Jung Young Moon: Vaseline Buddha

What if I began by talking about travel, which contains countless scenes from everyday life and is a metaphor for death? I could do that. But traveling isn’t something I like all that much. I do think about traveling a lot, but I haven’t actually done a lot of traveling, and although I don’t dislike traveling I don’t like it very much either. Perhaps I could rephrase this statement by saying that although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I detest traveling, I could venture to say that I don’t like traveling that much (this story, in a way, is about rephrasing a sentence in different ways.)

What it is that I’ll be writing seems to grow clearer as I recall, along with my memories about swallows, the travels I’ve done, and think about travel, which is considered an escape from mundane things and everyday life. This story could be a record of mundane things as well as a kind of a travelogue, a travelogue that contains casual yet cold ridicule on the many travelogues that praise and encourage traveling, and thus is for people who don’t like to travel, and it could be a story that could give some kind of a hint, although it wouldn’t serve as a good guide, on what to do when you don’t know what to do when you’re traveling, just as you didn’t know what to do when you weren’t traveling — if I were to write a real travel book, that’s the kind of book I’d write.

And this could be a mixture of a journal and an autobiographical novel, something that’s difficult to put a name to, or it could be something that isn’t anything at all, or something that’s not something that isn’t anything at all.

But I think I should hold off talking about travel until later. Right now there are other thoughts invading my mind. Other thoughts are invading me, holding me captive.

What are the thoughts that are closest to me now, or, in other words, thoughts that are holding me captive, clinging to me and not letting go, by which I’m held captive? But couldn’t I say that I’m not letting go of the thoughts by which I’m held captive, that I’m clinging to the thoughts, instead of saying that I’m held captive by the thoughts? Anyway, the thoughts are such that the more you try to break free from them, the more you become captive, but at the same time, they are such that the more you let go, the longer they linger (this story is also something that digs up and pulls out something dreadful that exists in thought itself, as an intrinsic part of thought).

Something is doing that to me this very moment, a sentence. My mind, again, is occupied with thoughts on the sentence, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” The sentence, presented by a language philosopher, is holding me captive like a charm, and I float around on it as if it’s a raft floating on an open sea. The sentence, cited by the language philosopher as an example of a grammatically correct sentence, or in other words, a sentence that has a logical form but makes no semantic sense and thus has no intelligible meaning, and can be discussed at different levels, feels to me, at least, like something that navigates the sea of language with infinite freedom. What I thought of as I watched a dolphin-shaped tube floating down a river in a little town in France, too, was a play of ideas using words.

For the past several days I’ve been spending time reading mostly works by linguistically experimental poets, thus allowing passages from the American poet John Hollander’s poem, “Coiled Alizarin a” such as the following, dominate my everyday life.

A red pigment extracted from the root of madder, or produced by synthesizing anthracene — Author’s note

Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts:

While breathless, in stodgy viridian, b

Turquoise pigment, or the color thereof — Author’s note

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

But wasn’t it possible that the large dolphin-shaped tube I saw by a riverside one winter day, floating down the river, wasn’t something that someone had thrown out? That perhaps the person sent something floating down the river every winter around that time, at that place, as if performing a sort of private ritual, and happened to set a dolphin tube afloat on the water that year? Wasn’t it possible that he didn’t wish for anything as he let go of something that floated down the river — I hope he didn’t wish for anything — and merely wanted to see something float down before his eyes and fade away and disappear? And that no one knew he did such a thing every year, that it was his secret, his greatest secret? Yet as a result of his secret act, someone ends up thinking about plays of ideas as he walks side by side with a big dolphin-shaped tube that’s floating down a winter river, wondering how it’s come to float down like that.

Amusing ideas and games of ideas. Games using ideas, and languages, which are carriers of ideas. A story that’s a puzzling game, a game that becomes puzzling. Games using words, just for fun, not just for fun, not necessarily for fun, for fun only, not just for fun only, simply for fun, in the spirit of fun, as if for fun, not possibly for fun, and in the end, for fun only. (Games using words are really the only games you can enjoy until you get tired of them, or enjoy forever without getting tired of them.)

Again, I feel that my craving for amusement is relentless, which isn’t because my heart is heavy, both when I’m alone and when I’m with someone, or when I’m doing something or doing nothing, and seek to lighten my heavy heart. It would be more correct to say that it springs from the idea that life itself is a chaotic wandering state in which you roam around the edge of blindness, or make your way to the center of blindness, without any aim or will, and end up playing the writing game, having no other choice, and by so doing turn your life into fiction, fiction that resembles a riddle.

Perhaps the fact that the ideas that play around in my head often turn into something preposterous and bear and breed extravagant daydreams, or delusions almost, delusions that take up a great portion of my thoughts, when I think about it, could work to my advantage as I write about amusing ideas. For example, for someone who raises a lot of rabbits in his mind, rabbits could be something that gives him the hardest time. If he scoops out something sticky and slimy and transparent from the pond every morning, and imagines that it turns into several rabbits and gives them all the same name, Alice, and imagines that they take care of him and live only for a day like mayflies and hop around the pond, rabbits named Alice will be important creatures in his reality, and dominate him with real power, and he could say what a hard time he has because of the rabbit Alices that never leave his mind, and could be sad one day to find that all his Alices are dead. Although this is a metaphor — the rabbits are a metaphor for ideas or imaginations — the many ideas that come to my mind as I write this actually dominate me like the rabbits that belong to someone who raises the rabbits he scoops out of a pond.

Anecdotes in my memories and images in my imagination dance on a stage from which time, which flows in one direction, has made its exit. I wave at them, and further, I dance with them. The past is revived in the present, and I pass again through past moments. As I write this, I’ll come face to face with returning scenes from the past and become a part of those scenes, and the scenes will overlap with my present, and I’ll confuse the past, present, and future tenses.

Anyway, what I thought was a dolphin-shaped tube may have been a little plastic bag someone had thrown away, or perhaps I never saw such a thing as a plastic bag, or went out to the riverside and watched the river one winter day when I lived in a little town in France long ago. But I’ve already said something about a dolphin-shaped tube, and although it’s an unreliable or nearly fabricated story, it becomes a part of this story, as words that are written down and printed out take on certain power and become a part of a certain story.