Jung Young Moon - Vaseline Buddha

I was deeply disappointed by the game the dog was playing, and in the end got up from the bench, went to a nearby park, and sat on an empty swing, picturing the playground near my house that I visited from time to time, and thought that I might be able to go home with a happy heart if I saw girls jumping ropes, or a dog being dragged away by someone against its will, past children running around columns of water spurting from the ground — once I went somewhere and saw someone climb an artificial rock wall in a park in the city and sincerely hoped that he would fall in the middle of climbing, and could end my journey and come home when, in the end, he fell to the ground — but there were no such sights to be seen. There were, however, children running around between columns of water spurting straight up in a nearby fountain, but the sight, which ordinarily may have drawn a different response from me, made me feel indifferent at that moment. But I was pleased to see instead a girl sitting on a bench eating ice cream. The ice cream in her hand was melting and trickling down her hand, and it was always pleasant to see a child licking melting ice cream. Was it because the ice cream was trickling down a child’s hand? Or did ice cream trickling down any hand bring me pleasure? Or did the pleasure come from my idea of ice cream melting in hand? I can’t be sure.

And by then I was feeling somewhat ridiculously good after passing a period of extreme bitterness resulting from the breakup, so I tried to make my somewhat ridiculously good mood ridiculously better, or keep it up, at least, but it wasn’t easy, and there was nothing around me that responded to my effort.

A Caucasian man who looked somewhat slow was sitting on a bench next to me, and I saw that he was plucking his nose hair very subtly, in his own way, as if he weren’t doing such a thing as plucking nose hair, as if he were concerned with what people around him thought, although he didn’t seem concerned, and what he was doing looked so subtle yet naïve that it made those who were watching him feel extremely frustrated. He somehow managed to pluck a few strands of his nose hair, and although it was quite understandable that he was concerned about not having plucked the rest, it was very unseemly that he was plucking his nose hair like that, while pretending not to, in a public place. He could have gone someplace without people and plucked the rest of his nose hair as much as he wished, to his heart’s content, but he didn’t. Plucking your nose hair in a public place like that should be legally banned, just as it’s legally banned to name or call a pig Napoleon in France. Seeing someone plucking his nose hair could make you aware of your own nose hair, even if it didn’t make you pluck your nose hair, which could stop your train of thought.

Anyway, at that moment, a woman with long blond hair, who had brought with her a girl with long blond hair, looked with disapproval at this man from the East, who looked dazed and yet was glaring threateningly at everything in his sight for no apparent reason, taking up the swing that was for her blond girl — there was another swing next to me, but it was broken — and glared at me, waiting for me to get off the swing. Her gaze wasn’t insufferable, but in the end, I got off the swing and went off to a side. I was used to quietly making way or sidestepping for people who wanted a certain spot in a place.

Glaring at the swing and the girl who now had her feet on the swing, soaring up into the sky with her long hair flying prettily in the air, I thought that it would be nice if the swing magically flew high up into the sky to a place of no return with the girl still on it, and thought that it was quite amusing to watch a girl who looked as if she would fly away, while hoping that she would fly away.

But I went somewhere else, thinking that the woman who was still glancing at me could report me to the police, and suddenly decided to go all the way to the Versailles Palace, for some reason, but it was so boring there that I became sullen and wanted to take revenge on the palace, which had done nothing wrong. A pleasant, overwhelming feeling, which comes at times from a structure taking up enormous space, did not come from the Versailles Palace. Nothing but arrogance could be seen in the Versailles Palace, which looked stiff on the whole and seemed as if it would never look otherwise, which was boring.

What I thought of while looking at the Versailles Palace, where everything was in perfect balance, were the people of the royal family and the aristocrats who had strolled there in the past in fancy but uncomfortable clothing, and although I had nothing against them, I felt a strong urge to do something outrageous, to pull off such a thing, to make some kind of an unreasonable demand, and it wasn’t so much because I felt that a king of France, who was holding a fan in the brochure on Versailles in my hand, was fanning the urge — I only imagined this, and there was no king of France holding a fan in the brochure, but still, I pictured Louis XVI suddenly opening up his beautiful fan with an exotic painting on it to startle his favorite cat (I wonder what the cat’s name was), and playing around with the cat, for every king, and everyone, must, at times, want to think playful thoughts or play around, and actually think playful thoughts or play around — but because in watching people moving around in groups and flocks of pigeons walking on the ground or flying in the air, which made it seem as if everything were in motion — a baby near me was trying to catch an ant on the ground, with a hand that was suitably small for catching ants, but, being clumsy, he was doing so without success — I felt an urge to direct myself at something static, to make the scene come to a stop, at which moment I happened to see swans in the palace pond, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could make that happen by throwing a stone at one of them and hitting it. Or perhaps I felt an urge to create a small stir in the surface of the pond, which was quietly reflecting a brilliantly sunny and peaceful day, regardless of the swans.

But because of the people around me, I couldn’t do to the swans what you shouldn’t do to swans. Nevertheless, I ended up bearing somewhat playful, casual malice toward the swans, which wasn’t because I wanted to commit a casual act of evil or atrocity, going along with the popular belief that travel sets you free.

I had nothing against swans, just as I had nothing against the royal family and the aristocrats of France. If I did have anything against them, I could have done something on that pretext. Still, as I walked the paths through the impeccably manicured garden during my few hours of stay at Versailles, I couldn’t help but be afflicted by the thought that I should do something to the swans. Perhaps the thought came from the ill feeling I’d been harboring toward the French for some time. It seemed to me that they were excessively proud of their culture, to the point of conceit. It was easy, of course, to have your pride of something turn into conceit, which was understandable, but it seemed that the pride of the French seemed to go to such a ridiculous degree as to support the idea that pride was suppose to be ridiculous.

Some ideas are difficult to shake off because the temptation to surpass them and make them materialize is too great, for they can’t be confined in the mind because they’re ridiculous, and the more ridiculous they are, the larger they become, which was the case for my idea of doing something to the swans.

And, as I considered the idea, it seemed that the swans that were peacefully swimming or sitting still, indifferent to all the problems and cares of the world, in the palace pond of an old French king, were a symbol of monarchy, and that doing something to the swans would be a useless act of defiance against monarchy. Monarchy has long disappeared, and so it seemed that I was too late in defying it, but it seemed that I was fighting something that didn’t exist, this thing called monarchy, and that doing something to the swans, a symbol of monarchy, was my own lone and belated struggle against monarchy, and I’d be able to taste the joys and sorrows of the struggle by myself.