I am interrupting the smooth feed of informative and quirky posts about my Buddhist temple stay to interject with a post that is more accurately reflective of my current state of mind. It is odd, but I am finding I like writing this sort of non-fiction blog thing. And even though I have no clue who (if anyone, other than my Mom) actually reads this, I like the idea that the things I'm writing (and in often case feeling) are just sort of there for anyone (or no one) to seek out, and imbibe, should they be willing. I guess it's kind of exhibitionist, but maybe thats just part of what being a "real" writer is. (And a real writer I most definitely am not, not yet that is).
In life we all ride waves (as anyone familiar with Virginia Woolf knows), hitting peaks and troughs as they come along, and sooner or later all waves break, giving way to the currents beneath, sliding down only to once again rise.
I am riding now on the breaking of the wave.
This induces in me the desire for isolation, a heaviness, and an internal dialog that unflappably reflects on the world and its greater significance in relation to my life, in relation to itself, in relation to the books I am always stuffing my head with (because each occupies it's own snug little corner of my mind once consumed). I can't help it when this type of mood takes over me. The world and I merge, the thin membrane that separates me from it breaks, and all things, all associations, slide in and out with a sort of ease that both terrifies and enthralls me. I'm a woman of heavy emotion, so for those of you who find this depiction of my existence dramatic I make no apologies (or rather this is as close as I'll come to one). I guess I'm just sort of tired of sugar coating my reality, life is intense, anyone pretending other wise is living a blunted (and I dare say somewhat cowardly) experience.
I spent today alone.
I am lucky, in that the friends I have found here are pure gold, and I had a number of invitations to spend time with them today, but the thought of being in the company of anyone else was loathsome to me. I couldn't do it. Some part of me was itching and scratching and had to be left to itself. Sometimes this is just the way of things. And so it was, and so it was, and so it was.
I spent today alone, and reflecting.
I woke up this morning and, to quote Bjork, "The day felt broken". So I asked myself what I could do to un-break this day. A voice in me rose up, and told me to do whatever I wanted.
What a novel concept.
So I did.
As it turns out I wanted coffee and rye toast (thats right I found REAL RYE BREAD in Korea, glorious gloriousness I am elated). I also wanted to clean up my apartment a bit, so I did just that. I often sit down and journal in the morning, but I didn't want to this morning, so (for once) without guilt, I didn't. I asked myself, "Well what do you want to do?" As it turns out I wanted to go back to the Pusan film festival, alone that is.
So I did.
Looked up train times, ran out of my house (literally I was running down the street) hailed a cab that took me to the train station, ran into the train station, got there about 10 seconds before the train was leaving, ran to the train, was the last person on, rode to Pusan. Got off the train, found a film. Bought a ticket. Went to a coffee shop. Got an iced mocha latte and wrote in my journal because finally, I wanted to. Reflected on the irony of feeling incredibly conspicuous in this foreign land, and simultaneously sort of invisible b/c though I can be easily seen there is something about me that is so far from being understood in this place where language flows around me like water as I sit dry, protected by my bubble of incomprehension. Reflected on my day (much as I'm doing now).
Then it was time to go see my movie. It was a weird ass movie, I'll say that much. I believe the English translation of the title was, "The Faithful Wife". It was one of the only movies that still had tickets available, so I said, what the Hell, and went to see it.
The film was made in the seventies, but the audio track had been lost. Recently it had been recovered, and so here the film was today. It was set in rural Korea, and I think it was supposed to be the year 1900 or so. It was about this woman named Ah Hua, who was a little bit of a weirdo, and everyone would mock her and tell her she would never find a husband. Her character at first reminded me a bit of Bjork's character from Dancer in the Dark, but as the film progressed the character's clearly diverged.
It was shot in this super grainy black and white film, and was more or less about the sexual endeavors of a one Ah Hua. Initially she has a crush on this old guy named Lu Hang, but Lu is old, and rebuffs her. She more or less follows him into the forest and sort of throws herself at him, until he more or less "rapes" her, which is to say has sex with her while she really feebly tells him not to. It was one of those, "she was asking for it" rapes, which was really weird to see depicted. Post rape, though she feigns anger with him, we see her, in later scenes, fantasizing about being Lu Hang's wife.
This of course does not happen. Rather her father, who is a bit of a drunk--to the chagrin of her mother--but who Ah Hua always defends to her mother (foreshadowing!), betrothes her to a local restaurant owners gambling son. She's pretty bummed, and watches her dreams of being married to old man Lu Hang slip away via a few fantasy sequences.
So she marries the gambler. Works like a dog day and night for his family's restaurant, but even after a month of marriage he won't bang her, he's too busy gambling all day and night you see. So naturally, she becomes horny and angry, and gets really desperate. She really wants to have a child and keeps repeating over and over that, "Soon they will have a happy life together."
We in the audience know this to be false.
Her husband really doesn't want to bang her, and when she gets all crazy needy about it decides to hit her instead to get the point across. In spite of the gamblin', the beatin', and the no bonin' Ah Hua (the faithful wife that she is) defends him to all who seek to malign him. There is only one subversive female character in this film, and that is Ah Hua's sister in law. Sister in law tells Ah Hua to leave her fool husband, and run away with her. Sister in law has a boyfriend that she kisses behind the chicken shed, of course he jilts her for another woman, which is a clear sign that being a kiss-slut doesn't pay off. Though neither does being a faithful wife it seems.
Ah Hua is appalled by the idea of running away. She is certain that soon they will, "Live happy days."
So she curls her hair, because men like that, right? And she really needs to have a baby. Then she finds her husband, in their bedroom with another woman, flips out on him and hits them both, then runs to hide in a closet.
He finds her in the closet, and we're all afraid. She apologizes, says everything is her fault, and asks him to forgive her, tells him that she curled her hair b/c men like that. He leans towards her, for what we the audience, and she, Ah Hua, assume is a big ole' smack, but instead he grasps her in his arms and FINALLY makes love to her.
She. Is. ECSTATIC.
8000 shots of her over joyed face, screaming out in the greatest joy that nothing matters so long as he is faithful to her.
This seems ironic considering she just pulled him out of bed with another woman, but we overlook Ah Hua's contradictions b/c she's such a starry eyed idealist that we almost hope that things will be OK for her. (I had the sincere feeling me and the audience were of one mind about this thing, hence my use of "we".)
OK! So things are looking up. Ah and her husband are boning, her husband won a crap ton of money and has sworn off gambling, and not only that but has given her the crap ton of money to hide, on pain of her life--he tells her even if he beats her to death not to give it to him (cough, foreshadowing, cough, cough).
Guess what happens?
Everything goes to shit, Ah keeps nagging at him not to gamble, and get's the smack-down from her man as a thank you present, he gambles, loses all their money, and then his friend, who has been lusting after Ah, tells him that she's been cheating on him (this is not true). Her husband, blinded with the rage of his financial loss, and the hypocritical fury of believed betrayal, goes ape-shit and beats her to death. But then this local crazy guy, who has had a thing for Ah throughout the movie, goes and kills her husband and with a rake no less. Ouch.
The film ends in a sort of dream like montage with Ah and Lu Hang being reunited, but Ah is chastely refusing him, running away from him in a state of non-recognition. She implores Lu to tell Lu (b/c she doesn't realize she's talking to him) that Ah Hua is dead.
Shot of her prancing off into the distance, shot of Lu Hang crying, shot of her prancing again.
Fin.
Wtf?
I try to remember these two things when I feel the most annoyed, or when life feels the most devoid of significance: all things have meaning, and happen for good reason.
This was a weird old movie about the dominance of the patriarchy in Korea, and the negative effects of being a woman who tries to accept her role with docility and subservience. Our character, in an un-christian-like manner, does not get rewarded for her hard work, her faithfulness, her optimism or her sense of duty, but rather is punished for those things. Her sheep-like adherence, and blindly optimistic illusory assertions, in spite of great evidence otherwise, that, "Soon they will live happy days" are continually bucked by the realities of the powerful negative aspects that can, and in this case do, comprise human beings.
This movie seemed to the advocate the subversion of preconceived cultural gender roles (but also to show it ain't all roses there either), and also to condemn blind adherence to duty and delusion. It also seemed to be a real smack in the face to all those women in the past who lived lives probably not that different from Ah Hua's, and arguably at the time, a necessary one.
Interesting that this movie was made during the 70's. I don't know much about Korea in the seventies, other than that it was in a sort of modernization upheaval. Maybe a film like this is indicative of the modernizing trend. This questioning of the patriarchy's dominant role, questioning of gender roles, questioning of what really is important in life, and whether or not the things we have been told to fixate on (marriage, children etc etc) can in fact bring us happiness. Because really, can they?
Maybe for some people (clearly not for Ah Hua) but for me, I wonder.
Because in spite of being a seemingly independent young woman I have for a very long time been, as my friend Krissy once put it, "Relationship girl." I remember the cool shock that trickled over me in the few moments after she said that, and the immediate recognition that oh my God, she's right, it's true, I really am, "Relationship girl."
Voice1: Oh God, GROSS.
Voice2: I'm lonely, I don't feel loved.
Voice3: Jesus Christ.
Voice1: Spare me, he can't help anyone, least of all me.
Voice3: Buddah?
Voice1: Thou shalt not worship false idols.
Voice3: You just said you didn't believe in Christianity!
Voice1: That doesn't mean I'm not still heavily ingrained with the psychological conditioning of my Judeo-Christian youth.
Voice2: I want to be hugged.
Voices 1 and 3: SHUT UP!!
This is usually about the part when voice2 takes off for the first set of arms available flying on the wings of a similar delusion that I think Ah Hua was enraptured by, "Someone else can save me, if only I can make them love me right, someone else can save me I KNOW IT."
Weird schizo voices aside and the fragmentation of self that they imply for me, the real question now is: what does it all mean man?
Ha. Like I don't know.
Thats the funny thing about me though. As can be seen from that snapshot of my inner dialog there is always a sort of line of questioning going on that makes it so that I'm pretty logically aware of what things mean/imply for me. Thus making it so that the part of me that is absurdly reasonable, is always sort of at odds with the part of me that is absurdly not reasonable. I sometimes think of myself as residing in the place where reason and emotion collide, because there I am, trying to hear both warring parties out, reason is like, "Be strong and capable, be aware, move forward with wisdom and temperance and for the love of God, CREATE, CREATE, CREATE." But emotion is all sulky and whiny, always feeling unvalidated and ignored. She has a shovel and she digs a pit, then sits in it pouting. When reason gets tired of arguing its case, or better put, when the mediator in me gets tired of listening to all that whining and yelling, a sort of silence settles over me. But not a good kind. The silence of chaos. Out of this silence rises another sort of dialog. Enter stage left that tantalizing delusion that maybe I don't need to heal my inner rifts of self, after all they are so impossibly tiring. Delusion cajoles me, woos me with the prospect that maybe, just maybe if I go and find another person they will help to heal those rifts for me instead. Not that they can do the whole damned thing, oh surely not (after all reason is in some sense listening in to this persuasive speech as well) but maybe just help a teensy, tinsy bit, because being alone is soooo boring, and remember love? It wasn't all bad, was it? No of course not...not all bad...
Any how it seems like theres too much heavy construction going on in the dark inside here, it's too hard to maneuver, I can't find my way around. And the world outside of us can so easily be seen, it's not shrouded in the same kind of darkness as is the interior (it croons.) (To which reason says, ha! yeah right. But of course, emotion is swooning in remembrance.)
Delusion, and the illusion it spins is a veil. Me and my thin membrane to the world are often easily confused. I can't remember a relationship where I didn't do the same damn thing, to less dire consequences, as Ah Hua. I took my illusion, took my idea of who I wanted the other person to be (usually a compilation of the best and least realized aspects of myself), flung it outside of myself like a thin gauzy shroud and draped it over the object of my love (soon we will live happy days!) with near total disregard for who they really were, and what they were really capable of.
A love that is a seeing what you want to see, a disregarding, a taking.
Thats not love at all, it's just a twisted form of narcissism. And the truth about Narcissus is that he was a real self loather. Always looking outside instead of looking within.
Look at me, lovely little adherent to the patriarchy's confused notions of love as salvation, all bound up in irresponsibility for my intellectual/emotional/spiritual condition. To be aware and lazy is a crime. Lock me up like a criminal, because why the Hell won't I get off my ass and try to change things?
Relationship-wise (or rather failed attempt at-wise) September was a month where the universe laughed at me, and I really couldn't blame it. Scratch that. 2009 has been a year where the universe has laughed at me in regards to relationships, and really I can't blame it. Because really, I have had nothing but failure in the past when it comes to successfully having a relationship, you'd think I'd have taken the hint by now, but no! I've soldiered on in steady rapture of delusive thoughts and hopes for external salvation.
Because truly, when I turn my head back a sliver I can see the smoldering ashes of so many relationships laying in my wake, catastrophe's each of them, amalgams of shared illusions and disappointments gone terribly wrong. OK, thats a slight exaggeration, they weren't all horrible. Some, were frivolous and brief, and others just sort of depressing and draining, but I certainly can't say I haven't learned valuable things from all of them.
Amongst these there are some that still walk with me through my days, reminding me of them because they so alternately colored my world, and in spite of the 50 times my world has been through the hypothetical wash, their colors remain, faded, but never gone. Admittedly I don't want the colors to disappear, only to appear less noxious and mottled, only to appear more clearly to my eyes.
However, I think in order for this to occur I'm going to have to learn how to be alone for some time, and also a bit more forgiving of myself for my previous blunders (I tend to forget that I'm human just like everyone else, not a perfect being built for absolute analysis who should be outside of and above emotional frailty...). But not that sort of alone where my, "light is on," like a cabbie waiting to pick up the next rider, but rather, out of the game by choice. To actually spend some time genuinely devoid of a romantic entanglement of any kind, and to just sort of grin and bear it. To step away from the sense of relief and validation being with another person can temporarily provide so that I can perhaps learn to cultivate some of those feelings on my own.
Because I really don't want to end up like Ah Hua, crazed on the floor of a closet begging my philandering husband to love me, and my curled hair, and to please, please give me a baby.
After all whats my excuse for a fate like that? "Well you see, I'm little more than an uneducated early 20th century farm girl, I simply did not know better!"
No, most definitely not.
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