Back to The Place - Essay Example

Back to My Place I imagine myself walking up along the little hill that stretched upwards from the left side of the house I lived in as a child. Thisis where many of my childhood memories are stored. This place at the top of the hill, which comes so clearly to my mind, was surely there before I was aware of it. I have no idea when it was built, it was always just there. This spot has been enshrined in my memory as a precious part of the world that revealed its magic just to me and has often helped me chase bad memories away. It had an odd little name. Translated literally, it means ‘A Car Inspecting Office of the Eastern Part’. Looking back, I suppose it was a sort of garage or inspection station to ensure automobiles were running properly. As I remember, there were hundreds of taxies, so it might even have been a cab company like Yellow Cab. Every morning, it was busy answering complaints about the waste oil that flowed downhill from the top where the station was to the bottom and our housing area. This is the only negative thing I can remember about that place. However, those malcontents did nothing to actually stop the flow of oil. It seemed all they could do to murmur unhappily to themselves and anyone near them to express their displeasure. Around midday on Sundays, after having a light lunch, my family would take four badminton rackets, a few shuttlecocks, and some water to drink, and then would step inside the 400 square yards of that big car park up the hill. With a light heart, we would pass by the black written sign “A Car Inspecting Office of Eastern Part” as if the sign did not exist. A few neighbors would usually have already taken their places, playing side by side, as everyone enjoyed their own games. It seemed as though nobody cared or even thought about the original purpose of that place. Instead, the car lot became a little camping spot meant just for us. For my family, the white parking lines denoting parking spaces became the perfect court on which to play badminton – the markings were just right. We wouldn’t return home until dusk, cooled by a fresh breeze, smelling the sweet scent of fun-earned sweat that wafted skywards on that gentle wind, tired but happy On weekdays, around the time when office work was finished, the parking lot would get empty bit by bit. It was during these hours that my friends and I, without any formal appointments, would gather one by one as if we knew each other’s thoughts. Using the same white parking lines my family enjoyed for badminton, my friend and I would play everything we could think of. If we put those lines together as a set of twelve, which looked like a chessboard, it made a great soccer field. The perfect place for dodge ball could be played on a group of lines fewer than those used for soccer, yet grouped in exactly the same way. We wouldn’t go home until the sun fell below the horizon making us feel some fear in the darkness and eager for the safety of home. The only exception to this rule was when we heard our mother’s voices calling us loudly, sounding far away, “Kids, its dinner time!” Those friends, and our mother’s voices, filled with longing calling us back home, were a regular pattern in my life throughout my entire childhood and I thought they would remain unforgettable scenes throughout my life. But sometimes things don’t work out the way we plan, and the scenes of my happiness would be disturbed by later events. Besides the lovely sound of our mother’s calls, we would hear another voice, darker, directed toward us. There were two viewpoints regarding using that space, that of our parents and ourselves, using it for fun, and that of the owners, a different aspect that also stayed in my memory. The office was never totally empty even if we hoped it would be. After 5 PM, when the workers’ jobs were done, they would leave a few persons on duty in the office and the rest would go home. Though they did not frequently confront us, there was a sort of competition, as they did not want their property used as a playground for kids. Their position of being ‘on duty’ would sometimes force us to leave the property and we would watch vigilantly for ways of getting inside again. That would be another fun game, watching them working outside as we did our best to hide our bodies carefully in the tall grass. But even in my memory, I understood they were only human, same as we were, and we saw evidence of that often. When they got bored sitting in the office, they would come out and walk toward us, without any loud shouting or angrily ordering us to leave. They would just begin to kick the soccer ball we kept, with a little invisible shyness tending to hide their true desire to join us. I know they thought we were just kids who didn’t know how to judge people. But I still remember them sometimes as ill-tempered uncles, wanting to play but too dignified and mature now to let go and have fun! We were crazy about the scent of the exhaust gas of automobiles that emerged from the place. I still don’t believe that it is one of the most crucial causes of air pollution, simply because of the happy times I enjoyed with that smell. I would stop by the place on my way to school, and then try to feel and taste that smell. I would breathe deeply and let the beautiful smell stir inside of me. Some people might say it was just an artificial chemical feature combining carbons and oxidized steels, but to me, it also seemed pure and natural. More than aromatic air-fresheners, covering a bad smell in cars, much more than the smell of marijuana making people high temporarily, it was natural. This was the smell of reminiscence, which had been dominating my childhood senses. My country, Korea, is a nation with a very quickly developing IT industry. For fifty dollars, Koreans are provided with high-speed internet service, ten times faster than America’s Comcast cable service. Any transactions regarding payments are able to be authorized with only one touch on a keyboard. We can get involved in all kinds of things, anywhere on earth, through the screen on our desktops. This technology-oriented routine started out quite recently. Until I graduated from elementary school, internet service wasn’t commonly available to even citizens of our biggest city, Seoul. Its high price per minute and low speed made people less inclined to try it out and not comfortable with its promised possibilities. While society has since benefited from high technology and the availability of high-speed internet services, I am not sure that we are really richer, or if the quality of life has actually improved. People no longer have the patience to get something they want. They can’t give up the convenience of online service instead of going out and dealing with real human beings. They have given up their chance to connect with others, and are becoming isolated within themselves. Kids are more likely to have fun playing computer games or chatting online, rather than going out and becoming self aware through their face to face interactions with others in society. They have lost their reason and incentive to make up their own games on the play ground, like my own precious place in my memory. When I returned home for a time, I remember how annoyed I would get waiting for one page on my laptop to move to the next (It was not even Comcast service). Now I write checks every month to pay my rent for my apartment, and I have come to believe that life does not need to be that fast. While I waited for pages to download, I saw the faces of children with parents at home, so full of smiles, their voices joyful and energetic, as they ran and played, jumping and shouting to each other. It made me recall that parking lot where I used to love to skip and play, back in my home place, back when things were slower and more carefree. There is a word that translates to “Aesthetics of waiting” in my country, Korea. To understand it, suppose that I am trying to draw a circle as perfectly round as I can. Everybody else is trying to draw their own circle. Each person must take their own time to complete their own circle. If I take too long to draw the circle based on my own natural pace, the circle will be meanderingly scattered because of my trembling hand. However, if I try to rush my pace, it becomes too fast to deal with my skill and would also not come close to being a perfect circle. Instead, I have to recognize and work at my own pace, something that is not possible in a world constantly rushed by the new technology. During my last winter vacation, I got a chance to visit the child hood place I have described. My parents, my friends and I joined together in remembering those early days, sharing our feelings and memories. The little hill was still that same slope on the left side of the house I once lived in that I remembered. As I walked up the hill, I felt as if the higher I climbed, the smaller I grew, becoming younger with every step. By the time I stood on the top, I was a little child again. But my memories were betrayed. I found nothing on the end of the street at the top of the hill. Instead, an unfamiliar building stood on the spot. This didn’t matter, though. I turned back with a smile at the corner of my mouth, because I could still feel the atmosphere surrounding me, touching my mind. I heard the yelling of the workers, in the old Car Inspection Office of Eastern Part, the mothers’ voices call us from down the hill. I smelled the fragrance of the cars starting-up in the morning, everything I had once known was awakening in me; it became for me a precious moment. Although I had forgotten them somewhat, as I stood there I realized that old car park and these memories will always stay with me for the rest of my life. Discovery of the New World I was floating on the river Thames that flowed below London Tower Bridge at sunset. The sky was reddish when I got on the cruise, but as time passed, the red of the sky began getting darker. Finally, the river lost the power of the sun, turning its waters black and reflecting the light from Big Ben and the bridge in glittering pathways. The light, contrasted with the black river, was sparkling bright and highlighted the grandeur of Big Ben, casting its own face upon the surface of the Thames in a beautiful display of the passage of time. While London was urban loveliness, the nature of Switzerland symbolized purity itself. Switzerland’s brilliant green hillsides and the clear refreshing air relieved all my stress and worries at once. One moment especially stands out in my memory. As we traveled on our cruise, I had been able to see a few islands distant and gray in the mist. As we approached them, the islands emerged green and shining from the mist, exposing an entirely new world and I understood Columbus’ thrill of discovery. To travel between nations, I usually used the Euro Pass. This was a tremendous means of transportation because the trains offered personal beds for the number of people in the car. Thanks to this procedure, I naturally encountered many new people on every rail trip. Most of them were travelers like me. They wanted to experience new things and to see new ways of living, just like I did. It destroyed the barrier that people normally seem to place between strangers and we became friends easily. The conversations we had were not so practical or necessarily focused on real life, however, we all seemed to feel rather carefree and this increased our sense of true freedom. It was a great experience to have relationships with people who didn’t know me before. I could be anyone that I wanted to be. I experienced a view of myself through others that was, at the same time, not me. Besides the people I met in the trains, there was a memorable person I remember. In Rome, I lost my way on the road. It was not easy to find the right way because the road was crowded with other lost travelers. While I was confused, looking at the map of Rome and moving slantwise again and again, I heard someone’s voice calling me. At my first glimpse, I knew what he was going to say. A big straw hat, tattered clothes, everything he wore indicated he was homeless. As I expected, as soon as I turned my head to him, he opened his lips with a very pitiful voice, “Please, give me some money, I haven’t eaten any food since this morning.” Because I could not let a hungry man starve, I handed him some Euros, and then as a reward, he told me the way. But, in a few minutes, I got lost again. Embarrassed, all I was able to do was just look around and try to guess where I should go. However, something happened which I didn’t expect and that proved the existing of a god to me. The guy I had given some money to was approaching me again. Actually, he was walking behind me to be sure I found my way. He indicated a specific direction again, “That’s the way you’re going to.” I realized that while I was looking at him as a stereotypical homeless person, at the same moment, he probably saw me as a hopeless tourist. But we were each just people, we were able to help each other out not because of our assumptions about each other, but because of our willingness to move beyond these assumptions to see each other as human. This had been my first travel experience overseas. Until I undertook the trip, I couldn’t understand my father’s saying before every business trip, “Oh! I hate these flights.” I considered it a common complaint to the life he lived, like “Life is hard.” But for the first two hours of my flight, I began to understand my father’s complaints. It seemed I became someone’s pet, just being raised within specific patterns of behavior. The only pleasure I was able to have was in the meals the stewardess offered twice during the flight, based upon their own determination of the appropriate times. If I had not had a dream of the new world I was going to see after the flight, I’m not sure I would have been able to sit so patiently through it. However, time was honest and in fifteen hours, I arrived at the international airport of London. As time passed during my tour, I found myself becoming tired of the picturesque scenes surrounding me all the time. Everything I was seeing was a work of art. All the buildings I went through, even supermarkets, represented the magnificence of the Middle Ages. The buildings were embellished with all kinds of gorgeous and delicate lines and there was no such thing that had just a sleek surface upon it. My fingers releasing the shutter of a camera restlessly for the first couple of days began to lose their willingness to perform this role, as my mind, overwhelmed with the images around me, began to lose the reason that those splendid moments had to be captured on the film inside it. My eyes got tired of being dazzled with the brilliance of all those wonderful things. I began to miss the concept of the merely mediocre. Most of the days I spent in Europe were spent under the cover of clouds blocking the brilliance of the sun and further making me miss my home. It was usually raining, but even if it wasn’t, I always had to keep an umbrella in my hand. One book, called “Nine Keys for Success”, indicated, “You shouldn’t be affected by weather, whatever the weather is like, you are the person dominating yourself.” As I traveled, though, I thought I couldn’t reach the point the book recommended for success all the time. Although I had been surrounded by a great deal of splendor, I wasn’t able to escape being at least a little depressed. I still hadn’t spent that much money. I took specific time out during one of the days I spent in Prague to figure out how much money I had by that point. Because I scattered my money among a few places within my traveling bags, considering the possibility that some of my money might be stolen, I tended to spend it without first making plans. I decided to pool it all together in my wallet to encourage me to be more careful. One day I took a bus and I was wearing Hip-hop style jeans that had a big sized pocket. After I got off the bus, I finally realized that two thousand Euros that were in my pocket were as accessible to anyone else besides me who had been standing in my area. Now I know that sometimes, there is no compromise, or there are some things worth taking a little extra effort. I probably thought that managing the scattered money was tiresome work, in fact, that concern for spending was a bigger point than preparing for having my money stolen. I was making excuses to myself, like “I am the person, well prepared”, to hide my laziness. Suddenly, I began to miss my country so much because it was the place where everything had been familiar, comfortable and handy. If I could travel through time and talk with my younger self, before I went on the trip, I would say to him, “This trip is not going to be exactly what you have expected, but you go, and feel by yourself!” I didn’t know what exploring a new world would mean to me. I thought it would be just like eye shopping for splendor and gorgeousness. However, I was arrogant in this assumption. I had considered myself an already-completed-person. All the magnificence I had seen, all the people I had met, and every moment I spent in Europe, even the moment in which I lost my money during the bus ride, were the lessons I gained of this new world. Now I am in another new world, called America. This time, I am not wishing or expecting everything to be under my complete control, but I am going to feel and touch this country as another new world, I am going to face it head-on with all its faults and benefits! The Smell I became lighthearted. The greetings from restless hearts were coming from here and there. Someone who seemed to be the promoter of the class reunion then said, “Okay, everyone get together.” As always, a number of people in the group could not be seen. Those were the people who used to be the topic of conversations. They used to be the center of attention, which at one point of their lives they might have enjoyed. This time though, they just want to avoid hearing any stories about themselves. One guy opened his mouth quietly and said to his friend nearby, “What a shame…he used to be always like this!” “Yeah,” his friend agreed, “He was really good looking and smart. But his personality doesn’t really match his intelligence and appearance.” I believe that this is the typical way we assess someone. We might look at their appearance and their behavior. We might listen to them while they’re talking and sometimes hear about their reputation from other people. These are the basic interactions we encounter and participate in everyday. The senses used to assess an individual are not without restrictions. We cannot simply judge the person based on just seeing, or hearing. And we cannot simply just touch a person without reason, the same goes with taste as well. However, there is one among the five senses that is oftentimes undervalued as a basis for judging a person’s character. Nobody evaluates someone by starting with, “That guy smells….” in normal conversations. It can be read in some forms of writings like romantic novels or poetic impressions, but the writers should have these words prior to producing their literary works. In other words, they were planned. These things do not really happen instantly. In this case, it must be embodying the special value rewarding the writer’s effort and observation. Now that we look at it, isn’t the smell being overlooked or ignored worthy of merit? Probably some people think of smell as simply saying, “I have a great fragrance” or “I do not stink!” There is, however, another definition. When writers or talkers mention “the smell” in their writing or in conversations to describe someone, the role of smell doesn’t end in the statement, “I do not stink!” Smell is further defined beyond its literal meaning. It pulls out one’s faint aroma behind, so that it provides a detailed description of each individual’s character. I have had a very inspirational impression from one book called Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind, which gave me a greater sensation about the concept of smell. The main character, Grenouille, was extremely gifted in the fleeting realm of scent. Unfortunately he went through a difficult childhood and had only hatred in him. The combination of these circumstances drove him to his erroneous cling to “the perfume.” His obsession led him to murder a woman so that he could use every part of her body, including her hair, to make the greatest scent as the only one in existence in the entire world. The scent he created was not artificial, but rather it contained the natural essence of the woman while she was still alive. What Grenouille did was to preserve her every moment as fresh as possible. The people who experienced a whiff of the perfume felt as if they reached the goal of desire, as if the snow melted in the radiance of the morning sun and collapsed down on the ground. Grenouille was not only an expert in compounding, but he also had an amazing skill of making the common sense of smell in the public extraordinary, which distinguished the substantial meaning of smell from other people’s scent. Today, people are still conscious about how they smell. To illustrate, what is normally our task after rising from our beds? What is our top priority, the first thing in our minds that we should do? We could have a coffee with toast, or if we had more time, we could read the newspaper. Normally after finishing our morning routines, we would then go to work or school. Sometimes though, when we are really in a hurry, we skip our joyous breakfast, or give up knowing what happened yesterday. But what we could never forget in our routine—one of the major tasks we do when we wake up—is to wash ourselves, even if it’s as simple as washing our face. Since we are social creatures we always like to be clean. There is this one common item next to a bathtub that we use everyday. Even if we plan to travel to a place where bathtubs don’t exist, we would still want to carry the means of getting clean. Soap is very tiny, but very powerful. It has been one of the basic necessities for human beings since the 19th century, when it was no longer considered a luxury. In those days, when we smelled good, it meant that we were members of the higher classes of society. Oddly speaking, the fact that our desire to keep ourselves pleasantly fragrant was once considered magnificent represents how smell plays a big role in society. We all have the right to be blessed with a fine smell. People might use perfume and boost their confidence thanks to the knowledge of the fragrance overspreading their bodies. But if we think about it, are we truly confident from the blessing of smell? We all know being merely fragrant no longer carries special meaning amongst the public, so the smell is not enough to secure our confidence. Let’s turn this cause and effect relationship around. What do you think will happen to our smell if we are confident? Imagine that our fathers had just finished their jobs at 10:00 PM after spending all day working as hard physical laborers. Their clothes are all covered with sweat and they want to hug their children to say good night and yet they restrain themselves since they worry that the smell of their clothes might annoy their kids. Can we say that this is stinky? Our fathers must be proud of their work since they did their best to feed their children even when they are tired. They are people who deserve to be confident and people who deserve to be respected. This is an example of a time when the smell of sweat from our father’s hard work is reborn upon their confidence as the most valuable perfume. They have one of the finest smells in the world. Smell is a song for all of us. Sometimes, it sings who we are; sometimes it sings how much anger we have; and sometimes it sings how much love we have. We all start from the beginning as poor composers having an empty score on the white page. How we are going to compose the score is our assignment. It often could be drawn as dissonant harmonies, but since monotonous music is not interesting, it is worth experimentation. The smell of our bodies can be one of the aspects that truly tell others what kind of individuals we are. I hope we all have a chance to smell beautifully while we live in this world. Read More