Daily life, diary

It was an awful rainy season. The summer of that year did not stop raining. The rain this summer felt like some omen. The sky was cloudy all day and night, and there was a month of showers in which weather forecasts were useless. The track of Line 2 heading toward Seongsu-dong has reached Jamsil Railway Bridge. Most of the highlands of the Han River were submerged. The thin rain moistened the outside of the window.

T learned for the first time in the summer that I was sensitive to the weather. I learned that when the weather is sunny, I feel clear, and when the food gets stuck in the clouds, I feel somewhat sad. In fact, although the daily fortunes and the week’s desires are usually weather-driven, the photos and the schedule recorder’s records on T’s cell phone honestly reflect the weather. T’s habit of moving diligently when the weather is clear must have affected it. T has recently mastered the habit of using his body quite skillfully, and when the weather was clear, he used to ride his bike for an hour or take a walk.

T liked the Seongsu-dong section, where trains on Line 2 only travel to the ground. There were many empty seats, but I purposely stood at the door and looked down at Seongsu-dong, which was raining.

• Collage one.

T forgot to leave his lunch box for two days at the shared office. The salad in the shared kitchen refrigerator was a waste of freshness to throw away. Besides, it was a self-cheap lunch box. Considering the salmon or fusungi that quickly went bad after picking up a little later, I couldn’t leave it as it was. The cup had to be wiped away from every nook and cranny with a toothpick.

The lunch box was safe and sound. I couldn’t smell anything suspicious even when I opened the lid. When I left the building after eating a lunch box without any bad energy, the rain stopped. T looks up at the sky and guesses the direction in which the clouds move. A summer constellation was seen glisteningly through the big clouds. Clouds moved rapidly from Mapo to Hapjeong, from Hapjeong to Sangam, from Sangam to Gimpo, from Gimpo to the West Sea. T turned back to the bicycle station as he was on his way to the bus stop. I could instinctively feel that it wouldn’t rain for at least an hour or two at the latest.

T came up with a single riding route that can be fully enjoyed while the Han River is blocked by the heavy rain like now. Run from Yeonnam-dong to Mapo-dong. Obviously, the floodgates leading to the Han River will be tightly closed, but a slight pull will lead to Mapo Bridge, which welcomes the rider at the most gentle and safe angle of inclination among the bridges. Crossing the cultural bridge over the Saetgang River across Yeouido Park, you could easily and safely reach the Gyeongin Line. T ran the road without hesitation. It took exactly an hour to get to Sindorim Station by riding Yeouido from the entrance of Hongdae.

The long rainy season was the site of T’s joy. He loved the hour or two a day, the time he focused on rolling the wheel leaning his hips on a triangular saddle.  T felt great satisfaction with his unexpected ride on his way home and finished returning it to the bike stand at Sindorim Station.

And T is thinking. What we feel when we look up at the sky and take a deep breath, perhaps some intuition leads us to the excitement we deserve. T’s choice was a path he found by poking around somewhere in Seoul every day over the past year, and a path of rationality made by linking various possibilities together.

Even on the road full of rain and wind, there was an unshakable comfort on T’s short tread. T knew exactly where to go. A person’s confidence as he moves boldly toward his destination. Based on the number of all cases, the sense of stability that I can feel because I know empirically that it is the surest way, T truly felt joy in knowing exactly where I am going now. The fact that he wasn’t leaning on coincidences and improvisations made him full of joy with a sense of feeling like his own in every corner of Seoul.

• Collage 2

“Isn’t it the first time we’ve had such a terrible rainy season? It’s no exaggeration to say that the rainy season has come, not the rainy season.”

“A change in the weather means a change in the lives of people who live under the weather. It changes habits, it even changes personality.”

“What does that mean?”

“The first thing that the rainstorms sweep away is the lives of the weary. Those who cannot occupy the highlands, those whose resting place is at stake, those whose compassion is money, and those who can breathe are the first ones to be swept away. I imagined faces trying to protect them somehow, looking at trees that were pulled from the roots of the pillars and sucked into the rough waters of the river.”

T couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he wondered at the end of his words. Nodding a small head was also a long-standing habit that T unfolded when he felt like he was listening to something really interesting.

“I’m also on the hard side. I’m worried about not being swept down even if the rain is heavy, and I tend to think about how not to be affected by the rain, and I’m sure there are days when you think about this more specifically.”

• Collage 3

Three collage-side writings. One day in August, at 6:30 p.m. at Gangnam Station, circulate around Line 2, transfer back across the Han River to Line 2, and return home. It is full of monologues without formality to be a novel, and it describes quite eagerly what it sees as prose.

When I develop without being conscious of style, my writing always seems to be this way. However, I’m trying to write more of these things these days. Writing unrelated to work and not connected to an intended creation. I’m only going to try to write to hold onto what I saw and felt. Wouldn’t it be beneficial for both writing and creative writing? I don’t want to leave a lot of posts like that, but I want to leave a lot of posts like that when I feel satisfied. I hope that such writings will be self-written, such as those that capture the time and space of time.