Jung Young Moon - Vaseline Buddha

In the end, I came out of the hotel, and before leaving Paris, went again, for some reason, to the Eiffel Tower area that I’d vowed never to go near again and sat with my back to the tower on a bench from which the tower could be seen in its entirety, and, seeing the person sitting on the bench next to mine staring off into space, I, too, stared off into the space into which he was staring, but then he suddenly turned away his gaze, as if angry at discovering that someone was looking at something he alone was looking at, something that he alone should look at — I couldn’t understand the reason at all, for the space into which he was staring was an exceedingly blue sky with no clouds at all, and there being no signs of weather change, it seemed that the space, in which there was nothing but the blue sky, wouldn’t change at all no matter how he stared at it, no matter how much he stared at it — and glared at me, which made me realize that space, which I thought was for everyone, and something at which anyone could look at any time, wasn’t something at which you could look thoughtlessly at anytime, that there was something in space that people shouldn’t look at together. No, I think it was more because I had a hangover and was quite red in the face. But looking with such disapproval at someone who was red in the face because of a hangover was something that no human should do. I turned my gaze to something else, and saw a black dog. It would be very big when full grown, but it was still small. The dog didn’t yet possess the dignity that dogs of that breed have when full grown. In a little while a white dog — it was a kind that doesn’t grow to be very big, and was small, although it was already an adult dog — appeared, and the two felt each other out for a moment, then sniffed at each other and barked. The dogs seemed to be communicating perfectly with each other. Then in a moment, the white dog went off somewhere else, and the black dog, left alone, went to a flowerbed nearby and ran around among the flowers playfully, wantonly. The dog, like all dogs, demonstrated that dogs want to run around every chance they get, and never miss an opportunity to do so. At that moment it suddenly occurred to me that one night, while spending the night with the woman I’d broken up with, I might have strangled her at one point when it seemed as if I would pass out. I was drunk, and extremely tired, and it seemed that I unwittingly strangled her with my hands, then came to myself when it looked as if she had stopped breathing and let go, and woke her up by slapping her cheeks several times. But it wasn’t clear if such a thing had actually happened.

In the flowerbed, there were roses and other pretty flowers of various colors, and I casually hoped in secret that the dog would trample on the flowers even while being pricked by their thorns, as if it couldn’t help itself, and thoroughly ruin the flowerbed. But the dog was careful in its own way not to ruin the flowers, although it didn’t look as if it would be, and wasn’t injured by the thorns hidden by the trees, either.

Thinking about how many different breeds dogs and cats have developed into, and how nice it would be if someday humans would do so as well, I thought again about the woman I’d broken up with, and thought that it was for the good of both of us that we broke up, and pictured the day when humans would have evolved into as many different breeds as there are of dogs and cats, and thought, as to the breakup, that we had merely found one of the countless reasons for which we should break up. Perhaps the reason why we broke up was because I couldn’t find a reason to keep seeing her, and I thought such a reason was sufficient for a breakup. And I thought that everything that can happen in the world only happens because it can, that what happens is just that something among the things that can’t happen loses its possibility of not happening — everything that has happened up to this point could have not happened — that if there is a purpose to the world, it’s to make everything that can happen, happen. And I thought, as if coming to a conclusion, that my mind was made up while I was looking at a part of the massive steel structure called the Eiffel Tower out the window, and that I, having always pictured the end of my relationship with someone, had always pictured where and how my relationship with her would come to an end. And it seemed that the fact that I thought about her for a moment told me nothing as to if I still had feelings for her, or if the opposite were true, and that’s what I believed.

Looking at the Eiffel Tower, I tried to savor the pleasure a breakup brings — in the same way I sought some pleasure in returning home from a trip, looking at the empty house with no one there, and feeling that I was back to my original self, or in other words, my lone self — but without success.

I had already had a chance to break up with her before that. Late one night when we were in the city where we lived, we were sitting in a cafe, and she was telling me that she was breaking up with me. I’d already felt earlier that something between us had come to an end, and I wondered why the feeling that something had come to an end always came to me before something actually came to an end, and I quietly listened to her, thinking that perhaps it was because I always had in me a sense of anticipation for the end of something. Anyway, while it was raining, and while she was talking, a man who had been passing by outside the window came to a stop and looked at the window, and it turned out that he was someone I knew. I waved lightly at him when she stopped talking for a moment and looked elsewhere, but he didn’t seem to see us inside. He went off somewhere else after a little while, staggering as if drunk, but when I looked out the window a moment later, he was once again passing in front of it. For several minutes even after that, he kept going back and forth as if lost, or for some other reason, like an illusion, and I had a hard time focusing on what she was saying because of him, and accepting what was happening to me as something that was actually happening to me, and although it wasn’t necessarily because of that, we couldn’t break up that night.

I recalled some memories I had of her, for instance, how we picked acacia flowers together every spring and made liquor with them, and how she was always more daring than I was in every way, and how we talked about the fact that we didn’t have a single picture of one of us sitting and the other lying with his or her head on the other’s leg, against the backdrop of a landscape, and how I thought that we may never end up having a picture like that, although one of us said that he or she wanted a picture like that, and I felt a little sad thinking about the process and the results involved in meeting and breaking up with someone, in which the person seems indispensable at times when you’re seeing each other, but becomes irrelevant after you break up, and in the end, becomes almost completely removed from your mind, as if the person had never existed, but the sadness, too, like the joy that seems insufficient to be called joy even when I do feel joy, seemed insufficient to be called sadness, and I didn’t feel anything more special than that. One of my biggest problems was that I couldn’t feel any emotion fully. I must have come across something beautiful once, and felt that it was beautiful, if only in that moment, there must have been such a moment, but I didn’t have a clear memory of such a moment.

Looking at the Eiffel Tower I’d tried so hard not to see, I felt a sort of confidence rise in me, confidence that I’d fail in all my future relationships as well, although I didn’t know where the confidence came from, and thought that I could put a closure to our relationship by writing something about how I met and broke up with her, perhaps a novel about a relationship that turned into a failure, or never turned into a romantic relationship — thinking that sometimes, all you can do about something that’s come to an end is talk about it — and felt somewhat tempted to write a love story, but writing such a thing seemed a very unseemly thing to do. Anyway, a little while after we broke up, I saw her, no, someone who looked very much like her, walking side by side on the street with a man, holding hands, looking affectionate, and realized that I’d never walked with her like that, holding hands — I always felt awkward walking with a woman, holding hands, and offered my hand grudgingly as if I were about to shake off her hand — and thought that the fact could explain one aspect of my romantic relationships, and that perhaps I could write a story about that, but again I gave up.