faint-hearted

How have you been?

I'm sitting here at our student publication's office in campus, listening between a random Youtube background music and a professor's voice at the classroom nearby. Our class was cancelled, so I spent my morning doing my backlogs for both academic and my scholarship. I'm still not in the mood to do my requirements.

For what seems like a rare occurrence (because I'm even more of a sleepyhead now), I slept less than four hours last night and spent my first hour of being 21 on a Discord call with my friends, where we went down a trip to memory lane, quietly laughing over our very cringe-y yet wholesome high school pictures. It felt so nice to be in that space, comforted by the thought of having them with me in a new year again. I am so thankful for them in ways that I sometimes don't realize immediately.

Another friend gifted three pairs of earrings she made herself. A friend is also planning to make baked sushi on Monday. Sometimes I feel so, so un-deserving of their kindness. Like it's an act I have to reciprocate one way or another in the future. I think I have not done much or offered that much in this world for me to be handed these little pockets of good. But I know I'm wrong, that even with just my friend's presence I am comforted and feel loved, and I know this may be the same way for them too. So I bite back the self-depreciation and feel filled with gratitude and a kind of joy that makes me want to savor it all, one by one, slowly.

So many things have happened while being 20. And I owe this vibrancy of my life, no matter how miniscule or mundane, to the people I am inspired by. My collectives, friends, siblings, my grandparents, the people in school, the masses. Thank you for showing me the bravery of choosing to step forward every single day. When I am overcome with fear and worry, your love for this world is not lost on me, and I cling to them in desperation and determination.

May the possibilities of tomorrow allow us to assert ourselves anew.

In two interviews, Ocean Vuong mentions his connection with writing his prose & poetry. It's like two sides of a river & there's a raft, he says non-verbatim. You're on the other side, & once you put out a work it's left on a raft, swimming away, far from you. I think about this metaphor. How it explains so much & so little. It prompts me to think of my own writing, my own drabbles, my own ramblings. How do I approach these pieces of words? Where do they go once I let go of it to the world? What do I feel after? I've contemplated about this for three days so far & with no surprise, I don't know.

At first what he said came to me as a disconnection. How a writer & his work is disconnected from one another. I've always thought my pieces were an extension of myself. That's perhaps why, even after days or weeks of writing something, I linger to it. I go back to it. I think of it so much, the weaknesses & flaws more often than the power. And I know that opinions & perspectives should be examined but shouldn't be taken as the absolute truth but I think what he said was more than that for me. Rather than an extension I'd more like to view it as something I don't wholly, completely own in a figurative sense. For to be so engrossed with your own piece of work the possibility of being obsessed with it inches taller, nearer to your perimeter. I don't want that. Instead I want to take what Ocean Vuong said. To learn how to let my writings go into the world & not become mine, but become what others think of it. It's not something I figuratively & emotionally own. Once I decide to put it on this raft & let it swim over to the other side, to the people, it becomes a photography of a moment in time, which is to say it is not an extension of me, but a still-life of something. Maybe that something is an emotion. A moment. A figment of fiction. A drive. An inspiration. But it's nothing more than that, I think. I don't need to glorify or linger over it. Once I let go, I permit myself to see my work become a part of the world with no hold of it. I believe it's hard. As someone who's sensitive to what I create I think it'll take tremendous courage & experience to truly & whole-heartedly take that insight in & apply it, both of which I lack. But to start now, to think & say to myself that I am letting go of this poem, I let it out as a picture to the world, means I am relieving & examining myself at the same time.

And I'll continue to ponder over this. To contemplate more about this with or without writing. How do I see my work in relation to the world? I think it's something all of us have thoughts on. Something I'll personally think about in this lifetime.

Please Look After Mom
by Shin Kyung-Sook



→ Genres: Contemporary Fiction
→ Rating: ♦♦♦.5
→ Date Finished: July 1, 2021

The book in three sentences
1. Often times we regret more than we relish in the memories we hold of people we love.
2. Love can be held in conversations over food, in the making of errands, in the cooking & the eating.
3. There is a feeling so bittersweet that could be filled with what if's & should have been's.

For discussion, based on the novel's Reading Group Guide
► I agree that the second-person narration is uncommon & not as used as other points of view in stories, but the effect it had on the long run of reading Please Look After Mom is effective in regards to enhancing the reader's bond with the characters, especially when it was leading up to the Mother's POV at the end. This preferred style of narrating, I think, also enforces the character's feelings about Mom towards us. I suspect the reason why Mom is the only character who tells her story in first person is to build a feeling of confrontation, creating a sort of duality: the characters (which you embody with the second-person view), & Mom herself. It is subtle but powerful.

► Chi-hon and her mother's relationship is a complex one, I think; a bond that stretches & folds itself throughout the story, with numerous layers laid atop of another, particularly that of their developmental stages from childhood towards adulthood. Opposing emotions like tension or resentment between them can be found in the smallest, realistic bits: during phone calls, in collisions of opinions & decisions, especially during Chi-hon's point of view. I presume that Chi-hon's words of "Maybe I'm being punished" said towards her brother is due to the truth that she felt regretful of her attitude towards her Mother. Not that this is the only reaction we get from her, but it says a lot about the love she has with her Mother. She is being "punished" of not showing love & appreciation towards Mom 'enough' that she feels like something is lacking now, being alone.

► My idea about this is the mother felt a sort of boundary becoming all the more present with Chi-hon then becoming a successful writer. It's like your daughter is still the same, of course, but not really. I know that her mother admires & loves her, but she's become conscious & cautious, thinking inadequate of herself, when in reality this is not the case. It means all the more to their mother-daughter relationship because Chi-hon's mother is illiterate.

► I know that life was hard back then, before my generation. My grandmother had to sell fishes along the streets & the boulevard to pay my mother's university tuition while simultaneously running a small store for everyday expenses. Even today, life is still hard. Our family has never gone three days of not asking what our next meal would be because we were always short on money. This is why I felt heartbroken when I read Chi-hon's mother's reply. "I am not in the kitchen because I like to; I am here because I have to." Something like that has layers deep within, rooted in one's standing. Today's generation is more open than before & so is our perception. I feel like it includes that.

► I think this bond of them is special, unlike those of the mother's other children because Hyong-chol is the eldest out of all of them. And there's a lot of things to keep in mind when you're the eldest. I know because I am one. You are your parent's first try. Trial. Expectations are laid before you, but also love. It's a knotted, tangled, rope between the two.

Top three quotes from the book
1. "The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong."
2. "To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you."
3. "A house is alive only when there are people living in it, brushing against it, staying in it."

Almond
by Won-pyung Sohn



→ Fiction
→ Genres: Literary Fiction
→ Rating: ♦♦♦♦
→ Date Finished: June 13, 2021

The book in three sentences
1. Being fearless does not equal being courageous.
2. Emotions make us who we are as a human.
3. Children can love, should be given love, and can have an abundance of love more than any of us can imagine.

Impressions
The content intrigued me from the start to finish. I love every chapter of it: the anticipation, the storytelling from Yunjae’s perspective, and the topic of alexithymia itself. The more I read the story, the more I felt sympathy for Yunjae and how people treated him differently, just like Gon—their obstacles, their interactions with other people, and how Yunjae was able to feel at the end made everything all the more worthwhile.

How I discovered it
I was looking for Korean novels to read and I stumbled upon this book. As an unspoken and mental rule, I guess, I frequently wouldn’t read a book’s synopsis nor background information and just get right into it, except for potentially triggering content. I also saw that a mutual of mine was reading this, though I did realize that after the first few chapters.

Who should read it?
I personally think this is for teenagers and adults who prefer short reads and who are interested in understanding the human mind.

How did the book change me?
It made me treasure my interactions with children, particularly with my younger siblings more. This debut novel by Won-pyung also captures how emotions and feelings are essential in beings like me and you, that vulnerability should not be something to shy away from, and that emotions like fear, happiness, sorrow, sadness and bliss are fundamental in our lives and how we interact with the world. I believe it also sets an impact on how we view children. It raises the question about our preconceived assumptions of young people, and that they will grow up as different & unique in the future. It was worthwhile to ponder over that. This book is definitely one of my favorite reads so far.

Top three quotes from the book
1. "Mom said everything was for my sake, calling it love. But to me, it seemed more like we were doing this out of her own desperation not to have a child that was different."
2. "People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him."
3. "Life takes on various flavors as it flows. I’ve decided to confront it. Confront whatever life throws at me, as I always have. And however much I can feel, nothing more, nothing less."