listen to my heart

2010-05-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

Close my eyes

Plug my ears

to isolate myself from the world

to ignore what other people say
.
..
...
....
.....
......

then again, i start looking for people to find that comfort

the warm comfort that i am addicted to

since the first time i opened my eyes,

cried outloud to inform people and the world about my existence.

the song

2010-03-15T00:56:00.000-07:00

warmth arising around my eyes,

electrostimulation occuring around my nose,

and my heart, pounding and pounding.

it's that song that makes my eyes teary, my nose bitter, and my heart achy.

2010-03-15T00:50:00.001-07:00

We all love to walk to a different direction from where we are supposed to walk to. Don't we?

Morning Blues

2009-08-16T00:13:00.001-07:00

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I squeeze my body into the rectangular car,

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I can’t even breathe anymore,
I have no where to escape.

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I roll over my eyes,
to the right,
to the left,
to the top,
to the bottom,

And still,
I have no where to runaway.

…………….

No one speaks,
No one moves,
Not even the rectangular car that
has been absorbing itself into the labyrinth,
the endless labyrinth,

And I am thinking to myself,

surrounded by complete strangers,
smelling a white boy’s greasy hair that stuck in front of my face,
feeling a Hispanic woman staring at me frowning
hearing a Black boy’s loud music screaming out of his I-pod,
looking at an Asian woman’s New York Times,
across the shoulder of an European guy who has been napping and snoring,
reading the back page of the paper as she’s reading the front page, what is going on in this world,

What am I doing here?

Abandoning all the sweet comforts in my home,
studying other’s language,
forgetting my language,
appreciating other’s culture,
ignoring my culture,

And still,

Feeling insecure, inferior and alone,
and struggling, struggling and struggling.

What am I doing here?
Why am I here?
Why does my heart ache?

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,

The rectangular car starts to march into the labyrinth again

And I,
I, too, march into the labyrinth,
disguising myself as if I am one of them,
pretending nothing happened in my mind,
and again, hoping that I will become successful
here,
one day,

and starting my day again,

As if I am one of them.

Blank

2009-08-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

I am writing this to record memories that would churn my heart. Although I am very well aware that the memories would ache my heart terribly like someone thrusts my skin with a needle, I want to remember them, vividly. I never want to forget them and I never ever want to forget him.

Everyone fantasizes of a dangerous and clandestine affair at least once in his or her life time. I, too, never wanted to be an exception. But I never expected this affair to linger in my heart as a stone. Like anybody else, I wanted to be a protagonist of a story, a woman who is loved by a man, not a woman who has to carry an emotional burden that tears down and eats up her fragile heart.

There was a little girl who jumped into the sea on a very hot day of early June without hearing her mother shouting at her, “Be careful! It’s dangerous!” When the waves rolled all of a sudden, her body became paralyzed and numbed with pain; she could not buffer the wave anymore and, eventually, drowned.

I was that little girl who was infatuated by a dangerous temptation that appeared to me suddenly. Now, I am floating around him and being engulfed quickly into a labyrinth. Like a paralyzed little girl in the ocean whose respiration has ceased, I cannot do anything but think of him, even when I close my eyes and plug my ears.

And i think about him even when he lays down next to me.

*********** Skip ****************

Have I made a terrible decision that night?

"Do You Think of Me When We Are Not Together?"

2009-08-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

"Do you think of me when we are not together..."

She carefully typed. Her eyes, fixed at the computer screen. Her body, glued in the chair.

Delete.

She clicked. Then again, she typed carefully letter by letter: ‘D. o. y. o. u. t. h. i. n. k. o. f. m. e….’ her lips slightly moved as she typed the letters. Her eyes, staring at the screen too long, emanated the crimson light. Her fingers almost became numb except her pointer finger on her right hand that kept clicking Delete button.

It was already four o’clock in the morning. She was still in her tight black dress that was enveloped in her beige trench coat. Mascara that she carefully applied eight hours ago kept stamping her thick and long black eye lashes on her dark circle areas as she blinked her big blue eyes. Her lips have become dry. It was all the more clearly shown through the faded red lipstick that she carefully applied eight hours ago on her lips.

She turned on her computer as soon as she arrived home from dinner with Y, hoping she still saved the email that S had sent a year ago for a profile piece that she was working on.

**** skip ****

J kept clicking “next” button anxiously, searching her desk drawls simultaneously, flipping her old notebooks hoping she wrote down his phone number somewhere in her note by any chance.

‘Shit, why did I even delete his number…’ she murmured; her hands were busy looking through her notes and clicking next button in her laptop.

“He really liked you.”
“He really liked you.”

She kept repeating what Y had told her a few hours ago. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She repeated and repeated the same sentence over and over it now embedded in her mind completely that she felt afraid that she might not be able to erase it.

“He really liked you,” said Y.
“Then, why didn’t he never tell me about it?”

she asked, quickly finishing up a glass of Bordeaux that was freshly poured by Y a minute ago. One glass quickly became two glasses and then four and five, quicker and quicker as time went by. The heavy silence that was carrying her surprise existed in a distance between her and Y.

She carefully and slightly started to move her lips again, her lips that were pressed heavily by the sudden uneasiness that was caused by the surprise.

Untitled.

2009-08-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Chapter1.

September 29, 2007.

“Don’t you think we are too different?” said J, her almond shaped eyes, her big brown eyes fixed at the window, her swollen eyes absorbing the morning sunlight.

“What?” asked, or more precisely shouted K, his husky voice over the phone could have not been huskier, but J could feel K wasn’t caring about what she said as much as he wanted to sound like he was.

“We have nothing in common. Look, I live for sweets, but you hate sweets. You once said you feel nauseous when looking at people eating cakes. And you don’t even drink coffee, and I’m what..a heavy coffee drinker!” J shouted back, for she was, once again, irritated by K’s nonchalance.

“What are you trying to say?” asked K not trying to laugh, which he usually does when he hears J pronouncing L like R, F like P because of her Korea accent. “I don’t know,” hesitated K. “I know we are different. In fact, we are very different. Look, you’re a Korean and I’m an American and sometimes we don’t even understand what we say. But we’ve come this far. The fact that we are too different makes us get along very very well,” said K.

J was quite for a while and hung up the phone without saying much; K stared at his phone thinking – ‘I would never be able to understand this girl ……’

September 30, 2007.

Sunday morning sunshine always exhilarates me; today, even more than usual. As soon as J opened her eyes, she lifted the window up, popped her head out of the window as far as she could and felt the cool autumn breeze.

‘When did it become fall?’

J breezed into a kitchen and made a cup of coffee for herself. She poured the water into the cattle, turned on the stove, and let the water boil. She poured a couple tea spoons of Morning Buzz coffee that she recently purchased at a local coffee shop and as usual, placed the red mug that K once gave her after he learned that J's brain couldn’t function without a cup of morning coffee. K was smart. He wanted J to think of him from the moment she opened her eyes.

As the water boils, emitting the hot steam, she marched into her room and played Nat King Cole’s “I’m in the Mood for Love.” As the small one bed room apartment that was packed with stuff that will define J’s two-year-old life in America was quickly engulfed into the smell of percolating coffee, she went back to the kitchen.

J sipped a cup of coffee and carried herself to the window again. The crisp and clean air gently hugged her face as the leaves rustled and danced and irresistibly fell down and kissed the ground. The fresh scents of Downy softener that the wind was delivering not only purify the smell of the night but washed all the sticky steaming memories of the sticky steaming hot summer.

J couldn’t leave there. The longer she stayed there, the more clearly she felt the change of the season. Fall came so imperceptibly that it made her feel as if she was living unconsciously. J has lived so obliviously that she almost forgot the heart-rending memories of the summer.

The guy, K, who J loved so much, disappeared just like she had assumed he would.

February 16, 2007.

“You have to go to my mentor’s birthday party tonight!” said C, who took English class together with J in their freshmen year and became best friends afterward, almost crying on the phone begging J to be her company.

“Come on, he goes to medical school. What kind of a party do you think nerds will have? It will totally be boring,” said J cuddling her blanket and enveloping her lazy body and soul into it.

“Hey, you’d better come up with a more reasonable excuse. You’ve been isolating yourself enough. You really need to get over that stupid everlasting homesick. Come on! It’s going to be fun!” shouted C.

A couple of hours later, there she was, in front of his door, looking only at him, not anybody else, but K.

‘My heart beat.
My heart beat.

Fast,

and faster,

fastER and FASTER,

loud,

and louder,

loudER and LOUDER.’

J walked into the room. The door has been shut down completely.

And she knew, she knew that she could never go back.

You, in my dream.

2009-01-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

Again, he appeared in my dream last night.

it's been days since i've begun to see his eyes staring at me secretly, hear his voice calling my name softly and feel his hand touching my hand nervously in my dream.

Just like Sigmund Freud believed, i do consider dreams as human's psychological mechanisms for revealing hidden urges.

Hence,I've been having a diffucult time figuring out what i have been unconsciously thinking and wanting lately since i ,quite candidly to myself, believed that my longing for him had faded away long long time ago.

I do not know.

I do not know if it's my mere desire for love or if it's my love
for him that had not faded away but indeed,has been growing even bigger and deeper from the deepest of my heart for a long time.

*the picture, my bookshelf and me, on one starry night.

winter, morning, winter morning breeze

2009-01-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

I felt a winter morning breeze, sending the smell of percolating coffee and toast from the cafe across the street.

The cold wind hit my face so severely that i felt tears in my
eyes. i was amazed that i was actually being able to even
sense the feeling.

I fastened my steps on my way home.

Then i stopped.

I stopped in the middle of the street just to look at this car that had lonely look to it.

And i forgot that it was cold, i forgot that my body was paralyzed by the weather, and i forgot that my eyes were pouring the water out.

And my heart lurched.

I don't know if it was the weather that poked my heart or it was the car that ached my heart.

But my heart lurched whole day till the sun finally went down.

시간.

2009-01-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

도대체 시간이란 우리에게 무엇을 의미하는 것일까

Lately, i've been trapped by my desire of defining time.
What does time mean to us?

that old lady in her red dress and her pearl necklace

2008-09-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

The strong sunshine of one September afternoon still makes her frown; today, she looks so sullen that everybody who sees her knows what she has been thinking: “It’s September, why is it still so hot?”

That frown, however, does not suit her loveliness at all. The old woman who always wears a red dress that is as seductive as Marlin Monroe’s red lips, whose pearl necklace always shines so brightly just like that of CoCo Chanel’s, and who always sits down at the same place at the same time. That lady in her red dress is always there, the outside of Café El Beit on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, the mecca for young hipsters.

As always, the front window is widely open at Café El Beit. The sunshine brightens up the café as the white wall reflects the strong sunlight of the afternoon, and the café looks so white like a piece of a paper, a very clean paper before someone starts to write. Perhaps, that is the reason why the old lady sits down there. There is another café right next to Café El Beit that is painted like a red apple. However, the old lady does not sit down at a bench in front of the red café; she sits down in front of the bright and white Café El Beit. She must know that the shiny milky white airy cafe behind the bench will highlight her red dress.

She is there by herself, but she is not alone. All hipsters are there, sitting next to, behind, and in front of her with the close quarters. She emanates a distinctive aura around herself on the street where hipsters show off their freedom, indifference and the sameness. Her red dress, her classic red dress shines saliently like a pearl in a mud among the same ragged hipsters on Bedford Avenue.

The deafeningly loud yet enjoyable music has been coming out from the café; the anonymous voice of an indie rock star is as melancholy as those groups of guys, Bob Dylan look alikes, who have passed the old lady with their guitars on their backs. Their skinny, pale and tattooed bodies, looking like the white keys of a piano that someone doodled on, their huge black guitar bags hanging on their backs unsteadily, and their legs as thin as chopsticks that squeeze into tight black skinny jeans; it looks like someone is playing the chopstick march, so thoroughly, as they walk further and further. The old lady in her red dress is still sitting down there at the end of the bench, and seems more interested in the old red brick apartment across the street than the Bob Dylan look alike musicians.

Several groups of girls have passed by the bench, strutting and twittering at Bedford Avenue, the hub of the hipsters. The girls look so flamboyant and stylish yet all the same as if they come straight out from the runway catwalk. They are not shy to show their bony legs like cranes. They wear the scary short skirts or tight shorts and the scary high heels and boots. In their stick like arms that are fret by tattoos, they all hold the pink plastic bags from the Beacon’s closet, the used and vintage clothing store in Williamsburg. The glossy and eccentric looking girls pass by the old lady in her red dress who is still sitting down there and still distinguishing among the stylish hipster crowds. The old lady stands out among the modern hip girls just like the old brick house across the street attract much more than the modernized white cafe.

Suddenly the bench turns into the chimney as baristas have come out to smoke cigarettes. Their fragile fingers on their skinny, pale and tattooed hands hold cigarettes firmly. They stretch their long and thin legs, wrapped up by their tight black skinny jeans. Who can possibly think they are baristas when they are too dressed up for playing with espresso machines, and pose on the bench like models in GQ magazine. People pass by the street and they keep checking on too-cool-to be baristas. Meanwhile, baristas constantly inhale and exhale smoke and camouflage themselves into the hazy air so that people will not even recognize their presence. The old lady in her red dress is still sitting down there, next to the baristas, keeps staring at the old red brick apartment across the street. The old lady and baristas do not even glare at each other, not even once.

As baristas get back to their work and as the smoke has vanished into the air, people inside of the café, sitting at the bar right in front of the window, adumbrate. They do not look at people nor do they put their heads up; their eyes are stuck in their MacBooks. They do not listen to people nor do they listen to the loud music at the café; their ears are stuck in their IPods. Their skinny fingers constantly hit the keyboards, their skinny legs keep beat on the floor, and their skinny, pale, and tattooed bodies are bound to the chairs just like the old lady in the her red dress is bound in the end of the bench in front of them.

They- all hip to the death hipsters and the old lady in her red dress- are all there in and outside of the café, bound to the chairs but the old lady in her red dress is the only one that stands out. Her clean skin dazzles unlike the hipsters’ scratched and tattooed skins just like they decorated all the walls on the street on Bedford Avenue. Her red dress and her pearl necklace on her curvy body emit the endless beauty unlike the all the same looking tight jeans on hipsters’ bony bodies. Her presence in front of the sophisticatedly decorated café resembles the presence of the corny red brick apartments across the sophisticated, modern looking milky white café.