Reading Journal-One Thing in Common

One Thing in Common

From the very introductory part of this story, or the first thirty pages of the novel, the boys reveal their weaknesses. Unlike the average children of their age, they all bear wounds from their family. Their family members are all dysfunctional, and all of them seem to give bad influence towards the children, each and every one of them.

Gordie, who appears to be the main character of the novel, is a late born from his family. He has excessively old parents who don’t care for him, and a dead brother. His brother was a perfect son, who was tall, strong, smart, obedient, and warm. Because of his age and such characteristics, he overshadowed his brother. This is rather obviously portrayed when Gordie identifies himself with the Invisible Man.

Teddy is physically defected child with low intellectual abilities. The fact that his eyesight is bad is noticeable, but more important is that it is his father who fries Teddy’s ears and makes Teddy deaf. Teddy’s father is a respected social figure who “stormed the beach at Normandy”. Although he has such experiences, he shoots cats, lighting fire in mailboxes, and abuses his own son. The parental figure who should be a role model for his child not only is negligent, but is abusive towards his own child. Oddly, Teddy shows respect towards his father. This respect does not seem to be authentic. Although his intellectual capacity is limited, Teddy knows his life is miserable, and this can be proved by his habit. Teddy has a strange hobby of truck-dodging. It is facing a truck coming towards him and dodging it by few inches. He has bad eyesight, and Gordie narrates that it would be a matter of time of Teddy getting hit by the truck.

Chris is a typical result of a malfunctioning family. The description of his brother’s future shows what will become of Chris in the future as well. His father “beats the shit out of him”, and he is suspected for the theft of milk money. His arm and wrinkles are broken from his father’s violence.

It’s not yet clear what story Stephen King would make with these boys, but it seems clear that the peculiar similarity between the main characters would definitely relate to the plot of the story.

Explaining my metafiction-Window Glasses

It's extremely embarrassing to explain my own works, but I believe my meta fiction is very unclear and opaqre. What would be the meaning of creative writing if I fail to communicate with the readers? So I think it would be better off to cite some sources to avoid plagiarism, and explain the intent of writing such a long, boring and chaotic story.

Here are someworks that helped me write my metafiction (or maybe works that I misused) :

<Books>

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

John Story, An Introductory Guide to CULTRAL THEORY and POPULAR CULTURE

<Poems>

Youkyuong Lee, Chain of Thoughts in a Rainy Day

<Songs>

Tablo, Home



<Poems>
I used the expression of "melting glasses" after reading my peer's sonnet. I thought it was my expression, but come to think of it, it was from my good friend's poem. So that would be an answer for Mr. Garrioch's question of "Is this story original?". Half from her and half from me. I used the expression, and tried to develop it into a story, which seems comparatively poorer than the work of my friend's.

This is the original text of her sonnet.Chain of Thoughts in a Rainy Day

The windows in the house are melting down

Around the curtains weaved with drops of rain,

Which blurs creations shown in trickling pane,

Dissolving everything that’s in the town.

The fact that rains are cold is clear and plain:

The heat is what makes nature dripping hot;

The cold should make events that heat makes not.

So how rain melts things, I cannot explain.

Maybe the god who looks upon us lot,

Found out the world in such polluted state

That he himself with holy water great,

Is melting dirty skins with coldness hot.

But I am in my house with steaming tea,

Which cannot even melt the throat in me.

<Songs>

The metaphor of house and loneliness is what I took from the song above. I thought the expressions used in the lyrics of Tablo was excellent, so I dared to use the metaphor. The part where he compares other's thoughts and expectations as piled newspapers and mails perceived to me as the punchline of the whole song. You can play it if you want to. It really is a good song.  

In overall, I tried to describe sadness and loneliness as the protagonist's home, and window as a part of the house and a potential passage outside as well. If the rain comes and the window melts down, the protagonist would be free from his house and would take a walk outside.

Metafiction-Window Paine

Window Glasses

"Window glasses cry every night it rains. Trickling water-drops soak the windowsill while the glass melts down. The transparent being covers itself by moist; it's always cold when window glasses cry. The window keeps me safe and isolated at the same time in my house from the outside world. Window is the lens I see through, it is a part of my doorless home. Part of my home. Although I'm cringing in the blankets on my bed, I can still feel my limbs hardening from low temperature. The thoughts of her keep pulling under. I wish the bed can sink my body into the mattress.

The clock strikes three. I’m still in pain as blunt as blue bruises. My brain is pounding like others’ heart, when mine stays still. I got out of bed. I faced myself outside the window. Although transparent, it was wet with rain trickling down the glass."

Definitely unsatisfied, I put down my pen and stared blankly out the window. The sky was cloudless, filled with dust-scent nostalgia. Children were running through the dirty, dry  asphalt trail, stuffed with garbage. The children were shouting incomprehensible words. I did not understand their shoutings.

I frequently smell memories, and the scent drifts me away to a specific point of time of perceiving a similar scent. Today, what I was smelling until now was dusty playground and a lonely child, so it was impossible for me in the first place to write about melting window glasses.

“Have you ever experienced an icy yet sunny day? It is a winter day when cold wind blows but sun blazes right behind your head. I was the only black-haired in my class, instead of whitish-yellow. The color black absorbs more sunlight than whitish yellow…How cold it is within the hearts! While it scorches on the head, the body shivers! And the scent of sand and dust blundering unwashed clothes and skin…disgustingly beautiful.”

I never expect others to understand my affection on scent. Any and all smell is fragrant to me. They have stories within. My stories. Each and every one of them is unique. I stop think of the day when I had to cross the dusty, empty playground in unwashed school uniforms, while nose runny and grains of sand dancing in my mouth. It was a sad day. I expected no one in home and no one beside to walk home with. The sunset was irritating as well. The smell of sunset with a pinch of sand from an empty playground is the most depressing smell one can imagine. Yet I love the strong impulse it gives to my stomach. Sad scents pulls me under.

Thinking of those, I got nostalgic. The scent of sadness may be the color of sunset, dark yellow, while the scent of nostalgia that comes right after sadness is……sky blue. But this sky blue is different from what we congregate usually with that color. It’s darker with a shade of blue, and it makes me feel the scent will go on endlessly. Despite the feeling, I already know that this will go off right after the moment I swallow the apple juice right beside my hand.

The artificial sweetener scratches my throat while it feels my nasal skin with the scent of powdered cherries. They are fiery and juvenile, somewhat green-handed in satisfaction. Although I do not go along with his sexual preferences, I believe my affectation towards all scents is similar to what Humbert felt towards his nymphs. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins…” They are what I exactly think of my memories associated with fragrances.

Apple juice made the playground distant, far far away. I felt more of writing about window glasses. The monsoon period makes sunny weather cloudy. Clouds are harbingers of cappuccino and melting glasses. Children stopped running. They seemed to look up at the ominous clouds swarming over their heads. Worried shouts. Although I cannot distinguish what words they use, I can sense their tone of voices. This time, it is apprehensiveness. Maybe words aren’t important. Maybe the primary messages signified by the words aren’t important as well. Maybe, maybe there might be a secondary process behind the words. A social yet nonverbal, poetic and lyrical transaction that makes communication truly possible. Words tell nothing. The context does. The smell of words, maybe the words are unimportant, nothing but flesh, while the smell or the social message conveyed is the true essence of communication.

“I read from somewhere about communicating between two individuals. It said language is like a cup yet filled with water. Whenever I knew you were thirsty, I poured my water into a cup. I gave the cup of water to you. You should have drunk the water, but not the cup. But should that have meant that the cup is unimportant? I knew not the answer before. But I know now. They are equivalent. I tried to deliver the water, the warmest of all, through a disfigured, porous cup. Whenever I filled the ugly cup with warm water, what you held in your hands was an ugly cup without the water. My messages were meant for you every time, but they weren’t signified. I hope you’re able to drink this water now.”

Now it’s raining. Somehow children’s intuitions are always accurate. Window glasses melt even now. But these days it rains less. The glasses melt less. Someday when my window glass fully melts down, I will take a walk outside. Along the non-arid, quenched asphalt road, I shall gaze upon the garbage flowing downtown, absent from the trail that I walk on. Only if, only if it rains enough to melt down my window glasses.

“Why do I sink even into the shallowest wounds? It’s always dizzy when I step over the threshold. The line that I feel comfortable. It is to protect myself from others. Let the mails and newspaper from them pile up untouched before my door. I prefer the usual depression than unfamiliar happiness. Let me breathe. This is my home. Leave me alone.”

Fragrance recalls memories. Memories recall emotions. Emotions convey the context of those incidents. The context relates those impressions to my present state. Memories vary, but my emotion doesn’t. They have been consistent throughout my life. The meaning of our words stay unfixed if let alone; but the context of saying it, the memories, makes them lively, making the communication and sympathizing possible.

Window, part of my home, starts to melt down again. When will it disappear? On a rainy day, I might be able to walk freely down the moist trail.... Only if...

"you visit my loneliness of blue walls and dusty floor along with your apple hair"

Response to Kim Ki Duk's movie

Two herbs may look alike, but one can save people, while another can kill. The movie shows of how same hands of a person can both save and kill another life.

As a young boy, I used to make cynical remarks at others or make them look funny by pointing out mistakes. When my classmates made a mistake on drawings, I used to tease them about how it looked absurd. When my friends raised their opinions, I used to criticize them as harshly as I could. Especially during my middle school years, I learned debating earlier than other kids; and that made me more cynical and arrogant. To be frank, while doing so, I felt strong. Even though I was no better than my peers, they restrained from saying their opinions in front of me, and I liked how my friends followed what I insisted. For me at that time, it was my way or the high way.

However, there was one place that I could not enact in such wrongdoings. It was my home. My father was an extremely authoritarian man; and he used to make hurting comments directed to me in general. There were no exceptions within the family; everyone was subjected to his harsh remarks, and I was not the only one afraid of it.

Once I realized how my way of speaking was identical with my father’s, I started not to speak. I opened my lips only when it was necessary. Instead of speaking so much, I shut my mouth to every conversation that I was supposed to be in. I listened to what others said, followed to what others insisted. I almost always nodded to other’s opinions and followed whatever it was. A year passed. I thought I made much improvement from a person twelve months ago.

But I was wrong.

Instead of hurting others with my tongue, during the year, I had been hurting myself by not saying what I had to say. I became to have difficulties in having personal conversations with other people, or make frequent eye contacts whenever engaging in conversations. I have become a “docile body”, kind and obeying, yet dependent and juvenile.

From the moment I had my second acknowledgement, I started to speak again. Of course, I tried not to make harsh remarks or be cynical. I wanted neither others to be hurt as my friends were in past nor as I was in a more distant past. Although I still had hard time making eye contacts when talking or engaging in friendly, personal conversations, I begin to speak again, in a manner that ordinary people would.

It took me some time to realize the simple fact. Two kinds of similar herbs, but it make two distinct results on other lives. Two types of talking, two distinct influence on others. I wouldn’t be able to forget this for a long time, maybe until the last day of my life.

Window glasses

Window glasses cry every night it rains. Trickling water-drops soak the windowsill while the glass melts down in cold fury. The transparent being covers itself by moist; it's always cold when window glasses cry. Although I'm cringing in the blankets on my bed, I can still feel my limbs hardening from low temperature. The thoughts of the day after tomorrow keep pulling under. I wish the bed can sink my body into the mattress.

The clock strikes three. I’m still in pain as blunt as blue bruises. My brain is pounding like others’ heart, when mine stays still. I got out of bed. I faced myself outside the window. Although transparent, it was wet with rain trickling down the glass.

Reluctant, I sat on the bed, by putting my feet on the floor. Facing the floor, I thought of the big and small mirrors around the room. They must reflect the wet and moist glass on the window. They must thus become wet and moist, just like myself.