Was I dreaming all the heat?
It’s become chilly all of a sudden. If I had known this in advance, I would have endured the heat better. I feel sorry. I couldn’t stand the heat even though I experience it every year and know it soon passes.
My acquaintances have recently started saying that they envy me for living in Seochon. They are probably saying that to please me, but Seochon has recently been publicized as a hip place for MZ generations in newspapers and TV.
While it’s in the middle of the city, it is located slightly to the inner part of the city. Seochon was peaceful and quiet for a long time for that reason. Some people have moved into Seochon because they were tired of skyscrapers and apartments and people have started walking around the area.
When people say that it must be great to use the Blue House or palaces as if they were our backyard, I respond that it isn’t like that in reality.
Our 300-year-old house’s back yard and garden which were inconvenient but looked beautiful, were cut off to make way for the road. As I cannot buy the land next to me right now, I take a walk to the Blue House,Gyongbok gung Palace, Deoksu gung Palace, small parks and mountains.
And things that lack in some ways come to my eye, rather than the good things that people from across the river envy.
I went to a university in Georgetown, a 400-year-old old town in Washington DC. I walked in an older town around Doshisha University in Kyoto every day. My eye also saw old towns in London and Provence. So with this eye that saw all these old towns, I try to peer into the things that other people would envy in our town.
This town is the place of my origin,the place of my family’s register and my current address. But I have found plenty of things that I wish were different.
At the same time, I find some things pretty and attractive.
There are four or five cafes in Hyoja-ro main road on way to the Blue House and in a small two-story building that is now a gallery there is a sign that says Boan Inn. This is the place where writers like Seo Jeong-ju,Kim Dongni and artist Lee Jung-seob stayed and wrote.
A café named 33 Market nearby with its neat natural mood, is a popular place even with its more than 10,000 won price for a cup of tea. And there is a popular buckwheat noodle place called When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom – with a pretty name and a long history - on the left side of the café. The narrow alley between When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom and 33 Market is one of the places that looks charming to me.
Farther into that alley, on the left side there are shops that sell used art books that might be found in Europe, and on the right side there is red brick traditional Korean house.
Trumpet flowers spilling from the top of buildings on the left side make me smile. Those flowers that climbed trees here and there in town throughout summer were eye-catching. Their bright color especially draws my eyes.
Trumpet flower called nobleman’s flower as they used to be planted in the garden of nobility’s house is a summer flower. It hasn’t withered under the seething heat and storms and its orange color is so vivid I feel.
And I naturally think of my mother who lived in Seochon far longer than I did.
When half of the house was cut off and my mom had to rebuild the rest, she had a lot of luggage and nowhere to go. Someone who respected my mother rented her an empty house in Gugidong which looked out toward nearby Bukhansan.
My mother started dialysis around that time. I read a poem about my mother who, after spending several hours in Severance Hospital, returned home tired, to be welcomed by trumpet flowers climbing along the trees in the garden. I imagine that view.
My mother never complained even though she was going through a lot every day. While only trumpet flowers welcomed her in the large garden, she kept the discerning eye for beauty, sensibility and gained strength from the burning-red spirit that never turned off in heavy rain. All this is featured in series poetry 'trumpet flowers'
Walking and watching this lovely byway, I think of my mother’s heart, and feel the life of those left in this town. It’s the moment between the seasons – still raining.
For whom the trumpet flower yearns burning red, remaining bright
even in the rain
Hoyun Son
Youngchoo-mun Gate of Gyongbok gung Palace, the opposite side is 'When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom' – Street Hyoja to the Blue House
Boan Inn of 90-year-history where writers stayed is now experimental gallery
33 Market Café, Toungui dong
Garden of 33 Market
Trumpet flowers between IRASUN art bookstore and a Korean traditional house
Bookstore IRASUN – IRASUN is an acronymof “I like Sunday”
Korean traditional house of red bricks
Tongui dong Madang Park near the restaurent 'When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom'
The Trumpet flowers nearby in Seochon - 2022 the end of Summer
