Perhaps because I am small myself, I have never been fond of large people, nor do I care for grand things. A few days ago at a gallery, a woman asked me, “Why do you write your English name, ‘sooim lee,’ only in lowercase?” Before that, I had already been asked three or four times if my name had been misspelled. Of course, I had a certain intention when I first started using lowercase letters, but it was only after being questioned repeatedly that I began to deeply examine the subconscious mind behind it.
In life, there are people you hope you never run into again, while there are others who remain vividly in your memory even after many years. For me, there is one person I would truly love to meet again if given the chance. He was a man I met when I was twenty-six, during my student days at NYU.
He was an international student from Colombia, South America, who had come to study music. It happened one day after class while I was waiting for the train at the subway station to go home. Standing close to me, he suddenly spoke. “I know you.”
I was startled. I never expected that such a tall, handsome man—with pale skin and sad gray eyes, looking much like the actor Jake Gyllenhaal—would ever speak to me. Seeing me try to shrink back behind a subway pillar out of embarrassment for my shabby appearance, he let out a warm laugh and said in a gentle voice, “I live in the building right next to your apartment.”
A neighbor who went to the same university! And he was the one to speak to me first! I remember so clearly how my heart pounded and how flustered I was, not knowing what to say. He was a sensitive and quiet soul, and not long after, he suddenly left for Europe. Before he departed, I asked him, “Why are you leaving before even finishing your studies?” He answered calmly, “I just want to live as a new person in a new place. And by moving to yet another place, I want to forget my past life and live as someone else.”
It all happened a very long time ago, but his words remain with me like an indelible imprint. Sometimes I wonder, Is he still wandering through foreign lands? Out of curiosity, I have wanted to search for him online, but while I can remember his first name, his last name was too difficult for me to memorize, so I have forgotten it. Searching is impossible.
Unlike him, who continuously moves to places where no one knows him to live a brand-new life, I settled deeply into New York. Yet, in my own way, I too wanted to live differently from others. My yearning for that 'difference' was not something grand or loud; it was closer to living quietly, almost invisibly, with a small name that fits my small self.
By nature, I am drawn to things that are faint, hiding, and disappearing, rather than things that are big, bold, and shocking. Perhaps because of this disposition, I majored in etching—a form of printmaking where delicate images are scratched onto a plate with a sharp needle. I love the trembling of those thin lines, which are barely visible yet sharply alive. This is precisely why I write my name entirely in lowercase. If I explain that this is my confession of wanting to live within that infinitely thin and meticulous world of trembling lines, would it be a sufficient answer for my lowercase name?
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