Afterword

Summary

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT BE COMPLETE without a note on North Korea. A trip to the Diamond Mountains reinforced the idea of the ugly arrayed alongside the beautiful, though the north's greatest ugliness was its utter lack of freedom.

Kŭmgang San: The Diamond Mountains

It's a pure land, but alien, aloof, contradictory;

no fish in its mountain waters,

no birds in its mountain air;

no tangible Buddha presence anywhere.

A green antiseptic beauty reigns,

encumbering the intruder,

tying the ox to its cart,

regulating Zen from the heart.

Samilp’o, where the hwarang sported

while the lake water laughed in the sun,

is holy ground now; idols are enshrined.

Joy would be indecorous; the water is forbidden to laugh.

Kim Shisŭp, mendicant monk, slipped from the woods:

‘Find joy where you can,’ he said; ‘that's what counts!’

‘Awe comes easy here,’ I said; ‘but joy is constrained.’

‘There comes a time,’ the good monk said,

‘when you let the thousand books in your belly dry in the sun;

forget ideology; think mugwort thoughts.

Draw into the light to see what you’re saying.

Go to Nine Dragon Falls; jade water slips from pool to pool.

There's been no rainy season this year; the flow is slack,

but there are other pulses there that will let you feel

the vitality that has sustained us for five thousand years.’

I took the monk at his word

and made the two hour trek to the falls.

I discovered the elusive pulse of joy

where I least expected it, in the cries of pleasure

of grannies gulping the elixir waters. Iron-couraged,

they had slid-scrambled for hours to make it here.

No surge of unfreedom would prevail

against this tide of redeeming yin.

Man makes lovely things; not here though;

there are no pavilions, no temples, no wind bells.

The denizens of the land are denied access;

no monks play paduk in the shade.

Man's legacy is concrete grey.