As if it was yesterday

he writing group I started because I wanted to write well is climbing its fourth (fourth year) mountain peak. I joined because some of the book club members started learning to write from a teacher. Writing is not as easy as I thought. It seems that I have crossed the Jirisan Hills one by one, which I climbed with great enthusiasm during my college days. Will I be able to climb that high? I wasn't confident. I remember the days when everyone was happy when I came down after climbing.

After struggling over and over again, 18 short stories came out. I have no plans to deal with them. It's amazing that I can write more than 14 pages of writing that I couldn't write more than 2 pages. It's nice to have something that wouldn't have existed if I hadn't written it. It's strange that the past events that I hadn't thought of at all are remembered as if they were yesterday when I stand in front of the mountain peak I have to climb (I have to write).

When I first started writing, at least I wrote for the newspaper for a long time, so I didn't get stuck. Over time, other members' writing gets better and better. I'm stuck in my mannerisms, unable to find a way out, and repeating the same writing in circles like a frog wandering by a well. I think about stopping, but I want to write again, just like when I come down from a mountain and rest, I want to go back up again. 

After graduating from art university, my studio was on the side of the road from the Crown Hotel to the Hamilton Hotel. My father had built a single-story house white house on a vacant lot he had bought a long time ago. Friends walked in and out, calling it a white house. It was clear when winter was coming to an end. I went outside to wash my brushes, not wanting to smell the oil in the studio. A slender girl stopped, hesitated, and asked cautiously. 

"Do you live in this house? Your house is so beautiful."

Her white shirt shone through her black coat, and the sight of her small, bloodless face, her large eyes filled with a lonely shade, I involuntarily drew her into my studio.

"Have a cup of tea. I was just about to have one myself."

"Thank you, I wanted to go to art college too."

She came to do croquis once a week, and then, just as quietly as she had approached me, she disappeared one day. A year later, I received her letter from abroad. She had met and married a foreigner who was assigned to Seoul as an editor for an American newspaper. It was about her living in a small town in Ohio and making the artworks she wanted. The image of her suddenly comes to mind.

It seems that the indelible memories that pop up from the subconscious mind and the long-forgotten past seem to have been resurrected through an old movie projector, making me continue to write.