FEELING SUMMER RAIN IN SEOUL:
A feeling of insignificance at the very heart of the sublime, so fragile and swollen with the majesty of things, trapped, ravished, amazed by the bounty of the world. Just as teardrops, when they are large and round and compassionate, will leave a long strand washed clean of discord, the summer rain in Seoul washes away dust and brings endless breathing to a person's soul. To be sure, we cannot perceive this universality directly: that is one of the reasons so many philosophers have balked at considering the essence of rain to be real. I will only ever see the raindrops that are before me, not the essence of beauty.
Eternity: for all its invisibility, we can gaze at it.
The disposition of the raindrops achieves the universe in the singular: the timeless nature of the consonant form.
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The day it rained in Seoul my grandmother gave me a pink envelope.
A humid summer rain is one that envelopes and suffocates simultaneously
and that is what I felt when she whispered,
"비오는 날 자금" (rainy day funds)
When the umbrella failed to shield me from feeling insignificant, I cried for my skin,
for my grandmother, for her pine room with a yoga mat bed, for fragility, for summer in Seoul, for the permeance of rain.
I felt grateful for Seoul, for letting me merge my tears in a way so that their disposition could fall again when it rained the day I left.
I felt grateful when I did not cry as my grandmother held my umbrella at the airport bus stop, when she climbed on to simply bid me farewell.
Instead, as the bus pulled away, I did not cry for the timeless nature of feeling fragile and swollen with insignificance. I did not weep for fallen tears because the day I left,
Seoul cried for me.
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