Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River

by Jung Young Moon

  I’d ridden horses a few times, and on one occasion the horse I was riding wouldn’t run, being in a bad mood perhaps because of another horse, but I made it run anyway, and yet it tried to make me fall one way another, and I tried not to fall but did end up falling, and I resented the horse that had made me fall as well as the horse that had perhaps put the horse in a bad mood, and although I’d never been dragged by a horse after falling off I could go at a run and perhaps run at full speed if I got more used to riding a horse, and if I rode a horse wearing a cowboy hat perhaps I could feel like a real cowboy. When I became a cowboy perhaps I could write something similar to what I’m writing now or something completely different, or stop midway, but it didn’t matter either way and it didn’t matter even if I ended up not writing anything.

  When it occurred to me that there was no future now for someone who wrote something like this and even less of a future for this person in the future, my future seemed to lie in becoming a cowboy. But you couldn’t really say that there was a future in being a cowboy as a cowboy was just a rural farmer, and a future as such wasn’t a future to be dreamt of but perhaps at this farm I could live the life of ease I’d always dreamt of. And it seemed that perhaps I could once again while grinding my teeth keep a diary, which they made me do at school when I was little and which I did even though I didn’t want to while grinding my teeth, having no choice, and naturally the title of the diary could be A Diary Kept While Grinding My Teeth, but the contents of a diary didn’t necessarily have to correspond to the title and so they could be something that didn’t really have anything to do with something that made you grind your teeth, but perhaps I could keep a diary that was mostly about the absurd way in which I spent the day, which would make me click my tongue rather than grind my teeth and which would boggle my mind, both as I wrote it and as I read it afterward.

  What concerned me the most, however, as I considered the possibility of becoming a cowboy, was cowboy hats. Even if I did become a cowboy I wouldn’t wear a cowboy hat, the kind that first comes to your mind when you say cowboy hat, whose brim on both sides is rolled up. It seemed that such hats were designed so that they wouldn’t get blown off easily when you rode a horse and that they could have been devised as a sort of compromise, since the best way to keep something from getting blown off your head was to not wear anything on your head, and yet you couldn’t call yourself a cowboy if you didn’t wear a cowboy hat. If not for a reason like that there would’ve been no reason to make the person wearing it look funnier by putting on a cowboy hat whose brim was rolled up. A cowboy hat like that generally made the person wearing it look too much like a cowboy. The higher up the brim was rolled the more it made the wearer look like a cowboy, and cowboys who were from a family of generations of cowboys were generally full of pride, and some cowboys flaunted their pride excessively by rolling up the brim excessively, and some of them wore cowboy hats whose rolled-up brim was rolled in as well, and they didn’t look like anything other than cowboys which of course was because of the hats they wore.

  When it came to hats I had very exacting standards, unnecessarily so, which were something I wanted to stick to even if I stuck to nothing else and no matter what happened to me in the future. I thought that in a way what had brought me—someone who wore only a Panama hat in the summer and no hats in the other seasons—this far was my unnecessarily exacting standards on hats, which I thought and believed would continue to sustain me in the future, and although the Panama hat I’d obtained somehow one summer when I was having quite a difficult time, feeling that I was at odds with nearly everything (at the time, it seemed that I was at odds even with the rooms in my house, which made me go ceaselessly from room to room, and I couldn’t even bear the sound of birds chirping noisily on the tree outside when I opened the window, so I mumbled to myself fervently wishing that they would go chirp somewhere else, although they were at liberty to chirp anywhere, but that they would go chirp by the window of someone who didn’t mind, or who liked the sound of birds chirping, or that they would go chirp in the woods since that would be better for everyone, and when the birds still wouldn’t go away I yelled quietly at them, and when they still wouldn’t go away I yelled quietly at them until they did, and then I mumbled again toward the birds not to return soon, and that if they did return it would be nice if they’d sit quietly on the branches); I was so at odds with everything then that I was in great conflict even with myself, and I wore the Panama hat all through the summer, but even though it didn’t help much in passing a difficult summer it seemed to be the only thing with which I wasn’t at odds or in conflict, and when the summer came to an end I could take off the Panama hat thinking that what had been with me to the end of this summer was this hat.

  I thought that out of cowboy hats a black felt hat with a flat, wide brim wouldn’t be so bad, and that perhaps I could put on the cowboy hat and stand before a mirror looking at it as if I were hoping that the man wearing a cowboy hat, or the cowboy hat, would decide for me whether or not I should really become a cowboy. If I became a cowboy I would wear a cowboy hat since I was after all a cowboy, but I would either wear or not wear cowboy boots even though I was a cowboy, and I would not wear a cowboy belt, and neither would I wear a cowboy shirt, which usually had silly ornaments around the chest, and I would never wear a cowboy necktie, with a brooch-like ornament with tassels hanging from it, and I would either go or not go to the cowboy festivals held annually in Alpine, a little town on the western end of Texas, and in Elko in northern Nevada, where cowboys, in order to promote fraternity, recited poems and stories and played music and danced around a bonfire as bored horses watched on, and I would either go or not go to Tombstone, Arizona, which became famous as a cowboy town through the film, Gunfight at the OK Corral, and I would either go or not go to Durango, Colorado, which once flourished because of coal mines, and there was probably no need to start thinking now about what to do if some drunk cowboy picked a fight with me in a bar where cowboys came to hang out. And perhaps I could borrow a gun from the farm manager who hunted with guns, and although I didn’t want to hurt or kill something that was alive, I could perhaps shoot just once quite timidly at a fish in a stream or something, and regardless of whether or not I hit the fish I could think, I’ll never commit an act of slaughter again.

  And wearing a cowboy hat with a brim the right size for a skeptic, although I’m not sure what that size would be, I could spend a day as a skeptic and think, as became a skeptic, thoughts you could think only because you didn’t believe in anything, without criticizing or passing judgment on something—because I had almost no stance on anything, and even if I did have a stance on something my stance always swayed over it like a swing in the wind, while I mocked the subject not too much but a little, and not openly but in a quiet subtle way; because even though there were many things to mock in the world mocking required energy; and because the process could also sometimes give you the energy to get through a day, although of course sometimes it took it away, and in fact in most cases it took it away rather than gave it (to those few who know how to mock quietly, an attitude of quiet mocking would be a desirable attitude with which to face life). And I could start or end a day by taking in two or three pages of a book by Samuel Beckett or Karl Marx, or The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or a book on the coal mines of Texas, which N had given me as a present, or a book on the cowboys of Texas, and take in that book along with a glass of water—as if they were a sort of nutritional supplement or sleeping pills—on an empty stomach after waking up or before bed.

  I liked little puddles of water as well as lakes and ponds, and perhaps I could ask for the farm manager’s consent to create a puddle on the farm and spend a lot of time by the water and also place in the water a wooden door that had once been the shed door but which had rotted away and been discarded, and then I could do nothing but stare at the door floating in the water which looked like an entrance to another world but in fact certainly wasn’t an entrance to another wo
rld, a door that you could say led nowhere rather than a door that led everywhere, and I could wonder if perhaps I could escape from such vagueness and arrive at a world of even more intense vagueness, which too would be as vague as could be but different—if only I could open that door and enter.

  And I could spend a lot of time wondering if what I was looking at now could be called a door, and wondering other such things, and the question in fact was not a simple one and so I could go on thinking that if a door was something that could be opened and through which you could enter or exit, then a door floating on water which could not be opened and through which you could neither enter nor exit couldn’t really be considered a door, and the rectangular wood that had once been a door but could no longer be opened and entered or closed after entering should instead therefore be called a boat of sorts, because if you were to climb and lie down on it and wonder what it was it wouldn’t be a door. But the thing which wasn’t a door could always go back to being a door. I could make a doorframe for the thing that was floating on the water which could no longer be called a door, thus turning it into a door which could be opened and through which you could both theoretically and actually either enter or exit, which I could experience firsthand but I could also let fish go in and out through the door. Watching the fish go in and out of the door which had become a door again and which looked like an entrance to another world—having been set upright along with the doorframe—I could imagine a world in another dimension and I could imagine looking at the fish returning from another world, but looking no different even after having been to another world, and I could think how stifling this present three-dimensional world was. I could also think many other irrelevant thoughts that you couldn’t think unless you were looking at a wooden door floating in a puddle, but perhaps I could think such thoughts even if I weren’t looking at a wooden door floating in a puddle, and I could therefore think that there was no need to go out of my way to create a puddle and make a wooden door float on it.

  But perhaps I could throw many things into the puddle and see how some things sank and others floated and accept that some things sank, unable to float, and others floated, unable to sink, or I could feel betrayed or disappointed that I hadn’t realized that some things would sink like that and others would float like that, but perhaps I could accept all that and accept the fact that just as there was nothing I could do about them sinking or floating, there were other things in this life about which I could do nothing.

  Or, as someone who was becoming more and more unfathomable, and as someone who thought it would be all right to become someone completely unfathomable, I could dig a ditch in a corner of the farm for no reason or purpose and say, if someone asked me what I was doing, that I was digging the ground, as they could see, and if they asked me what I was digging I could say that I was digging a ditch, although I didn’t know what the thing I was digging now looked like to them, and if someone asked me why I was digging a ditch I could say that I was digging it for no good reason, or I could also be at a loss for an answer. I could go without saying that it would be all right for there to be at least one person in this vast state of Texas who dug ditches for no reason or purpose. I could also go without saying that it wouldn’t be so bad to do at least one absurd thing which you couldn’t explain yourself, regardless of whatever it was or wherever you did it.

  If I grew tired of digging a ditch I could make a fence for no reason but I could also, instead of making a fence, start digging another ditch next to the original ditch and then take turns digging the two ditches, and I could watch in vain which one was falling behind rather than watching which one was getting ahead, although I’m not sure what the difference between the two would be. And although you couldn’t say, “There’s nothing like digging a ditch for doing something for no reason or purpose,” it wouldn’t matter even if what I dug while thinking I was digging a ditch didn’t, in fact, turn out to be a ditch, and if instead it turned out to be something that could either be a ditch or a pit because I’d dug too deep, although I didn’t have to dig so deep. Perhaps when I felt uneasy or lonesome or melancholy I could—not on purpose and without realizing it—dig the ground so that what I was digging was closer to a pit than a ditch. But it was possible that while I was digging a pit—and not feeling at ease—the sun would set and darkness fall and a bright moon rise, making it seem as though a bright moon were rising over my uneasy heart, and I would find my uneasy heart brightening before I knew it.

  And while digging something that could either be a ditch or a pit I could think an irrelevant thought, one that I’d thought countless times before, almost every day in fact, and the thought was that if there was a reason for this world to exist there would be no reason for it to exist any longer once the reason was satisfied, so if, in the end, it became something that had no reason for existing, there would have been no reason for it to have existed in the first place; or if the reason for the existence of this world was something that could never be satisfied, then, in that case, too, there would be no reason for this world to exist; but the world existed, nevertheless, because despite all the reasons why there was no reason for it to exist, there was also no reason for it not to exist, either; and there was probably no other thought so appropriate to have while digging a ditch or a pit for no reason or purpose.

  Perhaps I could, while digging a ditch or a pit, listen to a song stored on my cell phone, a song that was a world apart from Texas. It was the song of the Korea Electrical Contractors Association, which my friend in Korea had recently sent me a file of. It was literally the official song of the Korea Electrical Contractors Association, which included the lyrics We, who are united through the vocation of electrical contractors / serve as the foundation of a flourishing electrical culture / Oh, the association shines throughout the world—an ode of sorts dedicated to electricity, you could say. It didn’t seem likely that the employees of the Korea Electrical Contractors Association started the day by gathering in the yard and singing the song, as people did in Korea during the military regime in the past, but they probably did gather together and sing this song on special occasions, such as to celebrate the establishment of the association. Like national anthems and school songs, this was a song that admonished you to be loyal to the group of which you were a part, to exhibit and exude loyalty, a song created solely for that purpose, and which said it would be wrong for you not to be loyal, as a rule, and perhaps some of the association’s employees felt their heart brighten as they thought of electricity while singing this song. And perhaps some thought about a world they couldn’t even picture without themselves in it, as they couldn’t even picture a world without electricity.

  I used this cheerful song as my alarm, and so I woke up to it from time to time, and although each time I did wake up to it, I didn’t start the day by gathering my senses and thinking about the importance of electricity, I nevertheless memorized all the words and sang this song in my mind time and time again every day, and on some days I sang this song in my mind even as I was falling asleep, and now it was as if the song were following me around in an annoying way, like a fly, and it seemed that I should throw off the song, but there wasn’t a really good way to throw off a song that was following you around in an annoying way, and so I left it alone, and it kept following me around like a fly. When I was listening to or singing this song, it seemed that there was no song so ill-suited and absurd to listen to or sing in Texas, and so it was all right to listen to or sing it, and then it seemed that there was nothing so suitable for listening to or singing. But since I’m writing something like this—which is no different from digging a ditch or a pit for no reason or purpose—I didn’t have to dig things like ditches and pits. But I could also keep on writing things like this while at the same time digging ditches or pits as well.

  Now I’m wrapping up my writing while drinking Everclear, a hard liquor that’s 95% alcohol, and that’s banned from sale in some states in the US, and on whose bottle is written a warni
ng, alongside a drawing of an ear of corn, red as if it’s on fire, that it can cause hallucinations; and a hallucination that I’d had one day while I was drinking another hard liquor—a hallucination in which I saw a so-called concert, without an audience, performed by a scrawny cellist with one eye rolled back, and who’d collapsed to the floor while clutching a cello in his arms, and with one foot already in the spirit world; and by a scrawny pianist, picking out discordant notes while having an epileptic fit with his back to the piano; and by a scrawny singer, suffering from delusions, and singing an aria to hasten the end of arias while he was on fire; and by a scrawny undertaker, who’d come in place of the percussionist, and who was throwing songs which had met their end into a coffin; and by a scrawny conductor, who too seemed to have been on fire somewhere, and who’d turned black as soot, and had emerged from a corner somewhere, and who was laughing as if all this were a farce—this hallucination that came to me one day didn’t come to me now, but I did hear, in the distance, the sound of a long whistle, the kind made by very long freight trains, for no particular reason it seemed, while running through central Texas, and I thought of the roller skating rink in the town of C, the rink that was near the train track, and that was remarkable for its enormous and gently sloping tin roof, which had rusted red with a hoary look about it.