A nice little chat about love on a rainy day

[jollyman]

A nice little chat about love on a rainy day

Love has significant meaning in our life. Sometimes it brings us with stupendously enormous joy but sometimes it instigates us more than excruciating pain. As st. Paul said, what matters if there is not love? Actually the painful part of love is usually self-inflicted and so hard to cure, but that doesn’t mean the coruscation of love could be easily waned away. Love is good, beautiful, admirable and so on; it has every right to be featured with every compliment we can produce for it. Most of all, it is worth giving a shot, even when the pain is well forecasted and certain.

Anyway love has been known as something good throughout the history of human being, at least, if it is ongoing thing, no matter what the nature of love found to be suited with any of 3 types of love - motherly love, friendly love and erotic love. But the thing is love is nothing but a nuisance when we discuss on the nature of love. Its profound and abstract nature brings us a huge gulf to cross over if we like to drive our understanding to somewhat satisfiable extent. When we easily consider that love is something close and familiar to us - as a phenomenon easy to find wherever human beings are, it is so natural to get puzzled and frustrated on the nature of love.

When I firstly saw the notice of a literary award on love – of course there was some amount of prize money on it, a passion or powerful urge to write something to reap the bounty off began to run through my vein, ensorcelling me to take over this big castle that seemed perfectly impregnable to any reckless attempt to conquer. But you may easily find it, in my undergraduate days, as harder as it gets, I was prone to take it as more valuable to throw one’s energy into. Sometimes, especially you are in a peaceful and quiet patch of your life and everything around you starts to seem boring, maybe it's right time for you to find something exciting or hard to crack. If you make your mind to eat it up and commit yourself into it, you may feel alive when you struggle with troubles caused by that seemingly wrong decision. You are going to hear your heartthrobs louder and faster and it is the moment of truth that you find the proof of being alive, in my two cent. So I made my mind to work on it, but it was not easy to find how to make my first step. I wasted nights and days, not idling but not finding a single bit of ray to illuminate the dark road that would lead me to the glory of conquering the ostensibly unassailable castle.

The way to shed light onto understanding the nature of love was such a troublesome work. Nobody knew exactly what the love itself was but everybody knew and practiced it anywhere and anytime in their own way. And the writings of wise men on love…Ah, the beautiful styles and piquant senses to penetrate the center of issues… I appreciated their endeavors and good works to open the door for average man like me but the problem was their way of understanding was beyond my intelligence. I tried some holy tracts of them somewhere in the past and failed to understand and despaired. It was painful to take the current situation of emptiness with no gain that I was going through.

But isn’t there an adage like ‘chance loves the prepared’? I know things of this world are strange in a way but I didn’t know the mind-boggling problem at that moment would be solved easily like that. My chance was brought by one of my friends who adopted a stray cat recently. It was a nice little chat at a café located in my school.

It was a fair day. However, it was weird enough to be rainy with bright sun rays to penetrate the thick blanket of dark clouds mysteriously. At that time, my friend made his mind to have his own place somewhere out of the school and moved out – we had lived in the dormitory more than 3 years, and it was not easy to acquire a scarce and valuable chance to bump into him. No matter how the odds were low on that weird but good day, I was fortunate enough to meet him accidentally. I know you are going to be curious of the reason why I mentioned just meeting a friend as a rare chance, even if he moved out of the dorm. The thing is he had an ascetic tendency to make his place as a deep cave or forest to hide in, not understandable to me, though. But don’t get me wrong. He is a nice and capable guy but just not that active or adrenaline-driven like me. He wanted to avoid troublesome issues of the school or society. Anyway I still love to have a little chat with him, because our little chat takes us to anywhere we like to go such as sports, games, books, philosophy, history, music from the baroque age to today, or political and legal issues that I am now infatuated a lot. So now you know why a chance to meet him was something worth being celebrated for me with somewhat troubled mind.

My way to celebrate this rare chance was simple; we went to the only café in the school and took a cup of coffee with a delightful little chat about his newly adopted cat. Actually, my concern was not on his cat firstly. You know I’m a man like the geographer in ‘The little prince’ and I was not concerned with ephemeral things around me. I was eager to query him about what he thought about the abstract concept of love to get some clues to work with.

Perhaps he was not in that mood. He made some silly jokes with a muffin I bought for us to lessen the rich but pungent taste of espresso, bitter enough to make anybody to frown. Perhaps he began with something like this, ‘If that muffin were something poisoned to kill some people...’ It was the beginning of what we did, taking some sips of espresso. "The name of the muffin" was the title of a parody that we talked about; if you are a die hard book lover and happen to be a big fan of Umberto Eco, you don’t sweat to construe where we got the title from – ‘The name of rose’. He is definitely a big fan of Umberto Eco who wrote "the name of the rose", "Pendulum of Pucco", and some other interesting and thought-provoking novels widely known amid of large number of people throughout the world, although Eco’s job is teaching semiology at an university. "The name of the rose" was his maiden work but made a great sensation to gather lots of admirers up and one of them was definitely this friend of mine.

We were talking about the poisoned victims depicted in "The name of the rose" and pondering how the situations of the original novel could be mimicked in our childish parody using the muffin we began to dig in. When we played enough with the childish stuffs and got bored, he began to talk about a cat adopted from a member of an internet community for pet raising people. I think he was of a mind to brag about his cat. The cat he newly adopted was a kind of wonder to him not because of her sight of grandeur, heavenly grace, or other merits or conditions we are apt to think that a good cat should satisfy, but because of her commonness - her ordinary feline nature. Maybe it sounds weird to you but it looked like that her being an average cat which went astray but caught and tamed was the reason why he loved his cat.

As you know, when it comes to the feline nature, a cat looks like something lovely and close to us, but not in the way we want. Sometimes it seems that they are very similar to a human lover, secret and mysterious. So I guess his life with her could shed light on what love is and would make a good example, not as the flawless love st. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthian 13, though.

He said she loved to sniff on him. As you know her feline nature didn’t let her do it as a dog got friendly with a human being. But ‘why on earth did she do that?’, I asked. My friend said cats loved to sniff on their master to confirm‎! the existence of someone who cared of them; he had learned it from an internet pet raising info site. Maybe, if love were something like caring and being at somebody's side, sniffing him could be a way to show her love, I thought. In other word, if facing each other was the definition of 'friendliness' in human concept, sniffing each other's smelly body was in feline concept. That was the moment I found an aspect of love - acknowledging each other's existences.

She was just an average cat with yellow curly texture. I saw her when I paid a visit to his place. But she was not that easy to approach. Sometimes, when he liked to grab her on his knees and patted on her furry nape, her feline nature didn’t allow him to do what could distract her freedom to sit alone and denied his hand with her claws usually hidden in paws. He told me that, when he experienced her angry scratch for the first time, he was sorry for her scratch on his hand because he thought she hated him. But later he found she didn't go far away but stay around and it made him puzzled. Yet, soon after a while, he understood she didn't hate but love him. Her behavior! to keep distance but not to get away was her way to show her concern and friendliness to him. Namely, love is in acknowledging each other's standing point.

As you see, her behavior! was just like what a human lover did probably. Yes, she was egoistic. But, in a sense, she was better than a human lover; not pretending everything OK. She was frank and straight, straight enough to follow her own feelings when she faced her human 'friend'. Her human friend was special to her as she was to him. But it didn’t mean she had no problem with him to be the master who would subjugate her and dominate her own way of life. He told me that, after he understood she didn’t like to be dominated, anything to prove who was master and who was submissive was not on his to-do list in their everyday life. I found, here, love is in being equal but not in making ranks or mastering. Love doesn't force anything and, thereby, love doesn't need to pretend anything. If love is something delightful, it is because love is springing freely out of the deep inside of heart. In other words, love is in being true - not masquerading.

He said, ‘When you understand what felinity is the boundary that separates taming and being tamed begins to disappear. She doesn't do anything before you show her how to do something, such as playing with scratch board or being familiar with a new food she didn't have a chance to try.’ Maybe I asked him, ‘Did you show her how to eat cat foods or how to play with toys you bought for her?’ I konw it was a silly question, because he did. But anyway he continued, ‘And, when you reach out your hands to the cat and make friends with her, thereafter she comes to be a lover who makes you realize you've been being tamed by her, which brings us a little weird feeling, but it is not that bad.’

Nowadays she's given birth to 3 little kitties still not able to open their tiny eyes. My friend called me and bragged about what happened on that morning. He was so proud of his cat and invited to see her newly born kittens. When I lastly dropped by to see the kitties newly arrived at this side of the world, she was on edge because of her nature as a mother to secure her precious kittens. Maybe half of her being cranky was thanks to her hunger from nurturing her kitties and the other half is to her tired nerve to guard them. Anyway she didn’t move even a step from the nest where her precious kids were lying. Looking back to the image of the ferocious mommy cat and her newly born kittens, love seems to reside in caring and devotion - a devotion to secure what she loves from any kind of danger or hunger that, maybe, she hates most.

The story of the newly born kitties was the last part of our conversation; actually it was more close to a chat rather than a conversation or an elaborate dialogue. No matter how it was done, on that weirdly rainy but sunny day, against unkind odds, I met my friend and found good stuffs to construct my writing about love; it was a little bit fudge because it was from an every day chat and love was not usual issues I prefer to talk. Though I suppose I beat around bushes all the time, it was supposed to be much better to stay like that. Because I know thinking more deeply of love would make us unsure more about it. Perhaps it would be felt like to wade into a deep swamp and to be stuck in the middle of there waiting for somebody’s help.

He has been a good man to have a conversation on things for years and even nowadays still is he. A conversation with him always has shed light on something hard to grasp and amplifies the brightness to make clear ideas about what I have been after. At this time, It was not that different from my understanding of his nature. Even with that little chat I could produce some clues to write an essay on love. So, when we said farewell to each other, I gave him my word to treat him to show my gratitude on what he taught on her cat and love between them at other chance to meet him. It began to stop raining outside...

[jollyman]

몇년전에 아직 대학생 시절에 교내 영문 에세이 대회에 출품하려고 시작했던 글입니다. 지면 제약 같은 것이 있어서 한 반쯤 들어내고 다시 써서 출품하기는 했습니다만 그래도 원래 썼던 글이 더 나은듯 하네요. 지금 보니 여기저기 다시 쓸 것들이 너무 많아서 여기저기 첨삭해서 게제해 봅니다.

[Khan]

사랑에 대한 글이라-개인적인 삶의 이력을 볼 수 있을까 기대했는데... 암튼 흥미로운 소재로 다룬 사랑에 관한 에세이 재미있게 읽었어

[jollyman]

ㅋㅋ 원래 저는 남의 이야기만 하고 사는 사람이라 아마 제 인생편력은 보시기 어려울듯 합니다. 사석에서...ㅎㅎ