hope

See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice... The mind of the rash will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear... For the fool speaks folly, his mind is busy with evil... The scoundrel's methods are wicked, he makes up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just... The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever... They will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest. 

I can't be ever right on my own. I know that. I eagerly await the righteousness for which I hope. But neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. What counts is faith expressing itself through love. I fall far short in this area. And I write about it. Because I realized that shutting up doesn't really help me, either. There's a longing for clarity. I need to see what I'm thinking, if at all. For example, I find myself so quick in finding others' faults and so blinded in my own. Which disgusts me. This disgust becomes clearer when or after I write, along with the general sense of clumsiness and disorganization manifested in the flow of thought. I do sometimes worry about the possibility of emanating a certain energy or thought that's not wholly positive or hopeful. If that happens, I never mean it to be the end result. Fragile, sometimes corrupted thoughts and feelings are transformed into concrete ones. Only then, I can put them aside and be away with it. Away with it as a process of understanding something better, bigger and higher. 

On a side note, I don't know what it is, but I think there's something special about blogging. No matter how few read my post. I remember some Canadian writer said something about it. What exactly she said, I forgot. Some external, imaginary consciousness I can freely exploit without guilt? Anyway, it helps, sometimes. 

a ceramist in her eighties

Then the question of doing good for society. Don't forget that all our contemporaries and ourselves had some big ideology to live for. Everybody thought he had to either fight in Spain or die for something else, and most of us had to be in prison for one reason or another. And then at the end it turns out that none of these great ideologies was worth your sacrificing anything for. Even doing personal good is very difficult to be absolutely sure about. It's very difficult to know exactly whether to live for an ideology or even to live for doing good. But there cannot be anything wrong in making a pot, I'll tell you. When making a pot you can't bring any evil into the world. 

frictions

그럴싸하게 포장된, 결국엔 저밖에 모르는 어른. 능수능란 재빠른 책임전가. 제 아이밖에 볼 줄 모르는 부모. 저가 세상의 중심인 줄 아는 아이. 지나치게 가벼운 말. 미루는 습관. 함부로 하는 약속. 돈 아래 있는 사람. 원칙 아래 있는 사랑. 본인은 어떤 사람인지 잘모르는 무지. 몇십년이 그렇게 가도 익숙해지지 않는 오늘의 똑같은 얘기. what am i supposed to do with all this?

dullness

Why do I languish thus, drooping and dull,
As if I were all earth?
O give me quickness, that I may with mirth
Praise thee brim-full!

The wanton lover in a curious strain
Can praise his fairest fair;
And with quant metaphors her curled hair
Curl o'er again.

Thou art my loveliness, my life, my light,
Beauty alone to me:
Thy bloody death and undeserv'd, makes thee
Pure red and white.

When all perfections as but one appear,
That those thy form doth show,
The very dust, where thou dost tread and go,
Makes beauties here.

Where are my lines then? my approaches? views?
Wehre are my window-songs?
Lovers are still pretending, & ev'n wrongs
Sharpen their Muse.

But I am lost in flesh, whose sug'red lies,
Still mock me, and grow bold:
Sure thou didst put a mind there, if I could
Find where it lies.

Lord, clear thy gift, that with a constant wit
I may but look towards thee:
Look only; for to love thee, who can be,
What angel fit?

문제. 가는 길에 발은 떼는데 마땅한 목적이 없다. 어떻게 하든간에 피드백이라곤 없다. 잘하고 있는지 잘못하고 있는지 알 길이 없다. 앞에 놓인 것들이 너무 쉽거나 너무 어렵다. 몸과 마음이 따로 논다. 의식은 하는데 관계없는 잡생각이 섞인다. 나름 정의한 실패를 걱정한다. 자의식이 자리를 지킨다. 언제고 시간개념이 구부러질만큼 집중하질 않는다. 하고 있는 것 외 다른 걸 기대하면서 그 일을 한다.

가장 무서운 것은 더이상 궁금해지지가 않는다는 것이다.
그보다 더 무서운 건 그게 더이상 무서워지지도 않는 것이다.

present

"We never keep ourselves to the present moment. We look forward to the future as too slow in coming, as if to hasten its arrival, or we remember the past to hold it up as if it had happened too quickly. We are so undiscerning that we stray into times which are not our own and do not think of the only one that is truly ours, and so vain that we dream about those which no longer exist and allow the present to escape without thinking about it. This is because the present usually hurts us. We hide it from sight because it wounds us, and if it is pleasant then we are sorry to see it pass. We try to buttress it with the future, and think of arranging things which are not in our power for a time we cannot be at all sure of attaining.

Everyone should study their thoughts. They will find them all centred on the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do it is simply to shed some light on the future. The present is never our end. Past and present are our means, only the future is our end. And so we never actually live, though we hope to, and in constantly striving for happiness it is inevitable that we will never achieve it."

대전에도 일명 '까페거리' 같은 것이 많이 생겼다. 지난주 부모님 댁에 내려온 이후 가까운 까페거리에 위치한 한 커피집을 찜하고는 매일같이 도장을 찍고 놀고 있는 중이다. 이 거리에 안타까운 점이라면 까페 두 건물마다 하나꼴로 빙수 전문집을 발견하게 되는데, 올해 빙수계에 태풍을 몰고 온, 사계절을 품었다는 모 브랜드사의 이층짜리 건물이 생긴 이후 다른 모든 빙수집들이 때늦은 파리만을 날리고 있다는 점이다.

지금 이 순간이 좋다는 얘기를 하려고 했다. 적당히 배부르고, 좋은 음악을 귀에 꽂고 있고, 이 공간에 머금고 있는 오후 5시 반 경의 빛의 정도와 색이 좋고, 마시고 있는 커피도 식상하지 않다. 빨간 날이 끝나는게 아예 아쉽지 않다고 하면 거짓말이겠지만, 푹 쉬고 많이 자고 골고루 먹을 수 있어 감사했고 내일이 그렇게 빨리 오거나 늦게 오는 것 같지 않다. 이런 여유가 평소 일상에서도 그렇게 멀리 있는 게 아니니 나는 그것도 참 좋다.