flexibility of his schedule here in Korea. He needed plenty of free time to think his weird thoughts and reconstruct himself as long as his thoughts did not collapse onto him, burying him alive.

At the least provocation, in late August, he began to come to her, his favorite city, lost and uncertain with eyes somewhat wild and fearful but yearning and believing in Seoul's power to provide him with experiences that would thrust him into a better knowledge of himself and the world. She would reflect onto him a more refined and loving being (or, at a lower stage, a loved one since he knew that it might be true that he was one of those tattered souls who weren't needing to learn how to be loving at this point but just needing to feel loved).

Four or five times around the pool were enough to tire him to a respite of ten minutes sitting on its edge and contemplating the movements of the people around him. Their forms transcribed into ideas concerning what he thought their lives might be like; and from there, feeling and the musical notes encroached from distant spaces within his imagination.

There had been a time when the whole world seemed to him full of connections. Perhaps that is what made his childhood memories so special: as a child he believed that their meaning would go on forever. The temporary nature of family marshmallow roasts and monopoly games with his father; tire swings and neighbor's tree houses; bicycle radios fastened to handlebars; selling snow cones to passing cars; bicycle routes; meatloaves, potatoes, and onion rings; bi bi bop and kimchi chige; that trip to Arkansas at a distant relative's house and how he and his sister had played in the snow with a "cousin" the whole day; his sister….

Oh, how painful! He didn't want to think of that ever. He wanted to find the beauty of the present moment. How good it was to stretch out into motion; to feel the power of his arms; and the embrace of water.

He thought about how on his walk here an ordinary happening had touched him without even then being aware of it. A young boy standing at a curb with other pedestrians waiting for the light to change rocked a metal, rectangular trash container, which swung back and forth on a hinge. Sang Huin put his hand on his head in passing; and the world could not have seemed more rich and connected by this impersonal incident than if Sung Ki's Buddha had manifested himself supplying answers to every question that Sang Huin had ever had in his head. This contentment and absorption in the poetic qualities of the present moment lasted only that long: a moment. He told himself that he continually wanted to be in the present moment as fully as this no matter how banal or what lonely patterns it consisted of. It was better than searching through memories of people long gone who had no capability of returning to him again.

He pulled his dangling legs from the pool. So much came and went. It was hideous in a way: he could not determine who or what was important. He wasn't even sure how much people were supposed to mean to him, if anything at all. Of his friend, Yang Kwam, what importance to the long- term aspect of his life did this man make? Disconnection ran amuck looting the benign corpses of good memories. After sitting himself on a bench in front of the pool, a sadness at the loss of his friendship with Yang Kwam made him feel age that he did not possess.

He watched a couple young men stretch out in motion. He watched their splashing, their excitement, and their frenzying limbs with the awareness that this tousling around had no higher significance. He got a vision in his mind. It was a feeling with musical notes. He got his underwear and his book bag from the locker and dressed himself marginally. In the dark sleeping room of the mokotang, where many businessmen got their only bit of relaxation from the week, he sat in a reclining chair near the window and began writing down notes but he felt that he was dabbling. He deluded himself that an ability to record notes on a staff would tranform him from an amateur cello performer and general musical dilettante to a composer. it was a dream for dreams meant that he was more than amarginally educated professionless clod kicked by circumstances to job, residence, and sexual orientation. Dreams meant that he was more than a mere carbon organism jilted around by electrical activity in the circuitry within the result of hornomal activity and the results of genetics. Dreams deluded him with a sense of purpose that would be mroe pleasant than reality.

One man's long and thick penis throbbed up and down on its own volition by the impetus of dreams. Sang Huin tried not to stare but he could not help it. His eyes, still getting over an eye virus, began to hurt and he felt tired. He put away his composition and then put his hands over his eyelids.

He went to sleep. He dreamed of a woman named Gabriele driving down a country road in Arkansas. She reached for a can of snuff that was on her dashboard. The roads she chose were random and she kept yearning to move southwest until she was out of America to that neighboring country of Mexico so different than the homogonous American model that was rife the world over. He saw into her mind and her hopes to cross over the Mexican border and veer off the main road through adobe hamlets, and cacti and past Mexican Indians.

When he woke from his epiphany he wasn't sure what to do with it so he returned to the pool only to find it had been drained. Seven streams of water gushed from spouts at the bottom of the pool and three young boys were running around in the collecting waters—one kicking water up to the lower parts of the mirror that covered the walls. It all reminded him of his mother blowing up a plastic pool for he and his sister and how she ran the hose over to the pool to fill it with water. He could remember how the two of them had splashed freely inside it for hours but were so prudishly careful that neighbors hosed off their grassy feet before entering with them. He remembered telling one neighbor boy to get out after he had disregarded the rule, soiling their clean waters, and when he, "Shawn," wouldn't leave he got out to tell his mother only to gain the enflaming sting of Texan fire ants on the souls of his feet. He could remember his screams more than the sting. He looked toward his reflection on the nearest part of the mirrored wall, but still steamed, it wasn't there.

His thoughts crumbled like Graham crackers and spilled like pints of milk that Mrs. Ghrame, the kindergarten teacher, had given to each class member as they watched Winnie the Pooh and Piglet on television before being made to sleep on mats for a nap. He felt lost childhood with so many forgotten memories sucking him into an invisible vortex of dust. He was running around with a cowboy hat, a play gun, and a holster. He was running around in his own wayward thoughts before adolescence created a hunger for beautiful bodies and a neediness that he would never be able to shake.

He jolted up and went where there was more light. He seated himself on a bench near a row of lockers believing that what he had was some story unrestrained by notes but when he put the pen to paper notes exuded there. He sensed the brilliance that came to him and felt awe toward the paper that could magically reflect the mood and full realm of his mind. He yearned to embrace his cello and to practice the notes of a Gabriele symphony that he was composing.

Chapter Two

He dressed himself. As he put on his socks, he did it with the mentality of a small child who still felt newness in the sensation. Sexual glutton of adult games, introvert, a man perpetually weakened and wary in ways unbecoming to a man, he still was a little wiser than most on a couple issues. He was cognizant that as an