Reconciling Gently with Life's Emptiness

📖 The Road Not Taken Is More Beautiful_Park Wan-seo

While reading this essay collection, I found myself wishing I had an adult like author Park Wan-seo around me. I want to grow old into a clear-eyed elder who gently traces the melancholy of life within their wrinkles. I’ve had Park Wan-seo’s novels on my reading list but haven’t gotten around to them yet. Reading her stories, filled with her meticulous and neat thoughts and life, makes me curious about her novels. I need to go to the library right away.

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Loved

pg.24

Even now, when I give literary lectures, I often speak about this virtue of novels, the comfort and healing power that both writer and reader can share. When I admit that I was saved through novels, it leaves a hollow feeling, as if I were putting on airs.

pg.30

A time when melancholy, instead of bitterness, flows through the deep valleys of my wrinkles, and the cruel brilliance that once exposed changed and decaying things fades, allowing for a gentle reconciliation with objects. I, too, want to gently reconcile with the emptiness of my life. Even if everything in my memory has vanished into futility, if I can revive the names of my childhood friends on some humble porch, on the face of a cleanly aged elder, that would be enough for me.

pg.45

That moment is brief, like a mysterious fish swimming in the water briefly revealing its beautiful scales. Though brief, on such days, it feels like something good will happen, and my body feels refreshed all day. But on days obscured by yellow dust or fog, when nothing is visible, both my body and mind sink into gloom.

pg.59

Kim Hoon’s cold, short sentences, devoid of even a shred of human warmth, felt like sharp shards of ice slicing into my skin. It was never an abstract idea; it was a visceral feeling.

pg.65

Memories frozen by that winter’s cold maintain a freshness that is more unpleasant than something rotten, like food kept frozen for ages. This isn’t memory; it’s a disease. Bad memories should rightfully rot and disappear, and even good memories, too precious to forget, should rot and be reborn as something like flowers.

pg.126

His desired epitaph reads, “Haruki Murakami, writer (and runner) who at least didn’t walk until the very end.” His arrogance is thrilling. He says he likes being alone and prefers running, which can be done perfectly well by oneself, because he dislikes competing with anyone or being conscious of rivals during exercise. But is exercise without rivals truly possible? Perhaps his rival is himself. Is there any other confidence, any other sense of superiority, as profound as believing that the only rival in this world is oneself?

pg.148

I can’t discard books that make my heart flutter just by seeing their titles, bringing back the happiness and emotion of my first read, just as they did in my youth. As long as I believe that I can receive a transfusion of young blood through books, I will not grow old.

**

pg.183

However, this is neither a book review nor a reading reflection. It’s a story that veered off onto a side path while reading a book. As I get older, I find myself more drawn to books that have charming little detours where I can pause and rest, rather than those that breathlessly pull me towards the summit.

pg.192

When a seemingly ordinary poem comes and meets my ordinary time, it makes even a philistine like me philosophize. Oh, the power of poetry, how great it is!

pg.215

When I get stuck while writing, I read poetry to rest my mind. When I encounter a good poem, my blocked words sometimes flow freely, as if by magic. There are times when a finished sentence feels awkward or empty because I can’t find that one perfect word it needs. At such times, I also read poetry. To borrow a single word, or to subtly ‘copy’ one. A poetry collection is thus a treasure trove of good words for me. When I’m bored and listless, wondering why I live, I read poetry for comfort. When my back is warm and my belly full, and my mind is dulled like a pig’s, I read poetry, wanting to be pricked by its thorns and have my senses sharpened. When growing old feels lonely, and the thought of death frightens me, I read poetry. I think of the years I’ve repeatedly watched flowers bloom and leaves fall, and I tell myself I’d have no regrets dying now, yet I still collect flower seeds to plant next year—feeling pity for myself, I read poetry.