여름의 눈사람

Snowman has a dream, he wants to experience summer; he wants to know what warmth feels like. Winter night is long and dreary; except for the cold howling wind blowing through the snow-capped field, he hears nothing. The view of the vast milky way is magnificent but his frozen heart is not beating, not a bit.

Fellow snowmen discouraged him:

"Without cold, your existence will cease."
"You will melt before you even know it."
"You will not survive, why do you even try?"

Day-dreaming is free but not dream; there is a price to pay to hold one. The night before snowman decided to leave, blizzard came and whipped the barren land. All known exit routes were shut but snowman was undeterred; he used Polaris as a guide and moved slowly away from it.

Snowman finally met summer one day. The heat of summer reached his heart and melted it; it started to beat. However, the rest of his body also began to melt away. There was no magic and fairy dust to reverse the process. Soon the ground which snowman stood on was left with a pool of water and two rocks, a small rock stacked on top a big one.

Took this picture at my old office three years ago when I completed arranging everything after the shift.

장마 시작

Yesterday morning, hashtag "장마 시작" (start of monsoon) was trending in Korea. Monsoon season lasts for a month and by August people will start hitting the beach as summer reaches its peak. Then schools will re-open for autumn semester and people will be looking forward to Chuseok (mid-autumn) holiday. Then autumn foilages will come and go and soon it will be winter and end of 2019.

하고 싶은 거 다 해

While browsing in a bookstore in Hong Kong I came a across a travelogue. The authors were two friends who made a round trip of Hong Kong on bicycle. The book was a detailed record of the places they visited, food they ate, people they met and incidents encountered. It was a thick book with load of pictures to go with their stories.

I was thinking, theirs was something I would have wanted to do - take my time, live a life. I used to believe three conditions need to exist for thing to happen; they are time, money and energy. I have since discarded it as the belief provides a convenient excuse for not doing thing I want. At any stage of one's life, one or more of the three conditions will likely be deficient. In essence, life is simple; if I want I will find my way, all stars aligned or not.