded into the sea, float gently to the surface and drift toward the sandy shore. Beside Dad’s sea, on the sand, a mound of corpses of empty hands quietly gathers.

Reflections, South Korea

The door called the organization

!Epic Tomorrows

By Kim Ja-heun

Human relationships are like that. When people gather, whether they like it or not, they must open their mouths to speak. You have to reveal words that could have remained hidden, and you must listen to words that would have been irrelevant had they gone unheard. Furthermore, in any gathering of an organization, words inevitably pour out—this way and that. As the mass of the organization grows, the volume of words swells, branching out in every direction.

Even on a single agenda, conflict arises because thoughts differ. It is not a matter of “This is my thought, what is yours?” but rather an attempt to inject one’s own beliefs into others: “My thought is right, so why is yours like that?” It would be ideal if conflicting opinions reached a consensus, but when they don’t, the situation escalates into raised voices and flushed faces. When the clash is over petty interests rather than a grand cause, a sense of self-reproach washes over me as I watch, listen, and participate: Good heavens, why do I even have to be here? It feels like a homework assignment where the distinction between right and wrong will never reach a resolution.

Yet, I also realize that the opinions each person puts forward can be interpreted as a desire to do things well. If a few say one thing but the majority says another, it could be that the majority is right. When opinions are expressed, synthesized, and deduced to create something new, the resulting conclusion might return as a different kind of vitality.

Late at night, returning home through the pouring rain in Gwanghwamun, a junior colleague who lives in the same direction and I got into an extension of the meeting’s debate on the subway. My junior argued that the activities of the Self-Discipline Committee are ultimately political and that we must, therefore, increase our influence through numbers. To be honest, I couldn’t actively agree. My conviction is that a writer’s political expansion should be expressed through their writing. As political assertions clashed with my professional philosophy, the junior—who seemed to be from “Venus”—exclaimed, “Ah, senior, you’re being frustrating again!” I, coming from “Mars,” grew weary of the same problems repeating and closed my tired eyes, saying, “Hey, let’s just stop now.”

***

On a day like today, I feel an immense fatigue from belonging to an organization. Is it regret, or perhaps a realization? I think to myself that if I hadn’t joined this organization in the first place, I wouldn’t have to deal with this bitter energy on my way home so late. I realize once again that I am, by nature, ill-suited for the confines of an organized framework.

Closing my eyes, I sink into thought. I wonder, as my junior poet said, how a senior writer who is respected should behave. And is that junior, who says such things, behaving correctly as a senior respected by their own juniors? While pondering what human relationships are all about… I eventually lean toward the positive: Yes, this is all just everyone trying to do their best!

They say that as you get older, you should keep your mouth closed and your wallet open. Since I am not in a position to gallantly open my wallet, I suppose I should act my age by simply keeping my mouth firmly shut.

Many feminisms, South Korea

My First Word: “Fuck”

!Epic Tomorrows

By Kim Woo-nam’s dream

The moment I was born, I drew my legs together. It wasn’t something I had learned. The body knows before the mind does—cold air, the sense of someone peering in, about to give me a name.
My grandmother tried to look between my legs. She had longed for a grandson to carry on the family line.
“Oh… it’s a girl.”
Her words struck the ceiling and fell back onto my body. “Fuck.” I tightened my legs even more. Before I had language, my body was already a sentence.
Even when they tried to change my diaper, I refused to open. My grandmother grew anxious; her fingertips trembled. At last, she clasped her hands together.
“I was wrong… please forgive me… please let the child open her legs.”
The words I was wrong changed the air in the room. Something unseen settled, like dust falling still. Slowly, I loosened my legs—not forced apart, but like a flower opening late.
I already knew how to fold my body to protect myself, and how to endure until someone said they were sorry.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, England

Building Silent Haven: Introduction & Chapter One

!Epic Tomorrows

INTRODUCTION

I come from a background where feelings and needs were not discussed, leaving me somewhat in the dark as to who I was and what I needed in life. I did know quite clearly from an early age that art was a major source of joy and comfort and this was my saving grace. In adulthood I was unconfident and unsure about my choices but assumed that if I worked hard I could become a well known artist. I used to have visions of living in an exclusive apartment in New York and having shows in major galleries. Finding that I had major obstacles to this route, (I hated being out there and doing publicity, or talking about money for my freelance art commissions, for example) I lived frugally and just made art. Over the years the pressure built up, my choices of environment were very limited and this made me ill. I had no idea I had inner cravings for a natural way of life let alone how to achieve it. Eventually, the dam burst and the river flowed out freely but not in the way I expected. Looking back, the journey that I went on was so much more in tune with who I am and what my needs are. This journey was much more nourishing than I could ever wish for. In a labour of love, the idol that took shape came to be known as Silent Haven. 

CHAPTER ONE

In 1963, when I was five, my parents, brother and I moved from the home I was born in, in Yorkshire, to Leicester. The house was newly built and there were no other houses surrounding it; it was surrounded by open fields and felt spacious. That didn’t last. Houses were being built around us. My fondest memories were the first few days as the electricity and gas hadn’t been connected yet. It had a significant impact on me, and I remembered this when my partner and I started building the cabin at Silent Haven. There was no time to get the furniture in place before dark, so we all slept on mattresses on the floor in the lounge. My mom made food on a little camping gas stove, and we burned candles. There was a fireplace, and we lit a fire. I loved it. It was atmospheric; we were in it together, camping, surviving, basic and connected in this marvellous adventure. 

That was one of the best nights I ever had in that house. Then this chaotic but casual and relaxed atmosphere began to disappear. The electricity and gas were turned on so the cooking was done in its proper place in the kitchen, with food being eaten at the table. My spirits sank when the beautiful warm and exciting hub of the house got filled up with an ugly gas fire and I don’t think they ever recovered. The place just wasn’t the same after that and it felt like neither were the relationships. After that first night it was back to the frosty barrier of my brilliant, but controlling and frightening mother. I thought my upbringing was normal until years later when my school friend Claire said my mother ‘ruled me with a rod of iron’. My dad provided relief by cracking silly jokes and making me laugh, but anything emotional was immediately swept under the carpet.

The house sat in a lovely woodland garden. I loved the feeling of the trees surrounding and protecting us on two sides and how beautiful they were but we were on the corner plot, and it was otherwise very open. As the other houses were being built I retreated in doors more and more as I was painfully shy. My parents were about the only people in the neighbourhood who wanted to keep their trees; everyone else must have thought they were a nuisance, because they were getting cut down. I only realised after doing a session of eco-therapy at university, how disconnected I had been from the earth —this was until I bought Silent Haven, this land that quenched a long period of dehydration. 

After the electricity-free night in my new childhood home, I asked for a paraffin lamp as my bedside lamp. Stepping back into my inner child’s shoes, I feel I was responsible enough to have one. Of course, the answer was no. The compromise was a fake paraffin lamp, with a fixed key I could pretend to turn to raise the light level and a removable bowl. I loved that lamp nevertheless.

***

My childhood lamp

***

My parents were very creative and resourceful, and this is the thread for my way of life. I decided to become an artist at the age of 12. Fast forward to 1977, at the age of 18 I spent a year doing an Art Foundation Course at Leicester Polytechnic. It was situated in a beautiful old school. My dad would take me early before anyone else got there so I had time to adjust my hair and my make-up. The course consisted of all kinds of art: life drawing, sculpture, oil painting, illustration, photography and textiles. I loved it and wanted a degree in all these subjects but I had to choose one subject. I chose Graphic Design, I think because that was the most likely to make money. My grandparents were from a poor mining background and that was still in my system.

***

Metamorphosis, 1977

***

I left home in 1978 at aged 19 and went to St Martin’s School of Art in London and lived in Ralph West Hall of Residence for the first year, just beside Battersea Park. I loved the communal living. Although I had art as a meditation, I was on a destructive path of depression, drinking, smoking and experimenting with different types of drugs. I had been brought up in a household where, although I had many physical privileges, which I was grateful for, my mother had been in control of my life and on moving to London, I suddenly had complete freedom yet didn’t know who I was. I was trying to make sense of my world but was vulnerable and without boundaries. I was also extremely sensitive to noise and I didn’t realise this. Certain noises deeply triggered me, but at that time I didn’t know what they were. The drugs and alcohol numbed the fear. 

By Jules Smith

Genderwild

Queer vulture

!Epic Tomorrows

Somewhere in the Southwest of the Fragmented States, our 4 by 4 broke down. We scratched around in the desert dirt, looking for Roman coins. But every coin we thought we found, turned out to be a Coca-Cola bottle top, printed as a Roman coin. Coke knew their time was nearly up; they wanted their remains to be rediscovered as greatness.

It was a hot day. Not bleak as it should have been, but orange, fiery, with a sense of adventure. The adventure came from the sky, a genderwild vulture which I knew to be me, wearing frilly skirts, leggings, talons, wings, and barbs on long threads shooting out from its head, like a cat o’ nine tails, but made of softer material, like a spider`s web, with tiny soft spheres along the lengths of the threads, like knots. It somersaulted in the air, neither male nor female, it was clearly both joyous and dangerous, but without a clear head.

The genderwild vulture was a sign. A sign for my wife, who appeared next to me in the desert. She said This is for you, at which the vulture took me through a void in the desert to a completely different world. From unconsciousness I descended down into a system of deep caves, thrilled. Finally, amongst a procession of others, I was led into a cavern, where our hosts sung a choral piece, the purpose of which was to remind us to hang up our coats. Someone mentioned Jane Eyre, which I have never read. At this point, the dream dissolved…I wonder what clues Jane could have for the genderwild?