Vaseline Buddha

by Jung Young Moon

  I imagined creating a self-contained world of my own in which communication was impossible and unnecessary. Perhaps the very thing that constitutes a person’s inherent nature is something that can’t be understood by others. Only the thoughts that I couldn’t share in their entirety with another person seemed to be my genuine thoughts. I thought that the emphasis on communication, rampant among people and even forced upon them, was so excessive that, in a way, it kept a man from squarely facing the fact that he was, in the end, alone—how right are the words of Nietzsche, who said that a man merely experiences his own self, that he experiences a world distorted by his own self?—and made severance and isolation, things that were actually necessary, seem undesirable, and thought about how unstable and imperfect communication itself was, whose possibility may be nothing more than an illusion, and thought that you could go down deeper and withdraw into yourself, finding peace there, and that perhaps Wittgenstein, too, who stayed withdrawn deep in his own world, working as an assistant gardener, was able to communicate with the world on a different level, through the isolation he brought on himself.

  Wittgenstein, who studied mechanical engineering and mathematics, then logic and philosophy and music, and fought in the First World War, and wrote, while at prison camp, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which later became widely known, and also worked as an assistant gardener at a monastery where he lived as a recluse, probably spent a period of his life quietly bending and unbending his body in the silence of the monastery, cutting branches from trees, gathering fallen leaves, and fertilizing trees.

  I imagined that perhaps it was while he was gardening or when he woke up from a brief nap while working in the garden—at which moment he may have recalled the war he had fought in, during which he may have escaped several deaths, and reflected on how far he had come from the war, and at the same time, how close the war was in his memory—that Wittgenstein, who fought in the last war in which romantic elements still loomed in the air despite the smoke of gunpowder and the smell of blood, a war in which horses were still used as an important mode of transportation, and soldiers in confrontation shared the food they made with each other, and people may have begun a new day’s fight by asking how each other’s night was, and whose two nephews fought each other as enemies in the next world war, came up with his important ideas.

  It’s pleasant to think that Wittgenstein, two of whose older brothers committed suicide and one either committed suicide or disappeared, and who acquired a patent by doing a research that led to the development of the helicopter about thirty years later, and went to a small town in Norway in order to study logic without any disturbance, and studied the problem of color and the problem of certainty, and died two days after writing the last part of his book, On Certainty, and then, losing consciousness, thought about the air mechanics and parts of a helicopter while doing garden work, such as cutting tree branches and sweeping dead leaves, although I don’t know if he did so in reality.

  When I was lost in my own thoughts, the cat that kept me at a distance would come near me, but when I tried to come near it, it would withdraw, and I would inflict several forms of torture, which were possible only in thought, upon the cat that was hiding somewhere or passing quietly in front of me, and picturing the cat in agony and passing out in the end, I would say something that was appropriate for saying to a cat in such a state, for instance, What we can say to a cat incessantly scratching its face is that wherever we go, we float down with empty chairs, surrounded by words.

  And I named the cat, which had a name given by its owner, Maoist, although I didn’t call it by the name. I named it Maoist because one day while I was with the cat, I saw on television the news that Maoists had come into power in Nepal. I watched the news with Maoist the cat, which knew nothing at all about communism, which, without any grounds, made the cat seem like a true communist to me.

  And thinking about Maoists’ Nepal, I tried to become better friends with the cat I named Maoist, but we never grew closer than when we first met. Maoist the cat, which had no thoughts of its own, looked like a Maoist when it was wandering around the house or sitting quietly somewhere, but when it was pooping in its sand-filled toilet, it seemed to go back to being an ordinary cat. Nevertheless, I told Maoist the cat about a cat named Tango that I saw on television one day, that left home and somehow appeared in the back of the stage for a British talk show that was being broadcast live, but I didn’t tell the cat about the fact that Mao Zedong mostly rode a rickshaw during the Long March, which was 9,000 kilometers long, or the fact that Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, spent a lot of time raptly watching the cartoon “Tom and Jerry,” although he didn’t read a single book in the forty years before he died (I suddenly wondered which character Arafat identified with, and which he sided with as he watched “Tom and Jerry,” and if he didn’t come up with a strategy that would be helpful in fighting those he saw as his enemies while watching the cartoon, but I had no way of finding out). And I wondered whether or not it was right to tell Maoist the cat that in a certain area of the world at a certain period of time, there was a custom of burying cats alive in a wall in the house, but in the end, I did.

  One day, Maoist the cat was walking on the keys of the piano whose lid I kept open, and it went carefully back and forth several times on the keys, even though it was quite startled and a little frightened by the sound that came when the keys were pressed, as if the sound raised its curiosity and brought it some kind of a pleasure, and did so several more times after that. I came to enjoy listening to the music played by Maoist the cat, a musician now, and I gave titles to the music it performed ad lib, differently each time, such as “Blue Rapture,” “Crumbling Sorrow,” or “Uncontrollable Dizziness.”

  And as I watched the cat, the cat I had long ago came to my mind. The cat, which I named Ramsay—was it because there was a genius mathematician by a similar name, or was it because of the name of the characters in To the Lighthouse?—loved it when I picked it up and threw it very high, and sometimes I threw it so high inside the house that it hit the ceiling with its head, but the cat loved it, as if it enjoyed being dizzy from hitting its head.

  And sitting in a chair feeling dizzy, I thought about my dizziness, and thought that dizziness, like boredom, could be a condition of existence. And for the first time, I thought that perhaps I could examine the cause for my dizziness, and that the reason why I had never thought that there could be a cause for my dizziness, that I could find out the cause, was because the dizziness, which became obvious with my swooning, came to me so naturally, and so secretly at first, and became a natural part of me.

  In the end, I spent several days with the cat that kept me at a distance, doing almost nothing, and returned home after getting several mosquito bites. The person who returned from his trip gave me a little wooden carving of a reclining Buddha as a gift, because I told him that I went to an antique shop in Nepal once, and saw a little wooden horse there and liked it so much that I wanted to buy it, but gave up because it was actually too big, and bought a sitting Buddha statue that was next to the horse, after which I began collecting Buddha statues. It was true that I bought a sitting Buddha statue in Nepal, but I was joking when I said that I was collecting Buddha statues. The reclining Buddha looked shoddy even at a glance and looked shoddier the more you looked at it, and made you question the sincerity of the giver, so thinking about him, I thought that it would’ve been better for him to not give me anything at all, but shortly put a stop to the thought. But I kept thinking about him, who was a good person but had a very stupid side to him, which is what made it difficult for me to deal with him, and so I thought that I shouldn’t deal with him anymore. But I was wrong. He was a good person, and not stupid. So I thought that perhaps he had a reason for giving me such a shoddy gift. When I did, the reclining Buddha looked like some kind of a riddle.

  Before I left Nepal I went to an antique shop and bought a somewhat shoddy wooden carving of a sitting Buddha on whose lap
sat a woman, her legs spread out, which looked blasphemous and sensuous at the same time. I wrapped toilet paper around its upper body and put it under the bed at first and then under the desk, and I continue to put it here and there, not having found the right spot for it yet.

  But now I had two statues of Buddha, and could start a collection of Buddha statues. It also occurred to me that perhaps I could, with great difficulty, carve the solid statue and make a statue of a cat or Maria. I could turn it into a cat or Maria that came out of Buddha, or into something that wasn’t anything at all.

  The man, who was darkly tanned, told me, who hadn’t asked him anything about his trip, about the time he explored the jungle one afternoon. You couldn’t really say that he explored, for what he did was follow a relatively well maintained forest path with a guide showing the way. He said that he fell behind, suddenly tired of being led as a group by a tour guide like children on a school excursion, and entered the jungle, imagining that while following the path into the jungle, he might arrive at a community of natives who lived almost in the nude, and be invited to the home of a kind native and have roasted iguana or lizard for dinner, and then about midway through crossing an old rope bridge that looked quite dangerous, he suddenly ran into a huge coiled up snake that looked splendid and beautiful—the rope bridge was so narrow that you couldn’t pass through unless the other party stepped aside—and without realizing what he was doing, he took out the fan he had and opened it up, and when the snake, quite startled for some reason—considering that snakes don’t have good eyesight, it was more likely that the snake was startled by the sound of the fan that suddenly opened up, than by the sight of the fan that suddenly opened up—fell into the water under the bridge—the bridge wasn’t high, and the snake didn’t seem in danger of losing its life, having fallen on water, and although the snake got quite a scare, it was fine—he felt almost happy that he was there, he said.

  Afterwards I for some reason wrapped bandage all over the reclining Buddha, whose giver seemed to have posed a riddle for me, and which itself seemed like a riddle, because I thought about wrapping a scarf around the reclining Buddha’s neck while picturing the black girl I saw in a subway station in Coney Island, unwrapping the scarf around her neck, but then thought that bandage might be better than a scarf. But it suddenly occurred to me that I forgot to rub Vaseline on the reclining Buddha, because I once thought about the pleasant feeling that comes when pronouncing the word Vaseline, a compound word of the words water and oil, the name of a petroleum extract used as a healing ointment for the injured during the first and second world wars, and used for too many purposes at one time, while picturing a pantomime with no action or sound, in which a Buddha with Vaseline rubbed all over the body, a Vaseline Buddha, you could call it, quietly sits in a little room whose floor, ceiling, and four walls are covered in Vaseline, a room gushing Vaseline and gradually becoming filled with it. And I thought that I could give the title Vaseline Buddha—the name was something that could be given to something indefinable, something unnamable, and also meant untitled—to what I was writing, but as soon as I did, I thought that it wasn’t a good idea, and as soon as I thought that perhaps this story had its beginning when I sat cross-legged in the middle of my room one day, thinking of Vaseline Buddha, and picturing the Buddha buried and melting in Vaseline, I thought that it wasn’t really true, and after thinking that when I unwrapped the bandage, I should perhaps hold a mirror up to the reclining Buddha, I put it under my bed, reclining, and from time to time, I lowered my head and looked at the Buddha, reclining peacefully under the bed, and recited at random, to pass the time, Buddhist mantras, such as om mani padme hum, maha prajna paramita, and doro amitabha. And I thought that a name like Fasting Clown could suit the bandaged Buddha, but that I could give him the name, The Difficulty of Light Swimming on Difficult Waters, or The Difficulty of a Water Strider Walking on Difficult Waters, because someone who performed the miracle of walking on water came to my mind, and I thought that perhaps he got the idea of performing the miracle from a water strider.

  But when I returned home a dead goldfish was waiting for me. The person who watched my house for me while I was away didn’t say anything about the death of the fish. At night, I put the goldfish in a plastic bag and went to a cemetery by the river, where I took a walk now and then. Once, looking out at the sea, I thought that the sea was a huge grave for fish—I pictured the countless dead fish in the sea, and the sea was the biggest grave in the world—so I thought that I should bury the goldfish in the pond where it once lived, but I couldn’t think of a suitable pond.

  The cemetery was a burial ground for missionaries who were beheaded while proselytizing Christianity during a period in the past. I dug up a bit of the soil in front of a missionary’s grave and buried the goldfish. The place, where beheaded missionaries were buried, and which overlooked a river, seemed the perfect grave for a fish, and I felt that by burying it there, I gave the fish a proper funeral. I suddenly recalled that the Danish word kierkegaard means churchyard, and I named the dead fish Kierkegaard, which seemed to suit the fish. And I was pleased by the fact that I was the only one who knew that a fish named Kierkegaard lay sleeping in a graveyard for missionaries, and that I could come to a kierkegaard, or a churchyard, whenever I wished and think about Kierkegaard the fish and Kierkegaard the philosopher.

  Anyway, there were moments when I felt so dizzy that I really felt as if I would die, and wanted desperately to die for that reason. Or could I say I wanted desperately to die, and felt as if I would die for that reason? At any rate, I learned that a desire to die could be more desperate than a desire for anything else. My consciousness was urging me, badgering me to come to a decision, but I didn’t listen, not even to my own consciousness

  I still thought about suicide only in a faint, vague way, and in fact, I’ve never thought properly about it. And my idea of suicide in those days was a quite playful one, regarding the issue of whether a person who committed suicide behaved no differently from usual, or differently from usual.

  Still, I had a lethal dose of sleeping pills, which I could use whenever I wished, a part of which I kept in a music box I bought as a souvenir on a trip. From time to time, I opened the music box to check up on the sleeping pills, and when I looked at them, listening to the music box, they always raised some kind of a hope in me, and put me at ease. Perhaps I could take the sleeping pills and wind the spring, and fall into eternal sleep while listening to the music box play.

  I didn’t see phantoms, but I saw signs, visions, that foretold the coming of phantoms before long. Once, in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up in bed and saw a large black dog quietly sitting in the darkness of the room, and took it into my sleep and let it lead me to a mysterious place, and before I knew it, we were surrounded by a countless number of other large black dogs. Seeing the vision, I thought about having a chat with phantoms when they actually came.

  And what enabled me to just barely endure the depression that seemed as if it would lead to death were the thoughts I had in secret. Thinking those thoughts, I smiled to myself at times. And the smile I smiled to myself in secret, while rereading Molloy for the first time in a long time, during days when there was almost nothing to smile about, seemed my only genuine smile, and the smile, which wasn’t different from a certain kind of sneer, was directed at strange things. But at times, all kinds of smile, not just that smile, seemed strange, and awful as well.

  I applied modifiers, such as corrosive, or sparkling, or coagulative, to my smile, and thought that I could apply them to my dizziness as well. In any case, such modifiers endowed a smile and dizziness with physical characteristics, and I felt that my smile and dizziness were physical states.

  But from some time on, I no longer smiled even that smile, and I felt as if I were an empty house where no sound was heard anymore, abandoned by the people who had once lived there, talking and laughing. I also had the vague thought that perhaps my smile, which had vanished like
an erased figure in an ancient wall painting, could be found only in the expression of a character in a novel I hadn’t yet written.

  And the thought led to some thoughts on smile or laughter itself. The ability to smile or laugh is probably one of the things that distinguish humans from other animals. I don’t know if other animals smile or laugh, but it doesn’t seem that they burst out laughing as humans do, or quietly smile to themselves. It seems that animals only make a pleased sound or wag their tails in contentment. But humans smile or laugh when they’re having an interesting experience, when they’re in an awkward situation in which they don’t know what to do, and even over nothing at all. And sometimes, they laugh until their stomachs hurt, or chuckle, or smile reluctantly, about trivial things, or at other times about something huge, or even as they’re trembling with anger over life. Smile or laughter is something that’s the closest to, or depending on circumstances, the furthest away from, humans. Smile or laughter, which is so familiar to humans, is actually not as simple as it seems, and difficult to understand. For example, let’s take a look at some different kinds and aspects of smile and laughter. They are countless, including a hearty laughter, a wry smile, a sneer, a smile of satisfaction, a dumbfounded smile, a foolish smile, a grin, a loud laughter, a giggle, a quiet smile, a groveling smile, a cunning smile, a smile you put on when you look down on someone or when you’re not pleased with someone, just before you’re stripped of a smile, a nasty smile, a big smile that spreads across your face, a big nasty smile that spreads across your face, and so on. And then there’s a crooked smile. I’m not sure what a crooked smile is exactly, but my smiles always have the feel of one.