Vaseline Buddha

by Jung Young Moon

  After relieving myself and spending some pleasant time on my own, I stayed with the mushroom in my hand, not knowing what to do with it, and then I remembered how once, I went into a forest with someone and saw mushrooms in great abundance, just as I did now. We picked a few edible looking mushrooms, but at that moment, an old woman appeared from somewhere and glared at us as if we were trespassing on her territory, but didn’t say anything. We weren’t sure if it was her mushroom farm, but we told her nevertheless that we were very sorry, but she remained silent, even when we asked her if we could keep the mushrooms we’d picked, and if we could eat them. She looked at us for a moment without saying anything, as if she weren’t interested in people at all, and looked deeper into the forest, in a way in which most people would have difficulty doing, as if she had forgotten how to interact with people, as if she had never learned how to interact with people in the first place, or as if she were making irrelevant remarks to evade the question. Her mind was occupied by something deep in the forest, whatever it was, and not by the mushrooms around her, and that’s where her attention was.

  She went off somewhere else without telling us if she wanted us, who stole mushrooms on her mushroom farm, to become sick or die, or if she, too, had come to someone else’s mushroom farm in secret to steal mushrooms, or if she had simply been passing through at that moment, and in the end, we threw away the mushrooms which we couldn’t tell were edible or not, and I had no choice but to do the same with the mushroom I’d picked in the forest in the town I thought of as Molloy’s.

  I went a little deeper into the forest and climbed a little high, clearing a path through the trees, and soon I reached a spot that could be called the peak. But the peak wasn’t very high, and it seemed that it was more like a little hill than a mountain.

  I sat under a tree, leaning back against it, and looked at the scene spread out before me. It seemed to me that the scene was somewhat too open, as everything in sight is, but I didn’t care. A typical French country scene lay before me, and I stared at it as if there were something infinitely captivating about it and as if I were trying to be completely captivated by it, or as if I were endlessly resisting it so as not to be captivated by it, or as if I were trying to be at least somewhat captivated by it even though there was nothing captivating about it, as if it were all the same, or not very different, as if I were in a trance, and, at the same time, indifferent.

  And with conscious effort, I used my eyes to gently return the still scene, which had spread out wider before my eyes in the meantime, no, the scene that I thought had become wider even though it was the same, and had not become wider in the meantime, to its original size, and looked it up and down. A cloud that looked like a flock of sheep was drifting in the sky—it didn’t look that way on the whole, but I tore off a part of it in order to see it that way—and I thought that there’s nothing like a cloud in the realm of nature that could transform itself so freely, and that that’s why I never tired of looking at clouds, and saw several birds flitting among the branches in front of me, and heard the sound of birds singing, which must have gone on before I got there and then ceased for a moment.

  I felt that I’d stepped into a lyrical world—I thought that perhaps it was because I had come, anticipating a rendezvous with a girl, which didn’t happen, but it seemed that it wasn’t necessarily so—but in that scene of nature, which was far from a scene of ruin, I saw some sort of ruins, and then it seemed that I was in a lyrical world that couldn’t really be called lyrical, a lyrical world bereft of lyric, a lyrical world that had come to ruins, or a world that was the most lyrical because it was in ruins—is a lyrical world lyrical because there’s a harbinger that everything in it, nature and civilization all, will one day vanish and come to an end, that in the end, only ruins will remain, and only an enormous shadow of the ruins will linger?—or in some sort of ruins, in another strange lyrical world, and I was fettered to that world. And I thought that it could be because nature, which was perhaps purely blind, was spread out so languorously before my eyes. As I had such thoughts, it seemed that the scene of nature served as some kind of a background music for my thoughts, and the music sounded squeaky and disordered, like a wrong tune, which kept me from thinking properly. The music was like the sound of orchestra members tuning their instruments without the conductor present.

  But the sound I wanted to hear at that moment, the sound the wind makes as it passes through a forest, caught by trees and then escaping, or the sound trees make, holding the wind for a moment and then freeing it, could not be heard. And yet the branches in the upper part of the forest were stirring slightly. I suddenly remembered how I used to go to the forest near my house when I was a boy, and climb up to the top of a tree where you couldn’t climb any higher and look at the forest where there was nothing to see besides other trees, and it seemed like a very strange experience. (My childhood before a certain period of time seemed time out of mind, like a previous existence, and it seemed that in my childhood, at least, there had been moments in which I was happy for no reason, but the fact didn’t comfort me or anything, and in the first place, I wasn’t sure if it was true or not.) The branches near the top to which I had climbed were shaking, and I had to hold them tight so as not to fall. But being at the top of a tree as if keeping watch, though there was nothing there that had to be kept under watch, excited me in a strange way. There were owls living in the forest, and sometimes I saw, from the top of a tree, an owl sitting at the top of another tree. Was the reason why I climbed to the top of a tree because I liked the idea that it wouldn’t occur to people, and perhaps to owls, as well, that there could be a child on the top of a tree, where things like owls should be? Or was it because I seriously entertained, as children do, the fantastic idea that if I were to be born again, I wanted to be born as something with wings, not as a human who had to live with his feet on the ground, and to do so, I had to become friends with owls that lived in the sky? In any case, looking at owls from the top of a tree in a forest where owls lived, I imagined that we were staring at each other without moving, and felt safe, and protected although I didn’t know from and by what, and whenever the persistent boredom and anxiety and loneliness of childhood visited me, I hid myself in the air. (It’s different every time, of course, but as I write this, my swimming in a river where swallows swooped down and soared up, brushing against the water, and jumping from a branch hanging over a river, and being at the top of a tree in a forest where owls lived as if I weren’t there seem like certain clues or signs necessary in looking into and understanding my childhood, but they also seem like vignettes that don’t require interpretation, and were sufficient as they were. Still, the origin of some of my thoughts, perhaps, and of the ways in which I feel about some things, or at least some of them, could be traced back to my act of hiding in a forest of owls, quietly staring at something or not staring at anything. But how insufficient and ambiguous is it to trace the origin of something in this way? Anyway, when I was a boy, I used to feel an urge to go down into the ground, as well as to go up to the territory of owls, and when I actually saw a pit dug by an animal, I would imagine going down into it and disappearing. Was this, too, something that provided a clue as to what I have become since then? Was I already very tired then of living on earth? Or did I want to go hide somewhere, as if I predicted the days to come? No, it was a very natural thing for a child, a very normal way for a child to create his own space and stay there.)

  Thinking about my childhood, I rolled up my trouser leg to show myself a very old scar on my knee, which I got by falling down from the owl tree when I was a boy, even as I thought that it wasn’t necessary to roll up my trouser leg like that, and thought somewhat absently about how far I had come from those days, and recalled some childhood memories that don’t easily leave once they’re recalled, and was sending them away with as much difficulty as possible, when a gentle breeze began to blow again, and a great distance away I saw something that looked like a flock of sheep movi
ng very slowly, and the flock of sheep, which looked as if it were moving even more slowly because it was far away, was adding, perhaps unnecessarily, a new unity to the composition of nature that was already perfect in itself, and it seemed that the unity wouldn’t break even if a movement of something else were added to the scene, with a flock of birds appearing or something, so I posed the question, Is a perfect composition of nature something that can’t ever be broken by nature itself? but failed to obtain an answer, and so I thought that bagpipe music would be in harmony with the place, and that the place might have been the stage of the Hundred Years War, which continued on tediously between France and England long ago, and wondered if the soldiers played bagpipes even during the war, and if the enemies really fled in fright at the somewhat sad sound of bagpipes, even though bagpipes were originally played by the Scottish to frighten their enemies on battlefield. Bagpipes, whose inherent sound was plaintive, were often played at funerals for some reason, and I thought, Sometimes the sound is so plaintive that it sounds miserable.

  And I thought that in the very forest where I was lying, feeling, even while lying down, the gentle breeze which came from the sea, with the Atlantic Ocean being somewhere to the west from where I was, though I didn’t know how far away it was, soldiers slept during the Hundred Years War, and that some soldiers might have thought of another war that was fought there, and some of them might have thought of a story that was passed down from the time when Roman soldiers were in rule there. And I thought about how tedious it must have been to be at war for a hundred years, and had the somewhat absurd thought that the people at the time continued on with the war for a hundred years so as not to return to life before the war because it had been so boring, or that the people of England and France, who had opened their eyes every morning for generations, failed to find anything else worth doing as they began the day. Or, I thought, perhaps they continued tediously on with the war for a hundred years because they wanted to see the end of a war, like the end of a story, but the war didn’t unfold as they expected and did not end easily, like a story that doesn’t easily end, and I thought that I may not be able to end this story easily either.

  Perhaps the people went about their everyday lives even during the war that lasted a hundred years. They must have been faced with the everyday routine of fighting, and they must have begun the day, after digesting their breakfast, with a weapon in hand—for it must have been difficult to fight without even digesting what you ate, and if you did, you would’ve had to fight, clutching your side in pain. And they must have fought for a short stretch at a time, not long, since they wore heavy armor, which must have made it difficult to even just remain standing while wearing them, and fought with heavy weapons in hand, such as swords and spears and shields, and sat or lain down and taken a nap in the shade of a tree after fighting for a little while, or sang to ease their fatigue and the longing for a loved one with whom they had parted. For there must have been nothing like a song to ease their fatigue and longing. In the meantime, a flock of sheep must have watched from afar, with extreme interest, the people fighting to take possession of the scene of which they, the sheep, were a part, and then grown indifferent to the fight among the people, for sheep don’t stay interested in such things for long, and returned to grazing. And after repeating this several times, they must have become indifferent to the fight among the people and come to consider the war, which humans were waging without any regard to them, part of their everyday life. And in the meantime the field, which had been noisy with the sound of swords and spears clanging against each other, must have fallen silent as the soldiers, failing to resist drowsiness—for you can’t fight while trying to resist drowsiness—fell asleep. There’s probably nothing like a war, which makes its brutality so easily pervade everyday life, and becomes a part of ordinary life through repetition, that shows that it, too, can become a real part of everyday life, even though it’s considered the furthest thing from everyday life.

  I began to fall asleep, thinking that there was something in the pastoral scene that had once been a ferocious battlefield, that kept me, who had come from a distant foreign land and was lying without stirring in a forest in the French countryside, whose exact location I didn’t even know, as if to hide from the world, from getting out of that state, and I thought that it would be all right if I fell asleep and never woke up. I also thought that it’s harder to refuse small invitations to death, which come to you like quiet passion at such peaceful moments, than to overcome moments of unspeakable pain.

  And I also thought, as I always end up doing when I fall asleep in a forest like that, that there could be snakes there and I could get bitten by a snake, but a snake wouldn’t bite someone who was asleep, and wondered why I always thought about snakes when I fell asleep in a forest, but more than that, I thought that if I fell asleep, I could have a dream about the Hundred Years War in the middle of the battlefield where the war was fought. And I fell asleep, fancying that the clouds in the sky, which looked like a flock of sheep, were heading a flock of sheep on the field over which they cast a shadow, and feeling as if a long snake were gently climbing over my body, and thinking, What is that thing hanging from the tree, if not a leopard? though it was hardly likely that a leopard would be on a tree in a forest in a French countryside, feeling as if I were being buried snugly in the sand blown by the wind on a desert toward evening.

  But when I woke up from a dream about chasing someone while being chased by someone else, a situation which, in dreams, makes everything seem drawn out and urgent at the same time, which ended with me entering a forest, and which I don’t remember in specific detail—I did remember, though, seeing crows floating on a pond and thinking how strange it was—it was peaceful all around, as if the war really had ended long ago, or as if a war had never taken place there. But I suddenly recalled, while still half asleep, that I once dreamt about a forest with a bed and a table with coffee cups on it, as if my house had been relocated. In the dream, in which all objects had, to a large or small extent, lost their original shape and size, I spooned up a little cloud that was hovering low above my head and tasted it, but there was no taste to it. But when I put the cloud in a cup of coffee, the coffee tasted good as if it had cream in it, and the cloud went very well with the coffee.

  I thought that it would be nice if there were pots of plants and a mirror in the forest now. If there was a mirror, I could lean it against a tree and see my foot, for instance, in the mirror reflecting trees. And if I tilted the mirror at a certain angle, I’d be able to see my foot along with a cloud in the sky. I thought of several more scenes that would look well in a mirror in a forest, which included me sitting in a crimson velvet chair with an earwig or a green frog, as if we were indispensable to each other. The reason why I pictured something like that might have something to do with my recalling that at a certain point in history, people began to view the world through windows, and that at a certain point in the history of art, people began to paint by holding up an object to the mirror and reproducing the image reflected in the mirror. Objects, and sceneries, do not lose their essence by being in a frame, but are endowed with a new essence, and become clearly different from before.

  I looked at the scene again and it was beautiful, and there was something about it that appealed to the heart, although I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. And when I pushed aside a branch of a bush that was slightly blocking my view, so as to get a better look at the stage of the Hundred Years War, I saw a fortress-like structure in ruins on a hill, which convinced me that a war had indeed taken place there long ago. The landscape that lay before me did, in fact, look like something that two countries would wage war over. (I also fancy that England and France went to war because the English couldn’t bear to think that the French ate on a daily basis delectable wine and cheese, which they themselves couldn’t eat, and wanted to keep the French from doing so, if not for anything else.) There must have been another reason, of course, for the war, one that was le
ss romantic or lyrical, but I thought that waging a war so as not to let the opponent take possession of such a landscape, so as to take possession of it yourself, was quite reasonable as a reason for waging a war. And the region was famous as a grape and truffle producing district.

  At any rate, people started many wars for ridiculous reasons, and did many ridiculous things even during wars. People of a certain period, thinking it would be advantageous to make spears as long as possible, did make spears as long as possible, and ended up being unable to even pick them up—they probably couldn’t fight with them, for they couldn’t even pick them up—and during the First World War, Italians, flaunting their remarkable fashion sense, made red uniforms that became easy targets for the enemy, reducing the chances of survival for their own youth. During a war, it’s possible to see an antiaircraft gun in someone’s garden, through laundry flapping in the wind, and in fact, it was possible to see such scenes at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese. Perhaps war is a stage that lets people do the most ridiculous things in the easiest way.

  As I looked at the landscape before my eyes, picturing scenes from the past of people fighting, the herd of animals in the distance drew nearer. But I still couldn’t tell what the animals were exactly. I was pleased to think how I had been led to think about the Hundred Years War, and to watch a passing flock of animals with interest, on this short trip I took to see a girl I didn’t even know very well, who had rejected me.

  In the meantime, things that were clear or unclear continued to appear and disappear, or stay, in clear or unclear forms, and I watched them without losing sight of them, or watched them, losing sight of them. And smelling pine leaves, I rejoiced a little, as if it brought me ineffable joy to smell, in a forest in a French countryside, the smell I’d smelled in a forest a long time ago in my childhood.