Afterimage 60: Learning from Dark Nights

Han Kang, Okuntakinte, and the Last New Moon

no 60

Have you accidentally looked into the sun or bright light and then looked away, the image burned into your eyelids? That’s an afterimage.

I’ve been delirious, in bed. With Covid and 38.6 fever. That’s somewhere above 101 in fahrenheit.

It’s not the comeback I wanted. In fact, I never wanted to leave. Sometimes we don’t intend to leave and other times, we don’t quite intend to come back. Today, I want to share some things that moved me, during a spell of non-feeling. An interview with Han Kang, the newest– and Korea’s first– Nobel laureate in literature. And lessons from the Artist, Joseph Awuah-Darko. And the darkest time of the year, for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

Here's what I saw, heard, or sensed that’s stayed with me. Let’s begin.

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The Thing is not the Thing

I ran to the bookstore to flip through and figure out whether I wanted to read Han Kang in English, or in Japanese. I usually prefer reading Asian authors translated into Japanese.

I walked into the bookstore, intent on reading a page or two. I found a collection of her books in a prominent spot near the entrance. I recognized one of the book covers right away.

For a good part of a week, I argued with myself on the pros and cons of reading my first Han Gang in English, my language of emotional landscapes. I also cross-examined myself, arguing the case for reading it in Japanese. Japanese is Korean’s linguistic cousin after all, sharing syntax DNA and relational context.

Language influences how words feel to me, how they taste for me as a reader, and ultimately how it comes together as a whole. The palette of my brain responds differently, depending on language.

I had to find out. Would reading Han Kang in Japanese do it for me? Would it make a difference? I needed to get my eyes on a page and see what would follow.

***

Once in the bookstore, I reached over and took a book off the shelf. I was shocked by how small the book was, and how thick. Photos of book covers, like on goodreads and Amazon, are deceptive. Because, well… scale.

I held the book. It didn’t extend beyond my fingertips. While thick, it was light as five puffs of popcorn. I opened to a random page to see what it felt like, in Japanese.

Squinting sceptically, I tried it on for size, as if trying on a dress I wasn’t convinced about. I had a hunch I wouldn’t like it, and would prefer an English version.

I was wrong.

Barely through to the end of a paragraph, my body knew. I had to read it in Japanese.

The certainty of having to read the book in Japanese wasn’t driven by language. In my quest to figure out how to read Han Gang, I’d ignored a critical part of the book: its physical form.

I have small hands. The work of one of the world’s most celebrated authors sat neatly on my palm; the heft of massacres, love, and searching that lay between the covers somehow was contained, neatly within the span of my small hand.

I had to read it in Japanese.

Knowing this had little to do with words, or language. Quite simply, I didn’t want a North American paperback for my Han Gang experience. I didn’t want the read to smell pulpy sweet. I didn’t want it to feel grainy and rough to the touch turning page after page. I wanted it exactly as it sat in my hand: in a format smaller than 8 small matchboxes, on fine, smooth paper.

Photo: Han Kang’s The White Book. I never imagined it to be so small. Look at its size relative to the matchbox. About mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Knowing I had to read Han Kang in Japanese had nothing to do with language. It came down to design. A Japanese sensibility for the reading experience. How it feels in my hands.

The cover and pages of a book are like skin and a body. Supported by a spine, they are tangible; tactile and physical. A French folio book feels different from its Japanese tankōbon counterpart. And again, different from an American paperback. They have different shapes, textures, and a different feel. They move and take up space differently.

The words and the language on the page are what emanates from the body of a book. Instead of the tactile, corporal pages, covers, and spine, they are in many ways, like what a person smells or sounds like: like pheromones or a voice, they are intangible, undeniably unique, an ephemeral proof of presence. They compel, make us feel, and make us respond. React.

There, in the bookstore, I wondered whether this book’s voice matched its body.

I hurried home to find out.

The Conundrum of (Co)existence

Before diving into its pages, I wanted to learn more about Han Gang. I Googled and surfed, and was struck by hearing Han Kang in her own voice, in an interview from the Louisiana Channel from 2019.

“Since when I was a child, it was very overwhelming to look at human beings, all the things human beings have committed throughout the history and throughout the world, and at the same time, you can see all those such dignified human beings all around the world.

So it was like impossible. It was like an impossible riddle for me, and the fact I belong to this human race. And you know, when we are confronted by the horror of humanity, we have to question ourselves, what is the meaning that we are human?

And you know, humanity has such broad spectrum, I always wanted to know the meaning. So it is like an unending inner struggle, because I want to embrace this word and embrace life, but certainly there are points we cannot, and it's like walking back and forth between these two riddles.”

– Han Gang

Interview, by Christian Lund in May 2019 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. 6:28

In humanity and in the simple gesture of living, we experience both the worst and the best: horror and love exist together, simultaneously. They stand and wait, expecting us to make sense of their impossible coexistence. I’m finding more and more instances of it this year. Have you had to make sense of this odd coexistence in your own life?

I stumbled onto this video clip the day after the US elections. Hearing Han Kang speak about the coexistence of the horror and dignity we find around us gave me an odd sense of comfort in the midst of not knowing how to feel.

I learned things coexist. Justice and injustice. Love and hatred. Joy and doubt. And they can exist together. They will exist together, whether I like it or not. While a moral conscience and western ways of life and reasoning compel me to fix things, I learned that things can coexist. Just as light and darkness do. Light doesn’t need to fix the darkness. It just is. They just are.

I initially wrote this letter to you over a month ago. And I didn’t dare share it. Something in me closed and went silent.

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I don’t know what’s kept me from sharing and hitting publish. Having convictions and feelings seems more dangerous now, than it ever did: my disappointment about the U.S. presidential election, bewilderment and disheartenment for the children, the people in Gaza, for Liberation for Palestine. Confusion about the unexpected tryst with a friend.

I’ve always embraced feeling deeply, but recently, feeling has transformed into something unsoberly and sharing into a precarious act. It’s always felt a bit unsafe to have feelings, but I used to lean into them deeply anyway, not caring about the aftermath.

Now, feeling makes life messier. I acknowledge my thoughts, but I keep them to myself and unknown to others, even though I know it doesn’t change anything. Having feelings isn’t what’s dangerous. Not stopping to discern who I share them with is; it feels something akin to emotional promiscuity. That Afterimage is a kind of naked sharing of experiences is not lost on me.

Maybe this is why it feels luxurious to have Covid, to sleep for hours, be awake for 2-3 hours, then repeat. Covid’s made me hit pause on life. It helps me to avoid feeling anything outside of my fever dreams.

Euthanasia as Intentions to Live

Tonight, I came across the video of Han Kang’s Louisiana interview again. This time, on an Instagram story from Joseph Awuah-Darko, an artist I follow. I’ve been following his Last Supper Project on Instagram, a documentation of his last hundred-plus dinners on earth. His days are numbered. He has decided to end his life by legally-assisted euthanasia.

The word euthanasia evokes a lot of things; death, primarily. Followed by some chaos for the heart. The initial chaos ricocheting in my heart has settled into something new: the beauty of an intentional life.

Photo: To learn more about the Last Supper Project, go to Okuntakinte’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/okuntakinte

Whenever Joseph’s content comes up on my Instagram, I’m transported to a sacred place within me. And then, the very next reel jolts me back to the vulgar, vernacular, and mundane. In the allocated framework and time limit of a reel- how is it possible for me to feel so different from one reel to the next? I wonder to myself, how can something so sublime and something so mundane live within the same confines of a defined space?

What I am learning, following Joseph’s journey, is that a well-lived life is not so much about how and what I can pack into the time I’m given, but by the intention and presence I bring to this very moment.

New Moon and New Intentions

Just days after the winter solstice, the depth of darkness, today we enter the new moon in Capricorn. No moonlight, just darkness. And we emerge toward the full moon, toward realization. It’s one of the best days of the month to make new intentions, and in this case, this month, visions and intentions for the new year.

I thought I’d be feeling so much better this morning, and would have a sunny morning of intention setting. Instead, I woke up at two in the afternoon, hungover from high fever and weird dreams, and fatigue from coughing. Tonight my fever is down, my mind clear. I still wanted to set my intentions on this new moon, so I lit a candle and drew a bath before I writing them down. I put on music that stirs me and puts me into a mise-en-scene in an imaginary Pina Bausch vignette. I sat and soaked and decided to finish this letter before setting my intentions tonight.

The first thing I’ll do after sending this letter is meditate. Then I’ll draw cards for the year, and vision my year. And while I do, I’ll do something different this year.

I’ll reflect on what I’ve learned from Joseph– will I allow myself to feel my desires and see the vision for my year– then pack it into a timeline of fifty-two weeks, creating an ambitious or impossible To Do list for the year? Or will I invest everything I can over the next fifty-two weeks, to be here with compassion, presence, and permission to feel, stopping along the way to check in with the Universe, with myself, and those with me on the ride? And with the intentions I set on one of the darkest nights of the year?

Journal Prompts

Find a quiet space, clear of distractions. Set yourself up with a warm tea, or a glass of water. Open your notebook- or wherever you write- and before taking pen to paper, breathe in. Pausing at the top of the breath and at the bottom. Do this for four rounds of deep breath.

Now, write.

• What are ways you commit to what’s possible in the year to come?

• What do you see for yourself? What do you want for yourself?

• What do you want to discover?

• Who do you want to do that with? What gets in the way?

• Do you give yourself permission to be happy? To be fulfilled? To receive what you really want?

• What are affirmations you will repeat so you can remind yourself of who you are becoming, and who you already are?

Thank yourself for taking time to listen to what needed to be heard.

Gratitude

Thank you for being on this journey with me, again this year. It’s been an unexpected year of change and movement. I’m grateful you’ve accepted me into your inbox and for time to connect.

Special thanks to my collaborators, in friendship, in creativity, in love, and in writing, and to make the world a better place than we found it. Thanks to Leo Ariel for your editing powers, and for pushing me to hit send.