jenaeswriting

[jenaeswriting]

I read the first half of 'The Museum of Modern Love' with deep-seated skepticism. My friend Dan recommended the book in the Hobart Bookshop. I was looking to learn more about his hometown. The author Heather Rose also grew up off the mainland. So you can understand that I was very cross to read and find myself in MoMA in New York instead of wildness in Trowunna or so-called Van Diemen's Land or so-called Tasmania.

I scoffed, thinking it was cheap to write a story around a piece of seminal art. I use "around" in the literal sense. Rose's characters physically orbit Marina Abramović's performance piece 'The Artist is Present' (2010). I wouldn't have known the artwork's name but I had seen the clips. "You Were Not Just Another Visitor, You Were My Life". I daydream about seeing Tom in a crowded city and saying the words.

Marina performed 'The Artist is Present' late in her career. She sits at a wooden table with an empty chair. Spectators are encouraged to sit across from her and meet her eyes in silence. Rose's characters interpret the piece in real time, situating the book in New York in 2010. This bothered me as the time and place of 'The Artist is Present' is not at all relevant to its allure. I recognise some art is moving in light of its context. The Great Gatsby a window into shiny pre-depression America read at a time of economic and cultural turmoil. Waiting for Godot questioning where the Mighty Saviour was after another World War. To stare into another's eyes however, could be moving in the first decade of the new millennia or at genesis. The use of the performance to situate characters in a book seemed insulting to its immortality. I thought credit to the book was just credit to Abramović.

And then, I realised I had mapped terrains still unknown. I had finished pages before reaching them. Yes, the book was in New York in 2010 (and not Tasmania...) but like Abramović this was just circumstance. The stillness of 'The Artist is Present' was not stagnation but catalyst. Like the first stone that attracted all those after to create the universe the woman across from the empty chair offered a basis for all characters. Whether they sat or not, all wanted to be seen. And to be seen, said Rose, is to be Loved.

"The Museum of Modern Love" is about human desire for full transparency. That is Love in the simplest, most concentrated form. There is no room for a Love re-imagined for one's career or music or friends. Love is the bounding of your hair with your partner in the public realm. It's existence as a single entity. The kind of intimacy only afforded with proximity and time, with surrender and sacrifice.

I have been skeptical of romantic love for some time now. I couldn't find reason to give up what I had created to make room for someone else. I had a half-life once, then I made it a life for one. I had to find meaning in the absence so I called it freedom and dedicated my heart to other things all more important, all more reasonable.

The truth is, I left someone behind in Queensland. In the clouds in the Winter sky I think about how he smiles with his eyes. I think about his hands and his hard work. I think about how much I felt I was playing pretend, how calculated I was to only give away just enough to string it along. And then feeling isolated when I was misunderstood.

Maybe he would see me if I met his eyes. If I added another seat to the wooden table.

But I ran away and I know I will lose him. Neither of us were willing to look up for long enough. 'The Artist is Present' asked participants to be vulnerable and asked Marina to break herself in the process. Love is to be seen, Love is to sacrifice, Love is to surrender. I did not have enough weight to sustain him holding the arrow, nor I the bow. But I know I miss him. Not just another pair of arms. I think I would see him in Marina's brown eyes. Realise the closedness of my open heart. I desire to love now. A month ago I did not. I want to fly to another state and do other stupid things.

Instead I will wash my face and wipe the dishes and take up the room in a bed for two. 

[jenaeswriting]

Patterns or something February 13th Tomorrow it will be February 14. I draw a big heart in the condensation on the shower screen and already, the droplets conspire to unmake it. The heart unravels and dissolves. This year marks another Valentines Day alone. An American holiday to capitalise on lovesick consumers. And I fall for it. I fell for it every time. Soon, I will outnumber the years I spent with T. Every day I step further from the place I found home in his arms. And I write about him again. Patterns and Patterns and Repetition and Loops. I feel like a pay-by-the-hour clown, pulling at the rags from my sleeves, another thought that leads to another thought that leads to another thought, all tangled like carnival bunting, in spools that start at my feet and wind around my throat. Lately, I have been remembering that other self—the girl who did not believe she could be wanted. I see her standing before the mirror, four pale limbs, and two eyes that stare back without recognition. I put my work pants on, and I paint the blush on my cheeks, and I test a smile, tearing a little at the seams like a busted chip packed. I know I haven’t looked like myself in a while. I liked feeling like I had to keep myself together for someone. Now it’s just me. And I eat grapes for dinner and press play on foreign news podcasts and rearranging linen on the shelf to try and forget that I am waiting. When he left all, I could think about was how I made room for two. How I had clipped and twisted myself to fit alongside him. Now I am trying to fill all the blank space. I make funny shapes like a balloon animal losing air. There is too much space, too much time to myself, and I don’t know what to do with it. I am a pay-by-the-hour clown, pulling at the rags from my sleeves. Time and memories and time and times past. Bunting makes swirls at my feet. Try not to trip. I hope I am not waiting for someone to come along; I have always detested that thought and held myself high and mighty for going it alone. I want love to punch me in the guts. It’s not something I want to to search for. Not something I want to build. I dream of nothing in particular. If I am not in love, I am waiting for time to stretch far enough that I no longer recognise an absence. I wait to go to sleep so I can finish work so I can go to sleep so I can wake up again. I long for June. But what is June if not a deadline to meet and new disappointments to greet me like a date in the calander that I dread to re-live

[jenaeswriting]

January 13th

The colours in Mackay are electric. A visceral green that leaks from the leafy palms and tall sugarcane and buzzcut lawns. A sky blue as blue until the sunset when humidity clouds rise up from hot concrete and descend into the sky. I run around the university oval three times in the cool breeze that only exists during dusk. Last night there were thunderstorms. I was visiting my friend on her birthday, her dad died two days ago (and yet I write about my grief!) Lightening cracked across the sky like shards of glass. Big zig zags that zig zagged into tinier zig zags. Like the universe was breaking, like something behind the sky was entrapped and raging to leave. Endless numbers of bats flocks across the grey skies, like waves rolling on the shore.

I came home at 1pm to an empty house. I pissed with the door open and took a phone call on speaker phone. Then when the call ended I was left by myself, and with my own thoughts. So I screamed into my pillow. A big hoarse dry scream. I think Gabby, my housemate downstairs heard. She knows I am sad. Everyone does. And it’s no longer worth enquiring about. I was broken up with a year ago, and the sugarcane town of north Queensland I moved to didn’t change that. And there’s other things going on I guess. I have a job I care about. But I know that love is everything, I know love is the only thing. And when I am in Mackay I am not loved.

I am romanticising the big open sky and the teenage tantrum weather and I think about my ex. I stop at traffic lights and I think about my ex. I buy organic soy milk, and pluck a splinter out of my toe, and cough and smoke and drink and fuck and lie and I try to grow up or change but I still think about my ex.

His name was T and I miss the version I had of him. He has changed and I guess I have too. And nothing in particular broke us up I don’t think, just time and circumstance and age and a longing to know what’s out there. I wonder if he likes what’s out there. I don’t. But I lie and I pretend and I can fake laugh and I can smile and I can ask people how their day was and I can report the news, and sometimes I do it well and I am proud of myself, and when I don’t I think 'that’s okay I am too creative for this bullshit anyway'. And I think of my mum back home and how I don’t show her enough love, or how I only call my sister when I don’t feel up to showing the ugly side of myself to anyone else. And I forget things all the time, things about my friends. And I am always googling the calories of meals. And it’s all the same and I have the same bad habits I had at 21 except I have a serious job where I have to take my nose ring out. And I convince myself that I am growing and changing but the more I change the more I come back to who I used to be. Before I learnt the lessons I learnt from T.

And I am lucky in ways, and I should find a new subject to write about. A year on and it's pathetic. And I can feel myself not trying now. I had something to prove because I thought T and I would get back together and I wanted to keep my friends but I come back from Sydney and realised I am good for a catch up but not for too long. 2 hours with me and I will exhaust you. I am a wind up friend. Wind me up and I can go around in circle clap-clap-clap. Perhaps I am good for a call while you’re multi-tasking on the other end of the phone line, once a week, when you remember I exist.

So I am wondering if I move to Tasmania will I be happy but I know the answer and that’s that I have never been happy not even when I was with Tom. I have the journal entries to prove it. I felt suffocated, now I feel alone. And I feel ambitious and then I feel overwhelmed. And I never know. I never never know. So I will apply for jobs because then I can tell people I am applying for jobs. And I will go to work tomorrow and the next day and I will scream into my pillow and masturbate to go to sleep. And I will wait and wait and wait and wait. And learn and unlearn and take and I buy organic soy milk, and pluck a splinter out of my toe, and cough and smoke and drink and fuck and lie and I try to grow up or change. And then what.

[jenaeswriting]

I remove my fly screen to smoke out the window.

I remove my fly screen to smoke out the window. An airplane twinkles in the navy sky. I look down to a big open road of bitumen, like a soviet dictator above the masses. A grey cocktail seeping from my fingertips. Lester young on Spotify. I write so I can talk to a friend. I know a whole cigarette will make my head spin. I am worried how much my hands shake. Everything is a front. So much play pretend in Mackay. If anyone questions the smell, I will say I am burning incense. A dark cat slinks across the driveway. Trees like the one from the story book where the man with the moustache sits under the plum tree. I was left high and dry from girls I am trying to make my friends. I was desperate enough to accept a call from someone who was my friend years ago. I didn’t like speaking to her. I have a housemate outside my door doing dishes. I know he is alone too, and I keep trying to connect with him and show him I care but he doesn’t respond. I don’t like to talk to him because it is too closely a reflection of myself. I have liked meeting new people in Mackay because there is an excitement in being someone new. Someone bold. I come to the conversation with a novelty. With him, we are both alone. We both know it. What else is there to talk about really. Sunsets are wide here. With all the quiet I can do things I never have time for, like yoga before work. But the distraction is life. So much time on my hands like excess butter on a knife. But it is too much, and I could make myself so small. No real reason to have meals, no one to look after me. No one to watch the cracks in my eyes. My housemate has closed his door now too. I don’t write for an audience; I write for a friend. Same observations. In a loop. I looked into ways to leave, and I wish I hadn’t. I came to Mackay to escape but what if it’s a prison. I can’t go home for Christmas. I feel suffocated now when before I felt bold and big. I ran alongside the sugarcane and watched flocks of birds coast above the powerlines. I’ve given myself a nicotine headache, but I don’t want to stop typing because I am scared of the quiet. The quiet of the keys, the quiet of the night, the quiet between trumpet and piano on the track “almost like being in love” by Lester young and Oscar Peterson trio. This is the box I spoke about not opening. Now spilling out, pools like dark wine.

[jenaeswriting]

In the quiet

It always comes back to him. He is me. I am him. He is my memories my old self. Times I don't remember. Seeing him for the first time after covid. I thought I had never loved him so much. But at the same time I read pages and pages. Word like "suffocated" words like "claustophobic". What is the truth? Did he expand my world or constrict it? Is there an answer, probably not. Like the clouds in the sky they change and fold and depend on the angle you look from. But I guess my next question is, will I always be looking back. Will I always be comparing notes. Times memories. Even if I know there to be no truth. No one recount of the times now lost to fully trust. I am not sure. But it feels like as soon as I am with myself, without obligations. I try to communicate with my past self. To hear her message. Were you happier then Jenae? I tell myself yes but I look on the pages and hear the cries of a girl who felt unnoticed by so much of the world. I want to hold her but at the same time I am jealous of her, she doesn't know much much love she has. She doesn't know what true isolation is. Is this nasty? I read the hurt but I don't believe her. You should have relished in what you had. I can't take that back now. I just have to know I had love once and I lost it. It seems a cruel joke to give something so serious to hands of a 21 year old who can't even conjure the mental strength to eat dinner let alone to nurture a relationship. What does the world mean, what does it want. I still don't know the lesson I was meant to learn. I still miss him. In the quiet it always comes back to him. How do you know the point to life is love and then you lose it?

[jenaeswriting]

In the quiet it always come back to him, us, me. Interconnected. I know myself in how I know him. Lately I have been dealing with the decisions I make when I am not accountable to anyone. I can be hard on myself when they are not the right ones. Like trying to sleep with my housemate. Or talking in a pitch of voice I am not used to. It has me thinking two conflicting thoughts. One, I like the kind of person I was around him. I never felt good enough so I was always trying to be the best version of myself. Not to drink or smoke or sound stupid and how over time I came to cultivate myself into a better person, one who talks more articulate, is calmer, softer spoken. The other thought is one that questions how much I put to the wayside to always be on my best behaviour. If the music I listened to way truly my own if the books I read the way I spoke. And at one stage I thought my life had room for two and I could feel the emptiness in my bed, in my heart, in the meals I cooked. But what if this life is all mine. And what if I stretch my armm right across and spread my legs and fill all four corners. its the best I can do because I know in my heart I muss him dearly. But I also know the boy that was mine is dead. And all I can hope is that I find someone as broken as me. And we can help each other find love again. Because as much as I prod along, doing career things, giving love and light to friendships and family. I still believe in love and I still believe that it can colour and give meaning and purpose to 24 hours of a seven day week. I need to believe that or I will throw myself in front of the cane train, or in to Mackay Harbour or off the pioneer river bridge.

[jenaeswriting]

Im just learning how to cry again

I put my feelings on hold so I could do this new job. I like this metaphor 'on hold' because my feelings can only remain suspended for so long. I picture my mind like an attic. In it are boxes. The box with my love for Tom and the devastation of its end keeps being stuffed and stuffed. So often I hear a song, think of his hands, or remember how loved I felt with him and I think - I can't do this right now. And another piece of myself gets gets tossed over into the box. Everyday I am losing myself, and I realise how much of me was him. It is so painful to think about going back. Because he is still with me. In that stupid fake account. In the way I can't call him my ex. In the way he got me here. I think about the first week of losing Tom. How lifeless and hopeless I felt. What kept me hanging on was the thought that things could change. What motivated me to pick up this job was in part his reaction. Now I am here. I am alone in a too quiet sharehouse in a suburb that has had a stabbing, a murder and a meth lab explosion. I sit here, facing the window, in a winter that gives you a suntan and heat stroke and wonder why I thought I coudl trick myself to rejig my priorities. To think I can live with my love in a box in the attic in my brain. And time and time again I come back to the question that I try to stop asking myself. How you go from knowing the point to life is love and then you lose it?

[jenaeswriting]

First Day

I don't know why I am writing here and not my journal. I begun the first day of my job. I loved it. I felt confident and calm. But I dont love it enough to think losing tom was worth it.

[jenaeswriting]

Whitehaven Drive, turn onto Trinity Parade. I run like an arrow but it turns back into Whitehaven Drive. Round and round in a maze of bitumen and overgrown grass. Cars with duck taped doors and kids unsupervised on makeshift milkcrate bikes loitering on the roundabout. Roundabout turns onto a roundabout turns onto a roundabout. My head feels dizzy swirling and swirling around at every corner. I had little expectations. I feel like my heart is too heavy for excitement or nerves. I don't feel let down, just suffocated. I have lived a life of privilege, I still do. I have this optimism that everything will work out. So I was running to Dolphin Heads, a part of Mackay that overlooks the ocean. There is a resort. I try to make the most of it. But I am still caught up on the fact that it takes me twenty minutes to get out of this housing estate.

[jenaeswriting]

How do you go from knowing the point of life is love and then you lose it?

[jenaeswriting]

I thought at 23 I had it figured out. In the past, my life's worth was to be found in the marks on a test. When that didn't cut it, the point was the stories made on drunken nights. Then I grew up. The end of 2019, the parties lost their shimmer. One night in particular it went too far. I went home, I cradled myself silently. My skin wasn't my own, my body wasn't my own. So I poured my energy into my future job. Hours of writing, resumes, submissions. I was in my second year then. My future career seemed sprawling out in front of me like a long carpet, threads falling off the sides, creating their own pathways. This at the time strengthened me. This at the time felt enough. But in the midst of two hour drives to the city to sleep in a bed that wasn't mine, to do an internship that didn't pay. I found the point. I found the feeling that made it all worth it. A boy with blonde curls, whose face went red if you asked him personal questions. I spent three years slowly giving myself to this boy. Piece by piece I found parts of myself with him even I was yet to discover. The parts I hid, he held up in glory. At one point, even I learnt to love them. He is gone now. Perhaps he saw too much of me. Perhaps the pieces I tried to hid get uglier in the open light. How do you go from knowing the point of life is love. And then you lose it. How do you go on. How do you fight the urge to push yourself onto the train tracks. I know how it feels to have a point that's not love. I know how it feels to work on yourself. Fucking lonely. I have done this before. I am stronger with him. How do you go from knowing the point is love, and then you lose it?

[jenaeswriting]

My friend's band played a gig in Chippendale. It was gig celebrating non-male musicians. She was onstage in her peroxide pigtails, my feet were floating. I waved to her but she was in performance, she didn't wave back.

I was floating and my teeth were stained with red wine. Usually I don't like red wine. I won't even taste it. Too sour, too heavy. Why must you drink it lukewarm? But that afternoon I had a call with my boyfriend, it was a call that I was going to research for. I woke up with my heart racing. Although, I have woken up first to realise the pulse of my heartbeat and then to realise my consciousness to my heartbeat ever day since he left.

Before he took his flight, I had this overwhelming feeling something was going to happen. I don't usually fear plane crashes, not for myself and so especially not for others. I found myself anxious before he go on. Please be safe, I repeated, not recognising my own voice.

Then, despite having done my own travels just a fortnight prior, 4.5 weeks alone in Europe. With him gone I felt a hole. A mark. File missing. Like missing your favourite ring. Something felt wrong.

So every morning I have woke with my heart in my mouth. I could choke. I do. I also vomitted. That was for the first time in a long time. Now I cant eat. That is for the first time in a long time. I am trying not to give in.

The call I was anticipating I thought was about a girl, an "endearing girl, who smiles when she gets good marks. That's okay he was allowed to find a girl endearing, in fact, I wanted him too. He has been saying some frightening things lately, stuff about wanting to feel young, about wanting more friends. He should feel excitement. There is nothing more exciting than a stranger at a party, and permission to kiss them, to take them home. He deserves to feel young and attractive. He is both of those things.

I had brought it up before, if he wanted to do something like that he could, just with transparency. I told people in my life that I thought like this. They were surprised. But I think I anticipate the bad, and I try to circumvent it. Especially with him. I try to carve out time to see my friends, even thought secretly my favourite spot is his arms. I am doing it for me, for him, for the relationship. To be healthier for each other. All I wished was for him to call me, tell me not to come over, that he wanted to play his guitar instead. That would hurt less than coming over, and his comments about how he doesn't have time for it, how it's getting worse. Those moments I could have left. Maybe I should have left.

But he tells me about an "endearing" girl. So, with my heart racing I go to Kinokuniya and buy a book about open relationships. I go into muji and buy post it notes and a new pen. I am going to do my research, I am going to do this relationship well.

I lay in bed and wait for his call. The book is facing me in my bookshelf, price-sticker still attached. Know I don't know if I will ever read it. Maybe I will burn it. Or bring it with me into the Ocean.

The phone buzzes. There is little small-talk. He asks if I am mad. I say no, but it is hard to feel secure when I feel so disconnected. Then he tells me, on a Friday night 7pm. Sun still up, we are world apart and I hear him not in real time but with the fragment delay of FaceBook messanger call. He says, I used to think about forever with you. But now.

I hang up.

I can't speak.

I still can't speak.

There was another call but I feel like things have been on pause since those words.

He might have even came around. I remember he wanted me to still pick him up from the airport. I said I no longer could. Maybe that was him saying it was all okay. But I still feel that pause, that instant grief. The I cant do this. Usually I don't recognise the voice in my head, but thats who said when I spoke those words. If that makes sense.

My housemates knocked on my door. We were meant to go out. My eyes were stinging and I my neck was wet from tears. I said I needed more time and a glass of red wine.

That red wine turned into three and turned into a bottle. I went out to my friends gig. She has peroxide pigtails. My friend met me there, she was the only one who knew it was him and a phone call that was why I was so drunk. But she didn't know what it was. I still haven't spoken about it. And my mum messaged me telling me look forward to Friday when I pick him up. At the gig I got a tooth gem. I have it on my canine tooth. Its a round-pinkish stone that makes my already gappy-teeth look yellow. I liked it at the time, I liked it until this morning.

But I looked in the mirror for too long. Closed mouth. I thought about what Tom thinks when he looks at me. I wondered why maybe he loved me the most when I was dying. I wondered if thats what it would take. I know its not. It's just a thought I have sometimes.

My eyes were so red they were almost purple. They were lamented with tears threatening to spill. I reminded myself of the tooth gem I got three hours after the lost forever phonecall. And it sparkled in the same ugly way my eyes were. I thought about what Tom thinks when he looks at me. I wanted to rip the stupid thing off my tooth.

It will cost me 25$ to get rid of. Then am I not being individual enough for him, for our relationship like he said. Or, if I keep it, am i being the dominant one in the relationship like he said.

He thinks we are two different people. But he loves that we are two different people. He used to think about forever but-

[jenaeswriting]

Too many phrases I have heard before.Ones that I didn't understand and I wish I could re-not understand them. I wish i could wring out my brain like a wet towel and start again. Heres a phrase: My heart is in your hands. I never knew what that meant. In these last couple of days these words have ran loop-de-loops around my head. I guess "he must hate me. He must hate." got off the carosel. I am not sure where I heard heart in your hands. But I feel it so true. Like a small creature, naive and helpless, staring up and the face above. With you crush me or will you let me go. I am my heart, my heart is my whole being. Somewhere along the way I let you have it. Peice by peice. and now more of me is with you then anyone else. But it wasn't always this way. Times I hid, kept myself in-doors. This was me keeping myself, protecting myself. if you get to decide what happens. You have my heart and you decide to kill the thing. It is so clear that I do not have yours. Which is prehaps the worst part. Because I feel this too, has not always been this way. Somewhere along the way you took yours back. But I was not given the notice. And prehaps I am then a bad person. Innattentive, too much too much of a burden, a nuisance. This is okay. But I wish I had taken mine back too. Instead I give it to you, I remember another familiar phrase, on a platter, again I think I had not known this meaning like I feel now. Even if you are gentle, it is hard to have your heart with someone else, and to have just a gap where yours should be. What does it feel like to have two? I guess it can be easy to be dissmissive if you only need one. It must seem wasteful ,fruitless. I understand how you could be wreckless. One more phrase. I know where this is from Billie Eilish - hardly profound. The words of a fifteen year old girl - "If I love you was a promise". This one stings like teeht or poisen or lead or death or flames or fire or skin grating away. When I say I love you this is me communicating my intentions, my goals, my time, my patience, my confidence, my loyalty. I am not sure what you mean. How can you hold me and say those words and not be sure. What do you love. Do you love? I cannot write.

[jenaeswriting]

Pachinko was my read✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ of 2023

Pachinko was my first read of 2023. I was recommended it in the lead up to my trip to Japan by Tom's mum. She said reading it would be a good lesson in history. I am used to novels being fun and silly and non-fiction being serious and educational. Pachinko was like learning through play, like soaking up the sense of place on a through pictures. Pachinko was a trip through 20th century Korea and Japan. A period defined by flashpoints, World War I and II, civil conflicts. A period when places, peoples homes became transformed and cermented in time as battlegrounds. The conflict of Manchuria, or Hiroshima, just that a conflcit, and not a place of culture or identity, or home. This is how I had come to interpret the Korean civil war. Korea a nation today split into the North and South. A side to be chosen. Pachinko begins with a whole Korea, and born into it is hardworking Korean woman Sunja. She flees Korea during its time of Japanese occupation. By the time she can make it back, it is spit and owned by Russian and the West. Sunja doesn't fretabout the wartime, lifeis measured through the food on the table. These flashpoints of named and dated conflicts in Pachinko are not the omnipresent happenings, but were natural like the quiet hums of cars in the distance. Not heard until you are told to pay attention. When Sunja finds financial stability, her working children successful, she realises in her poverty, her nation has been lost, re-occupied and divided. To go home is un-true, her she can never go back. ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Pachinko was written in 2017 and tells Korean-Japan hostilities from 1911 to 1989. It follows the family linage of Sunja, daughter of Hoonie, a deformed man with a limp and a cleft-lip trying to make a life for himself in 20th century Korea. A hard worker and respected around his hometown in Busan, Hoonie is arranged to marry Yangjin. In the background Korea is allied with Japan through the Second World War. In Korea, there is poverty on the streets and livelihoods of Koreas are largely ignored by the Japanese empire. Money in Busan comes from the Japanese visitors. Quickly into Hoonie and Yangjin's marriage they birth beaming eyed Sunja. A hard worker herslef, she is volunteers at her mother's bathhouse and tends to the clients, both Korean and Japanese. When she is sixteen, Sunja meets a well-dressed man in the marketplace, he speaks highly of his life back in Osaka. He says he is from Jeju. Sunja can hardly believe when he says he is Korean. It is hard to spot his physical differences in such stunning white and clean clothes. He impregnates Sunja but announces he cannot be with her. Sunja is devestated and feels she has let down her mother and father. A Protestant minister Baek Isak stays in Sunja's mother's boarding house. In his ill-health, Baek declares he will marry Sunja to give the child a name and a better life, one in Japan. Sunja, Baek move to Baek's brother's house in Ikaino, the Korean ghetto of Osaka. Sunja knows the name 'Osaka' from the well-dressed man's stories. He spoke of a land full of food and technology and automobiles. In Ikaino, Sunja does not live this life of decadence. Her and Baek squeeze in with brother in law, Yoseb. Baek's brother is is high in the church and his wife Kyunghee a beautiful woman with soft and thin hands. But despite income and proffession or beauty if you are Korean you are sentanced to the ghettos. Rentals are denied to Koreans by Japanese. In Ikaino Korean children roam the streets and farm animals live with residents. There is little choice to ethic Koreans and living with cattle and pigs is a point to be disgusted of. So, Sunja and Beak move in with Yoseb and Kyunnghee and preparations begin for the fifth member of the house, Baek Isak's illegitimate child, Noa, Followed four years later by Mozasu. Noah and Moses. Noa was the most intreging character. He internalised much of the Korean descrimination from his Japanese peers. In tough times, Sunja and Kyunghee make kimchi at home in massive batches to sell at the markets. The smell of cabbage and garlic seeps into Noa's clothes, at school he is called garlic turd. Noa works hard to distance himself from the Korean archetype. He is told Koreans are dirty so he makes sure his shirt never has creases. He is told Koreans are rude so he is unfalteringly polite to a fault. He is told Koreans will not ammount to much, so he studies hard in school, staying back late after class and working into the night. Noa hates being Korean. He will hate being Korean all his life until he kills himself. To be living in Korea, you are destined for a life of hardshp. To move to prosperous Japan you are not offered the food, shelter or oppertunites of natives. Sunja and Noa and Yoseb and Isak do as they Japanese tell Koreans. They do so without ever questioning or oppposing the walls of oppression which suffocate Ikaino. They are generous, never angry at their place in society. It is a stark difference that until this point, Koh Hansu is the only Korean character who has made a rich life for himself. Of course, he is apart of the Yakunza and cannot have what he wants truely, which is Noa and Sunja. It takes Mosazu, Noa's brother, who defies the anti-Korean sentimate and doesn't take interest in conforming to the rules of the Japanese empirical forces. Noa tells Mosazu to study hard, to not get into fights with those who make him angry. Unlike Noa, Mosazu sees the injustice and can understand it is not him who is wrong but Japanese soicety. He befriends another bullied Korean child and further defies pressure to be a good Korean by taking up work at the Pachinko parlour. Mosazu is able to build a prosperous life for his mother and grandmother in Japan. At the end of the novel when Sunja is in her 70s cleaning Isak's grave placing a designer purse on the graveyard floor it is entirely diffferent image from the poverty striken life Sunja endured during her years of early motherhood in Busan and Japan. The book is the first English language telling of the Korean discrimiation in Japan. A histroy lesson, a comment on entrenched poverty, systematic discrimination, internalised hatred. Working hard and hard and hard in a system built to make sure you fail. The ways in which colonialisation and imperialism do not better those captured nations, and how large empire nations wish not to conjoin for joint prosperity but to keep those conquored on the bottom. To be a winner means there must be losers. It was interesting that Sunja immigrated to Japan when Korea was a unified country. There are times when she, or those in her family wish to see back home. But by going home they are forced to choose a side. Prehaps individual like Noa would wish to appease the Japanese, being taught all his life they are the superior race, never speak ill. Noa may be innclined to show his allegance to North Korea. Despite the quest for Korea to be free, Japanese rule is how many Koreans understand Korea. An American or Western south is still not home. Of course, as the years go on this sense of 'home' becomes very vague. third of fourth generation Japanese born ethnic Koreans have never been to their "native" country. How can this be where they are from? And how can they be made to choose a side and feel at peace. So much change occurs yet people wish for you to choose one side of a coutnry and go back to a counntry that is not yours. The Pachinko game is posited as a game of chance but successful Pachinko businesses, as Mozazu's says is about making people hopeful and then rigging the system. Koreans had been promised better lives in Japan, better lives in the north and in the south. Today, this war rages on.

[jenaeswriting]

Blue butterfly with a swallow tail. Chūrui gafu. 1910.

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[jenaeswriting]

I am sitting level three of the Fisher library. I feel too old to be here. I feel too old for Stucco I feel too old for my friendships. I feel past these memories past this place but I am still here. I feel a disconnectedness, like my best times are behind me. There is no excitement, no new friends to make, no new places to discover. Its a sunny day, I have picked a spot where the windows are slender, tall rectangles. Looking out you can spy on the pedestrians like a nosey neighrbour peeking through the slint in a venetian blind. I used to know a lot of the faces. I used to sit on the green with big groups. This blog was once for wrirting but I just wanted to winnge. I am lonely.

[jenaeswriting]

i want to make a zine