Outlook Upon a New Year
The wind stung my face as I stood atop the rocks and overlooked the sprawling, devouring city of Seoul, a mass of buildings like a giant circuit board stretching to the horizon in every direction. Just twenty minutes up the trail and already the noise and smog of the street was gone. A pervading stillness enveloped the mountain trail. I climbed a crooked staircase through an empty Buddhist village, past a chalk white dog, and through a low concrete canal to find the entrance to the trail. An old Shamanist route on the outskirts of the city. I found an alcove where the blackened stone testified to a great number of candles burned at the spot. I sat where the sun was warm and the wind was blocked and listened to an old woman chant an ancient oscillating lament to the wind and bang a cymbal in time, now quiet, now loud, with the heartbeat of the mountain. Calmness wrapped its arms around me, the city down below slowed to the pace of the mountain, all was still, but for the swooping flock of synchronized pigeons. I sat without moving for more than an hour. Till the sun’s warmth began to wane and the approaching night bade me move on.
In Seoul as I wandered the neon lit streets bustling with coats and mittens, scarves and faces I felt my soul rise in the presence of itself. I find being alone in a great city as sublime as standing before a cascading fall or a mammoth cliff. Overwhelmed by the power of the city and my own insignificant place within it, I could hear clearly a description of myself. A lonely passerby in this ancient world. One recently born and soon dead. One who could easily be crushed beneath the thumb of this mightier beast. One who is at the mercy of so many forces. The city spoke so honestly to me, concealing nothing, that I couldn’t stop a smile from creasing the edges of my lips.
Alone in the coffee shop, the subway, the tunnels, the palace, the museum, the bar, the streets, the mountain. For two days I wandered alone in the frigid cold in a strange city and felt once again myself emerging within this skin. I felt a joy welling up to bursting. The more sensitive organs swelled with anticipation. For life spread out before me like a banquet and at that instant I was ready to devour everything, the appetizers, entrees, and deserts, the napkins, the wine glass, the silver fork, the knife, spoon, porcelain plates and ice cream dish, crunching and tumbling down my bleeding gullet to my cavernous stomach below. I could scarcely sleep that night. Lying on the hard floor of the house of a generous stranger I wrote and wrote. I wanted to call everyone I knew. But I had nothing to say, no words to express. I simply wanted to scream to them, to release upon them this energy, if need be to devour them as well.
