my current therapies of choice: walking a few miles a day (yesterday a fox ran silently right across my path), listening to the open yale course "the early middle ages" while i stitch (i'm thinking about plato and the allegory of the cave today) and reading a few pages a night of the orphan master's son by adam johnson. i've been interested in north korea since watching any documentary i could find about the country and reading nothing to envy a couple years ago.
my daughter olivia (michael was her boyfriend) and i were in a bookstore recently. she wanted to find a book to occupy her mind. after a 45 minute search she came back with "the orphan master's son" under her arm, having no idea it was the book i was reading as well.
i am searching for answers and for truth. my attention is making what was previously invisible, visible. in the beginning of "the orphan master's son" the main character, jun do, is working in underground tunnels. the north korean soldiers are expert at navigating in the dark without modern technology, even without light. i'm about 150 pages into the book and there is so much that is beautifully written about light and dark.
here's a small excerpt from the book in a time period when jun do is working on a fishing boat:
Not that he envied those who rowed in the daylight. The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked through during the day. At night, they were things you looked into. You looked into the stars, you looked into dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps. No one ever stared at the tip of a cigarette in the daylight hours, and with the sun in the sky, who would ever post a "watch"? At night on the Junma, there was acuity, quietude, pause. There was a look in the crew members' eyes that was both faraway and inward.
