created 2025-03-16, & modified, =this.modified
Why I’m reading
I went to a Kafka exhibit in the city, and this short volume was part of the exhibition. It takes Kakfa’s letters to Milena as part of the dreamy narrative. I liked it, and have subsequently read more from Bae Suah.
There has to be a book within reach in any part of the house Hom Yun spends any considerable amount of time.
rel: Spliced Book - Alternative Reading Methods
As result he usually has from three to at most a dozen books to go at any one time, moving back and forth between them all. For example, reading Dante in the bathtub, a detective novel or history book in the bedroom; on the sofa one or two pages at a time of an encyclopedia of alchemy, which he opens at random, and on the subway a poetry collection of Whitman or Eliot.
He finds a copy of Letters to Milena, he cannot place the origin of. It follows him.
He writes his name and date on all books he owns for “recording the history of ownership of books in his possession while also stating ownership of them.
Always, the things that have fascinated and captivated him have tended to be those that shocked him.
One young woman is deep in thought, her faintly absent-minded stride carrying her so close to the cafe that her body almost touches the glass. she is of the usual height and body type, wearing green trousers and a very pale yellow blouse, and glasses. Hair falling down to her shoulders, pale white skin with no artificial extras - neither lashes, nails, chest padding, nor cosmetic contact lenses. Even her makeup is very light. In a word, she is ordinary. Ordinary not in the sense of average, but in the sense of a nonspecific majority which it would be meaningless to make a distinction. One cannot conclude that she is not beautiful: ordinary beauty, that degree of beauty possessed by most young women, is also possessed by her but she beautiful not because she a young woman but because she is ordinary.
If her ordinariness were to have a character, that character would be darkness. A shadowed darkness, like a camera lens covered with black cellophane. After a standing for a while gazing inside the cafe, she pushes open the door with an air of resolve, orders a cup of black coffee, and takes a seat a table not far from Hom Yun.
The woman is the secretary he saw earlier in the day, only he did not notice till they were at the Hiroshima Mon Amor screening.
“I can’t imagine” she repeats after a pause. “I really… can’t imagine.” “Life consists of the unimaginable” Hom Yun says and then hesitates a moment. Such an excessively conclusive manner of speaking seems unsuitable for a conversation with a young woman, but her expression does not change.
A beautiful disguise
So maybe she is beautiful. But were that to be the case, it would be because of an expression that is hidden from her. Precisely that expression which her face does not assume.
Time is its simplest sense was never something granted to me. My only time is night. Like now. Night that goes on for a long, long time. Never-ending night.
My only time is that which is invisible, opaque, faint. If I keep still, I gradually get dispersed into the night like smoke, thinning out till I disappear so completely no one would know I was ever there. With no one able to know anything about me, that’s how I will disappear.
If I stay here, my night never ends. If you would take me with you, I would be ecstatic.