Jung Young Moon - Vaseline Buddha

To add to the feeling of being lost and wandering in my own story, I recall memories of places I’ve been to and hover above them like a phantom. A memory from Paris comes to the phantom’s mind.

At the time, I was spending most of my time doing nothing in a hotel room from which the top of the Eiffel Tower, which could be seen from almost anywhere in downtown Paris, could be seen through a window. I’d wanted a room as high up as possible, but ended up getting a room on the middle floor. In that room, I had a quarrel, more violent than necessary, with the woman I was traveling with at the time, for a reason that’s unclear now, no, a reason that was unclear even then, a reason that seemed absurd when you thought about it for a moment, and much too absurd when you thought about it for a while — the reason, it seemed, could be found out if I tried to find it out, but I wanted to remain in ignorance if possible, and wanted to feign ignorance. We stayed cooped up in that room for two days in a poor state, utterly exhausted. I wanted to get out of there, but it seemed that I couldn’t find the right moment. I suggested that she wash herself, and she did so without a fuss. I made the suggestion because I had a sudden picture of her shampooing her hair, which was because I’d stepped out for a moment that day and bought a balsamic shampoo at a shop, and the reason why I bought the shampoo was because of its brand name, which I’ve now forgotten. She went to the bathroom to wash herself, and in the meantime, I thought it might be well to leave while she was in the shower shampooing her hair, and packed my things. And I opened the bathroom door and quietly watched her naked body in the shower for a moment, then left the hotel. That was the last I saw of her, and how I wanted to remember her, and how I do remember her, and so she remains a good memory for me.

Having checked into another hotel, I had to deal with a sense of betrayal about the woman who must be dealing with a sense of betrayal upon finding me gone while drying her hair after a shower, so I took out from my coat pocket the small Eiffel Tower replica she’d bought for me at a shop the day before, made up of pieces of wood glued together, and broke it into small pieces, put the pieces back in my pocket, and went outside with a heavy heart, and it happened to be raining, which made my heart even heavier, so I went to a nearby restaurant with an even heavier heart. At the restaurant I ordered something that couldn’t really be identified, which contained a lot of boiled carrots, which I hate, and I ate halfheartedly, absorbed in picking out the pieces of carrot without hiding my hostility toward boiled carrots, and arranged the pieces into the word “NO,” but I wasn’t sure what I was saying no to.

When I went out of the restaurant I was still hungry, but it seemed that I had no emotion left in me that should be dealt with after breaking up with a woman. Nevertheless, I threw away the Eiffel Tower replica in my pocket piece by piece here and there as I walked, and hoped that the woman I’d broken up with would live a difficult life that suited her.

I returned to the hotel after wandering around the streets and felt the surge of emotions that come over you when you’re alone in a room just after a breakup, and thought that for a while now, mostly when I was suddenly awake, I’d be feeling an extreme sorrow weighing down upon me, though it came from far away, and then the sorrow would gradually fade away, which seemed to be the sad thing about breakups. And I tried to think about a more real problem — for instance, I didn’t have very much money left, and had to think about the problem of getting home — but nothing seemed real. Outside, where it was raining, a fierce wind was blowing erratically, and it seemed that the sound of the wind knocking at the window was mocking and picking on every thought I had, my very being. I felt an urge to go home and sit on my sofa in the living room, caressing the fabric sofa with my hand to savor being home, and sit vacantly, feeling the texture of the sofa, as I do sometimes after returning from a trip.

Nevertheless, amid a vague feeling of loneliness and frustration, which gently washed over me, I became seized with a strange feeling, and made a somewhat strange resolve that I wouldn’t even go near the Eiffel Tower, which I couldn’t help but see out the window — the Eiffel Tower could be seen from there as well — as if by doing so I could keep myself from falling even deeper into the distress I was in. I didn’t have anything against the Eiffel Tower, a massive steel-frame structure. The Eiffel Tower was a public historical heritage that was much too famous, and it was difficult to have personal feelings about it, just as it was difficult to have personal feelings about the Egyptian sphinx. No, to be precise, you could have personal feelings about them somehow, in some way, it was quite possible — just as it was possible to have personal feelings about certain things in your house, for instance, a damaged chair with a broken leg, a chipped kitchen knife, or your sock, which you discovered had a hole in it — but it was difficult to express those feelings.

I came to have personal feelings about the Eiffel Tower because I could see the Eiffel Tower out the window the whole time we were quarreling, and I was as tired of seeing the Eiffel Tower as I was of having a long quarrel with her, and grew angrier at the Eiffel Tower than I was at her, and in the end, I was glaring at the Eiffel Tower like someone learning to express a certain kind of anger. It seemed that the Eiffel Tower out the window, soaring high into the sky, was urging me to come to a decision, as if to egg us on to fight, without helping me come to a decision, and it also seemed that everything in the city wanted us to break up. A storm was raging outside as if on cue, as if a huge animal were showing discomfort, a storm that was like a huge animal in itself. And at one point, a bright light that shone in through the window seemed to inflict a wound, almost, like a rock that broke a windowpane and came flying in.

And I hated everything about Paris, which had become the stage for our breakup, even though it wasn’t responsible for our breakup, and I felt that my resentment was justified. I wanted to leave Paris as soon as possible but couldn’t easily do so, perhaps because I thought that the woman I’d broken up with may still be somewhere in Paris.

And there was a certain banality in the Eiffel Tower, the symbol of Paris, which could be seen out the window, a banality that was in everything, which could be found if you looked for it, and I felt the same way about Paris when I left the hotel and wandered around downtown. But it wasn’t just because I was in a poor condition that everything looked poor in my eyes. Everything has its own inherent banality, and I saw such banality in Paris, a city of great cultural heritage. (Writing about a terrible trip I took, as I’m doing now, brings me a strange sort of pleasure. And I watch my pleased self as if I’m watching someone else, confirming once again that I’m a strange person who’s pleased by strange things, which pleases me.)

That night, taking a bath in my exhaustion, I looked at the Eiffel Tower, thinking for a moment about the nature of banality that could be found in an object itself, or in a consciousness interacting with an object, then fell asleep in the bathtub, and had a dream that I was rolling a ball that grew larger or smaller, on a tiny star that, too, continued to grow larger or smaller, and had great difficulty rolling the ball when the star grew even smaller than the ball, which wasn’t a nightmare but gave me a hard time as I dreamt, but when I woke up, I felt nothing, nothing at all indeed, and I thought that the reason why it was difficult for me to have a lasting relationship with someone was because it was difficult for me, even when I met someone and continued to see her, to find a reason to keep seeing her, and thought that perhaps the ball in the dream represented my thoughts. And yet it wasn’t easy for me to find a reason to break up with someone, either, which made it difficult for someone to keep seeing me, as well as break up with me.