Catching the Last Leaves of Autumn

[This post was originally published on Cent here]

It might just be me getting old, but autumn, my favorite season, seems to get shorter with each passing year.

Be that as it may, every autumn I look forward to seeing the leaves changing their colors. Especially here in Seoul.

Going on slow strolls with my wife up Mt. Nam each weekend of fall, to track the slow, but sure changes of the gingko trees as their leaves turn from summer green to sun stained yellow, is a tradition I'll try to keep alive as long as I have breath to breathe.

To mark the end of autumn I have one other tradition. A 366 year old gingko tree that my wife and I call Halmonee (Korean for grandma) lives in the center of the apartment complex adjacent to mine. Before winter arrives - like literally during the last few moments of autumn - about a million golden leaves flutter down to the ground from her branches. When that time arrives, my wife and I stand beneath Halmonee and try to catch as many of the last leaves of autumn as we can.

Today was one of those days. And it was glorious.

Do any of you have any special autumn traditions?

Crunchy Leaves and Crisp Autumn Air

Autumn is my favorite season.

It just feels and smells so good.

The crisp air. The warm cozy feeling of layered clothes. The scent of fallen leaves.

After a long, hot and sweaty summer, it's just so relaxing.

Long walks feel better. Hugs last longer. Kisses more passionate.

I love autumn, and the next few days are all fixing to be fall classics.

Semantic Satiation

The cross-roads of epistimeological history lay not in the re-thinking of every-thing - a particularly blockheaded Brockman-esque thought - but in what may very well be considered the ultimate bellicose act conceivable; the forgetting of everything to namelessness.

Phillyish child-ish: Prequel 1.0

So let me take you back before the accident.  But not before the drugs and excess.  Or is it excess of drugs?  Anyways, I was introduced to Thomas auspiciously one early autumn afternoon in the city.  I had just disembarked from the R5 at University Station and was about to make my usual leisurely trek to Penn's main library to meet my dealer Jamal, when a familiar voice beckoned from behind.

"Frederick, brother? Is that you man?"
This guy.  Turned out to be Patrick Rothman.  I'm pretty sure everyone knows this type of kid : adopted, Jewish family, went through a "Black" phase, graduated from said "Black" phase into some kind of hybrid frat/lacrossey phase, only friends that he has steal from him when they get invited to his house, drug addict social misfit.  Long story short, turned out good ol' Patty had come across some pretty strong K (a.k.a. Ketamine a.k.a. Horse Tranquilizer) earlier in the day and was just then falling into the velvet hazy K-cave of no return.  Luckily, or unluckily for him, he was being supported by some helpful passerby.

"You know this guy? Then give me a hand and help me set him over there on that rank bench."
With a good 'thwack' Patty's head cracked atop the wooden bench.  Our mutual burden absolved, I turned to head towards Franklin Field when I noticed my new friend was heading in the same direction.  Having no agoraphobic tendencies I decided to broach the sphere of casual conversation.

Turns out he was going to meet the same Jamal to buy the same weed.  Then, in classic Thomas-fashion, this sly-ass grin began unfolding across his face and he proceeded to reach into his impeccably tailored Italian slacks grabbing a fat wad of cash along with a veritable Halloween bag full of every pharmaco pill imaginable that he had snatched out of Patty's pocket moments earlier.   We both took a knee - right there in the middle of the platform - and raised our pointed index fingers to the sky.

Patrick, it turned out, had been drugged by angels sent down from upon high so that Thomas and myself would not only meet, but have our souls welded together in what turned out to be an epic, narcotic fueled autumn afternoon of absolute debauchery replete with hookers, at least one potential case of grand theft auto, numerous misdemeanors, one dead hooker and the odd poetry reading (Blackthought if you must know). Needless to say it was from that day on, Thomas and I embarked upon our inseparable friendship.  We were both 11 years old.  And Thomas is a doll.

Previous Story :
http://kayageetheworld.blogspot.kr/2011/02/phillyish-child-ish.html?m=1

Glittering Gold Glints of Fall

Walking down this imperial boulevard, ears wrapped dapperly in supple leather melodics, the crisp early winter winds flutter the last yellow glint of fall overhead.  Squinting, I cock my head to one side while looking up in awe at man's engineering might, erect in it's full glory, hard off the beauty of the heavens outstretched above.  Exuding confidence in quantities normally reserved for those many years my senior, I'm groovin' in the path of the flickering rays of light laid down ahead of me.  But then, as I observe the passing glances of souls heading away forever, I become filled with an indescribable melancholy.  Why can't we all simply chill out just a little; slow down this speed at which we live.  From infinity, we have been brought together, but only for the most fleeting of instants, whence forth we embark upon trajectories exactly the same in their polar oppositeness creating the greatest distance away from fate; all but extinguishing it.  We appreciate not, it seems... The depthless profundity and potential of fate.  A fate that is constantly and forever enveloping and piercing our individual and collective orbits.  We live not, it seems... We are simply racing ahead, mechanically in a single direction every waking moment of our existence; an existence that loses more and more meaning the more we seek to quicken the pace of our pursuit of progress.    Fate for progress; progress over fate.  Sureness as security; no fears and no cares.... anymore.   But where the danger lies, so too does the saving force.  So, what then, is dangerous anymore?  Shall we feign an attempt at pointing it out? Yes! 

살아 있는 유리

겨울이 다 되어버렸다. 하지만 이 살아 있는 유리 안에서 가을의 색다른 영혼이 보장되어 있다.

제2의 봄

가을은 두 번째의 봄이다.
그때는 나무의 잎이 
여러 가지 울긋불긋한 꽃으로 변하니까.

November's Death

November's death, has swept what's left.
Bereft, inept you slept.
To me, I see what doth be
For we, yes we is be-
ing the whole, of those, whole
in all, with all, as all
that fell or Fall, and walked
then slept. For November's death,
has swept; now, we are left.

아 참 추수감사절 놓쳤네...

아는 사람들 다 아는데 어제는 미국 일년 중에 가장 중요하고 미국다운 빨간날 추수감사절이었다.  

모르는 사람이 있을지도 모르겠지만 있으면 한국의 추석이랑 비슷한 날이라고 생각하면 된다.  온 가족들이랑 일년 내내 모든 일을 반성하고 감사하는 마음으로 모으고 칠면조를 비롯하여 풍부한 음식을 배가 터질 정도로 엄청 많이 먹는 날이다.  

한국에 온지 벌써 3년 연속 이러한 행사에 참여하지 못했다.  거의 반세계 떨어지고 가을 학기가 얼마 남아 있지 않아서 몇일간에만 고향에 돌아가는 게 아까워서 그리운 마음을 참고 겨울 방학을 도착할 때까지 기다릴 수 밖에 없는 상황이다.  

어쨋든 추수감사절 바로 전날에 미디어와 사회변경이란 개지루한 강연을 들었을 때 심심해서 그런지 책가방에서 오래동안 점차점차 독서하는 "한자의 이해"란 책을 꺼냈고 읽기 시작했다.  

이 책은 독자들에게 한문을 익혀주기 위한 목표로서 성어와 격언, 한시 (漢詩），당시（唐詩），사서삼경 등등 한문의 대표적인 고전의 제일 중요하고 한문을 배우는데 가장 도움이 되는 부분을 한권에 모으고 각각 나누어 있다.  

그날에 진난번에 읽어온 당시 부분에 이백 （李白）다음에 우연히 왕유 (王維）가 지어진 《九月九日憶山中兄弟》란 시가 나왔다.  

이 시를 처음으로 감상했을 땐 유학생으로서 고향의 동생을 생각하는 심정이 참으로 진실된다고 생각했다.  

시의 기구에 있어서는 외로운 나그네로서의 쓰라림을 참아견디는 심정이 넘쳐흐른다.  

나처럼.  

승구에는 항상 부모를 생각하는 마음에 사로잡펴 헝클어지는 심사를 달래는 다부진 내심이 연보인다.  

내 마음과 같다.  

전구에 있어서는 형제들의 워애로운 정이 넘쳐 곧 달려가고 싶은 결구의 애절함이 얽히는 것이다.  

내가 하고 싶은 것처럼.  

우애 넘치는 家族愛의 풍부함과 사랑스런 정감이 무르녹고 있다.  아래에 왕유의 작품을 원전으로, 한국어로 그리고 영어로 된 번역을 드리고 있다.


九月九日憶山中兄弟       王維

獨在異鄉為異客
每逢佳節倍思親
遙知兄弟登高處
遍揷茱萸少一人

구월구일 날에 산위에 있는 동생을 생각한다

홀로 타향에 있어 타향의 나그네 되었으니
매양 佳節을 만날 때마다 갑절이니 어버이를 생각한다
멀리 알건대, 형제가 높은 곳에 올라
모두 茱萸를 꽂았지만 나 하나 모자란다

The 9th day of the 9th month I think of my brother on top of the mountain

Alone in a foreign town I'm just another passerby,
this time of year doubles the thoughts of my loved ones.
From afar, I know my brother must have reached the summit;
everyone must have planted their cornel seeds by now, everyone but me.

Dead November

Today marks the death of November. Those reds, golds, oranges and chinese yellows flutter no more. Under ones foot, walking by oblivious they lie. Tears run out their vains till they breath their last; left as brown castes of their former glory. All that is left is the heartless trampling. Oblittering all memory of their beauty is how we will survive these impending months of colorlessness... Foolish thoughts all ye philistines bear. You may drudge through in the grayness of ye mire buy not I...not I this time. For I have saved life in my portable heart. When your death comes round but a flick flick of my thumb on it's living glass and saved am I. That's right, this winter will be one of life; one of color; one of perpetual beauty.

Novemeber Dusk

A man walks solitarily along 5th Ave. passing the Museum of Natural History; his bearing aimed at the rusted memory of this town.  The brisk fall wind ruffles his red and black lumber-jack flannel collar protruding slightly outside a grease stained olive colored canvas jacket.  Hands stuffed deep in faded, well worn light blue jeans he looks up to his left at the washed out 7 story brick apartment-esque building and continues on...

While you and I float atop my warm tannish down comforter.  Light fluffy rustic melodics meander out from the speakers cones enveloping our souls.  Outside the eye of my new college room, reds golds and more browns are fluttering waves obfuscating the museum behind.  Blink.  My hand carreses your blushed tender cheek.  Blink.  I feel your fingers run through my velvety locks.  We stare into one anothers eyes; this is the closest we will ever be, and I know it...Blink.

Descending down a narrow tree lined dirt path behind the university, dead leaves crunching underfoot he heads toward the clouds evanescently frothing out of a factory.  Nearby a bridge, it's 1970's sickly yellow paint scarred with dark cold iron veins forged by death; he stands beneath.  Staring out at the horizon, warm majestic red and golden hues fill his periphery.  A tear suddenly forms, wavering, then while convalescing in the corner of his eye, the sound of steel grinding enamel overtakes his soul.