Texts
After a Rainy Autumn Night
Paik Philgyun
Because between seeing (bo-neun) and sending (bo-nae-neun), there is an “I” (nae), I gaze at your back and send these words. This place serves as a crossroads where earth, rope, and salt trace their stories to the present. Shadows of standing stones stretch long beneath the eaves. Clothed in straw rope, a figure stands beneath the eaves. Beneath its ribs, its torso cradles a lost sibling—a stump, stripped bare, giving everything to the boy, leaving nothing but itself, longing to become your resting place, a space where freedom can dwell.
Armless bodies stand side by side, spaced an arm’s length apart, front to back, left to right. Wandering steps tread last night’s wind-path, reaching the stone field where questions arise. After a rainy autumn night, seven upright menhirs, five letters, four salt sculptures, two rope pillars, and one stump await their guests.
Memories resting in the seven upright menhirs remain in silent meditation. On days when the red wilderness whispers omens of death, the colors that wait and those that face find deep kinship in one another. When the front-right menhir takes the lead, the diagonal axis aligns the menhirs and the winddance in symmetry, and a single step away from the ebbing shore.
Right-Front, Dog’s Water Sack misses the thick, furry breath.
Center-Front, Cloud Screen yearns for the tilted walls of the square.
Left-Front, Memory of Dawn greets the wind beneath the dawn sky, beyond the mosquito net of the high-rise home.
Center-Right, Valley of Fire stained by the red wilderness.
Center-Center, Wild Camomile-like Array tends to its youthful days left in the stamens.
Right-Back, Struggle with Weed carries on the roundelay of grasses.
Left-Back, Sandy Palm descends the staircase, recalling a lover’s skin.
The memory entangled in rope dredges up a lost question. Where does vast love grow? Hope writhes within the transparent pillar.
Left-Center, Parting Winddance is neat.
Center-Back, Aerial Winddance is a path to evade the tiger, a subject of study for all.
Frost forms on the angular crown of the salt named after the goddess of the ocean. He measures the world with a contract that is never renewed. In the echoing raindrop hall, the boy wipes the frost from the salt. With the resolve to call it an ark, he tends to the salt.
Oncoming lover is the cause of forgetting. Nonsense. The pillar, supporting nothing orderly, promises a torso shared by tree and human. Yet here, the stump is my given portion.
Paik Philgyun
Because between seeing (bo-neun) and sending (bo-nae-neun), there is an “I” (nae), I gaze at your back and send these words. This place serves as a crossroads where earth, rope, and salt trace their stories to the present. Shadows of standing stones stretch long beneath the eaves. Clothed in straw rope, a figure stands beneath the eaves. Beneath its ribs, its torso cradles a lost sibling—a stump, stripped bare, giving everything to the boy, leaving nothing but itself, longing to become your resting place, a space where freedom can dwell.
Armless bodies stand side by side, spaced an arm’s length apart, front to back, left to right. Wandering steps tread last night’s wind-path, reaching the stone field where questions arise. After a rainy autumn night, seven upright menhirs, five letters, four salt sculptures, two rope pillars, and one stump await their guests.
Memories resting in the seven upright menhirs remain in silent meditation. On days when the red wilderness whispers omens of death, the colors that wait and those that face find deep kinship in one another. When the front-right menhir takes the lead, the diagonal axis aligns the menhirs and the winddance in symmetry, and a single step away from the ebbing shore.
Right-Front, Dog’s Water Sack misses the thick, furry breath.
Center-Front, Cloud Screen yearns for the tilted walls of the square.
Left-Front, Memory of Dawn greets the wind beneath the dawn sky, beyond the mosquito net of the high-rise home.
Center-Right, Valley of Fire stained by the red wilderness.
Center-Center, Wild Camomile-like Array tends to its youthful days left in the stamens.
Right-Back, Struggle with Weed carries on the roundelay of grasses.
Left-Back, Sandy Palm descends the staircase, recalling a lover’s skin.
The memory entangled in rope dredges up a lost question. Where does vast love grow? Hope writhes within the transparent pillar.
Left-Center, Parting Winddance is neat.
Center-Back, Aerial Winddance is a path to evade the tiger, a subject of study for all.
Frost forms on the angular crown of the salt named after the goddess of the ocean. He measures the world with a contract that is never renewed. In the echoing raindrop hall, the boy wipes the frost from the salt. With the resolve to call it an ark, he tends to the salt.
Oncoming lover is the cause of forgetting. Nonsense. The pillar, supporting nothing orderly, promises a torso shared by tree and human. Yet here, the stump is my given portion.
